Floor Statements

I ask unanimous consent to take the time of Mr. Emanuel.

Mr. Speaker, the House of Representatives has shirked its constitutional duties when it comes to the issue of Iraq.

The most solemn of duties that this body can undertake is the declaration of war, reserved to the United States Congress. Now, in the case of Afghanistan, the known perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden and his collaborators in the Taliban, this Congress did act, with near unanimity. One person dissented. And we passed a resolution that was compliant with the War Powers Act and the Constitution of the United States to authorize an attack on Iraq and others who aided and abetted in the 9/11 attacks.

Now, if George Bush had had proof or had really thought that Saddam Hussein and Iraq were involved in 9/11, he would have needed no further authority. But, clearly, he had no proof, and he couldn't make the case. But he, nonetheless, wanted to attack Iraq. And Congress, reaching a new low point here, in my opinion unconstitutionally, vaguely delegated its solemn duties in the case of the making of war to the President.

Now, I don't believe that Congress can do that, but we did, and the President then, some 5 months later, used that very broad grant of authority to preemptively attack Iraq, ostensibly to remove weapons of mass destruction and the threat of Saddam Hussein, which later morphed into connections to 9/11, which later morphed into any number of other things, and which finally became we went into Iraq to bring freedom and democracy.

Now, since that time, this Congress, this Republican-led Congress, has refused to conduct any meaningful oversight of what happened about the distortion or the misuse of intelligence, about the huge scandals surrounding the more than $10 billion which has disappeared in the so- called reconstruction effort or the actual conduct of the war itself, the unbelievable incompetence of Donald Rumsfeld and his cronies, and the impact on our troops in the military. Not one meaningful hearing. No debates here on the floor of the House.

So, finally, the Republican leadership says, well, we are going to have a meaningful debate. Now, let's see what they mean by meaningful debate. Tomorrow, the House of Representatives will take up a bunch of time, that is good, at least we are going to discuss it on the floor, but it will be to debate a nonbinding resolution; that is, something which has no force of law and no authority. It is a sense of the United States Congress.

And if you read that sense of Congress, you will find a nonbinding resolution which will not be amendable. No Democratic alternative or substitute will be allowed. What the Republicans wrote in secret will be voted on here on the floor of the House. That is it, up or down. This resolution, if you vote for it, is a vote for the status quo. It is a vote for staying in Iraq indefinitely, perhaps a decade or longer. It is to continue the current policies with no end in sight.

On March 21, President Bush himself even said that the question of bringing home U.S. troops from Iraq will be decided by future Presidents. Future Presidents. Remember, unfortunately, he still will be President until 2 years from last January. Now, that is a pretty extraordinary statement for the President to make.

Now, I wish that the Republican leadership really wanted to have a full and fair debate. They could at least allow us to have and debate an alternative. I am a member of the Out of Iraq Caucus. I am a cosponsor of Representative Jack Murtha's legislation, legislation that would lead to a thoughtful and appropriate redeployment of our troops, and would also say that we would be ready should they need to reintervene in a crisis situation in Iraq. But what it would do is get us out of the business of day-to-day getting between the Shiias, the Kurds, and the Sunnis.

Now, Bush administration said, well, we never could have predicted the Shiias, the Sunnis, and the Kurds wouldn't get along. Rummy said they would welcome us like liberators, with flowers and stuff. He just ignored the last 1,400 years of history, that is all. He also ignored the State Department and the intelligence agencies, other than the little select group he had who said the same thing.

And now, I believe that the Shiias, the Kurds, and the Sunnis, and many others, will not meaningfully move to share power, get their act together and develop a national government as long as we are staying forever, which is what the President and what this resolution says. So I believe that if we go down the path of adopting this resolution that there will be Members of Congress debating this issue years and years from today about what is the U.S. future in Iraq.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for the time. I too rise to commemorate the 50th anniversary, the great vision of President and General Dwight David Eisenhower, in terms of the national highway system.

Fifty years. It is a long time. And now we need to look forward to the next half of the first century of the national highway system, and that is going to constitute quite a challenge. We, just after some lengthy struggle, finally reauthorized the highway program with SAFETEA-LU last summer.

But what we see looming before us is a system that is starting to show its age. The cracked bridge problem in Oregon, failing bridges that were constructed actually with 1950s technology, just before we moved to prestressed concrete, the cast-in-place bridges, and other places around the country. The system is showing its age, the wear and tear, it is showing in places that it is not up to the task of current traffic volumes, and we need to look to the future of this great artery of commerce and transportation and recreation transport for Americans, daily commutes to work, to long trips to far-away places within this wonderful country.

And that is a challenge that the chairman of the committee has begun to address with hearings to look at what the future sources of funding will be to meet even greater demands than the initial construction of this system.

So I rise today both to commemorate the 50th anniversary and the visionaries who gave us this great system, and to join with my colleagues here who I know will be part of the solution about how it is going to be celebrated yet another 50 years from today as still an essential artery for commerce and transportation in the United States, because visionaries in this and some near subsequent Congresses recognized the need to continue to invest, reinvest and enhance the system.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this morning to talk about a statistic that came out last week that says a lot about the direction of the United States of America, and that was the trade deficit for April. That is the deficit between what the United States exported and what we imported from overseas. Essentially, when we run a deficit, we are borrowing money to buy things that are made overseas. That has long-term implications in terms of U.S. indebtedness to foreign nations, particularly China which is growing more rapidly than our debt to any other nation, and the loss of the jobs that comes from that. The trade deficit for April was 63.4 billion jobs.

Now, the Commerce Department, the Bush Commerce Department likes to tout our trade policy and talk about how it creates jobs, and they say for every billion dollars of trade, you create 20,000 jobs. Well, if you are running a deficit, then that must mean you are running a negative number in terms of the creation of jobs. In this case, that would be about 12 million jobs lost in 1 month's trade deficit. Three million of those are manufacturing jobs. We are outsourcing all of the United States industrial base to China. That also has national security along with economic implications in the future. But down at the Bush White House and at the Bush Commerce Department and the Bush appointees at the Federal Reserve, they say this is great. It shows how strong our economy is that the world is willing to finance our borrowing to buy things that they make that we used to make that we don't make anymore.

Now, what world do they live in? Americans are losing jobs. Wages are being driven down. They think that is good actually. The President did have an economic adviser last year who said the exported jobs was just the greatest new manifestation of the benefits of trade, outsourcing of jobs. So they are totally sanguine about a $63.4 billion trade deficit, about the fact that we are borrowing $2 billion a day from foreign countries to buy things made elsewhere in the world. That is not a sustainable model. It now exceeds over 6 percent of our total gross domestic product. That is worse than Argentina before they collapsed in a heap a few years ago. This is not sustainable. It is ultimately going to lead to a crash in the dollar and a huge run-up in interest rates here in the United States that make the Jimmy Carter interest rates of 16 and 17 percent look like a bargain.

But the Bush administration says, no, it is working just fine. It is working just fine for a bunch of corporate CEOs and a few boards of directors and other preferred people in this country. It is not working well for American workers, and the American consumers are getting a Faustian bargain here. We may see some cheaper prices in the short term, but long term things are going to get much more expensive.

It also reflects a failed or, let us say, a lack of any energy policy on the part of the United States of America. $24 billion of the April deficit was due to oil imports. So while we fund Saudi Arabia and other countries that harbor and have harbored and created terrorists that attack the United States of America with billions of dollars every month, the Bush administration, totally enthralled to Big Oil, wants to continue to just say, no, let the markets, let Big Oil solve our energy problems. After all, they are making a pile of money. ExxonMobil made $100 million a day last year. Things are working really well in the energy markets. Yet, if we look a little south to Brazil, 30 years ago when there was an oil crisis, Brazil said they were going to become energy independent, and they have. If the people of Brazil can become energy independent, I believe the people of America could if we were well led, if we had an energy policy that determined to lead us toward energy independence instead of being in hock to Big Oil and OPEC and Saudi Arabia and other hostile interests around the world.

We could do much better for ourselves and we could have long-term stable and more affordable energy, but it is going to require an investment. It is also going to require standing up to Big Oil. Short term, we have got to take on the price gouging and the profits and the manipulation of markets by

Big Oil and bring the price down while we transition to a more sustainable model, and then we have got to invest in the new technologies that will lead us to energy independence and efficiency.

But, sadly, the Republican majority and the Bush White House have no interest in taking America in that direction. The petroleum industry is a very, very generous campaign contributor. Eighty-five percent of their massive contributions out of that obscene profit flowed to the Republican Party and the Bush White House last year, and they are not going to take them on. Well, we should take them on for the interest of America and the American people. And I tell you, this is one Member, and I believe there are other Members on this side and even a few on that side who are willing to take them on. We have to deal with the trade deficit, and part of that is getting a sustainable energy policy.

Colleagues, I have tremendous concern about the lack of preparedness in our Nation for the potential of a flu pandemic. Now, it is not certain that the current H5N1 bird flu is going to become a human-to-human type pandemic, but all the experts say we are overdue for a pandemic in the United States so it is prudent that we look at our preparedness or lack thereof.

Recently, in the Homeland Security Committee on which I serve, as does the gentleman in the chair, we held a hearing called ``Are We Ready: Implementing The National Strategy For Pandemic Influenza.'' There were a number of disturbing things that came out during that hearing, and one in particular has been highlighted a number of times by GAO reports and recently by press reports. I asked some questions regarding that during the hearing, and that is the lack of ventilators in the United States.

Basically, experts say that medical professionals will be triaging ventilators because we have such a severe shortage of ventilators in this country. It is the one way to help take someone through an acute phase of the H5N1 virus. The very few survivors that are known have been on ventilators and received intensive antiviral drugs and others. So were this to be a pandemic, as opposed to a few isolated cases, we are woefully short.

In fact, the estimates are that we would be 637,500 ventilators short. That is, people would be dying unnecessarily because they wouldn't be able to get near a ventilator, and that number assumes that none of the existing ventilators are being used for any other purpose in the United States.

Now, when I raised this issue with Dr. John Agwunobi, who is the Assistant Secretary For Health, he is a recent Bush appointee, his expertise was being Health and Human Services Director for President Bush's brother in Florida, so he brings tremendous expertise to this job and great professionalism, as do many of the political appointees we have seen with this administration, but when I asked Dr. Agwunobi about the ventilator shortage, he said, well, that is not our job.

I said, well, what about the national stockpile? He said, oh, yeah, we'll get some for the national stockpile. How many? Oh, well, 4,000 or 5,000 ventilators. Remember, we need another 640,000 or so in the case of a pandemic.

So I said, well, whose duty do you think it is to enhance the stockpile? How are we going to enhance the stockpile? He says, oh, no, that is the job of the States and the hospitals. He said, in fact, you know, hospitals or some county somewhere might not build a swimming pool; instead, they should be investigating in preparedness for pandemics.

Well, he doesn't live in the world that most of us live in. My counties are pretty short of money for essentials. They are not out building swimming pools. We don't have public hospitals in my State. The other hospitals that are there can't get reimbursed. You can't work it into a Medicare reimbursement schedule to buy a bunch of ventilators to stockpile for a pandemic. They have to justify the current clientele needing the ventilators, otherwise they are not allowed to put that into their rate base.

So I raised these issues with Dr. Agwunobi, and he just basically blew it off. He is really not too concerned. Now, this is the Assistant Secretary For Health, political appointee of George Bush. He started to kind of remind me of another famous appointee, Michael Brown. But this time it is before the fact. We need action to prepare for a pandemic.

I am writing to the Appropriations Committee recommending that they deal with this in the Labor-HHS-Education appropriation bill; that we mandate some purchases for the national stockpile, minimally of ventilators. We should also be doing a much better job of stockpiling the antivirals; and we should also be, with more urgency, instead of waiting for the private sector or the pharmaceutical companies, who aren't much interested in vaccines or other things they can't make a bunch of money on, to give us some new installed capacity in this country, modern capacity, to develop vaccines. I mean, this pandemic will come in waves. And between the waves, if it goes on for 6 months or a year, you could develop and deploy vaccines once the specifics are known. Unfortunately, there are no modern facilities in the United States of America capable of manufacturing vaccines.

But, again, Dr. Agwunobi and the Bush appointees don't look at this as a particular problem. We need to better prepare to protect the American people for the possibility of a flu pandemic.

Mr. Speaker, today I rise in support of America's craft brewers. Our culture, our economy, and our communities have all benefited from the contributions craft brewers have made. The craft beer segment includes more than 1,300 small, traditional and independent breweries.

We have seen a boost in sales and growth for these small business entrepreneurs in recent years. This consumer appeal has created thousands of quality jobs in our country, helped stimulate a demand for American beer exports, and promoted our agricultural economy.

In recent years, breweries and brew pubs have flourished across the Nation. And, as the Representative from Oregon's fourth district, I have enjoyed seeing the diversity that craft brewery has fueled across the Nation. They bring with their craft a healthy dose of friendly competition and a loyal clientele base that appreciates their craft- made lagers and ales.

The pioneering spirit of Oregon lives on with its craft brewers. Oregon continues to enjoy more breweries per capita than any other State in the Nation. Even with Oregon having only 1 percent of the Nation's population, it is home to 7 percent of America's breweries and brew pubs. Five of those breweries are among the 50 biggest in the Nation.

In addition to their sales success, many of these small businesses support innumerable community-based charities, public institutions, local events and charities. Small craft brewers successfully balance that dedication between the quality of their beer and the quality of their community.

I urge my colleagues to support H. Res. 753 in recognition of America's Craft Brewers.

I thank the gentleman.

Well, surprise, the political appointees at the Bush Federal Aviation Administration and their supporters in Congress want to undermine the safest, most productive air traffic control system in the world by any measure. Why? Because there is one basic flaw. There is an agenda no one is talking about here tonight. It is not privatized. It does not provide a profit for Halliburton or some other contractor. That is what this is all about. Let's kill off the existing FAA and the air traffic controllers and then the private sector will save us.

Well, in the three countries where the private sector has come in, it has not worked out so well, neither for the safety nor for the taxpayers. They have all had to be bailed out. They are all more expensive. They are all less productive and they are nowhere near as safe.

Now, the gentleman from Florida complains about the salaries. The salary he is talking about with benefits is less than a Member of Congress like himself or me or the gentleman there or any of the rest of us. Now, I could not handle 20 planes on approach with obsolescent equipment and keep people alive day in, day out across America and in our skies. Could he? I think not.

Now, I am not going to complain about that salary. In fact, I don't find anybody at 30,000 feet or 40,000 feet that is complaining about that salary. And if we said, well, let's talk about the productivity. Well, they are handling 20 planes at once on approach, death defying air time here. That is about $8,000 per plane. That is even less than the Republicans mandated federal minimum wage. Now, is that where they want to drive this or do they maybe want to outsource it to India so we could send the data over there and they could do it for even less?

This is about safety, security, air space, the American public and, yes, it is about fairness. There has been a little bit of talk about fairness. Let's talk about fairness. 265 Members out of 435 have co- sponsored the Costello-Kelly bill; but the chairman of the committee, the operatives at the White House, and the Republican leadership will not allow a bill supported by an overwhelming majority of the House of Representatives, Democrats and Republicans, to come up for an up or down vote. Instead, they give us this option. We will give you a vote and then we will complain about the terms of it because it is retroactive and has all these other problems. We will complain about it here and we will require, guess what America? A two-thirds vote for passage.

This is not a straight deal for the people who keep us alive every week in the skies, who have an unparalleled record of safety and security for the American traveling public. Yeah, you can quibble and complain about the salaries and you can get up and talk about the average salary in my district, but I know the air traffic controllers in my district. There is not a single one of them earning $173,000. They would be living in the mansions on the hill if they did and they do not live in the mansions on the hill. So they can come up with the mythical air traffic controller somewhere.

And then the gentleman from Los Angeles comes up and feigns concern

about the number of air traffic controllers. Where is someone going to move and relocate and live in the Los Angeles area on the new $50,000 a year salary?

Vote for this bill. We need a two-thirds vote. And if it does not pass then come down to the well. I invite my Republican colleagues to come down here, sign the discharge position, and bring up the Kelly- Costello bill for a straight up vote, simple majority.

Another real problem confronting America, another symbolic gesture by the Republican leadership. The thirteenth House vote on opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

Now, real action would require taking on the price gouging, collusion, and market manipulation of big oil. Reign in the speculation in the commodities market, save 25 cents a gallon. Impose a windfall profits tax, reopen or build new refinery capacity, 70 cents a gallon. Take on the OPEC cartel but no, they are not going to take on big oil and protect American families who are reacting with shock and awe to costs at the pump because it might slow the gusher, the gusher of campaign contributions flowing into the Republican coffers. So families across America will pay 50 bucks to tank up this weekend and the Republicans will pretend they care.

Here we are Memorial Day weekend. In addition to taking time to reflect on those who have made our country safe and made sacrifices, it is the beginning of the traditional summer driving season.

Families across America are going to pay $50 to fill up, or more, and they are mad. So here we are for the 13th time in the United States House of Representatives voting to put politics and symbolism over geology and reality.

Now, even if the wildly optimistic estimates of government bureaucrats, not the industry, about the reserves which the Republicans keep quoting with certainty, and they are far from certain; even if that was all there, this would provide a decade from today about 5 cents relief at the pump.

But if they were willing to take on Big Oil, we could deliver 70 cents tomorrow at the pump. 75 percent of the oil is traded in a speculative way. There is no market. There is no free market in oil. If we regulated oil the same as other commodities, estimates are we could save 70 cents tomorrow per gallon. If we broke up the collusion among the oil companies who have colluded to close refineries to drive up the price--refinery profits are up 255 percent in one year--then we could save Americans another 35 cents at the pump.

So with a couple of actions here on the floor, we could save people a buck a gallon. They are saying, 10 years from today, maybe under wild estimates we might save you a nickel.

But they are not going to take on Big Oil because Big Oil is very generous at campaign time, and this is all about the elections. They want to pretend that they are doing something meaningful.

Now they want to say it is environmentally sound. How do we get to that conclusion? It is deemed. Does anyone know what ``deeming'' means? Congress ignores reality and says we are creating a new reality. The reality is I came to Congress in 1987. We held weeks of hearings on this so-called environmental analysis. It was laughable at the time when produced by Mr. Watt and the Reagan administration. It was rejected by the courts. This was rejected 20 years ago. They are deeming it sufficient today. They are talking about the most modern technology and analysis and highest environmental protections. Yes, those of James Watt and Ronald Reagan rejected by the courts as insufficient 20 years ago so they can jam through a symbolic bill before Memorial Day weekend to pretend like they really care about American families.

They care about the CEOs of those companies. The head of ExxonMobil, a $400 million retirement. Those are the people they care about. They don't care about the families who are having to curtail their vacations because they can't afford 50 bucks to fill up.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this amendment, we have already had some discussion about the Secretary's budget and the concerns of the Chair and certainly there needs to be some amount of support for that, but this goes to a critical function, a function of the Department which actually could produce more dollars and make America more secure.

The Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General has done tremendous work. They have saved the taxpayers millions of dollars. They have uncovered fraud and abuse. Right from the beginning the $500,000 that was spent on art, silk, plants and other frou frou things at the new headquarters, that was uncovered by the OIG.

The OIG was then detailed, 75 people out of an already inadequately staffed office, to help with Katrina oversight. They found 10,000 mobile homes, at a cost of $301.7 million, vacant and sinking into the mud in Arkansas; $3 million in overcharges for food and lodging provided to disaster responders; a million dollars in overbilling by one company for hotel rooms for disaster evacuees. As of this date, the Office of the Inspector General has unfortunately had to continue to detail 75 people to the Katrina and the disaster recovery oversight. That is bringing about approximately a $15 million shortfall. Yes, there is a minimal increase in their budget, but it is about $15 million short of what they need.

They not only find fraud and abuse and overt waste, but make America more secure by spending those dollars more wisely. I am familiar with their work in the area of aviation security. They have been showing us the holes in the aviation security system in baggage screening, in passenger screening and other areas. Absolutely vital function. Again, they have been cut back because of the redeployment and the reassignment of the people to deal with the Katrina recovery effort. And it is not at all certain that those people will be coming back for years.

So I think it is essential that we find more funds to have more personnel full time, qualified personnel in this office; and in the end the taxpayers will come out ahead. We will avoid waste, and we will more efficiently spend the dollars we have.

I know the chairman will raise concerns about the Secretary's budget. I would suggest another place perhaps that could be cut in the overhead budget is the $21.2 million limousine contract. Now, granted that is a 3-year contract, but that is $7 million a year up from $3.8 million last year. There have been some revelations, and this certainly isn't for security purposes since as I understand it the owner of the company is a convicted felon. So I do not think we are providing security to senior level DHS people by putting them in limousines of a company owned by a felon.

I would wonder how many people there are that need limousines there at the Department of Homeland Security. $7 million a year? I mean, if there are 100 people, that is $700,000 a year. I can't even image there are 100 people who need limousine services. There are a lot of caps floating around D.C. loose.

I would suggest we could dramatically reduce the limousine budget, and I am sure there are a few other places we could find in the Secretary's overhead, and we could rededicate that money to the Office of the Inspector General, and we could squeeze out the fraud and abuse and better serve our taxpayers and make the country more secure.

So I am hopeful that the chairman would be willing to look favorably upon this amendment to help the OIG deal with their current backlog. This is as of March, I did not ask for an update, they had 4,151 allegations of fraud and abuse on file. And they have been able to investigate 429 of the 4,151 allegations of abuse.

You cannot tell me that they are overfunded or even near adequately funded when there is nearly 3,800 pending investigations on allegations of abuse.

This Department contracts, almost one-third of their total budget is contracted. They should have the most robust OIG force in the Federal Government. Instead, they have the smallest OIG force of any agency in the Federal Government despite the fact that a third of all the funds that go are contracted out and that does not even include the emergency Katrina issue which I addressed earlier.

So, again, I would hope the chairman could look favorably upon increasing the OIG budget and accept this amendment.

Point of Order

Would that preclude then offering the amendment again later?

We can either do it now or we can do it later, if he wants to raise a technical point, if I have to wait for one more intervening person and offer it again.

It was my understanding that after the en bloc we were in section 1 of the bill at an appropriate point; and since the previous amendments had addressed taking the money from the office, the same office from which I would take the money, I am a bit puzzled as to why this one is not in order and the earlier ones were.

Then I would withdraw. Unfortunately, that would mean that we would have to replicate the debate. It would be better if the chairman just rose in opposition as he is going to later and he voted ``no'' and I voted ``aye'' and we had a recorded vote.

If the gentleman insists on his point of order, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment at this point in time and offer the amendment later. I was offering a way to save the body time.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, this is a modified version of the amendment I offered earlier to bring the pay-out rates to sync. So I have reduced the additional funding for the Office of Inspector General to $11,500,000.

Now, at that level, that is way below the $1 recovery for $1 expenditure level for that office. If we put that additional funding in there, the taxpayers will save far in excess of that.

As I said earlier, 3,622 allegations are still pending and have not yet been investigated because of the backlog of that office. Quite simply, to respond to the chairman's concerns earlier, I

would see that this money could come from the what they call plus-up or that is, an increase of $3.4 million in the Chief of Staff's Office. The gentleman mentioned Office of the Under Secretary for Management earlier; that woman has resigned, and the office is vacant.

And then if we took the $7 million from the limousine account, we would have more than $11,500,000. I would recommend this as a good investment for the taxpayers of America.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Well, big surprise, the Bush Federal Trade Commission finds out there is no price gouging in the oil industry. No, none whatsoever. The oil men in the White House and the vice president, the oil man, their political appointees at the Federal Trade Commission finds no price gouging. The American people aren't going to believe this.

Now, let's just take one little example with Katrina. I live on the west coast of the United States; none of our oil refined products come from the southeastern United States, yet on Labor Day weekend in Oregon the prices were identical and they had gone up by 60 cents a gallon in one day. Now, isn't that interesting.

Now, how does that work? That is not price gouging? That is market- based? So they were going to build a pipeline that day and start shipping it to the southeast, or they were going to truck it across the country? Come on. Totally separated markets. Unbelievable increase in profits. $100 million a day for ExxonMobil, the most profitable day in the history of the world, and there was no price gouging going on.

Now, there is one commissioner who has a shred of integrity left, Commissioner John Leibowitz. He issued a sharp statement. He said a handful of refiners more than doubled operating margins in ways not attributable to increased costs after the hurricanes.

Sounds like price gouging to me. No, the entire Commission determined that the firm's conduct in response to hurricane-induced reductions was consistent with competition, adding that the Bush-appointed Federal Trade Commission doesn't back proposals to create Federal price gouging laws. There is no price gouging.

So then why wouldn't we create price gouging laws? If there isn't any, there hasn't been any, we could prevent it in the future. Or maybe there really was a little teeny bit of price gouging and the Bush appointees don't want us to be able to prosecute that in the future. I think we could substitute the word consistent with business as usual.

This is not a competitive market. There is collusion. It is organized. It has been going on for more than a decade when the American Petroleum Institute suggested to Big Oil that they shut down refineries to squeeze down capacity so that they could drive up refinery margins. And, guess what. On average they are up 255 percent in 5 years. Now, this is competition according to the Bush-appointed Federal Trade Commission. The rest of us might call it collusion, market manipulation, and price gouging. The American people are seeing it.

Now, if we took two simple steps. They say, oh, there is nothing Congress

could do anyway, don't worry about it. That is what the President says. Yeah, there are a couple things we could do. The experts say that 75 percent of the crude oil market is unregulated. It is traded in ways that would be illegal if it was controlled by the Commodities Future Trading Commission, like all other commodities and a quarter of the oil market. Traders swap back and forth, back and forth, back and forth just to drive up the price, no intention of actually taking a contract or taking delivery. They say we could squeeze 20 to 25 percent out of today's cost at the pump if we just regulated that market with the same rules as any other traded commodity and part of the oil market today.

Well, that would take us from $3.20 down to $2.56 a gallon. Not bad. I think the American people and American businesses would think that was pretty good.

And then we have the collusion to shut the refineries. Now, if we just took the refineries back to their previous margins, that was the historic margin that they got per gallon, that would knock another 50 cents a gallon off. But let's say we have got to give them an inducement to reopen the refineries that they shut, or build new ones because they tore down the ones that they shut to restrict the market to drive up the price. So with a little windfall profits tax that says these are windfall profits unless and until you invest in production and refining capacity; and if you do that, then you won't have to pay this confiscatory tax, that would take us down to somewhere around $2.26 a gallon. Now, that would be quite a gift for the American economy, American consumers, people who live in the rural parts of my district who have to commute long distances to work.

But the Republican Congress is silent and complicit with the oil men at the White House who have manipulated the Federal Trade Commission into trying to fool the American consumers and say, oh, that wasn't price gouging, that was a market at work.

Yeah. Give me a break.

Mr. Speaker, well, we heard some interesting debate on the floor today. There are those who allege, well, if only, if only we opened up our most sensitive coastal areas, areas that are critical, for instance, for our fisheries, that we could drill our way out of this crisis. We could drill our way out of high prices for oil and gas.

But as one gentleman from the Republican side pointed out, actually, that is far from the truth, because even if additional significant finds are made, they would be sold into a market which does not reflect the costs of the production of the oil or its origins. It is essentially a market controlled by OPEC, the cartel mostly based in the Middle East, that is violating international trade laws by colluding to restrict supply and drive up the price of crude oil. And the Bush administration, who are great fans of free trade, the World Trade Organization, and rules-based trade, refuses to file a complaint against OPEC. I guess they are scared of OPEC and their clout.

But the point is, even if these finds were made, for instance, today it costs about 28 bucks on average for a barrel of Texas crude. But guess what? It sells for $70 a barrel.

Now, where does that other $42 go, one wonders. Well, it goes, in good part, to speculators. It turns out that the trade in crude oil in the United States of America, only a quarter of that market is regulated and controlled by the government under the rules for commodities, Commodities

Futures Trading Commission. The rest of it is traded off the books. There is a lot of self-dealing going on, trades that would be illegal. One dealer sits next to another dealer and says trade, $5. Trade you back, $5. Trade you back, $5; trade you back $5, and suddenly we have jacked up the price to $70 a barrel.

Experts say that if we merely took the step, totally within the authority of this administration and the Congress to bring crude oil under the regulation of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, we would see an immediate 20 to 25 percent drop. That is not free-market oil. And then, if we took on OPEC and filed trade complaints against OPEC, we could further drive down the price.

Yes, there is a long-term problem with the availability of oil. Yes, we need to wean ourselves and become more energy efficient. But in the short-term, we don't need to allow the American consumers to be price gouged by the likes of ExxonMobil. Oh, they are not price gouging. They only made $100 million a day last year. And they handed their retiring CEO a $400 million pension. That is 4 days of gouging at the pump for ExxonMobil. That was no big skin off their backs. $400 million extracted from American consumers unfairly. Price gouging.

So if we were to regulate the markets and, secondarily, tax the windfall profits. Now some say, oh, we tried that in the Carter administration. It won't work. No, we say, okay, we are going to tax your windfall profits unless you invest that money in new refinery capacity, unless you invest that in new production. Unless you invest it in alternate fuels, we will tax the heck out of it. We are not going to allow you to give 400 million bucks to your retiring CEO or the next retiring CEO. We are not going to allow you to price gouge consumers and buy back your stock to drive up the value of the stock options of all the people sitting on the board of directors. But if you put it to productive uses, then it won't be taxed away from you. So we could take those two steps and provide some immediate price relief to the American people.

And then we need to begin investing in alternate fuels. You know, it would be nice if instead of buying our oil from the Mid East and that incredibly volatile region, supporting many countries who are, you know, working with the terrorists against the United States of America with our dollars, if we became energy efficient like Brazil did. They had a vision 30 years ago. They decided they were not going to import oil anymore. It took them 30 years. Tell me we can't do that in the United States of America; that we can't move it toward biofuels and alternative fuels and more efficient and alternative technology.

Now, the President has talked about it, which is nice. It is a change. It is a big change. He is talking about it. But his budget doesn't contain any money to get us there. If you invested the same amount of money into energy independence and efficiency that the President has proposed, if JFK had invested the same amount in getting us to the Moon, we wouldn't have gotten to the Moon yet. So he isn't following up on his rhetoric; might have something to do with his history with the oil industry and Dick Cheney's history with the oil industry and every other member of the administration's history with the oil industry.

We can become energy independent and efficient and have a greater future for the American people.

Madam Chairman, are there problems with the current process? Yes. For the most part, they are political. In the case of the Biscuit fire, the professional managers developed a plan that would have yielded somewhere around 175 million boardfeet of salvage.

The administration, in an election year, said that is not enough, we want a lot more. They pulled that plan. They came back with another plan, much bigger numbers, but they haven't even harvested half of the original proposal, which was virtually noncontroversial. So in response, unfortunately, instead of prescribing a professional management in the future that is site specific, that mandates things, we are providing even more discretion to political appointees with this legislation.

As I said to some folks from the timber industry in my district, you may think it is a great bill with Mark Ray down there and George Bush at the White House. But what if the Clintons come back? They said, ``Oh my God, that would be horrible.''

So if you give total discretion to salvage or not salvage, if you fill the bill with mays and mays and mays, which it does, for instance, the point was made as I came to the floor, I have been involved in other committee work, that they are mandating science. Well, actually, no; on page 14 it says ``may,'' the Secretary may conduct one or more catastrophic event research projects.

The bill is rife with discretion for political appointees. We need professional management and certainty. This bill won't get us there.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

I agree with much of what I have heard. Unfortunately, I do not believe that the bill gets us in that direction. As I said earlier, giving unbridled discretion to political appointees may sit well with this administration and some supporters in the industry, but it does not bode well for long-term management of the forests.

So I looked at this and said, well, there is a way to fix that, and that would be to say in areas that are designated for timber management, you

can use the expedited procedure since that is the plan objective, and in areas that are not intended for that, you would use normal procedures, which does not preclude salvage. It just means a little bit more evaluation of the work until such a time as you had anticipated catastrophic events and amended the forest plans.

Now, the Forest Service objects that it would take time, would have to involve the public to amend the forest plans, but the thing is the experts, the scientists, say that is the only way to get there. They say you cannot have a peer-reviewed list of preapproved practices that are not site-specific and are not specific to the management goals of the forest.

In fact, the dean of the Oregon College of Forestry Hal Salwasser, Jerry Franklin and Norman Johnson, from Oregon State, said here, ``Management objectives for the area in question are the primary consideration in any decision regarding postfire logging, reforestation, or any other activities.'' He said that ``those goals, together with information on the forest type, or plan association group, postevent conditions in disturbed areas, and future climate trends will largely determine what actions, if any, are appropriate. If management plan direction is not clear,'' and it is not, most plans do not have a salvage provision in them, ``for appropriate actions following large disturbance events, plan revisions should provide such clarity. Major disturbances should not be the basis for de facto changes in land allocations or management objectives,'' which is what this bill does.

So the preeminent scientist invited by the chairman to a hearing confirmed that.

I am offering what I think would be a perfecting amendment. It would open up millions of acres to expedited procedures. It would allow the Forest Service to then amend their plan so in the future they could apply with certainty preapproved practices, not with discretion, and greatly expedite future salvage under those conditions.

In the meantime they could use regular procedures, and I pointed out earlier, on the Biscuit fire, that could have yielded 175 million boardfeet, but, because of political intervention, yielded about 75 million boardfeet of harvest.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller).

Well, Dean Salwasser does support the thrust of the legislation, but he also supports my amendment as a perfecting amendment, and I read previously from joint testimony of Dr. Salwasser, Dean Salwasser, Dr. Franklin, and Dr. Johnson.

That is the key here, is I believe that there is a reason, unlike some of the others, as the chairman pointed out, I did support the Healthy Forest Restoration Act. The Healthy Forest Restoration Act was used for much of the post-Katrina recovery with little or no controversy, and I believe that these tools can be valuable. But we also have to relate back to the forests themselves.

As the experts said in their testimony, and I asked them, how could you establish a list of peer-reviewed, preapproved practices? They said, you can't unless you were considering site-specific, class- specific application. You can't possibly do that. There is no generic way of doing that. So my amendment would, I believe, further the objectives of the authors of the bill and remove some uncertainty, because it is not clear from their testimony how you are ever going to get together this list.

And if the alternative to the list is to go to the CEQ, the Chief of the Forest Service said he didn't want to go there. He used HFRA instead, which is another proposal I put forward, which is why not just use, since we are all familiar with, there is still some controversy, but I think very little, attached to HFRA and its application, why not apply HFRA procedures to the problems in postcatastrophic events? But that was not deemed to be adequate for some reason, and now we have an entirely new construct which I believe has some need for perfecting amendments.

And that is why I am offering my amendment, and I would recommend it to my colleagues.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I thank the Chair.

Well, when we first heard about widespread wiretapping by the administration without legal authority under the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act, the President said not to worry, just a handful of individuals, and only when they are communicating with people outside the U.S. Well, maybe not a handful. Maybe a few hundred. No, maybe 10,000 or thousands.

Oops. Now it actually turns out that they are monitoring and have asked for the records of the phone calls of hundreds of millions of Americans. Over a trillion phone call records, we are told. They say they need this to protect America. What are they going to do with this mountain of data? They are going to apply a complicated mathematical algorithm to it and they are going to find some terrorists. Thus far they have raided two takeout services and one call center. That is what they have yielded from this. How about good old-fashioned intelligence with humans and police work?

Let's look at the bungling that led up to 9/11. Actually the new nominee who headed the NSA who has perhaps perjured himself about these billions of monitored records, he had in his hands a communication from al Qaeda on 9/11, actually on 9/10, saying, tomorrow is zero hour. But the NSA didn't bother to translate that until after 9/11.

Then we had the FBI. Now, Agent Samit said he had a communication about Moussaoui from French intelligence in August after he had been arrested by the FBI saying he was very dangerous, indoctrinated in radical Islamic fundamentalism, completely devoted to radical fundamentalism and Osama bin Laden. But his superiors didn't think that was enough to give him a warrant to open Moussaoui's computer and perhaps stop 9/11.

That's why we need to monitor the phone calls of billions of phone calls made by Americans, because of the incompetence of the people running these agencies.

Now, Agent Samit sent a letter to FBI headquarters accusing Moussaoui of plotting international terrorism and air piracy. This is August. August, before 9/11. Then Agent Rowley came forward and also gave us the same information. Agent Samit also asked for help from the FBI's London, Paris and Oklahoma City offices, FBI headquarters, CIA counterterrorism center, Secret Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Aviation Administration, an intelligence agency not identified but presumed to be the National Security Agency headed by General Hayden who failed to translate the warning before 9/11. But we need to monitor the phone calls of law-abiding Americans, billions of them. What a wild goose chase. They want to cover up the extraordinary incompetence that allowed these stumblebums to launch a devastating attack on America by saying they are doing something now by monitoring billions of phone calls. This is absolutely outrageous.

Let's go back a little further. There were two other guys involved, Nawafal Hazmi and Khalid al Mihdhar. Now, they were tracked to the planning meeting, pretty good work, by the CIA over in Southeast Asia. That's good. Unfortunately, they didn't have listening devices, they didn't have agents go through them, they didn't know what they were planning, but they knew they were bad guys planning something. Then they lost track of them. Where did they go? Well, they traveled legally to the United States of America with visas issued by the Bush State Department, they lived openly in San Diego with listed phone numbers, but they were never visited or monitored by the FBI or anybody else, even though the CIA knew these were bad guys.

But what are we going to do in response to this incompetence? Well, we'll give the people involved gold medals and great retirements. Mr. Tenet, who was heading the CIA, he got a gold medal for freedom from the President. No one has ever taken the fall for this incompetence. Now, instead, they are trying to divert us and say, what we're going to do is monitor all the telephone conversations of all Americans and apply a mathematical algorithm. So the next time we have a terrorist in hand, we won't open his computer, either, because we'll be watching the algorithms and the phone calls of law-abiding Americans.

What unbelievable incompetence on the part of this administration, in addition to law-breaking. The American people are not well served by this. We need to clean up this mess and truly protect America.

Mr. Chairman, I just want to say a few words about a compromise amendment that my colleagues and I in the Oregon delegation negotiated with the leadership of the House Armed Services Committee.

Our amendment requires the Army to send a report to Congress within 60 days of enactment of this bill regarding the Chinook helicopter Reset program. The Reset program repairs and restores helicopters to their pre-combat deployment condition. The report requires the Army to explain its plan to reset all active duty and reserve component helicopters, including the timeline and cost for doing so.

The reason my colleagues and I offered our original amendment is because of a dangerous situation facing the Oregon National Guard. The Oregon National Guard is authorized to have six Chinook helicopters. One was destroyed on a mission. One is too old and will be turned in to the Pentagon. The other four need to go through reset after being deployed to combat zones.

Timely repairs and rehabilitation are essential to ensuring the Oregon National Guard has the equipment necessary for responding to public safety threats, including forest fires, as well as other state emergencies, homeland defense, and proficiency training.

Unfortunately, timely repairs are not happening today. Due to the influx of aircraft returning from overseas and in need of repair, the Army depots that generally perform this work are overstretched. As I understand it, the average time to get a helicopter repaired and returned to a unit is six months or longer.

I haven't seen the speech yet, but I've been told that Major General Pillsbury of the Army Materiel Command recently gave a speech at a conference lamenting how far behind the Army is on the Chinook RESET program.

According to a letter from the Army in March 2006, the Oregon National Guard will not get its helicopters back until November 2006. During the interim period, the Oregon National Guard will have to do without, which puts Oregon residents at-risk. That is not acceptable.

Congress, the Army and the National Guard Bureau must find a solution to this problem. One logical solution is for the Army to allow the Oregon National Guard to contract with a local private sector helicopter maintenance provider in order to help alleviate the backlog that would otherwise keep its Chinooks grounded for the next several months. One company in Oregon, Columbia Helicopters, believes it could get two Chinooks through the reset process by July, several months sooner than the Army. Such private sector involvement in the reset program is not unprecedented. Last year, the Army awarded Boeing a $40 million-plus contract to refurbish Apache helicopters under the reset program. And, Columbia Helicopters has already done this type of work for the Nevada National Guard, which had some discretionary money it spent on getting its helicopters repaired.

Letters in support of this public-private concept have been sent to the Army since February from myself, the Oregon National Guard, the Nevada National Guard, Governor Kulongoski of Oregon, Governor Kenny Guinn of Nevada, Senators Smith, Wyden, Ensign and Reid, and Reps. Hooley, Wu and Walden. Yet, the Army has not taken any action to expedite the reset of the Oregon helicopters.

Our amendment today puts the Army on notice that Congress is interested in this issue and is concerned about growing repair burden and backlog. Congress needs to ensure accountability by the Army for timely repairs. This amendment is a first step. I will continue to work with my colleagues in Oregon and on the committee to try to get the Army to step up and ensure the National Guard is adequately equipped and able to carry out its missions year-round.