Floor Statements

The Bush-Rove administration has delivered cronyism, incompetence and corruption in spades. Mike ``you're-doing-a-heck-of-a- job-Brownie'' Brown is the poster child for the hundreds of unqualified, often incompetent, political hacks chosen to head, to demean, demoralize and dismantle critical Federal agencies like FEMA.

Then there is the corruption side. Mr. Brown, as he was resigning, at the same time one of his buddies, David Safarian, the head of Federal procurement for the entire government of the United States, $300 billion a year, is being led out of the White House in handcuffs for perjury, influence peddling and bribery, but he did his job till the end as a Bush political appointee. Before they drug him out in handcuffs, he let billions of dollars in no-bid contracts, awarded to Halliburton and other favorites of this administration.

Good job, Mr. Safarian. I hope prison is a good reward for you.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the fact that the gentlewoman who preceded me in the well was speaking to the issue of paying for the disaster, not borrowing or obligating future generations to borrow. This House, in fact, 2 weeks ago, with 40 minutes of debate, 40 minutes and no amendments allowed, borrowed $51.8 billion for the beginnings of hurricane recovery efforts, on top of the $10 billion borrowed the week before.

Now, she said one thing I do disagree with, which is you cannot ask the rich people to pay for any share of this. Now, it is true they live on high ground, I understand that; so, for the most part, they are not affected by disasters. They have private security, they fly on private jets, they live in a different world than most Americans. But she and the majority are saying, there is no way they should be asked to pay for a share of these disasters, unlike working Americans who are paying day in and day out for the money that is being borrowed.

If Katrina cost, she said $100 billion, let us say $200 billion, if we just did not extend the tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year and limited estate tax relief to estates worth less than $6 million, that is most small businesses where I come from, and family farms and tree farms, then that would pay for Katrina over the next 10 years 5 times over.

Well, okay. She says that is off the table. Well, let us look elsewhere. They have an interesting list of cuts. As we saw the abject poverty of the inner city folks in New Orleans, they are talking about trimming on medical care for poor people, food assistance for poor people, education for middle class and poor people; those are the things that are being targeted on that side of the aisle to pay for this.

I would suggest a couple of other places we might cut. Now, we cannot

even build levees that can withstand a category 3 hurricane; we do not have new energy efficient forms of transportation which puts us in enthralled to the Saudis and other enemies of the United States, and the President wants to borrow $1 trillion to go to Mars; and NASA, which was mentioned just previously, is going to spend $100 billion to go back to the moon. They want to get some more dust and rocks.

Well, how about we cut those programs and devote that money, the $100 billion to go back to the moon. That would pay for Katrina, according to the numbers previously given, and the $1 trillion would pay for that and a lot of other things in America if we did not go to Mars. I do not think we can afford that now. Until maybe we can build levees that can withstand a category 4 and maybe even a category 5 hurricane, and we do a few things about the areas in the Pacific northwest that are not earthquake proof, and other preventive measures around the country. But, hey, maybe people do not want to cut NASA because it is based in Texas.

So, okay. How about then the redundant, useless Cold War fighter called the F-22, which is now 5 times over its original cost estimates and is not needed. That would pay for Katrina relief 3\1/2\ times over, and we could depend upon the F-16 until the joint strike fighter, a little more economical version of a fighter plane, is developed for future enemies and wars, but I am sure they would not want to do that. Well, okay. We cannot cut that.

Well, let us talk about something else. How about subsidies to farms where farmers earn over $100,000 a year. I really do not have very many farmers in my State who earn over $100,000 and, guess what, most of the farmers in my State could not get subsidies. But those farmers in the midwest who earn over $100,000 a year in the northern Midwest get very substantial subsidies under the Freedom to Farm Act. If we limited farm subsidies to farmers and families on family farms who earn less than $100,000 a year, in 10 years, we could pay for 1\1/2\ Katrinas.

So, instead of cutting the medicaid program, putting the burden on the States and depriving poor people of health care, instead of cutting food stamps, instead of cutting education programs that are important to average Americans, instead of stupid, across-the-board cuts that cut abysmally wasteful programs the same as essential programs, that is how we got in trouble with FEMA, they are cutting an essential program, we could do a few different things. But that would mean maybe a little rethinking on that side of the aisle. Ask the wealthy to carry their fair share of the burden, eliminate the redundant return to the moon, put off the mission to Mars, cancel a Cold War-era fighter designed to have air superiority versus the Soviet Union in Europe, and/or, maybe just cut back on subsidies for farmers who earn over $100,000 a year. That would more than pay for Katrina.

If we do all of those things, that would be 15 times what we need to pay for Katrina, and then we could begin to reinvest in FEMA, education and health care, and things that are essential to all Americans, and maybe even veterans' benefits too.

Mr. Speaker, words that will be remembered for a long time, unless the White House can erase them: ``Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.'' That was the President to Michael Brown, the political appointee head of FEMA, while people were drowning in New Orleans and in the southeast. The President was apparently unaware of the lack of assistance being provided by FEMA. Mr. Brown was shortly thereafter sent back to Washington and then resigned.

That might be good if it was an isolated instance. Unfortunately, it is not. This permeates the entire 3,000 so-called plum jobs that the President gets to appoint without any regard to qualification.

I mean, Mr. Brown's predecessor was the President's campaign manager who downgraded, demeaned, and ultimately submerged a previously very functional agency, FEMA, into the Homeland Security bureaucracy. Since then, many of the top people have left, and the agency has become totally demoralized, although we do find with new focus in the last week. Hopefully, that will last.

Just about the same time that Mr. Brown was going down, the government's top procurement official, that is the person in charge of all purchasing by the Federal Government, $300 billion a year of taxpayers' money, a gentleman by the name of Safavian, was being led off in handcuffs by the FBI, but not before he had let out a few more billion dollars in no-bid contracts to the usual suspects in the wake of the Katrina disaster.

He has been found to have not only perjured himself but has taken illegal gratuities and bribes from the now-infamous lobbyist Mr. Abramoff. That was the top procurement official appointed by George Bush.

Beyond that, he also, of course, like Mr. Brown, had no qualifications for the job. He once had interned as a law student, helping in some minor way on a helicopter purchase at the Pentagon, and he jumped from there to his political associations with the President, to being head of all purchasing for the Federal Government.

Basically, we have here a government run by people who disrespect government. They do not like government. They do not believe in government. Their spiritual mentor, Mr. Norquist, says he wants government so small that he can strangle it in a bathtub. We find out that people drown when government starts to get kind of small because government is not there to respond. Now they are backpeddling and they are trying to pretend, oh, that is not really what it is all about, but it has been.

Incompetence threads through so many agencies, conflict of interest, and there might be other things. The one thing they do respect government for is its ability to extract money from all the working people of the United States of America and put it in a place, the Federal Treasury, that they can raid to benefit a very few people and major corporations. Government is a profit center is the way they see it, and they have a wonderful revolving door.

They have a fellow over at the FDA in charge of reviewing medical safety, 33 years old, who is a former columnist in The Wall Street Journal, stock analyst, right-wing think tank guru, attacking the FDA who is not supposed to be in charge of new drug approvals; but when a few very potentially profitable drugs did not get approved, he, as the Assistant Secretary, started leaning on the bureaucrats, the professionals, to say why do you disapprove that drug. Pfizer is going to make $1 billion a year on it; it is a great drug. So what if a couple of people died? They probably would have died anyway.

So there is another fellow, Mr. Gottlieb, yet another outstanding appointment. Unfortunately, the government is rife with these people. There are too many to document, and what they are engaged in is the systematic looting of the Treasury of the United States to benefit a few, to make government less functional so it cannot serve the needs of the many in times of need, like Katrina, or even in less routine times of need, like education, health care, border control.

They have got a beauty here. They have got a woman they want to put in charge of the border control of the United States of America who even the Republican Senators have questioned whether or not she has any capability, a woman named Julie Myers, another political hack. Ohio Republican Senator George Voinovich said he would really like to hear from Mr. Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security, come spend a little time with us, tell us personally why he thinks she is qualified for the job, because based on the resume, I do not think you are. That is a Republican Senator. This is the woman who would be charged with keeping terrorists out of the United States of America, and that is a dysfunctional bureaucracy and has been for a long time.

That is new to the administration, but it is more essential today than ever. We need to clean house at this administration, put competent people in charge so government is there when the American people need it and stop looting the Treasury.

Mr. Speaker, time and time again here on the floor of the House I hear speeches: ``We will never forget 9/11; we will better prepare and defend America.''

But the most basic lesson of September 11, where we tragically lost so many first responders in the collapse of the towers, was that they lacked secure interoperable communications. They could not talk and communicate with those first responders, and many died needlessly. We have not learned that most basic of lessons.

In fact, President Bush this year zeroed out Federal assistance to local communities for secure interoperable communications. How quickly some have forgotten, yet they say it will never happen again.

Well, Hurricane Katrina was not a terrorist attack, but the Federal response was worse and degraded from the capabilities that we had on 9/ 11. On that day, FEMA was a high-functioning, independent, professionally run agency. Today, it is subsumed into this gigantic morass of the homeland security bureaucracy, downgraded to subagency level with a political hack as its director, and most of the professional staff has resigned and gone on to run State management agencies around the country. There are still some good professionals there, but the leadership, appointed by the White House, and the fact it was subsumed in the bureaucracy at the insistence of the Republican majority and the White House, they took away its independent agency status.

We had a vote on the floor to restore its independent agency status. We predicted these problems, but they opposed that amendment. Now they want to investigate themselves. Will the other side of the aisle fess up, like the White House never does, that they were wrong to follow the lead of the White House to downgrade this agency, to politicize it, subsume it in a huge bureaucracy, and that we are less capable than we were on 9/11 to respond to these types of disasters? I think not.

Mr. Speaker, we need an independent agency outside of this highly partisan body. They will not admit to those mistakes. There were certainly mistakes made at the local level, and they will probably highlight those, and those should be rectified, too. But all mistakes should come out, the failings of the Federal Government, the State government, and the local governments, with an independent, nonpartisan commission. That would be greatly preferable to this coverup that is going to go on here.

Mr. Speaker, I have before me a speech given by James Lee Witt who was the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the Clinton administration. It is actually testimony given on May 22, 2004. I think it is very relevant to the debate we had here today about what went wrong and how we are going to fix it and how we are going to understand what went wrong.

Basically, Mr. Witt predicted what happened. Here is some of his testimony.

Particularly on this issue of Department of Homeland Security and FEMA as an independent agency as the organization that responded for 8 years to the American people's needs in a customer-serviced focused way, that has been destroyed. It is not there now. It is buried down in the bottom of a huge bureaucracy. It now has no communications within the agency itself, nor does it have communications with State and local government where, before, we had a partnership working with State and local governments.

There is not even communications from FEMA headquarters in Washington to their 10 regional offices. FEMA employees call me constantly. They have got so many vacant offices within FEMA headquarters now that I doubt they could respond to a catastrophic event.

This was testimony on May 22, 2004. Because, when we left in 2001, FEMA was ranked as one of the top agencies in the Federal Government to work for. Just recently in the Washington Post, it was ranked dead last at 28. The morale within the agency is so bad some of the senior level people have quit, some that have the historical knowledge and capabilities to respond, recover, repair, everything the agency did. Our Nation right now suffers on the interoperability of public safety communications. It is zero.

This is James Lee Witt, May 22, 2004, talking about the state of the Federal Emergency Management Agency that this administration had said of the former director, Brownie, you're doing a great job. Of course, Brownie is now gone. But it is a much bigger problem than Brownie, the political hack appointed by the President to head this agency, which had been downgraded, underfunded, and basically dismissed by the Bush administration. It is a problem that is of tremendous magnitude.

Today, the House voted to investigate itself. I doubt that we will get an honest report out of the Republican majority here.

We offered an amendment on the floor. We said: if you put FEMA into this bureaucracy, you will degrade its capabilities. On a virtually partisan line vote, I think 10 brave Republicans voted with us, that amendment was rejected. I guess we were a little bit wrong. It is even worse and quicker than we could have thought that FEMA has been destroyed. It is extraordinary.

I hear so many speeches on the floor every night. One gentleman ended tonight with: ``We will never forget 9/11.'' We will not forget 9/11? What was the most basic lesson of 9/11 that killed many first responders who could have survived? The fact that they did not have secure interoperable communications. And what has the response of this administration been? The President recommended zero dollars to assist local communities, sheriffs, police, fire, emergency personnel to purchase interoperable or upgrade to interoperable communications in his budget this year. And the appropriations moved through this House doing the same.

Now, my colleagues will say, oh, no one could have anticipated this, and how could we have known, and this was a disaster of untold magnitude, and those local officials, they did not do their job. But it is actually the Congress that has to bear a lot of the responsibility here. It was the Congress that agreed with the politically motivated plan out of the White House to stick FEMA into the Homeland Security bureaucracy. It was the Congress that agreed with the President to cut the budget of FEMA, to cut the disaster teams from three to two. And we wonder why they could not respond and why people died unnecessarily?

We need a fair and honest evaluation and investigation comparable to the 9/11 Commission to unearth the facts around this. There are things that need to be done besides restoring FEMA to an independent, professionally led agency status with a robust budget. We are also entering into the greatest rebuilding effort and restoration and relief effort in the history of our country. We need to see that those monies will not be misspent; that those monies will not go to crisis profiteers; that they will get to the people and the communities that need it and the rebuilding will be done appropriately; that we will invest in the infrastructure that was not invested in to protect New Orleans.

And it is not unique to New Orleans. I have jetties failing in the State of Oregon. The Corps of Engineers has no money to fix them. If they fail much more, it will cost 10 times as much to rebuild them. I have a dam that was failing in my district, and the corps had to scramble all around the country to find the money to begin to rebuild that dam. It is not their fault. Congress has not given them the funds, and the President has not recommended the funds to protect the American people from disaster.

So we need to invest not only in a reconstructed FEMA but also in a more robust budget for the Corps of Engineers for prevention. And we need to make certain the dollars we are borrowing, because every dollar of this is borrowed, are spent wisely. And maybe we should reconsider the tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year and have estates worth $600,000. Maybe they should contribute to the recovery effort too.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the gentleman from Illinois' (Mr. Emanuel) time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to thank the Oregon National Guard. There is a lot of discussion here about the things that went wrong with the response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster; but yesterday, I had the experience of accompanying the adjutant general, Major General Fred Rees of the Oregon National Guard, to New Orleans to see the guard units there in action.

We have one of the largest, if not the largest, contingents in New Orleans. They have one of the most difficult sectors, a large portion of the city, particularly the portion of the city that is still submerged; and I had an opportunity there to meet with the troops. They are basically living in battlefield conditions, eating meals ready to eat, sleeping in an abandoned school and a university that is vacant at the moment, and they are doing extraordinary work.

One of the first people I met from the city when we made our first stop was a woman who was still in her house. I went to ask her why she was still in her house, because they have been trying to encourage people to evacuate. She said, well, I feel safe. I said, well, I can understand that. She said, no, thank God for the National Guard; I feel safe. She says, you do not understand. She was telling me that she felt safe in her neighborhood for the first time in years, an incredibly high crime neighborhood, because of the Oregon National Guard presence.

Then we went on from there to the flooded areas where, in the preliminary stages, they are still rescuing people. The day we were there they rescued people; 570 people rescued so far by the Oregon National Guard.

They have begun in their own small way to contribute to the restoration effort of the school, the high school that they are living in which was pretty trashed and this other university campus that they are on, beginning cleanup; but their efforts are just extraordinary.

The thing about the National Guard is they do not just bring the military precision to these sorts of efforts. I mean, they have got the discipline, the training, the logistic support, the unit cohesion, those sorts of things; but they have something else special. They are citizen soldiers, and they have other skills, and those other skills are needed more than ever in a disaster, more than regular Army troops.

They can certainly restore order. We have quite a number of police officers who have been heavily relied upon by other troops and other units of Guards not from Oregon in dealing with the residents and some of the problems still in the neighborhoods that they are assisting.

We have firefighters. We have people with expertise in heavy equipment. They found and repaired an abandoned bulldozer to begin clearing streets for

access around one of the headquarters. We have electricians who are trying to wire the school so that they can use the generators, at least have some basics for the troops.

This is the National Guard at their finest. Many of these troops have just recently returned from Iraq. They have not even been home 6 months, and many are signed up to go to Afghanistan next March; but I did not hear a single complaint. They said, this is a great mission. We are saving people's lives. We can see we are making a difference here. We are proud to serve.

I am proud as an Oregonian to represent many of these individuals. The Guard is a tremendous success story in a disaster which has too many other problems, things that must be investigated by Congress in terms of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, returning it to being an independent, professionally run, high-functioning agency. Many of us objected to putting it in Homeland Security. We were all too right, unfortunately.

We must oversee the relief and recovery effort. The government is borrowing and spending $500 million a day. That must be strictly overseen to make sure there is not crisis profiteering that has happened after some other disasters and other hurricanes. Congress has a role in that, and Congress then is going to have to look at the rebuilding effort in terms of the infrastructure that serves that area, the intricate infrastructure, the Corps of Engineers and what steps we are taking for the future, where we will rebuild, and how we will protect those things.

It will be massively expensive; and in the face of that massive expense, in addition to a deficit, I hope that the President and the majority party drop their push for more tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. Those who earn more than $300,000 a year and those who have estates worth more than $6 million, should they not contribute to this effort? Are they not part of this country, or do they just live behind walled compounds with their private security and their private jets?

We are all in this together, as was demonstrated by my citizen soldiers who are not paid a whole heck of a lot of money to do this. So let us do this right. Let us recognize the National Guard and others who volunteered and have done so well. So far let us support their effort, and let us enter into this rebuilding effort in a wise and cost-efficient way, protecting both the taxpayers and the people who have been ravaged by this storm.

Mr. Speaker, today Congress will vote to borrow $51.8 billion as a down payment on the relief, rescue and recovery effort, a sum which could reach $200 billion.

It is the responsibility of this Congress to oversee the administration's disbursement of these funds and to make certain it goes to the victims and appropriate expenditures and not disaster profiteering. Likewise, Congress must safeguard against opportunists, some even in our own ranks, who would use the disaster for their own petty political ends.

In fact, in light of the huge costs, the big run-up in the deficit that we are about to see, some on the other side of the aisle are suggesting this makes the case for tax cuts for the wealthiest investors in America, those who earn more than $300,000, have estates worth more than $6 million. They say that those tax cuts will provide economic stimulus that will trickle down on the people of New Orleans and Mississippi.

They have been trickled on more than they can stand. We need an appropriate, compassionate, and cost-effective recovery effort, not more tax breaks for the most privileged among us who were not affected.

Mr. Speaker, I would suggest to the chairman of the Committee on Rules that more time for words would be great, but what would be better would be action by this Congress to fix a dysfunctional Federal Emergency Management Agency. Dysfunctional at the top, not at the bottom. People at the bottom want to get out there. The first responders want to be out there. They still do not have effective interoperable communications 4 years after 9/11.

Given the befuddled response at the top, I am not confident that this $51.8 billion we are going to borrow, indebting a generation of Americans of probably another $100 billion or $200 billion, will be well and effectively spent and get the relief and the rescue efforts and the rebuilding efforts to the people and the communities that are devastated.

We are not putting in place oversight and protection against crisis profiteering. We are not trying to improve the agency. It is the middle of a hurricane season. What if there is another tomorrow or next week? Will the terrorists wait until we are done with our natural disasters? No. We need to begin the review and oversight now. They say, Oh, you cannot do that in the middle of a crisis.

What is the greatest crisis this country has experienced in the last 100 years? I think it might have been World War II. In the middle of World War II, Harry Truman chaired a committee investigating war profiteering under FDR, the greatest President of the last century, and reforms were put in place. Congress did its job.

We need to improve FEMA. We need a better response. The first responders need better tools. The people that have been affected need effective relief, they need compassion, and they need assistance. Shoveling money at them and more words will not do it. We need to make some changes, and you are not going to allow any changes or any amendments here on this floor today, but you will allow us a few more words. We might get up to $1 billion a minute instead of $1.2 billion a minute.

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the gentleman who went before me: we should see the best of human nature and we should all join together, and hopefully Congress and the administration can do better in the relief and the rebuilding efforts than they did in the prevention and disaster response.

But it is a time to learn and reform because it may only be days or weeks until we have another devastating hurricane, who knows when the terrorists will attack, and have we learned any lessons since 9/11.

A gentleman before me said we will never forget. We have forgotten. There were no interoperable secure communications. They want to blame New Orleans for that. Guess what, the Bush administration zeroed out interoperable communications in the Homeland Security budget. The Bush administration insisted that FEMA had to go into Homeland Security. I joined with 163 Members of this House saying no, that will degrade FEMA. FEMA has been degraded. They have a political hack as their head.

Changes need to be made now, and urgently, because the next disaster may strike tomorrow. And if the response is as poor as it was in this emergency, more people will die needlessly.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the House of Representatives under suspension of the rules, that is, a bill with 40 minutes of debate total, no amendments allowed by any Member of the House for any reason, will vote to borrow on behalf of all the American people $51.8 billion to begin the recovery, rebuilding and continuing the aid and assistance efforts subsequent to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina.

Now, it is good that we are reacting and we are going to begin to fund the incredible needs that will arise and have arisen from this disaster. It is the beginning of a long process, and it is probably only a down payment. But some say that we cannot, as the House of Representatives or the legislative branch, examine the causes of the miserable response that caused unnecessary loss of life while recovery efforts are still ongoing.

Some say that we cannot question the work done by the administration and the appointees in place who failed to act adequately. They say that would be unseemly.

But during World War II, Harry Truman, in a Democratic-controlled legislature, chaired a special committee investigating the procurement scandals of a Democratic administration in the greatest crisis of our history, World War II.

We can do both. We can provide aid and assistance, and we can get at the root causes of unnecessary loss of life and unnecessary disaster. We can do that.

There are a number of lessons to be learned. We need to be able to respond better today or tomorrow. Hurricane season is not over yet. We might have another. Another might follow tragically that same path. That might be an incredible disaster. And we are going to have the same people in place, the same procedures in place. That is not going to be enough.

The terrorists are not going to wait. It has been 4 years since 9/11. We still do not have interoperable, secure communications that were identified as a principal problem on 9/11. The Bush administration zeroed them out in this year's budget, and the Congress has not yet seen fit to restore that money. I hope they will do that in one of these emergency spending bills.

Then there are the cuts at FEMA. The aggregate budget for FEMA during the term of the Bush administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has been reduced. We are not quite sure how much yet because we do not have the final numbers on this bill. I guess with this disaster assistance that will not be the case. But in terms of their preparedness and mitigation, it has been reduced.

The Corps of Engineers has hundreds of critical infrastructure problems, including the levee around New Orleans, underfunded and unfunded. I had a dam in my district that was failing, a flood control dam, with the largest cities in the State downstream. And the Corps of Engineers simply said, We do not have the money. Finally they scrambled around and they found the money. But, unfortunately, they were not able to do that in New Orleans for the Corps budget had been dramatically reduced.

In fact, the Corps' own people predicted that this could happen because of the underfunding of the ongoing maintenance and the needed improvements in the diking system there, but all's well.

Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy said things are on track to privatize Social Security because we are going to borrow so much money for the disaster we are going to need to privatize Social Security. What? The Bush plan for privatization of Social Security requires borrowing more money. That is absurd. Then he says, oh, and the tax cuts are all on track, too. The tax cuts for the wealthiest among us are on track in face of a war and a disaster. Why? Because trickle-down will help the people of New Orleans.

How about Federal investment in the infrastructure that would protect the people of New Orleans and other cities around the United States of America? How about interoperable communications for our first responders across the United States of America? How about more money for disaster mitigation preparedness for FEMA? How about those investments before tax cuts for the wealthiest among us?

But they live on the high ground, and I guess they think they are exempt. They are not exempt. We are all in this together, and there should be some degree of sacrifice and level-headedness downtown. We are going to borrow $52.8 billion tomorrow, adding to the deficit; and they are proposing more tax cuts for people who earn over $300,000 a year and estates over $6 million.

Come on, let us get real. Let us act on behalf of all our people. Let us invest in our country and our people and do a better job against natural disasters and the potential for terrorist attacks. We need some changes. It should be more than 40 minutes of debate, and one or two amendments at least should be allowed.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. At long last no more, well, one extension, only so we can properly celebrate the adoption of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I want to join with the gentleman from Alaska (Chairman Young). I first want to thank the gentleman and other leaders on the Republican side for their extraordinary fairness in this process and recognizing that transportation, transportation efficiency is not a partisan issue; it serves all Americans. It serves all business in blue States, red States, Democratic, Republican, Independent.

We are here today gathered to make an extraordinary investment in the future of our country. I do not think there is anything this Congress could do more definitively to put people back to work, to stimulate our economy, to increase our efficiency, our competitiveness, both nationally and internationally than this legislation.

And the wonderful thing, at this time in our Nation's history, about this legislation is we are not borrowing the money to do it. We are spending taxes paid by all Americans at the gas pump: individuals, passenger car drivers, and commercial drivers and businesses.

And we are going to take that money, and we are going to invest it in ways that benefit this Nation for decades to come. We are going to help mitigate congestion, and congestion is at the top of my list, because the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) should have been here to join in this effort, but he is stuck in traffic. And hopefully by the time we finish spending the money in TEA-LU, the gentleman and other Americans will be able to get to work more readily in the future, in addition to benefiting business and other aspects of our country.

Mr. Speaker, particularly I want to thank the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) for his mentorship, his leadership on our side, his friendship, his advocacy, his knowledge, his history. I learned a lot during this bill. It was an extraordinary process for me. And he has been wonderful and helpful.

The gentleman also came to my State to recognize that my State has an extraordinary problem that transcends the boundaries of our State, something I started campaigning for a couple of years ago, to recognize that Interstate 5 is the lifeline of the western United States, joining the fifth largest economy in the world, California, to Oregon and Washington, two foreign nations, Mexico and Canada, serving the busiest port in the Nation, and a number of other very busy ports, the third busiest truck route in America.

Oregon has an extraordinary problem on Interstate 5, through an accident of history, having built our interstate before other States. Our bridges are virtually reaching simultaneous failure because we used an old 1950s and pre-1950s technology, where States who built the interstate later, California and others, used a very different technology, and they do not have the bridge problems we have.

My State has raised fees and licenses and bonded a tremendous amount of money to deal with this problem, but we are still short. And this bill will go a long way toward filling that gap and completing Interstate 5 so you will not have trucks detouring up over the Cascade Mountains, down the far side and back onto I-5.

But that is probably one of the many issues this bill will deal with. Other projects of national significance, something pioneered by the chairman of this committee and the House, which the Senate only tagged onto in the end, is going to make tremendous investments in the Alameda Corridor, other critical areas in California that are suffering from huge growth, and congestion all across the Nation.

We will be making very significant investments with major projects there, and then down the Missouri River Bridge all the way to the east coast and some of the problems dealing with freight movement across New York Harbor from New Jersey into New York. This is not everything we needed, but it is a tremendous and meaningful down payment.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank again all who joined in this effort. I want to join the chairman in thanking the Republican staff. He has done an able job of that. I would like to name a few folks on our side, and there have been a lot of sleepless nights.

First and foremost, my staff: Kathie Dedrick, who yesterday was her birthday, probably one she will never forget. She got all 24 hours out of it, because she did not sleep. So that is, I guess, one way to approach that.

I want to thank the Highway Subcommittee staff, Ken House, Art Chan, Stephanie Manning, Eric VanSchyndle, Jennifer Esposito, Jackie Schmitz, Homer Carlisle.

I particularly want to thank David Heysfeld, who brings almost as much history and knowledge to these issues as the ranking member and sometimes remembers some details that the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) has forgotten.

Ward McCarragher, Kathie Zern, Jen Walsh, Dara Schlieker, an administrative assistant without whom we never would have got through to people and coordinated things.

I want to thank some folks downtown, actually, at the Federal Highway Administration, Susan Binder, Rosi Crighton, because they spent an incredible amount of time analyzing what it was we were doing, because there are times when you start moving pieces around in this formula, we are not quite sure where it is all headed and who is going to be impacted.

Sometimes at 3 or 4 in the morning, they were doing analysis that was critical to the committee completing this bill in a fair way.

So I want to thank the chairman. I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Petri) and his staff. He has just been wonderful to me as chairman. I am proud to serve under him as ranking member.

I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) because he and I may disagree over a number of things, but we found common cause here in investing in the future of this country. And he played an absolutely critical role in negotiating with the Senate, which is one of the most confounding processes, I do not know if you can even call it a process, that I have ever dealt with. I do not know that it is that organized.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Corrine Brown).

Mr. Speaker, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman. She has been a very able advocate for the economic interests of her State, as have other Members of the Florida delegation. I want to assure her that at least on this side of the aisle, and I am certain on the other side of the aisle, we understand these problems and assure her we will work with her to try to reach some resolution that is fair to all.

Mr. Speaker, we will adopt a so-called energy policy for the United States later today. We are in the beginnings of a 21st century energy crisis, skyrocketing prices at the pump, consumers are being gouged, growing dependence on foreign oil. And what is the answer of the Republican majority and this administration? Let us obligate the taxpayers of the United States to borrow $15.4 billion as a gift, a needed incentive to the oil industry to go out and produce more.

At 60 bucks a barrel and $2.40 a gallon and record profits and huge piles of cash they do not know what to do with, we need to subsidize the oil industry? I do not think so.

We need a new energy policy that will serve this country and the challenges of the 21st century with new technologies, new efficiency, and breaking our dependence on foreign oil. Unfortunately, we are getting exactly the opposite here today.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

I would like to try to put this in perspective. I agree with the gentleman it is egregious this is in the bill. We had a very difficult negotiation with the Senate. This was snuck in. It is not like we are reopening a base, repositioning forces and/or equipment. We are talking about a runway.

The question is, will they, in the next month, until we can have a technical correction bill, have to run out and pull the weeds and repaint the lines on the runway? This is not exactly a major part of the BRAC process.

To forestall the passage of a bill which is almost 2 years overdue, which invests $286.4 billion in America's infrastructure, because there might be some weeds pulled on a runway in the interim, I agree it is offensive, but we can fix it and challenge the Senate at a later date. But to hold up the entire bill and forestall the investment, there are States who are waiting today and who will spend money under this bill and commit money under this bill this construction season, putting thousands of people to work and making needed investments in America.

I am not sure what provision the gentleman is talking about.

Right. It would reopen a runway.

Mr. Speaker, the Wall Street Journal yesterday: It is bad enough that the energy bill has become a subsidy fest that will raise gasoline prices in more places than it reduces them, and they go on from there.

The so-called energy policy to be adopted tomorrow will raise prices at the pump for American consumers, it will increase our dependence, and this is from the Bush administration's own projections over the next 20 years on foreign oil, on Saudi Arabia and those other wonderful folks in the Middle East.

It will do nothing to mandate increases in fuel efficiency so American consumers will have better choices. It will not fund any significant amount of money for alternative fuel research or alternative technologies, or transitional technologies to move us to energy self-sufficiency.

Finally, guess what? We are going to write the American people a bill for this piece of work. The American people are going to be asked to borrow $15 billion and give it as a gift to the suffering oil, gas, and coal industry, those who have cash reserves that exceed the subsidy that they are about to get.