Floor Statements

That was pretty astounding. Apparently the gentleman is unfamiliar with the portions of the Constitution referring to what were then post roads.

The government can't create a job? We create incredible wealth, millions of jobs, by facilitating the infrastructure of this country, which is paid for

by the taxpayers. And those are all private sector jobs. They are contracted out to the best bid. So the gentleman has a little bit to learn.

I realize he is new here and he has been sent here on a fool's errand: Let's keep the Republican freshmen busy while behind closed doors your Speaker is cutting a deal.

Things haven't changed around here all that much. And you are down here pretending that somehow we have become the omnipotent, unicameral legislature and the rulers of America, the President and the Senate be damned.

Now, I am pretty fed up with the Senate, too, and I share your low opinion of them. They are a problem.

Let's kind of think this through. We can pass a bill here that becomes a law. Now, in the last Congress, the House passed 300 bills that never came up in the Senate. Are those all laws today? Boy, we have got some catching up to do here. There were a lot of good bills that died in the Senate, 300 laws. Great.

But what if the Senate passes a bill and the House doesn't? Does that become a law? Well, I guess, you know, they could deem themselves the unicameral, omnipotent legislative branch, which I think they feel like they are all the time anyway. So then anything they pass we don't take up becomes law.

What if the President takes a bill that someone has introduced here but hasn't been debated and voted on by either House and he signs it? Does that become a law?

What a brave and wonderful new, efficient world we have. We can have two branches and three competing places passing what they deem to be laws. Now, come on. Let's get real here. We read the Constitution on the second day of this Congress, and, in fact, Joe Wilson--we all remember Joe Wilson, ``you lie''--he read article I, section 7, clause 2 on the floor. But apparently he and many others on that side didn't take it to heart. It's pretty darn specific. It's got to pass the House and the Senate in identical form and be agreed to by the President of the United States. We cannot deem anything. In your fantasy world, we can deem everything.

If the Constitution is a little too technical, I would recommend what I give out to schools kids: ``How our Laws are Made.'' It would be a good primer for the Republican freshmen who are being duped.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, article I, section 7.2 of the Constitution says that both Houses, this House and the Senate, must pass a bill identical and the President must sign it before it becomes a law.

Now, wait. The Republicans have a bill, we are going to take it up tomorrow, H.R. 1255, that deems that a bill that only has passed the House of Representatives, H.R. 1, has become law. Now, what happened to the fact that we were going to have to prove the constitutionality of every bill that came before the House? This blatantly violates the Constitution.

I was totally outraged, outraged, when I saw this. But then I realized, guess what? What is tomorrow? April Fool's Day. Hey, guys, you got me. Congratulations. Happy April Fool's Day. What are we really going to be doing tomorrow?

Unfortunately, this legislation, under the guise of being fiscally prudent, is going to delay vital safety and capacity needs and enhancements to our aviation system, condemning future air travelers to even more congestion, more delays, more wasted fuel. It's going to cut an already inadequate inspection force--again, threatening safety. And then there are other provisions that are problematic.

The gentleman from Arizona may ask for a vote on an amendment to change the very fair and competitive slot language for National Airport in the bill into an unfair earmarked anti-competitive amendment that would give potentially 70 percent of long distance flights out of National Airport to two airlines, about 50 percent to one airline. And he calls it competition. Now I don't know what planet he's from, but that's not competition where I come from, an underserved west coast market that has very few opportunities for my people to access National Airport.

And then, finally, a labor provision that was thrown in rather gratuitously that says that anyone who chooses not to vote in an election will be counted as a ``no.'' The interesting thing is, if we had that same standard for elections to the United States House of Representatives, not one single Member now sitting would have won their election because it's not just the people who are registered to vote. It's anybody who is eligible to vote. And if they don't vote or don't register to vote, they count as a ``no.'' I mean, some people might be happy, there would be no House of Representatives. But at least the sitting Members would not be here. They want to apply that standard to representation for labor unions. That's incredibly unfair, shortsighted, and would overrule the National Labor Relations Board.

Finally, Essential Air Service. We are supposed to have a system of universal air transport. It is critical to many small and developing communities, rural communities like I represent, to have a continuation of Essential Air Service.

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

Mr. Chairman, my amendment is quite simple. It would require criminal background checks of mechanics at contract aircraft repair stations, both those domestically and those overseas.

Now, the current law requires that people who repair aircraft at airports undergo criminal background checks that are quite extensive because there's a concern that they have access to airplanes, that we want to know who they are, we want to be sure they don't have a criminal background, and they can be denied employment for a large range of former felonies or problems, let alone any affiliation with terrorist groups.

Not so at domestic contract repair stations or foreign contract repair stations. The employees there undergo no criminal background checks, or only criminal background checks at the discretion of the employer. They can be certified to do the most critical de-check work, overhauls on airplanes.

Now, just think about it. As John Pistole recently said, he's the head of the Transportation Security Administration, ``For more than two decades al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations have sought to do harm to this country. Many of their plots against the United States have focused on the aviation system. It is clear that terrorist intent to strike at American targets has not diminished.''

Yet we're not doing criminal and security background checks of people who have access to the innards of the plane. They could replace one critical component, a bolt that holds on an engine with one that looks like the real bolt but is actually fake and designed to fail. That could easily happen, and yet we are not requiring that they have background checks.

Well, why are we requiring it at airports? If it's so critical a mechanic who can access a plane at the airport, why isn't it critical for people who can get deep inside a plane in an overhaul, overseas, far, far away from any prospective oversight by the TSA or the FAA?

Now, some would say, well, the Transportation Security Administration, rather belatedly, 7 years after the fact, is working on a rule that will require them to adopt general procedures for security, but it will not require criminal or terrorist background checks. They will verify background information through confirmation of prior employment. Yes, I used to work for Osama bin Laden. You can call him. Here's his number. But now I don't work there anymore, and I'm here.

This is, I think, a commonsense amendment. Now, the industry can say, oh, this will drive up the cost of repairs. Come on, it's 60 bucks to do a TSA background check. $60. Now, don't you think it's worth $60, and is that going to drive contract repair stations in the U.S. or overseas out of business if they have to confirm that their employees are not criminals or are not terrorists? I don't think so.

I urge support of the amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

May I request the balance of time remaining on each side?

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Costello), the ranking member of the subcommittee.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I appreciate the chairman, and I have worked together with him well and will continue to do that in the future. But we have got to differ on this.

The TSA is not considering requiring criminal terrorist background checks as a requirement for overseas repair stations. I think that is an unbelievable loophole that should send shudders down the spine of anybody who flies planes that are being totally overhauled overseas.

And all this does--it is very simple. It doesn't require anybody from the FAA to do anything. It just says if a repair station is to be certificated by the FAA, the repair station, not the FAA, will have to perform background checks on its mechanics. It is as simple as that. Any mechanic at an airport has to undergo these background checks. They cost $60. How about having the contract repair stations do the same thing?

Do you want a terrorist who is off the airport property to be working on an airplane critical component? Do you want a terrorist who is overseas working under very little supervision, none by the U.S., to have access to the most critical components of a plane?

The gentleman is an expert on aviation, and he knows you can take a critical component--and these are problems we have all the time--like a bolt that holds on an engine. We are trying to keep them out of the supply chain, because you can make one for $3 that looks real but it will break, but a real bolt costs $10,000. So they could easily substitute parts designed to fail in critical components when a plane has had an overhaul overseas.

I urge adoption of this commonsense amendment. Let's not have the al Qaeda Full Employment Act.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the chairman of the committee, Mr. Mica, and the ranking member on this issue.

As the ranking member pointed out, this was the single issue. The amendment being offered by the gentleman from Arizona was identical to the dispute which submarined this bill in the last session of Congress in the Senate. Essentially, it's a grab by, principally, one airline, but two airlines would get 70 percent of the benefit of his amendment. I think that's pretty much an earmark. It's pretty darned targeted.

What we've proposed and what the chairman has proposed is much more modest and builds upon the consensus of the House, the last two sessions of this House, and also the last two successful reauthorizations of the FAA, which said, let's have real competition. So it put up a small pool of slots to be competitively awarded to areas that are underserved, not to one airline so it can dictate who will get service and who won't, which is what the gentleman's amendment would do. This would be a competition for underserved cities and airlines which do not now have access to the airport.

This is very similar to what was done in AIR-21 and Vision-100. I believe it is an elegant solution to this that will not cause additional noise or problems at the airport, that will not give one airline a near monopoly or two airlines pretty much a duopoly. The market at National will give consumers on the west coast more options in getting to our Nation's capital and in utilizing National Airport.

So I appreciate the gentleman's advocacy for an airline which serves his State, but that airline doesn't serve mine or many other western States. I would urge opposition, and let's have a real competitive position, which is the position of the committee.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

We're here, and we're pretending we're doing something about a real problem. We are amending the wrong statute at the wrong time under the guise that this is a crisis, and we're bringing up a bill that will never see the light of day in the Senate.

So what could we really do?

Well, we could work with the Environmental Protection Agency. I've already written to the Environmental Protection Agency, and I would encourage others to as well who recently got an extension until October 31 from the court. So there is no immediate threat of these new regulations going into place. Particularly, the biggest problem with what they're proposing is the small size of general permitting. It's 640 acres. My State has 6,400 acres. That's a pretty big piece of property. I don't know many small farms or other folks who operate on more than 6,400 acres. Even at 6,400 acres, it's a three-page form that you fill out in my State.

Oregon is the State where this problem started because 90,000 juvenile salmon were killed by the improper application of a pesticide, so we would be particularly sensitive to that. We're pretty sensitive about our water. I think all of your constituents are sensitive about their water. So, to amend the Clean Water Act here, you're going at the wrong place. People don't want pesticides or herbicides in what they drink or in what their kids drink--plain and simple.

FIFRA is meaningless in terms of really regulating what goes into the water. The EPA doesn't test pesticides for their water quality standards, and FIFRA does not regulate how much of a pesticide is safe to apply to water. So we should be amending FIFRA, but that would have been a little more work, and that would have been real legislation, and that might have been something that the Senate would have taken up, and that might really have gotten something done.

But we don't want to do that. We want to play to the crowd here. Let's rage here and say it's going to cost $50,000 for every small business. That's a bunch of hooey.

In my State, like I say, we have a three-page application. So the point is that we can do something real. We can influence the EPA, get reasonable regulations, and protect the drinking water of this country--or you can do what you're doing here today, which is meaningless.

Mr. Speaker, we have now been in Afghanistan for 113 months, ten months longer than the war in Vietnam. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest conflict in United States history.

Here at home, Americans are out of work, teachers are facing budget cuts, police departments are overstretched, and yet the President and much of Congress continue to cling to the notion that if given more time and more precious taxpayer dollars borrowed from China we will finally--after a decade of war--gain the edge to ``finish the job'' in Afghanistan.

Mr. Speaker, I don't buy it. There is no comprehensive political outcome in sight. There is no decisive military outcome that will allow us to declare ``victory.'' There is no meaningful government outside of Kabul, the Afghani security forces are in disarray, and there is unbelievable corruption throughout the Karzai government, police, and security forces.

Despite these realities, the U.S. taxpayer is being asked to foot a $100 billion bill per year--again, all borrowed money that future generations will have to pay back with interest--to continue a failed strategy in Afghanistan. I continue to be extremely concerned that the Afghanistan war has drawn the U.S. into a black hole not completely unlike Vietnam, where we propped up a corrupt government that had no relationship to the rest of the country. Recent events in North Africa and throughout the Middle East have shown us the consequences of similar policies.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly support our troops. They have fought heroically and done everything we have asked of them. We should honor those who have served and sacrificed for their country. But we are not honoring those who have served and those who continue to serve by supporting a war without

clear objectives, a clear exit strategy, and without any substantial hope for a ``military victory.''

Clearly an orderly withdrawal can not be accomplished in 9 months. But supporting H. Con. Res. 28 provides an opportunity to send a message to the President that the current strategy and cost of the war in Afghanistan are unsustainable. We need a clear exit strategy. We need a less expensive, less troop intensive policy that could bring about a much better result in Afghanistan. We need to prioritize the needs here at home instead of spending treasure and blood on a seemingly open-ended war in Afghanistan. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H. Con. Res. 28.

Would the gentleman yield at this point?

I thank the gentleman for yielding since he has just made a good litany of ill-intentioned potential cuts by the Republicans.

You just mentioned NOAA. I'd like to point out that, as we're speaking, we're waiting for the third tidal wave to hit the Oregon coast. They're about an hour apart. We should be hit again in about 10 minutes.

Now, the reason we know where these waves are, what their amplitude is, what the potential for damage is, the reason we were able to evacuate those communities last night, and the reason we're online right now with our State emergency services people is because of the warning buoys we have and because of the great work of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Association and the National Weather Service.

The Republicans have proposed to decimate those programs in H.R. 1. So, in the Republican world, when everybody at NOAA is furloughed for 21 days, if there happens to be an earthquake in Japan and if you live on the Pacific Coast or if there are some tornadoes in the Midwest, tough luck, sorry. We had to furlough those employees who would have warned you to go to your tornado shelter. We had to furlough those employees who would have warned you to evacuate the low-lying areas on the Oregon-California Coast and in Hawaii. But, no, they have targeted massive cuts in the NOAA budget--$450 million. It's estimated that NOAA, because of the time of year these would be put in place, would have to have 21 days of furloughs for all of its employees. There will be $110 million in cuts to the National Weather Service and a big cut to State disaster preparedness grants.

So, right now, our Emergency Operations Centers in Oregon, in California, in Hawaii are in full swing. The reason that they're able to be in touch with people in scattered coastal communities and in relatively difficult areas to access, which could be cut off if the waves are bad enough, is because of the Federal assistance that we have given to them to set up these centers. Under the Republicans' budget, we would cut $206 million from State Emergency Operations Centers.

Now, where are the States going to get the money in this bad climate? I guess those places won't be tended to either.

So we won't know the tidal waves are coming because they'll have laid off the people at NOAA. We won't know the tornadoes are happening. Even if we did happen to stumble over that fact despite these cuts, we won't have the Emergency Operations Centers to coordinate in order to evacuate people and to rescue and to coordinate medical services.

If the gentleman would just yield again.

This all seemed to have started with our former colleague, Bobby Jindal, now the Governor of Louisiana, when last year or the year before last he made fun of money that was being appropriated for volcano monitoring. I'll tell you, actually, that

I live in a region that has a number of dormant volcanoes--not extinct, but dormant--and it is crucial.

Three Sisters has got a bulge on it. We're watching that all the time. There is the potential for a big lahar that could wipe out some communities and people downstream. Certainly, up in the Seattle area, there are concerns about Mt. Rainier. We have Mt. Hood and others.

So all of these attacks on emergency services seem to come with all of the juice that Bobby Jindal got out of criticizing volcano monitoring. Well, I think it's pretty darned important to monitor volcanoes, too.

Yes, exactly. I just got an email--and I've got to go take a phone call in the Cloak Room--but they just announced that some heavy waves have come into the harbor at Coos Bay. This would be the third period of waves. They say the fourth or the fifth might be the worst. The port tells me the docks are breaking apart. Luckily--since we had ample warning because we still do have NOAA and we still do have buoys before these Republican cuts go into effect--there were no people on the docks. At this point we're not aware that anyone has been injured. But this is a serious and developing situation. And I would expect the gentleman's district just north of mine is probably having a similar experience in Newport or other areas.

Mr. Speaker, the Republican majority is indeed focused on jobs. In fact, their H.R. 1 would kill 700,000 jobs under the guise of fiscal responsibility. They'd cut transportation investments. They'd cut investments in education, student loans, and grants. They'd cut the COPS program, keeping our citizens safe with additional police on the street. They'd cut back on nutrition assistance to women, infants, and children.

What's not on the table? Well, corporate welfare. Six billion dollars in

ethanol subsidies--don't want to touch that. Twelve billion dollars in agriculture subsidies for corporate farms--can't touch that. Tax loopholes for Big Oil while they're gouging us at the pump and not paying taxes in the United States of America--can't put that on the table.

But the Republicans have shown us their priorities, and even their friends in the Senate yesterday refused to take up their bill.

And that's the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, today President Obama and the Mexican President announced in short order Mexico will begin to reduce its extortionate tariffs on U.S. goods, many from my district and my State. That is good news. But we shouldn't accept a bad deal with Mexico that jeopardizes the safety of the traveling public on our highways; that further jeopardizes our security on the border of Mexico; and, finally, that puts at risk hundreds of thousands of American jobs.

Just think about it: What American trucking company is going to send their trucks south of the border into the lawless zones with the extortion and the kidnapping and everything else going on down there? No. If we give Mexico free license to drive north into the upper 48 States of the United States, we will lose hundreds of thousands of jobs.

So it is good news they are addressing the tariffs, but we are going to be scrutinizing the details of any deal that this President reaches with the President of Mexico to protect the safety of our traveling public, the security of our borders, and American jobs.

I thank the ranking member and the chairman of the full committee and subcommittee and others who support this essential legislation.

It is kind of sad that we are actually in this position. We are looking at the seventh extension of the surface transportation reauthorization. Because of events in the last Congress, lack of support from the administration, opposition from others, and basically no action to the Senate side, we ground to a halt in reauthorizing this vital legislation. That is too bad.

Had we taken a fraction of the money spent on the so-called stimulus and instead invested it in fully funding a 6-year surface transportation authorization, we could have created millions of jobs, and not just construction jobs--engineering jobs, manufacturing jobs, high-tech jobs--because we have the most effective buy America requirements on our transportation acquisitions in this country.

So, for instance, Oregon Iron Works is building the first made in America streetcar in 70 years. All of the components that go into that are being made here in the United States of America. They are very skilled workers, a very sophisticated product. You buy a bus made in America, the tires, everything has to be made in America. You build a bridge, the steel has to come from America except for a few loopholes in the law that we have to plug.

If we begin to deal honestly with our backlog, 150,000 bridges on the national highway system are substandard and in need of either significant repair or replacement. That is a lot of steel. That is a lot of work. That is also a lot of detours for trucks and others trying to use the national highway system.

Then you can look at the surface of our national highway system itself, not just the bridges; 40 percent of the pavement is in fair to poor condition. You've all experienced that--potholes blowing out tires, breaking axles, causing higher fuel consumption, accidents, all sorts of problems. That needs to be taken care of.

And then we have our transit systems. Actually right here in Washington, D.C., they are killing people on Metro because they haven't the money to make the capital investments they need to have a modern light rail system in this country, and they are running cars that shouldn't be on the tracks any more.

So we are really at a crisis point. I had taken to giving speeches when I chaired the committee about how we were falling to Third World status for infrastructure. And my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), came up to me after a speech once and said that is insulting and it's wrong.

I said, not really, Earl. You know the problems.

He said, no, to say that we're Third World. Most Third World countries are investing a much greater percentage in their gross domestic product in transportation and infrastructure than we are in the United States of America.

So I have taken to calling us fourth world; formerly First World, vaulting over to the back of the line to have the worst infrastructure of any modern nation on Earth. It's not right. It doesn't serve our businesses or our communities well.

The Obama administration did not take up this campaign adequately in the last Congress. I tried valiantly. They got hung up on the idea that we need to invest more money. We do need to invest more money. We had two commissions that were constituted when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate and the White

House. Both commissions came to the same conclusion: we are spending somewhere around 30-40 percent of what we need on an annual basis to have a 21st-century transportation system. We are spending about 30 percent less than we need to maintain the current deteriorated rate of infrastructure in this country. We're not even maintaining the Eisenhower legacy. Come on, let's get real.

Now, unfortunately, on the Republican side of the aisle, they have adopted an arbitrary rule: no new revenues for anything. Now, they ought to rethink that. Let's think about capital budgets. If you build a bridge, it lasts 100 years. We could justify borrowing money for that. Maybe we could justify raising some revenues to pay for that-- perhaps from the oil companies, who knows, and put a lot of people to work and improve our infrastructure; but that is a nonstarter so far. I hope that changes.

If we look at this as a way to put America back to work to make us more competitive in the international economy, we should be talking about rebuilding our infrastructure. It is the last place we should cut. And, unfortunately, some cuts have already been proposed and made in transportation. That's not where we should be cutting, and those who would advocate further cuts are wrong. This is a trust funded program. The program itself, 96 percent of the funding in this extension comes from the gas taxes every American has paid, the diesel taxes every trucker has paid, and the money paid in other miscellaneous taxes.

We need this bill today. It is a starting point for a robust reauthorization later this year. I look forward to working with the chairman and the new chairman of the subcommittee on that robust reauthorization.

Republicans seem to be pretending that emergency room care is free. Every insured American is paying an extra 1,100 bucks this year--$1,400 in Oregon--for those who are uninsured. We want to begin to address that problem, get them in earlier, get them treatment, less expensive, don't pass the costs on to other Americans. Personal responsibility.

We outlawed the worst abuses of the insurance industry--canceling your policy when you get sick even though you've been paying the premiums, preventing people from getting health care because of a pre- existing condition.

I heard from a dad whose young son with birth defects is finally getting covered for those issues because of this law. And then the students I met at Lane Community College--21, 22, 23 years old, getting an education, wanting to get in the workforce--they thanked me for their health insurance. They need that health insurance.

The Republicans said they were going to repeal and replace. Well, they've been pretty darn silent on the replace side, maybe because it upsets their patrons in the insurance industry who are so generous at campaign time.

We've got everything but murder going on here.

We're being blackmailed by the Government of Brazil, and so we are giving precious U.S. taxpayer dollars, $147 million, to Brazil for their cotton farmers while I have got small farmers going broke. Now, come on.

And now we hear from the gentleman from Georgia, well, that's what the law says. Hey, you just repealed health care. You can change the farm bill. We can do away with these obscene subsidies, $3.4 billion bilked from U.S. taxpayers going to subsidize cotton farmers, who use subsidized water on top of that, whose total crop value was $4 billion. So $3.4 billion of it is our taxpayer subsidy. This is indefensible.

Take this step now, and then next week you can repeal the farm bill and replace that.

Madam Speaker, our Nation is in dire financial straits, and, unfortunately, many on both sides of the aisle are blowing smoke about how serious they are in dealing with this problem.

The fact is we are looking at a record $1.6 trillion deficit. Now, it wouldn't have been a record and it wouldn't have been $1.6 trillion but for one vote: the Obama-McConnell tax compromise, the Republicans insisting that all of the Bush tax cuts passed in a time of surplus should be continued in a time of record deficits. That means, with borrowed money, there will be tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires and other special interests, or we will forgo the revenue of having them pay their fair share of taxes, say the rate they paid in the Clinton era when the economy did very well and they did very well.

So with that one single vote, suddenly we jumped up to a $1.6 trillion deficit. Now, the Republican majority says, oh, no, no, no, that cutting taxes doesn't count. Their rules deem that cutting taxes doesn't count. We can cut taxes without reducing spending; we can borrow the money and increase the deficit and the debt, but they say it doesn't count. They have deemed that in their rules. So they're really blowing smoke here. You cannot pretend that you're serious about the deficit if you say we can continue to reduce income. Here is what this year's Federal budget looks like.

This is the total budget. Look, we are borrowing from China and other places around the world almost half of what we're spending. We are borrowing $1.6 trillion, and the Federal tax revenue is $2.2 billion. Those are just extraordinary numbers. Now, they say they'll fix that by cutting. Well, here we go. Here we go again with the budget at $3.8 trillion and the deficit at $1.6 trillion.

They said, Well, wait a minute. You can't increase revenues. No. You could decrease revenues. They say that wouldn't count. Then, Oh, well. The Department of Defense is off limits. Entitlements are all off limits. Mandatory spending, meaning agriculture subsidies and other egregious things, are all off limits. We will balance the budget by going after non-defense discretionary spending.

There seems to be a little bit of a problem here.

Here is the deficit of $1.6 trillion. Now, if we eliminated all non- defense discretionary spending, which would mean basically the daily operations of the Government of the United States outside the Defense Department, it would be all gone; close the door; open the Federal prisons, and let the prisoners out. There would be no more Justice Department, no more FBI, no more Border Patrol, none of those things. Just get rid of all that stuff--the IRS, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Education, health education, the Centers for Disease Control. All gone.

Well, you would still have a $1 trillion deficit. But don't worry, they're going to get us there by cutting.

You can't get there simply by cutting. Yes, you need to cut. You need to reduce and eliminate wasteful programs, but you can't pretend that you can cut revenues or that you can maintain tax loopholes for companies that move their headquarters to post office boxes in the Bahamas, like Carnival Cruise Lines--excuse me, their post office box is in Panama--which operate out of the U.S., get their customers in the U.S., use the ports of the U.S., use the U.S. Coast Guard, and whose executives live in the U.S. but they don't pay taxes here.

There is ExxonMobil, which doesn't pay taxes in the United States, but pays in other places around the world. We borrow money to give a subsidy to ExxonMobil. Yet in the last quarter of last year, they had the largest single corporate profit in the history of the world, and we're going to borrow money to give them tax rebates for taxes they didn't pay in the United States of America but that they paid elsewhere.

That system can't be fixed, the Republicans say. Those will be tax increases. You can't plug those tax loopholes. The agriculture subsidies pay people $20 billion not to grow things. No, can't go there. We're going to balance the budget by hacking away at non-defense discretionary spending. Unfortunately, physics and reality don't work for them here, nor does the math because it's a tiny fraction of the deficit if we totally eliminate those programs instead of just hack away at them.

So let's get real. Let's get together here. The country is confronted with a serious long-term debt problem. As everybody said yesterday, everything is on the table. Well, it's not, but everything should be on the table.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Only inside the Washington, D.C. beltway could we be having this debate.

The taxpayers are demanding that we tighten our belts and save money. The Pentagon says, let's go ahead with the single engine procurement, which resulted from a competition, which is a quality engine.

Now, if that engine has problems, someone at the Pentagon should be fired. If there was problems with the original competition, a lot of people at the Pentagon should be fired. And maybe we ought to look at overhauling the procurement process.

But to say now, well, we've got a good engine. They want a competition. But we've got another company that really wishes it had won the competition but didn't win the competition, and now they still want to build an engine and the taxpayers should subsidize it, Which is what this is all about. It only costs $2.9 billion for them to develop an alternative engine. Only $2.9 billion. Inside the Washington, D.C. beltway that's not real money.

I guess the joke is, inside the Washington, D.C. beltway, how many jet engines does it take to fly a single engine fighter? Now, most Americans would think, well, that's probably not a joke, and it would be one. Right? No. It's two.

Now, if we need two on the ground, maybe we need two in the air. Maybe we ought to redesign the plane and put two engines in the tail, one from one company and one from the other. In case one flames out, we've got one left at least to bring the plane back. I mean, if we're so worried about reliability, maybe we just ought to start all over again. Come on, guys. Let's not be ridiculous here.

Two supply chains. Two sets of mechanics. Two sets of spare parts. Oh, wait a minute. This plane broke down over here and the mechanic there and the spare parts are for the other one. Oh, we've got to keep them sorted out by which engine they've got, where they are, where they'll fly in the world, what mission they'll go on, which mechanics we send, which supply chain we send for it.

No, this is not going to save money. This is not going to save money. If you did a crappy procurement, then fix it; but don't say let's do another procurement in the way the Pentagon always does things, which will inevitably be another cost overrun procurement.

So it won't only cost $2.9 billion to develop the alternative engine. We'll hear 6 months from now, a year from now, Oh, well, we thought we could develop an alternative for 2.9, but it will be 10. But don't worry. It will still bring down the overall cost.

Support this amendment. Support common sense. Stand up for the taxpayers, and stand up for the military which says we don't need a second engine for this plane. They are the guys who fly them.

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

At this point, Mr. Chair, I would like to bring to the attention of the Congress that we're about to eliminate a program which is incredibly cost effective, which truly supports a growing proportion of profitable small family farms in America, which is to help with research and transition to organic production.

In the most recent statistics, the organic sector of the agriculture production in this country was nearly $27 billion. That's up from $4 billion in 1997. There are over 14,500 family farms engaged in organic agriculture, and they have been experiencing dramatic increases. Now you might say, well, why would we want to continue to research and help them. Well, we're spending a tremendous amount of money in research and subsidies on other crops which are obviously totally developed and do not need assistance.

In this case, we're talking about many people who own struggling family farms who want to convert. They're interested in moving to organics because they know there is potential for higher profitability with those products with dramatically increasing demand. In fact, the USDA says that the average for small--these are truly small farms, not what some people consider small farms--organic farms was $46,000 last year and for all farms, small farms, was $26,000.

So there are many people who are engaged in truly small farming activities who want to stay on the land, don't want to parcel it up, don't want to sell to the developers. They want to continue to live there, raise their kids there, but they're having trouble making ends meet. And this is an opportunity for many folks, an opportunity both for consumers who are demanding organically produced produce and for producers, and I think it would be very shortsighted to zero out this program at this point in time.

So I'm asking that we take a very small percentage of the APHIS budget, well less than 1 percent, and at least on a temporary measure restore the cuts to the transitional and organic research portion of the budget in the hope that we can reach agreement on a sustainable way to fund this program in the future and look at more equitable distribution of funds, both for research and subsidies and other things that go on in the Department of Agriculture.

The amount of money we're asking for here at $5 million is a tiny fraction of 1 percent of the amount of money that we're spending on subsidies for five crops in eight States to pay people not to grow things. Now, I think to actually help people to grow things, to grow healthy produce, to supply the American people, to be able to live on their farms, support their families and pass on the farms to the next generation, that this would be a very, very wise investment, and I wish that this had not been chosen for a cut. I'm hopeful that my colleagues will see the wisdom in restoring this cut and then looking in the next farm bill or in the next appropriation to an equitable division of these funds.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

When I was first elected to office, I served with a very conservative Republican, and he used to say that government is about roads and rope.

He was talking about the basis for our system here in America--the basics. He was talking about transportation, the Boston Post Road, the original roads of America that tied a young Nation together on rope. He was talking about law enforcement here on Earth, law enforcement protecting American citizens from criminals.

Now, somehow the Cross-Agency Support account, which is an unbelievable catchall slush fund at NASA which has grown in the last 2 years from $550 million to $3 billion and which will actually be increased in this continuing resolution by $36 million, is more important than defending the American people from criminals, from lawbreakers, which is the most basic requirement of the Government of the United States.

Now, this isn't even like real stuff at NASA. It's not the fantasy about going to Mars or any of the other things they're engaged in for many billions of dollars.

This is a cross-agency support budget which has gone up six times, 600 percent in 2 years, and it's going to go up again here today, and we're going to slash the heck out of the COPS program. Now, go home and explain that to your constituents. You can't even say, Look up there, because it's not a satellite. It's not headed to the Moon or to Mars. You have to say, Hey, it's the cross-agency support budget at NASA, and when the criminal is breaking down your door, call NASA. That probably isn't going to work too well.

This not only supports police on the streets in overstretched agencies, it supports--and we've had a lot of talk about urban America--sheriffs in our rural areas which are woefully unpoliced, and in my district we've got money out of this account which you're cutting by 65 percent to go after methamphetamine manufacturing and Mexican cartels moving methamphetamine up the West Coast of the United States. We're going to cut that 65 percent because it's more important that we fund the cross-agency support budget of NASA and we increase it by 600 percent in 2 years and we decrease funding for COPS and sheriffs and drug reduction in our communities, in our schools, in our rural areas by 65 percent.

Well, you go on home and campaign on that, and I will be campaigning on my issues.

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

I had hoped to be joined by Dr. Paul, who is a coauthor of this amendment. Unfortunately given the very late hour, I'm not certain he'll make it. However, we're talking tonight about making cuts. We've heard in the earlier debate of programs that actually have constituencies, actually serve Americans: The COPS program which puts officers on the beat and helps with drug interdiction, drug prevention; the LIHEAP program providing financial assistance to families who can't afford to heat their homes. The list is long. But there are a few programs in the government which have no constituency and no purpose, and this is one of them. And somehow it escaped the knife, which I assume was just an oversight. So I'm hoping to persuade the committee to adopt this amendment. This is the expenditures for the Selective Service System of the United States of America, i.e., the draft boards. That is, if we believe that at some time in the future that the United States of America is going to reimpose the draft, then one might want to maintain this bureaucracy in deep standby. On the other hand, it might not, because the few times that this agency has attempted to test its capabilities with its obsolete computer systems, which could be surpassed by anything available publicly on the Internet, they showed that they couldn't have conducted a legal draft. And even if they could have conducted a legal draft, we no longer have a surge capacity at our training bases so we would be drafting people for no purpose. Beyond that, I don't think there are many in this House who believe that we are going to go back to having a draft. The Pentagon doesn't want to go back to a draft. The Pentagon has said time and time and time again they believe in an all-volunteer military; the all-volunteer military is superior to forced enlistment, as in the years of the draft. We're a higher quality, we're using significant incentives to get people to enlist in the military, and we have the best military in the world as a result.

So why would we maintain this bureaucracy? Here's what they spent $25 million on, or intend to, this year. It will be used for expenses of attendance at meetings. For purchase of uniforms. Now beyond me, I'm not certain what the uniforms are. I served actually on a draft board once and we didn't have uniforms. I don't know. I guess now we've got uniforms for people who are going to go sit somewhere and hear claims, if we ever reimpose the draft. I really don't know who they're purchasing uniforms for or what the purpose might be or what a Selective Service member's uniform might look like. They also will hire passenger motor vehicles and for official reception and representation expenses--all for a dead bureaucracy that does nothing and never will do anything.

Now, colleagues, truly if we are serious here, if we are in a crisis and we're going to cut programs that actually have large constituencies; my phone's been ringing off the hook about public broadcasting. Other people are hearing about other programs. Here's one where you're not going to get a single call except maybe a thank-you if you eliminate this useless bureaucracy that will never be activated for any purpose, foreseeable, in the future.

Colleagues, we have twice actually in the House voted to end the Selective Service System: in 1993 when Democrats were in control and in 1999 when the Republicans were in control. Unfortunately, the termination of the program never became law. Now is the time. Now is the time. I'm just dedicating the money to deficit reduction. It could be used to restore some meritorious spending elsewhere within this title by somebody else.

With that, I would yield back the balance of my time and urge my colleagues to end this useless bureaucracy.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 97: Page 172, line 25, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(increased by $5,000,000)''.

Page 173, line 8, after the first dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $5,000,000)''.

Page 173, line 14, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $5,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 98: Page 243, line 7, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $24,032,000)''.

Page 359, line 10, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $24,032,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 96: At the end of the bill, after the short

title, insert the following new section:

Sec. 4002. None of the funds made available by this Act

may be used for ``National Aeronautics and Space

Administration, Exploration''.