Floor Statements

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

As someone who represents rural, forested communities that depend on our national forests, this is an issue I care deeply about. I know my colleagues on the other side care deeply about this, too. We have many common concerns in terms of forest health, in terms of fuel reduction, in terms of dealing with bug infestations and other things.

There is, I think, a common interest in finding solutions to better manage our Federal forests. Millions of acres are in need of restoration to address disease, bugs, climate change, and fire, which was made painfully clear again this summer.

We need a long-term plan to provide for our rural forested counties. Right now, many of these counties are struggling to stay afloat. Counties in my district, for example, are near bankruptcy. Critical county services like public health, education, roads, and, most importantly, law enforcement have been slashed to the point where some counties have no rural sheriff's patrols and prisoners have been let out of jail, prisoners who should not be let out of jail.

The Federal Government made a commitment to these counties 100 years ago. Congress should honor that commitment. I think there are bipartisan ways to honor that commitment.

The inclusion of 1 year of county payments at fiscal year 2010 levels--substantially more than those proposed in recent legislation in the Senate--will provide a lifeline to more than 600 forested counties in 41 States.

I want to thank the chairman for his hard work on this provision in the bill. Any long-term solution on forest management will require bridge payments to counties. This bill provides a bridge payment.

This bill includes an extension of stewardship contracting authority and allows our Federal agencies to offer contracts up to 20 years. Stewardship contracts can help reduce the cost of restoration to our Federal agencies--and, thus, the U.S. taxpayer--to help treat large landscapes to prevent catastrophic wildfires we saw in the West this summer and provide predictability to local businesses and industry that incentivizes investment and creates jobs.

I met with a gentleman who is going to open a 2.5 megawatt biomass plant in Colorado in November. He is doing that with a 10-year stewardship contract on dead bug kill in the vicinity of his plant. It was done through a collaborative process. The result is the Forest Service will be able to do fuel reduction on twice as much acreage as if they had to appropriate taxpayer money to do it. He told me if that was extended to 20 years, which this bill does, that the cost would come down even more. So we would create electricity and make these forests more healthy by utilizing that biomass.

I particularly want to thank the chairman for working with Representative Walden, Representative Schrader, and myself to include our balanced, bipartisan solution for the statutorily unique O&C lands. These lands exist nowhere else in the country. They are historically, statutorily, and geographically unique.

The solution we came up with for these unique lands would not be appropriate for other land included in the larger bill. I spent many hours with Representative Walden and Representative Schrader and with you, Mr. Chairman, to work out a reasonable and fair solution to an incredibly complex and longstanding controversy in western Oregon. I admit it's not a perfect solution. There are things I would change. There are things that Representative Walden would change. There are things that Representative Schrader would change, and, Mr. Chairman, I'm certain there are things that you would have done differently. But that's the legislative process at its best. We did the best we could do and came up with a strong proposal. It's an Oregon solution to an Oregon problem, and I am pleased to see it included in this legislation.

That doesn't mean that I don't have strong concerns about other provisions in the underlying bill. I do. Members should know that H.R. 1526 would dramatically alter the way we manage our national forest system and would threaten the multiuse mission on our public lands.

The bill would establish ``timber production zones'' in every national forest and more than double timber harvest levels nationwide. In order to meet these targets, Federal forest managers would be required to allow logging and road building in current roadless areas and sharply curtail public review of proposed logging projects.

The bill would close the courthouse door to citizens concerned about their communities and quality of life in the neighboring forests by requiring plaintiffs to post bonds, a new precedent, in order to challenge Federal management decisions.

I have had communities in my district litigate against the Forest Service over timber projects that they felt threaten their drinking water supply. I have had the timber industry litigate, as we have had environmental groups. It doesn't mean it is not frustrating, but we can work on streamlining that process without shutting the door to the courthouse, as we did in the HFRA legislation, a bipartisan bill a number of years ago.

This bill would also devolve national forest management currently under the stewardship of the Forest Service to State boards and exempt these areas from major national environmental laws.

The practical impact would be to reverse 100 years of national forest precedent and undermine--or in some cases, eliminate--multiple use of the national forests over substantial parts of our forest, harming recreation, hunting, fishing, and tourism.

H.R. 1526 represents the largest proposed change to the modern Forest Service since it was created by Gifford Pinchot and Theodore Roosevelt in 1905.

I want to reiterate that the Democrats stand ready to work with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle on forest management. There is common ground. There is bipartisan agreement on some issues. Hopefully, this bill is the beginning of that conversation, not the end, as we attempt to have a real legislative process with the Senate on these issues.

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

Wasco County,

Board of County, Commissioners,

The Dalles, Oregon, September 4, 2013.

Congressman Doc Hastings,

Chairman Natural Resources Committee,

Washington, DC.

Congressman Peter DeFazio,

Ranking Member, Natural Resources Committee, Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Hastings and Ranking Member DeFazio: In

America's national forests money and jobs do grow on trees. A

failed Federal Forest management system has led to the loss

of thousands of family wage jobs and has left our rural

forested counties with a host of preventable social and

economic problems that need to be addressed; action is long

overdue. For most Oregon counties the only solution is to

return to a sustainable harvest level that provides reliable

family-wage jobs and provides a solid tax base to support

crucial services.

There are three main recurring themes choking sustainable

forest management:

1. Litigation that stalls or prevents much of the harvest

necessary for responsible, sustainable forest management.

2. Funding to prepare sales.

3. The environmental analysis and review time for

management activities.

An increase in sustainable forest management is essential

if we are to ever create and support the healthy forests

envisioned by President Theodore Roosevelt. The Forest

mortality we are facing destroys wildlife habitat and creates

a platform for catastrophic wildfires that leave millions of

forest acres bare and susceptible to erosion and extensive

insect infestation.

H.R. 1526 provides a common sense approach for returning to

sustainable forest management where planned harvests occur at

a reasonable pace. While we appreciate legislation that

allows for a temporary extension of the Secure Rural Schools

and Community Self Determination Act, the long term social

and financial health of rural forested communities depends on

family-wage jobs that stem from a healthy forest products

industry. Wasco County fully supports H.R. 1526 and will

contact our House members to speak in support of and vote for

the bill.

Rod Runyon,

Chair.

Scott Hege,

County Commissioner.

Steve Kramer,

County Commissioner.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 4 minutes to my colleague from Oregon, Representative Schrader.

I inquire of the gentleman how many speakers he has remaining.

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

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

Mr. Chairman, I'd like to spend a little bit of time directly addressing the concerns and questions of some constituents back in Oregon regarding the O&C plan in this bill. As Representative Schrader said, there is an extraordinary amount of disinformation and obfuscation out there.

This is the bottom plan. It provides everyone at the table with something that they don't currently have. For failing counties in western Oregon--and Representative Schrader did a great job talking about that, as did Representative Walden--it means $1 billion over 10 years to help pay for basic government services like law enforcement, public health, and education. It means putting sheriffs back on the roads, keeping violent criminals behind bars, having better public health, and rebuilding our infrastructure. All of those things are good jobs, necessary jobs, and things that enhance the quality of life for Oregonians and all Americans.

For forested communities and local economies, this plan means sustaining or creating thousands of good-paying jobs. I have counties that have chronic unemployment in the double digits. I've taken to telling some people I represent the new Appalachia. When you go and visit these depressed communities, when the last mill closes in one of my counties, I talk to the owners of the mill and they said, If your bill had passed, we'd be hiring 100 people, instead of firing 100 people, in a community where 100 would be the largest employer. This means keeping those mills open, or maybe adding shifts. This plan will keep the raw logs here at home, rather than exporting our timber to places like China.

For the environmental community, many of whom have totally disregarded or created propaganda about this bill, it means the first- ever legislative protection for mature and old growth forests in western Oregon. They are not legislatively protected now. In fact, if the Clinton forest plan, the Northwest forest plan, is ordered fully implemented, in pending litigation in a court here in D.C., that old growth will be some of the first to be harvested. Since I've come to Congress, I've been attempting to preserve the old growth. This would do it. There would be 1.2 million acres of old growth preserved, habitat that is fabulous. It is a carbon sink. It has the best areas to recreate.

The bill also increases wilderness protection on the O&C lands by 250 percent, doubling the size of the Rouge Wilderness, adding Devil's Staircase, and it also will add 130 miles of wild and scenic designation. There will be more river protection on the O&C lands in one plan than in the previous 50 years combined, and we will quadruple the watershed protection compared with Oregon State standards. They keep saying this is just the way Oregon private forestry is done. No. We're going to have four times the riparian protection, and in terms of herbicides and pesticides, we're going to require the development of an integrated pest-management plan through a public process for these lands. This is not Oregon forest practices as we know it, and as they are picturing in ads. If they have concerns about Oregon forest practices, they ought to go to their Governor and State legislature, because this bill is not that.

Of the 2.8 million acres, 1.2 million acres of old growth will be preserved. That is 300,000 acres of additional riparian reserve to protect our water quality for consumption and for fisheries and other values. There will be 1.3 million--less than half--that will be managed. Areas that have been previously managed, many of which need thinning and they need restoration work, half of those 1.3 million managed will be managed on a rotation of over 100 years, providing, again, tremendous environmental benefits.

Here's what the plan doesn't do. It doesn't privatize or sell any Federal lands. In fact, these lands will remain in Federal ownership, and we will pay the Federal Government $10 million a year to manage these lands, and the Federal Government will save tens of millions of dollars every year because of the management being done by a board, which would be appointed by our Governor and would actually govern these forests and manage these forests through an open public process under the Oregon open-meetings law.

It will not return to the unsustainable levels that occurred during the watch of my predecessor. There were 1.6 million board feet the year I ran for Congress on these lands. That was not sustainable, and they would tell people we're going back to that. No, we're not. I ran against that, and we're not going back there. It looks like the best estimates are we would probably get to about one-third of that level on these lands with a environmentally responsible plan. It does not eliminate national environmental laws. They would still apply.

This plan is about trying to restore balance and predictability to western Oregon. I was pretty surprised at the statement, better known as a SAP, that claimed this proposal would create more legal uncertainty. I don't know how it's possible to create more legal uncertainty on the O&C lands. The BLM is in the current of a multiyear, multimillion dollar process to rewrite the management plan for these lands. The new plan is intended to replace the old plan, which resulted from a lawsuit. The old plan was litigated and withdrawn. Their new plan was withdrawn by this administration because they said they couldn't defend it in a lawsuit. Now they're developing yet another new plan at the cost of tens of millions of dollars, which will certainly be litigated. And just recently, a decision in Federal court has confirmed that the O&C Act means what it says, ``permanent, sustainable timber production.'' This decision throws the status quo further into an uncertain area.

Now the BLM is required to offer for sale the allowable sale quantity every year. It hasn't been doing that. There's another lawsuit that would make this decision retroactive. That would be over a billion board feet of timber. Yet, another lawsuit pending seeks to return the O&C logging levels back to the 1970s and 1980s. This says nothing of the pending lawsuits on individual timber sales. That's not certainty; that's chaos. I'm pushing a balanced O&C plan that does three things: provides predictable payments to failing counties; creates jobs and sustains the existing infrastructure; and legislatively protects the environment and public health.

This is the first beginning, on either side of Capitol Hill, of a long legislative process, the first step toward getting a bipartisan bill finally negotiated and sent to the President hopefully not too distant from now.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

As I stated earlier, this is an imperfect vehicle. I have major concerns about three of the titles in this bill, but this is the beginning of a legislative process. It's almost become pretty rare here in Washington, D.C. We put something forward. We send it to the Senate. The Senate takes up that or a similar legislation. We go to a conference committee. We work things out. And we solve problems. It was that for most of the first 25 years I was here. That's a rare thing these days.

This holds promise to enter into the real legislative process, a real beginning. Now, if we fail to act, we just reinforce the status quo; and I've got to tell you, the status quo is totally unacceptable. There are some who would prefer that. They think they win with the current paralysis. Well, if you want permanent protection of our old growth, if you want additional wilderness on the Rogue River, if you want the Devil's Staircase wilderness, and if you want better forest health, the status quo won't get you there. If that's what you really care about, it won't get you there.

Now, my counties can't wait. The status quo, I have two counties who are experimenting, essentially, with how does a county go bankrupt. It's something that's never happened before and isn't provided for in Oregon statute. And I have others who are not too far behind.

My rural communities are in desperate need of real jobs. They can't wait either. So we cannot fail to act. We move forward tonight or tomorrow with a vote, and then it will be time for the Senate to come up with its version. Then we can go to a conference committee. We can work out final legislation and take it to the President.

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

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

Like many here tonight, I'm frustrated by the seemingly endless appeals and litigation on efforts to responsibly manage our forests, but not all appeals and litigation are frivolous. We know that some zero-cut groups seeking to end all logging in national forests have been successful in nitpicking the Forest Service's submission in Montana. However, this amendment literally tips the scales of justice.

The underlying bill already places extraordinary restrictions on parties--which I mentioned earlier, over which I have concern--on parties seeking to protect public resources. Do we really want to tell people they can't protest a government activity if the Federal Government violates a procedural requirement?

Failing to give notice of a major activity is a procedural requirement. Shouldn't the community be able to appeal an activity that's moving forward if they think it might impact their drinking water and they were never notified about the proposal?

Failing to properly advertise for bids is a procedural requirement. Shouldn't a small business be able to stop a project from being awarded to an out-of-State company if the Forest Service failed to follow proper contracting protocol?

The underlying bill already has numerous provisions that accelerate the approval of the projects and makes litigation much more difficult. We don't need to tip the scales further towards the power of Big Government and away from the public.

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

I yield myself the balance of the time.

We did have a hearing on this and similar issues, and I did find common ground with folks on the other side of the aisle.

We had a vigorous debate over fuel reduction 13 years ago, which ultimately resulted in a law called HFRA,

and I participated in writing that law here on the House side, very much a bipartisan law with myself and Mr. Miller on the Democratic side and Scott McInnis, John Shadegg, and Greg Walden on the other. And we gave this tool to the Forest Service, and they pretty much haven't used it. They've used it in very minor ways.

And at the hearing, I asked the Deputy Chief, What about HFRA? Do we really need to change the laws further or prevent--do these radical things like preventing appeals and litigation?

And he said, Well, no. We're moving ahead with a major, major landscape-scale collaborative process in the Black Hills.

I said, Well, that's great, Mr. Deputy. I said, How about all the rest of the intermountain West? How about central Oregon and other places where we need these sort of landscape-scale projects that can't be nitpicked, you know, acre by acre, but they are developed collaboratively and we move forward? And as I mentioned earlier, we can do them under stewardship contracts, which will attract investors who will utilize the biomass and lower the cost to the Forest Service.

There is a way to better do this. We need to push the Forest Service on these issues. If there are minor changes that need to be made in HFRA, they should let us know.

I believe one is that it doesn't allow for them to go into areas of bug kill, and that is something that should be fixed and was fixed in a bipartisan bill in the Senate, which we recommended, in part, in a Democratic alternative here which was offered in committee but not allowed on the floor because of scoring issues.

So I believe there is a way to move forward here and solve some of these problems, but this is not the proper way.

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

Mr. Chairman, on that I demand a recorded vote.

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

Well, the previous amendment was going to limit public access to information. Now we're going to ask the public, the Forest Service, to produce more information. Although, actually, we aren't asking them to produce more information. We're asking them to produce less information than they currently make publicly available.

It would require an annual report to Congress as a result of implementing title I, amendment requiring an annual report, volume of timber, cost of preparing timber sales, revenue from the sales, and how it's distributed to counties on one page.

Well, the Forest Service does prepare these reports on a quarterly basis--it is available online--but no, it's not one page. I guess we could put it on one page. I'm having trouble reading it at this scale, which is 18 pages. This is the 18-page report for the Beaverhead- Deerlodge Forest.

If we look at the report, they offer 3.4 million board feet of timber, the amount of timber delayed, withdrawn from sale, what was successfully bid on, what didn't get any bids. There are also quarterly cut and sold reports, showing the value of these sales. In the first quarter of 2013, the Beaverhead-Deerlodge sold $312,000 worth of timber, nearly all of it Lodgepole pine.

If we limit it to one page, we might lose other things, like the report on Christmas trees--$6,050 value for sales of Christmas trees; mushrooms, $1,500 in the Bitterroot National Forest.

So the Forest Service is already producing this information. They are posting it online. I know it's kind of de rigueur around here to say let's get it all down to one page. Well, we could put it on one page, but you're going to need a microscope to read it, unless you want to leave out a lot of the stuff we're getting. And that's kind of interesting, if you really want to know what's going on in the forest.

If you want to know valid bids, no bids, delayed bids, withdrawn, resold, re-offered, regular sales, cancelled, opted other volume, resold, re-offered, previous fiscal year volume, replacement volume, I mean, how are you going to fit all this stuff on one page?

So we're just going to tell them, ``Don't bother anymore to produce this data. We don't want it. The public doesn't want it''?

So under the guise of asking for information, we're actually going to tell the Forest Service to produce less, which, you know, they might be kind of happy with because they will be less accountable if they produce less information.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Well, the Forest Service isn't always responsive, but I believe if the committee chairman--in fact, I would be happy to join as the ranking member with the committee chairman and the gentleman from Montana and any other members of the committee interested in a letter to the Forest Service saying, Hey, you produce all this incredible amount of data. Some people think it's too much. So how about a one- page executive summary that covers these points, which would precede the other 18 pages online--they don't have to print them, so there's no cost to the government--I think that might solve this problem.

I don't believe we need to pass a law to get an executive summary. I mean, most Federal agencies provide executive summaries of all sorts of stuff for people who don't have time or interest in knowing things in more detail.

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

I have the right to close, and I'm prepared to close if the gentleman wants to summarize his previous arguments.

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

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

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

Again, this is an area where we do have some grounds for potential agreement. Part of the problem is the Forest Service budget. Not only are they spending half their budget on fighting fires, they've had a brain drain because of cuts in personnel and staffing, and they really don't have the personnel to go out.

I suggested a number of years ago, the last time we had a salvage rider, that a great alternative would be to have the Forest Service establish a strike team to go out to major fires--in fact, while they're probably still burning--and begin to map out a recovery effort--where it might be appropriate to go in and do some salvage, where there are critical watersheds at risk and there's going to have to be some immediate mitigation with the planting of grass or other efforts to mitigate problems that will come with the rainy season in a few months in California.

I believe there is a better way to get there. But there's a new kind of current trend online. It's called throw-back Thursday. To me, this is really throw-back Thursday to one of the most controversial pieces of legislation ever adopted by this body back in the 1990s, which was a massive salvage rider.

I have participated in a much more discrete, individual process when I was first here as a sophomore Member of Congress with Senator Mark Hatfield from Oregon. We sat down with an area that had been burned and we negotiated and legislated a salvage which preserved the areas that needed to be preserved.

There was a potential for 186 million board feet. We ended up legislating somewhere around 70 million board feet. The industry was disappointed. The environmentalists were appalled. But in the end, we got no additional sedimentation, we didn't get any slope slumping, and we did get 70 million board feet of timber out of there. We

didn't build a road into a sensitive, roadless area. We did it with helicopter logging. And the Forest Service still made money.

So there are ways to do this. But this, I don't think, is the best way to go forward. The underlying legislation already allows significant waivers of NEPA. Any project less than 10,000 acres is not required to go through an analysis. But this would allow a project to move forward no matter what the size or where it's located, without judicial review, if the project is salvaged, dead, damaged, or downed timber in an area impacted by fire this year.

We don't really know yet. I don't think a lot of the areas of Rim fire have yet been surveyed. Certainly, the Forest Service doesn't have the assets to do and find out what the impacts were--where the spot burns are, where the through burns are, what the conditions are, what areas would be critical to surviving wildlife, what areas are critical to watersheds and how we will deal with those areas, how we're going to recover the recreation in that area in the future, what would happen with building of roads and logging and salvage logging in those areas.

So I believe that this is a bridge too far in terms of expediting recovery and/or potentially salvage efforts, and I would oppose the amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I'm prepared to close.

Mr. Chairman, actually, this wouldn't apply just to the Rim fire, as I read it. The gentleman can correct me if I'm wrong. I believe it applies to any area that burned in 2013 anywhere in the United States of America, which would certainly include both Democratic and Republican districts. Fires are not very partisan in their destruction.

So that is an incredibly broad brush. That would mean there could be no analysis done by the Forest Service, Fish and Wildlife, or anybody else, before salvage efforts might begin on forests all across America.

If you're bidding on a salvage sale, it isn't your job to care about whether or not the road you're going to build in or the area you're going to access is subject to the slope slumping when the rain starts in a couple of months or the snows come in the inner mountain regions or up in the Northwest.

So this is extraordinarily and overly broad. We've already exempted things up to 10,000 acres. I believe there's a better way to approach this.

The other gentleman from California talked about getting in there and then we would have the money for strike teams. I would say that's just a little bit backwards. These are public assets. This fire is a disaster not only for the people of your district, the people of California, but the people of the Nation, particularly with the proximity to one of the Nation's most loved parks.

If we did have a strike team, we could have areas like that surveyed by spring and plans in place by spring to know where it might be appropriate to salvage and where it isn't appropriate to salvage, and it would still be valuable.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

I certainly don't know what is best for the Mark Twain Forest. And you had five Members sign your letter, so that would leave 430 who probably don't think they have any clue either about what would be appropriate in your forest.

We do have a committee of jurisdiction. There are times when the Forest Service bureaucracy is doing things that I do not approve of. I don't believe that the committee has done any oversight on this issue. I don't know if the issue was brought to the chairman before it was offered as an amendment here on the floor. This amendment wasn't offered in committee, nor was--I was there, there was no discussion of this in committee.

It's a very, very localized problem. I would suggest again, as we did earlier, that, first off, this bill is not going to become law before they're going to burn this winter--which is when they burn in the Northwest. I assume they do the same thing in your district, when the risk of fire is down because of other vegetation and when the moisture levels are higher.

This isn't going to be law by then--if it ever became law. If you're doing it to get their attention, perhaps you will get their attention if they're listening. But I would suggest that the gentleman initiate a process through the committee. Ask for a meeting with the Forest Service under the auspices of the chair and attempt to get answers to the questions he has. Doing it through this particular amendment is really not going to accomplish those goals in time if indeed there are immediate plans to go forward this winter.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Again, there are grounds for some agreement here. I agree with the gentleman from California that this very sensitive issue, access to forest lands, is critically important to people who live in, around or near the forest, or people who choose to travel there to recreate.

We recently had a disastrous example in my State. The Proposed Travel Management Plan in the Wallowa-Whitman Forest, which is in Mr. Walden's district in northeast Oregon, the plan was developed in 2009, little public input; would have closed a substantial amount of the road network. It became a huge, huge controversy because of the lack of public involvement. I had complaints from my constituents and we're 250 miles away. Although I do recreate sometimes in that forest, but it's not on the road. I access the areas by forest roads. So this is something that was of major concern.

A regional forester who was new said, yeah, you're right, they really screwed this up; let's do it over again. They started all over again in a very collaborative public process.

But this goes a little bit beyond requiring the public to be notified and involved. In fact, it's a little contradictory because major parts of this bill do away with NEPA, which does require meaningful public involvement and response to comments by the public meaningfully by the agency. So I don't know whether we've removed that requirement from the existing law for the removal of roads and that's why we have to have this amendment or not.

But this goes a little further. It says these would be legally created roads. As you know, I mean, we get people down in Nevada and elsewhere arguing with the government or even attempting to take back government property by saying these are legally created and are not the property of the Forest Service.

So first you have to decide which roads are legal, which are covered, which are illegal, not covered. Who is going to decide that? The Forest Service user group who has an informal road that they have established? How will that help with this problem?

It also requires the Forest Service to make a specific decision regarding a road or trail closure, including adequate and appropriate public involvement. Okay. Well, what are those standards as opposed to, say, the NEPA standards which should apply in these cases? So I think that this could actually lead to more confusion and litigation.

I agree with the gentleman that there is a problem. This is a sensitive area. In some areas the Forest Service has not dealt well with it and believe there are other avenues to a solution.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Well, that doesn't address the concern about legally created road or trail. Again, I'm not aware that there is a definition elsewhere in the bill, nor in this amendment, for ``legally created.'' And there is tremendous controversy and litigation over the issue of ``legally created.''

It does go on to say:

The fact that any road or trail is not a Forest System road

or trail, or does not appear on a Motor Vehicle Use Map,

shall not constitute a decision.

That leaves open the issue of informal-use roads, potentially in sensitive areas, that would have to go through a process before they could be closed. What if it's a newly developed ORV trail through a sensitive meadow? We had someone running doughnuts up in a very sensitive meadow in the Three Sisters Wilderness in an area--on the edge of the Three Sisters Wilderness. I mean, did that become a road or a trail that then would be available to vehicles and we couldn't close that area? And they did, they put in big rocks and other things to close the area off to motor vehicles. Would that have been precluded under this amendment? I don't know.

This opens too many questions to controversy and interpretation. There are times when we do need to act quickly when abuse is taking place. There are other times when the Forest Service has to act more deliberately. I believe the Forest Service can do a better job. I believe in having the public notified, the public fully involved; And the best way to do that on these roads is through NEPA.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, the gentleman has made the point that it is not mandatory, but the problem would be we already have inadequate funds for firefighting. As the gentleman, I'm certain, well knows, the Forest Service has devastated the remaining funds for fuel reduction, probably restoration activities, and a whole bunch of recreation activities and other things that have all been ripped from this year's budget because they had to spend $1 billion fighting fires, and I believe Congress appropriated less than half that amount.

This is an annual problem, and it's time to get real around here about the problem. One is to adequately invest in fuel reduction and not underinvest in firefighting. Until we do a lot more fuel

reduction across the West, we are going to have big fires. If we have big fires, we need to fight them. But we don't need to make the big fires more prevalent, more common, by cutting the fuel reduction budgets.

We had this discussion a bit in committee and actually found there was some common ground in this discussion. Certainly site rehabilitation and other activities, those are very desirable. But, again, to categorize them under firefighting I think could create major problems.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LaMALFA Mr. Chairman, in speaking of inadequate funds, if we were actually generating the funds by having actual timber harvest receipts, we wouldn't be looking to the government for the money for the type of fuel reductions that are needed. We would actually be making a living at it by taking adequate marketable timber, as well as operations that go along under a timber harvest plan that requires cleanup and replanting.

So we would be generating the receipts at the same time we would be doing this if we had this type of thinking involved with more of our forest management, not only in the current year where you're gaining those receipts, but in the future as you have a regenerated forest.

I would harken back to Weaverville, in Trinity County, in my area, where there was a fire some years ago that nearly burned the town; but then with no management, with no restoration, the land laid idle with brush, with snags, with all sorts of things growing back and remaining behind from that fire. It burned again just 7, 8, 9 years later and almost devastated the town once again. Whereas, we see on private lands, they're out there. They're salving. They're getting the job going again and restoring the forest, which is better for the habitat, better for siltation, better for the wildlife, better for the economy, better for everybody.

So let's move in the direction of fuel reductions, as my colleague from Oregon was talking about. Let's do the fuel reductions. But we don't have to do it with tax dollars. We can do it with the private sector having marketable timber being taken off and get the job done.

I, again, think this amendment will really help in this regard, so I respectfully, again, seek your support for this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Fuel reduction and salvage are two infinitely different categories. Salvage needs to be carefully planned. We already discussed earlier, the Forest Service doesn't have the resources to do that. Yet, if we take and add that onto suppression costs, that will take money away from fuel reduction and other programs of the agency.

I know around here we spend a lot of time talking about sequestration and a lot of people think it doesn't have much real impact or it's just waste coming out of the government. That came out of the fuel suppression budget. Then a bunch of the firefighting money came out of the fuel suppression budget. And now we are going to act like there was enough money in the fuel suppression budget or the firefighting budget that we could spend it on other activities. Yes, we want to do restoration activity, but at some point we have got to suck it up and make the investments we need to make in our resource agencies so they can get the job done right.

We had a discussion of how to properly approach salvage earlier tonight. I'm not going to reiterate that issue. This amendment is not mandatory, but as an addition to an already inadequate account, which is stealing from other accounts, would not be good policy.

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

I thank the gentleman.

Great name. We're really good at messaging around here, particularly on the Republican side. It's got a great name: National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2013.

Now we've heard just earlier that this is about things that are in critical short supply, vital for our national security and for emergencies.

None of those things are true. They could be a miniscule part of this.

But what this bill does is say that any mining project anywhere on any public lands in the United States of America does not constitute a significant Federal action. No matter how large, no matter how sensitive the area, no matter how proximate to the Grand Canyon and national treasures or how proximate to Yellowstone or how proximate to some critical watershed, that's not a major Federal action. So it's exempt from NEPA. That's one very big problem with this legislation. I think there's a lot of members of the public even living in very conservative areas of the country who would find that a little bit of overreach.

And then, again, these critical minerals are not critical. Sand and gravel are now critical. Anything is critical that you can find on public land. Any dirt of any sort, you are going to get an expedited process. That's a little bit of overreach.

We're going to have a great amendment by Mr. Lowenthal, who will use an actual definition from the National Research Council for strategic and critical minerals. So if this is on the up-and-up, the other side will accept that amendment and we will have these expedited processes, which still cause us some anxiety; but they will only be for truly strategic and critical materials, not everything and anything on any public land.

Secondly, most Americans would be appalled--those who don't already know--to learn that we give away all of the minerals on our public lands: gold, uranium, platinum. No matter what it is, we give it away. We do not charge. Unlike many western States, unlike Native American tribal lands, unlike private lands, unlike most foreign countries, we don't charge a royalty for extracting minerals from our lands, no matter how valuable, no matter how many billions of dollars that that load might be worth of platinum or gold or uranium. No charge. Give it away.

Twice this body has passed, on a bipartisan basis, historically, a modest royalty on the extraction of depletable valuable minerals from Federal lands. I've been very involved in that in the past. In the summer, I went to the Rules Committee when this bill was first going to come up.

They admit there are no parliamentary issues, no scoring issues. In fact, with my amendment, an 8 percent royalty would raise hundreds of millions of dollars. And those hundreds of millions of dollars would be used to remediate hundreds of thousands of mines in the West that are polluting the environment, polluting our rivers.

I have a foreign company in my district that, yeah, they put up their million-dollar bond. Unfortunately, they left the country, and it's a $14 million cleanup. The public is going to get stuck with that. It's polluting the river, killing fish, and the taxpayers are going to have to pay for it.

My amendment would have raised the resources necessary to deal with hundreds of thousands of abandoned mines in the western United States that need remediation and mitigation, but the Republicans were afraid to vote on that amendment.

Some in the West know it's a problem. They didn't want to vote against fixing the problem. Others just say you should run the government like a business, except when it comes to valuable minerals. We want to give them away. We don't really care about the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, the President has come to Congress, as he should, to ask authority for a discretionary military action. The sad fact is he doesn't have to because of a defective law passed by Congress in reaction to Nixon's bombing of Cambodia in 1973. The bill that Congress passed is a shadow of our constitutional authority regarding war and peace.

This President has come to us. That's good. The result is not yet known. It has already resulted perhaps in a diplomatic breakthrough. That is also good. But in the future we need to make certain that each and every President comes to us when we're not defending against immediate interests of the United States or against imminent or real attack of our troops or our citizens.

So I'll be reintroducing legislation to fix the war power authority. In the future, in circumstances such as this, it will require that the President come to the Congress before launching a discretionary military action. We must fix this law. This is a good precedent this President has set. Let's make it the law of the United States of America.

Mr. Speaker, today I will vote for H.R. 1911, the Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013. Due to congressional inaction student loan rates doubled to 6.8% on July 1st. This is not the bill I would've written but it was necessary to come to an agreement so that today's students don't see their interest rates double. It would have been my preference to pass the legislation introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren that gives students the same low interest rates that the Federal Reserve grants Wall Street banks.

With passage of H.R. 1911, this year's students will only pay a 3.8% interest rate when they go back to school in the fall. This rate will be locked in for the entire life of their loan. Although the interest rates will likely increase for future students under this bill, they should remain below the current 6.8% for the next few years. This is a short term solution to the long term problem of rising college costs and increasing student debt. I stand ready to work with my colleagues to address the issue of college affordability including student loan interest rates in the upcoming reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment is to remove from the bill provisions that would mandate leasing off of the fabulous Bristol Bay area of Alaska.

Now, I've said this bill is a little bit like Groundhog Day because we have passed it before, and we talked about that yesterday, but this is about a bizarre version of Groundhog Day and why I am forced to offer this amendment.

Actually, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, I traveled up to the spill with then-Subcommittee Chairman George Miller and saw what an extraordinary mess had been created, something that in those cold waters is very difficult to deal with and very persistent and caused tremendous damage to the fisheries. Congress chose then, in 1989, under President George H.W. Bush, to revoke the leases in the Bristol Bay area in order to protect this $2 billion a year fishery.

In fact, the American people, the taxpayers of the United States of America, paid $100 million to buy back those leases that had been sold in the 1980s. That moratorium remained in place until then-President George W. Bush lifted the moratorium.

The Obama administration has done the right thing and reversed George W. Bush's decision and excluded Bristol Bay from drilling in the 2012- 2017 OCS leasing program. So we had the first President Bush agree that a permanent protection of that area was warranted because of the $2- billion-a-year renewable fishery and other precious resources, the cold water, the difficult conditions. George W. Bush then reversed that, and President Obama has reinstated a moratorium.

Now this bill would mandate leasing off of Bristol Bay. Obviously, there's always division over these issues, but there is strong public opposition to drilling in Bristol Bay--55 tribes, Native Alaskan associations, and fishing organizations are opposed to the drilling in that area. National environmental groups like Trout Unlimited, Wild Salmon Center, and Natural Resources Defense Council also support this amendment.

This is a precious and irreplaceable area. One major spill in that area would devastate the environment, the fishery that supports thousands of jobs in Alaska. Actually jobs all up and down the west coast of the United States are dependent upon the fabulous fishery of Bristol Bay, both the commercial and the sport fishing. I have guides in Oregon who spend their summers in Alaska guiding in the Bristol Bay area. It attracts people from around the world.

We should not put this extraordinary resource at risk in this bill for some possible, potential future oil revenues in a State which is already quite rich in oil, where the former Naval Petroleum Reserve has been leased but, as in the case of many leases that the oil industry holds, is not developed. That is why it was the Naval Petroleum Reserve. There are known and large resources under that area of Alaska. The balance is clearly in favor of protecting this area, not another area to drill given the resources already available in Alaska.

I had to do a so-called ``pay-for.'' Last night we passed the Cassidy amendment, which increases the Federal deficit by $15 billion--excuse me, $14,999,999,970--over 30 years by lifting the cap on revenue sharing with the Gulf States. That's costing, they say, $1 less than $500 million a year. That didn't have to be paid for. They waived the rules. But because I want to protect this fabulous resource, they're saying you're forgoing potential possible future revenues for the government, you must pay for it. So unfortunately, given that, I had to move to strike title III so we could protect this resource.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Reserving the right to object, I'd like to understand the reasons--I understand the typographical errors and appreciate that the chair wishes to revise those, but I'm curious about one provision.

As the chair would remember, I came to the committee and asked that they not waive the rule for the Cassidy amendment because the Cassidy amendment will increase the deficit by $15 billion over 30 years. And of course the rules of the House don't allow us to engage in additional spending without an offset, and there is no offset. But the chair did waive all points of order, so the rules of the House don't apply to this additional $15 billion of deficit spending.

But now my understanding is that they want to substitute a different amendment, which, instead of $15 billion of additional deficit over 30 years, would only create $14,999,999,970 of new deficit.

I would like to understand why we're bothering to do this. I think over the span of 30 years, increasing the deficit by $14,999,999,970 versus $15 billion, which is easier to say because it has got a lot of zeros in it, what's the rationale? Why would we do this? Why do we need UC for this? I'm just curious.

Could the gentleman respond.

Continuing to reserve the right to object, so the bottom line here, if I can define it for our colleagues in simple language, is the net difference in waiving the rules of the House of $30, apparently the total waiving of the rules of the House to allow additional deficit spending. In contradiction of what the other side of the aisle normally proposes, there is somehow a dramatic difference between $14,999,999,970 of new debt and deficit and $15 billion, which requires a substitution of this amendment, because it's my understanding it would somehow then violate the Budget Act twice. Is that accurate? Even though you've waived the rule and we can go ahead with the amendment, you would be violating the Budget Act twice. So we just want to say we're only violating the Budget Act once; is that the difference?

Further reserving the right to object, if you're going to waive the rules of the House to create $15 billion in new deficit, I don't know why we need unanimous consent to waive the rules yet again to create $14,999,999,970 in deficit. I guess that makes a difference somewhere to someone, so I would not object.

I withdraw my reservation of objection.

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

We could have done this bill as a suspension bill 2 days ago. That is, it probably could have passed the House by unanimous consent, which is very rare, if this provision had not been added.

There is consensus on both sides of the aisle that it's critical that we move forward with this agreement with Mexico to deal with shared resources in the western Gulf of Mexico. However, the Republicans have chosen to use this as a vehicle to launch yet another attack on Wall Street reform, on the Dodd-Frank reforms, which is totally unnecessary. Obviously, it was presented as: it's potentially, possibly, maybe a future problem for American oil companies if the Mexicans change their law. Under their existing law, there is no problem. We're going to see disclosure, and it will be disclosure by Mexican companies that are bidding or by American companies that are bidding or by any other foreign company that is bidding in the gulf. You will see full disclosure, so no one would be at a commercial or at an economic disadvantage.

But the premise here is that, someday, Mexico might change their law, and therefore our companies would have to disclose and theirs wouldn't. If that did happen at some potential possible future date by some potential possible future Mexican Government, then the Securities and Exchange Commission has adequate authority, even under the Dodd-Frank reforms, to waive that requirement because it would be in the public interest and commercial interest of the United States of America to waive that provision in this instance. Now, that's dealing with Mexico.

The second problem with what they're proposing here is that they actually want to totally repeal this section of Dodd-Frank for any future agreements with any other nations on a transboundary basis, which could certainly include Canada and, likely, with the conflicts that are looming over the Arctic Ocean and the resources up there, with Russia. Now, I get pretty

nervous when I start thinking that U.S. companies are going to be negotiating secret agreements with Russia and that somehow these are going to protect our taxpayers, that they're going to protect our shareholders, that they're going to protect our public interest. That, I think, is really a very, very, very disturbing trend with this bill.

So the issue is: do we want to get this done? If we want to get it done, this is not the way to do it, because this bill, as amended by the Republicans to change the agreement and waive the rules for oil companies so they can make secret payments to the Government of Mexico, that will not pass the Senate. So we'll have yet another one-House bill, and we will further delay what the Republican side wants to expedite, which is offshore oil and gas development.

I would suggest that, rather than expediting things here, we're messing them up, and I would suggest to my colleagues that we oppose this bill in this form, that we bring it back as a clean authorization with the existing agreement with Mexico, and that we move forward and get it done. I expect, if we got it done here, we could bring it up again and get it done in a day or under suspension or perhaps, I think, with unanimous consent, even between today and tomorrow. Then the Senate would pass it with unanimous consent, and we'd be done with it.

Instead, we're going to have yet another example of the dysfunction of the Congress because we're going to pass a version here that cannot pass in the United States Senate, and then, I guess, the Republicans will try and blame the Senate for not wanting to waive the rules and allow oil companies to make secret payments to the Government of Mexico in order to garner commercial deals.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

That was very impassioned, and we can agree with the necessity of moving forward with the agreement. The problem is that the gentleman ignored the fact that the United States Senate will not pass this bill as written. They will not waive the Dodd-Frank disclosure rules to allow big oil companies to make secret deals with the Government of Mexico. They're not going to do that. So you're slowing things down by insisting on repealing part of these vital Wall Street reforms.

With that, I yield as much time as she may consume to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Waters), the ranking member of the Financial Services Committee, who is an expert on this provision of law.

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

If the gentleman would go to the microphone, I would like to ask the gentleman a question, and I will yield to him.

Your assertion is that Mexico asked the Government of the United States to include a waiver of our financial services reform provisions in section 105 in this agreement, and the Obama administration didn't agree to that but Mexico signed the agreement anyway, and now you're trying to help out the government of Mexico to get something that you claim they wanted but didn't get from this administration; is that correct?

I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Well, that's what you just said.

Well, please clarify.

Okay. With that, I would reclaim my time. I could ask to have the record read back, but I won't because it would delay things. But you said this is what Mexico wanted. You did say that just before as you spoke. Now you're saying that you believe that this is reflecting the spirit of the agreement. Now I will accept that. You believe that changing the agreement by waiving our financial services law is in the spirit of the agreement. I don't believe that. Maxine Waters, who serves on the Committee on Financial Services, doesn't agree with that. And, unfortunately, the President of the United States doesn't agree with that, so this bill is going nowhere. It's not going to get out of the Senate. They have a bipartisan bill over there that doesn't waive Dodd-Frank that they could pass by unanimous consent. We could be done with this. But no, we're not going to do that; we're going to play games.

So here's what the President said. He's got something to say about this in the end, he really does:

The administration cannot support H.R. 1613, as reported by

the House Committee on Natural Resources because of the

unnecessary, extraneous provisions that seriously detract

from the bill. Most significantly, the administration

strongly objects to exempting actions taken by public

companies in accordance with the transboundary hydrocarbon

agreements from requirements section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank

Act and the Securities and Exchange Commission's natural

resource extraction disclosure rule. As a practical matter,

this provision would waive the requirement for the disclosure

of any payments made by resource extraction companies to the

United States or foreign governments in accordance with a

transboundary hydrocarbon agreement. The provision directly

and negatively impacts U.S. efforts to increase transparency

and accountability, particularly in the oil, gas, and

minerals sectors.

So if we proceed with this bill in this form, the President will veto the bill, and we'll be back again. And how many months that'll take, I don't know. But to assert that somehow Mexico wanted this, or the administration wanted it, and they just kind of forgot to put it in the agreement, and now we're helping them out, even though the administration says they don't want it, and I don't know what the government of Mexico says--and then there was another issue raised about confidentiality provisions.

In fact, the SEC has more than adequate capabilities to do general exemptions in sections 12(h) and 36 of the Securities and Exchange Act. They could issue exemptions from this disclosure requirement under this authority, should it be warranted. In fact, the SEC today confirmed with us that there is nothing that would prevent the SEC from issuing exemptions should they be warranted. Now, the objection here is to waiving any and all future agreements from any public disclosure of payments to foreign governments. That's what you're doing here today. It's not about this one agreement or problems that might crop up with Mexico. That could be accommodated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's about doing away with a critical section of Dodd- Frank. And if you want to do that, why not bring it up in the Financial Services Committee, have a hearing, have a debate, send us a bill and repeal it. But don't try and do it in the dark of night in the hope that if you attach it to this agreement, which we all agree should be entered into, Mexico wants, U.S. wants, that you're doing anybody a favor.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters)

May I ask the Chair, how much time remains on either side?

Okay. Does the gentleman have more speakers or would he be closing?

Mr. Speaker, what we've heard here today is that by modifying this agreement, by preventing disclosure of payments by big oil companies to foreign governments which could essentially constitute under-the-table agreements, bribes, however you have it, will somehow lower gas prices for the American people.

Now, I think if you went out and asked the American people, ``Do you think allowing ExxonMobil or any of the other big companies to enter into secret agreements with foreign governments to exploit jointly held resources is going to benefit you at the pump?'' I think they'd kind of laugh at you. I mean, no offense, but they would.

The bottom line is there's also a further assertion that somehow this possible future development of this area will lower the price at the pump. It won't and it hasn't, and today the prices are excessive.

Why are they excessive?

Well, there's this funny little thing that happens just around Memorial Day every year. The refiners--and the refinery industry has been dramatically consolidated over the last few years because there's been buyouts and closures and everything else--they decide that they've got to do periodic maintenance.

It's got to happen at the beginning of the driving season; and, of course, they all schedule it at the same time and they limit refinery capacity, and then they say there's a shortage and the price jumps up 50 cents a gallon, like it did in Oregon just a month ago--50 cents a gallon in a week.

Whoa, what happened? Did you see anybody waving red flags saying, We don't have any gas, or yellow flags?

Anybody remember the seventies? No. Everybody had gas. They just jacked up the price, because that's the way that the oil companies celebrate the beginning of the summer vacation season for the American people, by increasing their profits with extraordinary and unwarranted increases in the price claiming there's somehow a shortage because somehow they're cleaning their refineries, or one of them had a problem. They are actually exporting gasoline from the west coast.

What does that mean?

There's actually a glut of oil in the gulf region right now that they can't refine. We've got refineries closed in California with oil sitting in storage tanks that can't be refined. And somehow, if we just had more oil to add to the glut, to add to the full storage tanks because the refineries are shut down to drive up the price--or maybe they're not shut down. There was actually an investigation last year. When they claimed they were shut down, they weren't. So we don't really know.

But to say, well, gee, we trust the oil companies. Let's let them negotiate secret agreements with the Government of Mexico, with Canada, with--ultimately, perhaps with Russia and that will benefit the consumers at the pump, it does not meet the laugh test.

I yield to the gentlewoman from California.

Reclaiming my time, we heard earlier the assertion that that would protect American workers. I'm not quite certain how that's going to work out. And probably it doesn't even help stockholders, because they might really want to know what's going on. I'm not sure.

I thank the gentlelady.

The bottom line here is it's simple. If we pass this bill in this form, the President would veto it if it came out of the Senate. It will not come out of the Senate.

They are actually acting in a true bipartisan way in the Senate, and they have a bill which could receive probably unanimous consent that does not contain this provision, that does not provide this waiver of the Dodd-Frank Act in favor of the big oil companies.

It's simple. I can see, you know, and I can count, and in all probability the Republican side will prevail here, but they are not furthering the cause of expediting the signing of this agreement and the execution of this agreement between Mexico and the United States by sending a bill to the Senate that the Senate will not pass.

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

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, thank you for yielding.

I believe Ms. Waters stated very clearly that there is substantial, if not unanimous, support on this side for this agreement without this provision, which would ultimately lead to the development of these resources.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Here we are again. It's kind of a Groundhog Day moment for Congress. This bill, or individual parts of this bill, passed in the last Congress five times and never went anywhere in the Senate, and it will meet the same fate again.

Now, the premise here is that if we had mandatory offshore oil leasing in the more sensitive areas of the coast--remember, 75 percent of the known recoverable resources are available currently under lease. Currently, there are 5,484 leases on the Outer Continental Shelf that aren't producing. Those leases cover 30 million acres--85 percent of the total acreage currently under lease. We estimate there are 18 billion barrels of oil under these leases and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. When I asked the gentleman from the American Petroleum Institute why they needed to put more acreage under lease when they're sitting on all of this, his answer was, Well, you know, these things take a long time.

If they take a long time, let's encourage them to develop what they've already leased, to go after these 18 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. When they're making progress there, then they might come back and petition for more, and we'll make a decision at that point given the needs of the country; but the premise that somehow by putting more leases out there--with no requirement for them to perform--the price of gas will drop is absolutely untrue. We all know that's untrue. The American consumers know it's untrue.

The principal reason that underlies the 50-cent-a-gallon, one-week run-up in May, which we're still paying, is refineries. Our refineries need to be cleaned and maintained and have periodic maintenance, and, oh, a couple of them have broken down. We have seen incredible consolidation in the refinery industry, and it's always the excuse for jacking up the price on Memorial Day and on the July Fourth weekend and sticking it to the American consumers. Last year, they claimed that all of the refineries were shut down. An investigative reporter went in and got the air pollution records--no. Actually, they were operating, and they were exporting gasoline from the United States to overseas and were claiming there was a shortage here.

Now, we're in a world market. There's not much we can do about that. So the world price is what we pay for oil and gas, and it's a manipulated market; it's a collusive market. If we really wanted to do something, Members on the other side would join me in getting the administration to file a complaint against OPEC for manipulating the markets and for violating the World Trade Organization. You would join in investigating these suspicious refinery shutdowns, which I've asked the Obama administration Energy Task Force to do. You would also join us, instead of giving more latitude to speculators in the oil companies, in actually reining in the speculators. Hey, the head of ExxonMobil says, Don't blame me for high prices as 75 cents a gallon is due to excess speculation on Wall Street.

So there are some real things we could do that would bring relief very quickly to American families, but those are not giving the oil industry, which is sitting on 5,484 leases, covering 30 million acres and 18 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, more acreage to put under lease, particularly with mandatory leasing in sensitive areas.

That's what this bill would do. We've passed it before. Well, not ``we.'' Collectively, the House has passed it before. I expect, as I said, we will see that happen again today, but nothing will happen with these bills in the United States Senate.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), the ranking member of the Energy and Mineral Resources Subcommittee.

I yield the gentleman from New Jersey an additional 1 minute.

I yield 4 minutes to an outstanding new member of the committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. Lowenthal).

Mr. Chairman, just to inject a few facts into the debate, although we often ignore those around here: oil production from Federal lands is higher now than it was at the end of the Bush administration. We have produced 596 million barrels of oil from Federal lands last year, compared with 565 in 2008; and the Energy Information Administration found that oil production is higher on public lands offshore now than it was at the end of the Bush administration. We have produced 474 million barrels of oil last year, compared to 462 in 2008, but sometimes facts are inconvenient things.

With that, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), an esteemed member of the Ways and Means and Budget Committees.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Shea-Porter), another esteemed member of the Natural Resources Committee.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I'd just like to respond to the gentleman who preceded me.

The statistic he used was accurate in 2005, the 20 million barrels a day imported. And that was, of course, when George Bush was President of the United States with the Bush-Cheney energy policy. And that was 57 percent, you know, of the oil we consumed.

Now, due to changes with fleet fuel economy standards and biofuels and other steps taken by the Obama administration, actually, our daily consumption is down to 18.5 million barrels. That's not bad. That's almost an 8 percent decrease in a mere 7 years, with the President only in office for 4\1/2\. And we are now only 36 percent dependent on foreign oil.

That trend continues, of course, as I spoke earlier, about the increase in production on Federal lands and Federal offshore lands between the Obama administration and the Bush administration. So actually, we are making significant progress with the new policies that are designed to create less oil dependence, as opposed to the Bush- Cheney energy policy, which was actually designed to increase our dependence on fossil fuels.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Does the gentleman have any additional speakers?

I am prepared to close, and I yield myself such time as I my consume.

The majority leader just put out some very impressive statistics on the possible potential off of the east and west coasts if we opened up these sensitive areas to mandatory leasing; but it's actually smaller than the known reserves under the leases the Federal Government has already let to oil companies, which they have thus far refused to develop: 5,484 leases, 30 million acres, 18 billion barrels of oil--his number was smaller than that--and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. His number was smaller than that.

So it's the premise that by mandatory leasing of these sensitive areas we're going to somehow have some sort of a boon to production as opposed to somehow incentivizing these oil companies not to sit on these leases forever. We have offered legislation previously from our side to require development of leases within a certain period of time, with escalating costs over time, and with the potential of turning those back and letting them be re-leased to companies that actually want to do the work.

People say, Well, these oil companies won't just sit on it. Yeah, they'll sit on it. It's worth more every day. And they don't pay hardly anything to sit on it. Does anybody think the price of oil is going to be cheaper 5 years from now than it is today? So if they sit on a Federal lease--and, oh, maybe we can get some more to sit on for the future--then that resource which they paid for in 1999 when oil was much cheaper is a phenomenally profitable resource.

So to say we must open up these sensitive areas now is disingenuous at best as opposed to incentivizing the industry to use those which are already leased and which have known resources that exceed the speculative resources under these in sensitive areas off California, off the east coast of the U.S., and in Bristol Bay, where there's a $2 billion a year totally sustainable fishing industry. It's not worth those risks.

The majority leader went on to castigate the administration. I know that many people's speeches are written in advance by their staff and they may not have been listening to the earlier debate and some of the facts I put out, or whatever happened. As I pointed out, during the Bush administration we were importing 20 million barrels of oil a day. That was 2005. And that was 57 percent of our consumption. Under the new policies of the Obama administration, which have led to conservation, more fuel-efficient cars, and biofuels, we are importing only 18.5 million barrels a day. That is 36 percent.

So we have made progress, and we should continue down that path. To lease more fossil fuel resources offshore is not a particularly creative 21st century solution. It may be a grand mid-20th century solution, which was much reflected in the Bush-Cheney energy policy. Actually, at the time when it passed, I said it would have been embarrassing policy for the 1950s, and it was tragic for the 21st century in terms of the potential we have with conservation, alternate fuels, and other measures we can take.

To rush this bill forward--and it will be rushed forward--to die in the Senate is not going to lower the price at the pump for any American. Again, the majority leader referenced that. And I made a statement on that earlier.

We're experiencing, not an oil shortage, but an artificial refinery shortage in the United States of America, which is used as an excuse to jack up prices and stick it to the American driving public every year in May and June and July when our families want to go on vacation. It's stretching their wallets.

If we took steps against the collusive shutdown of refineries, if we took steps against the collusive behavior of OPEC and other countries through the World Trade Organization, and if we took steps to crack down on the speculation on Wall Street, which even the head of ExxonMobil says, Don't blame me for those sky-high prices; blame Wall Street--75 cents a gallon is due to the Enron loophole created by a former Republican Congress to allow wild speculation in energy futures by Wall Street as opposed to producers and consumers coming together in a regular commodities market. So if we wanted to provide relief today, we'd crack down on speculation.

If we wanted to provide relief in the slightly longer term, we would deal with the issues of collusion and OPEC and refineries. And if we wanted to enhance the oil supply further, even though we're producing near-record amounts today here in the United States of America, we would encourage, incentivize, or disincentivize these oil companies who are sitting on these many, many billion barrels of oil, trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and refusing to develop their existing leases while pandering for more.

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

I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, at the end of the general debate we had some creative math and/or cherry-picking of years to make a point that is not accurate.

The point is that oil production from Federal lands today is higher than it was at the end of the Bush administration--596 million barrels compared to 565 in 2008.

Now, in the offshore, when you use a certain number of years, obviously there is some anomaly. The anomaly was the worst oil spill disaster in the history of the United States, which was the Macondo blowup in the gulf, which of course set back leasing activity and development in the gulf for a period of time. However, we have now adopted new regulations. We're actually requiring blowup preventers that work and a few other sorts of things that the Obama administration has done to make the drilling safer.

Under this administration, there are now more floating rigs in the gulf than before the spill and during the Bush years; and we approved 112 Deepwater drilling permits last year--the most since 2005. Of course that drilling is being conducted more safely than it has in the past.

So, I mean, we're going to be able to switch around, pick different years, and do all of these things, but these are aggregate, longer-term numbers as opposed to specifying a particular year--and particularly picking a year after the worst oil spill rig disaster in the history of the United States.

With that, Mr. Chairman, we do not object to the amendment by Mr. Brady, and I reserve the balance of my time.

As I pointed out earlier in the debate, yes, the chairman is correct, it does take time, and there are 5,484 leases, 30 million acres, mostly about 85 percent in the Gulf of Mexico, that have an estimated, according to the Energy Information Administration, 18 billion barrels of oil and 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas that have not yet been developed.

In any case, I do not oppose the gentleman's amendment. He makes a small improvement in what we consider to be a bad bill by requiring that if States opt into leasing, that there will be a NEPA review. I'm glad that there is some recognition on the other side of the aisle on the value of NEPA reviews to protect our precious natural resources.

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

I rise in opposition, although I am not opposed.

At the beginning of the consideration of this bill, I talked about how this was a little bit of ``Groundhog Day'' because all or parts of this bill passed in the last Congress five times. Now the gentleman is kind of disproving my theory because, well, I guess, at the very end of the movie, they broke out of the ``Groundhog Day'' cycle's being repetitive; but the gentleman is actually breaking us out of the cycle.

Actually, last year, the ranking member of the Rules Committee, the gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter), a Democrat, offered this identical amendment for sanctions to one of the many offshore oil drilling bills passed by the Republicans in the last Congress. On that day, which was the 25th of July 2012--almost a year ago today--I would note, on an amendment that does exactly what this amendment does, which we think is extraordinarily meritorious, that every Republican voted no--N-O. That would, of course, include Mr. Lamborn and the esteemed chairman, Mr. Hastings.

So I'm not sure what has changed in the last year. Perhaps they just opposed it the last time because a Democrat was offering it and because the principle and the danger posed by businesses operating in these countries which are hostile to the United States of America wasn't worth dealing with when you could beat a Democratic amendment. I don't know. Maybe there has been a new realization on the other side of the aisle of the dangers of Iran and Syria since that time. Again, I don't know.

Not one Republican Member of the House voted in favor of this amendment 1 year ago despite the fact that the esteemed gentlelady from New York (Ms. Slaughter) offered it as a motion to recommit on a bill. It could be because Republicans lockstep oppose motions to recommit or Democratic amendments, even if they have merit, just to make some sort of a perverse point.

We support this amendment today, as Democrats did last year, and perhaps all of the Republicans will change their positions this year, and it will be a unanimous vote.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

The gentleman would have been accurate had the motion to recommit been worded ``promptly,'' but it was worded ``forthwith,'' so it would only have delayed the bill by a total of 10 minutes or 15 minutes, however long the next vote was set for. It would not have sent the bill back to committee, and it would not have disrupted the movement of the legislation. So that part of the statement is not accurate and not a good explanation for why the Republicans uniformly opposed this excellent policy last year, even if it is, as the chairman says, reemphasizing existing law.

We happen to think it's a really great existing law, and we wanted to make that point last year. Your side didn't. I'm glad that you've come around on looking at the companies that do business in Iran and Syria as serious threats to the United States and are going to essentially support the amendment that we offered last year, which you opposed.

That's the best I can do, Mr. Chairman. Sometimes we change our minds around here. We haven't. All the Democrats, I expect, will vote in favor of this amendment, as they did last time. Apparently now, most or all Republicans will vote. That is a privilege we have around here, to change our minds. I just wish they had opposed it on better grounds last time rather than saying, well, it would have delayed the bill by 15 minutes.

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

Mr. Chairman, I claim time in adamant opposition.

This amendment would prohibit the Department of the Interior offshore agencies from using voluntary and commonsense planning as part of the National Ocean Policy to inform decisions they make under existing laws.

It's interesting that the National Ocean Industries Association, which represents offshore energy developers of many kinds, yesterday noted:

This is a great example of the progress that can be made

when industry and regulating agencies communicate with each

other. It's gratifying to see government and an industry come

together to cooperatively and responsibly address these

complex and important environmental issues.

And the gentleman's amendment would bring that program to a halt, which obviously the industry actually seems to think is useful.

With that, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Almost 17 years to the day--that's a long time--the House of Representatives passed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. At that time, I went to the floor and voted with a small minority against this legislation. I said it was unnecessary, discriminatory, and unconstitutional.

It took 17 years to work through the system and to finally get the Supreme Court to act and to decide that, indeed, the Defense of Marriage Act, so-called, is unconstitutional and is a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons it has protected in the Fifth Amendment:

``The Federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,'' as written by Justice Kennedy, ``by seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.''

Today, the Supreme Court restored justice and equity in America.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I will have a lot to say about the deficiencies to these two bills over the next 2 days. But today the Republicans are purporting two things: lower gas prices and reduce the deficit. They would have us believe this bill would do that. They're saying high gas prices are due to the fact there's not enough offshore oil drilling.

Nothing could be further from the truth. There's actually a glut of oil in the Gulf region. It's all waiting in storage because, oh, the refineries are doing routine maintenance. Why are they doing that? Well, because it's the height of the driving season for the American people, therefore, they can gouge the consumers by pretending, oh, there's just no other time we could clean the refinery. It doesn't have anything to do with oil supplies. It has to do with a lack of refining capacity artificially manipulated and speculation on Wall Street.

Secondly, they say they're addressing the deficit, that this is going to provide additional revenues in the future. In fact, they are so concerned about the deficit they would not allow an amendment I attempted to offer, supported by a number of west coast Members-- three Governors of the Western United States--that would have protected the west coast from the mandatory drilling in this bill. They said that might preclude future revenue from future leases that might be let by a future President, and they said we might not get $1 billion 30 years in the future because of your amendment.

However, there is an amendment by the gentleman from Louisiana, Representative Cassidy, who will mandate a diversion of $500 million a year of revenues flowing to the Treasury to the Gulf States for the next 30 years. Yes, we are going to forego or give up $15 billion of revenues to the Treasury, creating $15 billion more debt and deficit for the American people, but they waived the rules. That doesn't count.

This all kind of reminds me a little bit of George Orwell, the way the Republicans cynically manipulate the rules around here. As he said: ``All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.''

So Republican amendments that create debt and deficit are exempt from the rules, and Democratic amendments to protect the west coast, which does not want this mandatory oil drilling, because it might forego some potential possible future revenues, are not made in order. This is not for real. This is not an honest process.

Last Thursday, Speaker Boehner called President Obama ``absolutely crazy'' for moving forward with rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that cause global warming.

What I think is absolutely crazy is the Republicans' constant denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and human activity is largely responsible. I think it's absolutely crazy that the Republicans voted more than 50 times in the last Congress to block action on climate change.

In March, I talked about a new peer-reviewed report from Oregon State and Harvard that looked at temperatures over the last 11,300 years; and they found that over the last 100 years, coinciding with the widespread use of fossil fuels and turbines, et cetera, that we have seen more temperature increase than over the previous 11,000 years; 100 years versus 11,000 years.

Last month I came to the floor again to talk about a new NOAA report. Oceans are warming, fish stocks, many commercial fish stocks are moving north. Other things, which aren't capable of moving, are deteriorating in stocks.

And then, on the west coast, we've had shellfish failures due to ocean acidification; and the shellfish, of course, are only an indication of what might happen to the rest of the food chain in the oceans.

No one denies the acidification is due to the CO2 in the atmosphere. But the Do-Nothing Republican Congress just shrugs and says there's nothing to do.

But, unlike the Republicans, President Obama accepts the science; and in about 2 hours, the President will release a plan to combat climate change here at home and lay out steps for working with some of the world's largest polluters, including India and China, to reduce emissions abroad.

The details aren't all out yet, but the President's proposing to do something that I said we should do 5 years ago, that is, use the regulatory powers of the Clean Air Act to regulate new and existing power plants. That's responsible for almost 40 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions.

We can make a huge dent in our emissions by moving forward on responsible, flexible efficiency standards for coal and natural gas plants.

As the administration moves forward, it should take a close look at the climate plan outlined by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Their plan has two key elements: set State-specific emission rates to reflect the diversity of the Nation's electricity sector, and give power plant operators broad flexibility to meet those standards in the most cost-effective way through a range of existing technologies.

The standard for every State would be an overall emission rate average of all the fossil fuel plants, and individual plants could emit at a higher or lower rate. Each covered plant with an emission rate above the State standard could meet the target by retrofitting a more efficient boiler, installing carbon capture, or it could burn a mixture of coal and cleaner fuels such as gas and/or biomass.

The plan would allow for the owners of multiple power plants to average emissions rates of their plants and meet the required emission rate on average by running coal plants less often, increasing generation from cleaner sources, or integrating more renewable resources. Such an approach, that is both flexible and State-based, is exactly what makes the Clean Water Act one of our most successful environmental and public health statutes in history.

Mr. Speaker, it's time to listen to scientists. Get serious about climate change. The evidence is in. The President has a plan. The Supreme Court has given him the authority to regulate. The only question now is whether the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives will listen and act.

Last week I went shopping. I wouldn't exactly call it a spree. What I did was I went to one of the lowest cost grocery stores in the Eugene-Springfield area where I live to try and purchase a week's worth of food for $31.50. That's the average SNAP benefit for a single individual.

There are those on the other side of the aisle with regard to the FARRM Bill that will come up later today and say, This is the first place to cut: food assistance to hungry people, to kids, to seniors, to the unemployed, the disabled. That's where they want to cut first.

I wonder how many of them have ever tried to budget for themselves or for their spouse and child at $31.50 per person for a week. It doesn't go too far. In fact, I ended up a little bit over because we miscalculated on weighing some apples. I had three apples, but I had to put one back and would have had to cut back a little bit more on the pasta to make the $31.50 budget limit.

There are these incredible stereotypes out there about the SNAP program, the food assistance program formerly called food stamps, that all these people are on welfare. No. Actually, 92 percent of the people getting SNAP benefits are not on welfare. Half of them are children and 22 percent are on Social Security or Social Security Disability. So they're either seniors or disabled. The rest are unemployed or underemployed. And at $31.50 a week--a benefit that the other side of the aisle wants to cut--many of these people now can't make it through the month. This is pretty paltry stuff if you look at it and you think about doing this week in and week out.

Most people in Oregon--and Oregon is a lower cost State than many for food--run out sometimes in the third week of their benefits and they have to get emergency food assistance. Our food banks provided 1 million boxes of emergency food assistance last year. Yet, those on that side of the aisle would begrudge these people, their children, these seniors, these disabled an adequate budget for a very minimal diet.

It's extraordinary to me.

My State--and most people don't think of us this way--we are the fourth highest per capita in terms of food stamp utilization. Fourth highest per capita, because outside of our major urban areas, the economy has not recovered from the collapse that Wall Street caused in housing and other areas. We had recreational vehicles; that industry is gone. We had some high tech; that's moved on. We had a lot of construction, home building, wood products--pretty well decimated. The rural areas I have in my rural counties--real unemployment of 20 percent. People are struggling to make ends meet, and we're going to cut their benefits? They want to work. Some of them are working, and we even have a higher minimum wage than most States, but it still won't get you through to the end of the month for your family. This is just outrageous.

There are ways to cut this bill. We're going to stop paying--finally, at last, we're going to stop paying people not to grow things. But now we're going to have a new program of crop insurance. And some estimates are that this program--which goes to anybody with an unlimited income in this bill, that is, if you're a corporate farm and you earn $2 million a year, the government is going to pay for 80 percent of your crop insurance cost. Eighty percent subsidy from the taxpayers. Why is that?

We could cut back on the eligibility, and this would be a pretty big income for any farmer I know of. If you earn over a quarter-million dollars a year, go buy your own crop insurance. I think it even could be a little lower than that in my State and in most States. That would save as much money as they're going to save by eliminating food assistance to hungry kids, seniors, unemployed and underemployed, and disabled Americans. These are the cruelest cuts possible.

I urge my colleagues to support the amendment later today which would restore these benefits.

I move to strike the last word.

It's been nearly a decade since, on a bipartisan basis, against bipartisan opposition, we fought and were successful in creating the Federal Flight Deck Officer program. Since that time, over hundreds of thousands of flights have been protected by armed pilots.

There was controversy at the beginning. Could we trust pilots with guns? Well, we trust them with our lives. We trust them with planes that were used as weapons of mass destruction by the terrorists in 2011. Of course, we can trust them with guns. But they need proper training because it's an unusual environment in which to possess and use a weapon--and use a weapon as the last line of defense--should a plane be taken over by terrorists.

We've done other things to provide security like Federal air marshals, armored flight decks. But still, we know that this program is essential, it's inexpensive, and it is something that pilots want to do. There were openings last year for a few additional training spots. Over a thousand people volunteered for those slots. Many, obviously, were not chosen.

If this program were eliminated, as was proposed in the President's budget, or even if it's cut in half--and I appreciate the fact that the committee has labored to find money to restore half the funding--many officers will not be recertified, new officers will not be allowed to join, and we will lose this last critical line of defense and one that is wonderfully random. A terrorist could never, ever know if the pilots on that plane were armed. It's pretty hard to spot the air marshals, but it's even impossible to know what the pilot has behind that locked flight deck door.

So we're recommending an amendment to our colleagues that would take money out of other parts of the bureaucracy of the TSA at no increase in debt or deficit and fully fund this program so that thousands of pilots can continue to participate meaningfully as the last line of defense against a future terrorist attack.

I think this amendment has tremendous common good sense about it. It's very cost effective. And I would hope that my colleagues will join us on a bipartisan basis in supporting it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, last month, two scientists from Oregon State University, Shawn Marcott and Alan Mix, published a peer-reviewed study in collaboration with scientists at Harvard reviewing 11,300 years of global temperatures. They found that the range of temperature change in the last 100 years is equivalent to the temperature change over the previous 100 centuries.

Climate change is real, it is devastating, and it is accelerating. Most focus is on the terrestrial effects. Other research points to rapid and devastating changes in our oceans--again, a study done by Oregon State University.

Burke Hales, an OSU chemical oceanographer, coauthor with Alan Barton, who works at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, looked into the fact that oysters were failing at an incredible rate to spawn and reproduce. Their study linked the production failures to the CO2 levels in the water. That has incredible implications for the future of not only the shellfish industry, an important industry in the Northwest and other parts of the country, but also for the whole ocean food chain.

The ocean chemistry is also threatening something called pteropods, who are tiny sea snails, and they're very much at risk. They happen to be a food source for zooplankton, whales, and of course our salmon, who already have a host of problems in terms of their future.

Then from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, the Arctic seas are becoming rapidly more acidified. It turns out that cold water is especially susceptible, and as the sea ice in the summer recedes, more and more of the Arctic Ocean is exposed to the increased levels of carbon dioxide, and it is rapidly acidifying, in addition to which the melting of the ice in Greenland and elsewhere is adding fresh water, which further degrades the capabilities of the oceans to deal with the carbon dioxide.

Finally, research in the Northeast shows that the surface temperatures in the northeast Continental Shelf in 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years of record-keeping. They found that over the last four decades many species of fish stocks have been moving north to escape the warming waters, but there are many species that cannot move or evolve that rapidly, which portends for more disasters.

Back in 1973, there was a science fiction movie called ``Soylent Green,'' sort of a mystery movie, but it was about an overpopulated and polluted world, and the final devastating blow was that the oceans were dying. Now we have evidence that our oceans are very, very much at risk from CO2 and climate change.

The House Republicans are using their leadership here to stymie efforts to even research and document climate change, let alone just totally denying that it's a problem. Time and time again, they voted to know nothing and do nothing about climate change. They voted to block action on climate change no fewer than 50 times in the last Congress.

Mr. Speaker, it's time to listen to the scientists and get serious about climate change. The evidence is in. The only question now is whether Congress will listen and act.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Repetition has become sort of the cause celebre here in the House of Representatives. Last week, we totally repealed ObamaCare for the fourth time, and 33 other times we partially repealed it. Of course, none of those things have come true or have happened.

This will be the seventh attempt by the House of Representatives to expedite--in this case, they've gone one step further--or to mandate the building of the XL pipeline. That's right, mandate. We're going to deem that an Environmental Impact Statement done on a very different route is good for this pipeline. Now, if you follow that logic, we could just have one generic Environmental Impact Statement for any project anywhere in the United States of America, and Congress could just deem it to have met the law and the environmental requirements. That's incredible to go that much further in this political dealing here.

Now, what's going to happen?

The Canadians, sadly, apparently, are going to destroy their boreal forests, which are irreplaceable, to extract one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. They're then going to ship this tar sands oil through a pipeline crossing the United States of America, which, as the gentleman said, will be exempt from the excise tax that all other oil companies and pipeline companies pay--American companies and some foreign companies, but everybody else pays it. They will be exempt. They will not contribute to the oil spill liability trust fund. It's going to go to a refinery located in a foreign trade zone that is not paying export taxes, and that refinery is half owned by the Saudis.

And this is going to give us energy independence and lower prices. I mean, is it April Fool's Day? Really? Come on.

This is not going to give any American a single penny off per gallon at the pump. Right now, we are in the annual traditional Memorial Day price gouging by the oil industry. It just happens magically every May that they're up to do a little periodic maintenance or unexpected maintenance on their plants. Gasoline has gone up 50 cents a gallon on the west coast in the last 3 weeks. This is not a free market. It is a manipulated market. We pay the so-called ``world price.'' So even if this refinery does produce--and it will export--this product, it's not going to lower the world price because the Saudis over the last couple of years have tracked our increased oil production with decreases in their oil production to keep the prices high.

There are things we could do to bring real relief to American consumers--get the speculators out of the market and a number of other things--that would provide more immediate relief. This will not provide relief. It will not be a boost for our economy. Yes, there are temporary construction jobs, but guess what? We could create a heck of a lot more construction jobs in this country if we met our obligations to better fund the Surface Transportation Trust Fund and began to deal with the crumbling infrastructure in America. Those would be real jobs that would really benefit this country.

I thank the gentleman for yielding on this.

I spoke earlier today. This is the seventh attempt by this House to expedite, or now in this case, we are not expediting permitting, we are mandating permitting.

The gentleman just said that there's some disagreement here. The bill clearly states that it's the 2011 DEIS which is deemed to be sufficient which does not contain the current routing for the line.

We could create somewhat of an extraordinary precedent here. We could just have one generic national pipeline EIS that was done somewhere for something and went through the process and was approved and then deemed that any other pipeline that wants to be built can use that generic pipeline permit. That would certainly expedite things.

No, I'm sorry, I don't have enough time.

We would just deem that pipelines anywhere and everywhere met national interest, public safety, and that.

I also raised the point earlier that this will transport tar sands oil through a pipeline which the IRS has deemed not to be oil, so it won't pay the normal excise tax to go to the trust fund which takes care of leaks, like the one we just recently had in Kansas. It will go to a tax-free export zone to a refinery half owned by Saudi Arabia and this will bring us energy independence. Independence from whom?

Every time we pump another barrel, the Saudis and OPEC drop a barrel. They're keeping the price up. There is no free market in oil. You guys all know that. This is not going to save Americans one penny at the pump.

If you want to save Americans money at the pump, let's go after the speculators on Wall Street who are adding 75 cents or $1 to the price of a gallon of gas. Let's go after the collusion by the oil companies that shut down all the refineries all at once every year at the

beginning of the refining season for periodic maintenance, which they couldn't predict was going to happen, or sometimes there's a little accident. Except it turned out last year with an investigation they weren't really shut down--they just jacked up the price 50 cents a gallon like they always do.

So to pretend that somehow by deeming this to be sufficient, mandating that it happen, allowing a foreign company to build this pipeline across the United States of America, transport tar sands oil to a refinery half owned by the Saudis to be exported out of the United States, perhaps to China--over there you are saying, oh, we don't want to go to China. Well, it may well go to China and go through the Panama Canal. You're not going to stop that, and it's going to save the American taxpayers money at the pump and put people to work. Yes, there will be temporary construction jobs.

But we can do better, particularly as this committee. If we made the investments we need to make in our water infrastructure, our port infrastructure, our roads, bridges, highways, and transit systems, we can put millions of people to work permanently in this country and rebuild our infrastructure and once again claim world leadership there. We've got better things for this committee to be doing.

Okay, 38th time repealing all or part of the Affordable Care Act. Now, the Republican mantra was ``Repeal and Replace,'' but somewhere along the way they forgot about the ``replace'' part. So tomorrow, total repeal.

Well, what does that mean? I've got a few concerns.

It means insurance companies can go back to rescinding, that is, taking away your policy when you get sick even if you've been paying premiums. They could do that until this law passed.

And 3.1 million young adults, 18 to 26, oops, you're off your parents' policy. Sorry. No insurance.

5.3 million seniors who got their doughnut hole reduced last year, sorry, you're back in the bill doughnut hole.

3.54 million people in private plans who got free preventative procedures last year, sorry, those aren't free anywhere.

Up to 17 million children with preexisting health conditions would again be denied coverage.

105 million people in health care plans that previously had lifetime limits, well, your lifetime limit is back.

So total repeal, no replace, doing incredible damage to seniors, children, and many other insured Americans.