Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, when the House passed the so-called Medicare Modernization Act, the purported prescription drug benefit for seniors in the dark of the night, after holding the vote open for 3 hours by a small margin, a lot of Members did not know fully what was in the bill. We know we were lied to about the cost and that it was withheld from the Congress. There were a lot of other provisions people did not realize were in there.

But there is one that we still have a chance to correct tomorrow with an amendment I am going to offer. Seniors are going to be outraged if my amendment is not accepted.

The bill waives all privacy rights for seniors on Medicare and Medicaid. That is, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is, notwithstanding any other provision of law, able to disclose their personal information to private insurance companies who supposedly will not share it with anybody beyond their company. It is bad enough it is going to a bunch of private insurance companies, but we know, with the interconnectedness of these companies and problems with data retention, that these seniors are likely to have their data widely shared; in addition to which, that means these seniors will be solicited over the phone by mail, aggressively, by private prescription drug plans, insurance companies, obviously trying to sell them something they probably will not really understand.

Now, some people on that side will say, well, how else are we going to market this plan? You do it the way we do the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan. The government compiles all the data, you send it to all the eligible people, and then you, the consumer, have a choice. They look at the ones they are interested in, they have a 1-800 number, a Web site, they contact them. We do not give the personal information about every Federal employee or Member of Congress to private insurance companies to solicit us; why should we do that to every senior in America? They will be outraged.

Mr. Speaker, it is a simple amendment. It just says that this will not go into effect, and then the Secretary of Health and Human Services can work out a much better plan for marketing this program that does not violate the sanctity, the privacy of all, every one of America's seniors. That would be an outrage, and they will notice.

Mr. Speaker, well, I welcome the born again saviors of Social Security on the Republican side of the aisle. They have been looting the program for years, and now they want to make it right.

The President this year will borrow $168 billion from Social Security, money only extracted from people who work for wages and salary, and will transfer part of it to the wealthiest in

America, many of whom do not even pay Social Security tax. And he is replacing that money with these bonds. And now the President questions whether the government will honor these bonds with the full faith and credit of the Government of the United States.

So Republicans have a great new idea: Social Security will not hold the bonds anymore. They will issue them to individuals. Now, if we are not going to honor these bonds for all the people of America, what assurance do people have that those individual bonds will be honored, and the Republicans want to charge them a management fee and a so- called claw-back. So anybody that takes one of those individual bonds, if it is honored, is guaranteed to get less than they would under the existing system. Oh, that is a great plan, guys.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment is simple. Let me read it in its entirety. ``None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to initiate military operations except in accordance with Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution of the United States.''

The intent of this is simple: To prevent the President from committing U.S. forces to additional wars without first coming to Congress for a vote authorizing such military action. If the President wishes or feels it is necessary to have a war with Syria, Iran, North Korea or any other nation, then under the U.S. Constitution and my amendment, he must first come to Congress.

Some will try and argue that this would tie the hands of the President and the Pentagon and the CIA when it comes down to tracking down al Qaeda. My amendment would not impact the government's ability to hunt, apprehend or kill members of al Qaeda. On September 18, Congress adopted a broad authorization of force that says the President is authorized to use all necessary appropriate force against nations, organizations, and persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, aided the terrorist attacks, or harbored such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Referring back to the preceding list of countries, if the President could demonstrate that any of them were involved in 9/11, he would not need further authorization from Congress. Nor would my amendment impact on our ongoing military operations in Iraq. On October 16, 2002, Congress authorized those actions under the United States Constitution.

Further, there are those who would say what about covert activities? It is important to note that title 50, United States Code, section 413, already provides Congressional authorization pursuant to amendments in 1980 to the National Security Act of 1947, for the President to authorize covert operations under certain circumstances on behalf of the United States.

In other words, if my amendment passes, the President will still have all of the authorization from Congress he needs to actively pursue al Qaeda operations in Iraq and other terrorist activities around the globe.

The amendment simply seeks to reinforce war powers granted solely to Congress under the U.S. Constitution to ensure the President cannot launch a major war against Iran, Syria, North Korea or any other nation without a vote from Congress.

Some will say, Is that really necessary? On April 18, 2002, in response to a letter I and other Members sent to the President about the need to authorize the war with Iraq, I received a letter from then- White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, now Attorney General. Mr. Gonzalez stated that the President has broad Constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief, and as the sole organ of the Federal Government in foreign affairs to deploy the Armed Forces of the United States, a formal declaration of war or other authorization from the Congress is not required to enable the President to undertake the full range of actions that may be necessary to protect our national security. That is an extraordinarily broad assertion not supported by a President after more than 200 years of interpretation of the Constitution.

So I feel my amendment, as narrow as it is, is necessary to protect the war powers separation of the President as the Commander-in-Chief. The Congress of the United States has the sole authority to declare war, except in case of sudden attack upon the United States, its citizens, or armed forces. Ample opportunity exists for the President to continue to pursue al Qaeda and others and the war in Iraq under this amendment.

I urge my colleagues, if they support that interpretation of the Constitution, which is broadly acknowledged by most legal scholars, except Mr. Gonzalez, and I do not know if he is a legal scholar, and would uphold our authority.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I know the gentleman from Florida's speech was written by his staff, but he said that we could not pursue Osama bin Laden. If he had listened to my speech where I quoted back legislation that he voted for and I voted for which authorized the war with Afghanistan, it went on to the fact of any nation that harbors such organizations or persons in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism. That pretty well covers Osama bin Laden.

I do not appreciate the gentleman raising these bizarre allegations. He may disagree with me, he may want to cede this authority to the President of the United States and abdicate our constitutional duties. That is fine. But do not raise these false issues. It does not go to Osama bin Laden. He is already covered. It does not go to Iraq. It is already covered. It does not go to a third country that is potentially threatening or any group threatening the United States. That is covered under war powers.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, a large majority of Members of the United States House of Representatives voted on October 14, 2002, to allow the President to wage war, probably an extra-constitutional delegation of authority. There was no direct declaration of war, yet it was authorized under the War Powers Act by this body, so a great deal of the responsibility lies here.

The rationale at the time that was frequently mentioned in the weeks leading up to the vote was the potential for mushroom clouds, as mentioned by Ms. Rice, Mr. Cheney, President Bush and others very prominently just before the vote in the House, just before an election, when Members felt great pressure. There was a lot of talk about the delivery system of Saddam Hussein for his widely believed-to-be- extensive arsenal of chemical and biological weapons and links to al Qaeda.

Now, I attended the briefings, saw the thin gruel that was presented to Members, and I certainly was not convinced, but I am sure many others were, particularly with a picture of a UAV, which looked like something that could not fly. It had aluminum patches riveted on it and it clearly could not carry anything. It seemed the Air Force guy giving the briefing did not think much of it either. Be that as it may, a large majority of this House bought into that rationale and authorized the President to go to war.

Subsequent to that, revelations about ``yellow cake'' and Niger and uranium and the potential for nuclear threat was totally dispelled shortly, well, actually internally in the administration before the President used it in the State of the Union, but publicly after that.

So much had been dispelled that on February 5, 2003, I introduced a resolution suggesting that Members of Congress had been misled, had not had good information, and should reconsider this extraordinary delegation of war-making authority to the President.

The Congress failed to act, and we know what proceeded from then.

But now, I would believe that a majority of the Members, not just those of us who opposed the war or some who now feel that they should not have supported the war, but a large majority, would want to have a full investigation of how this happened. How did this all happen? Was it the result of a massive failure of intelligence? If so, then why did the President pin the highest civilian honor, the Medal of Honor, on George Tenet, the head of the CIA who is now an expensive consultant and living in luxury. If he was responsible, then maybe he should suffer some consequences.

Well, that did not happen, but they want to blame the intelligence agencies. Now, is it all the intelligence agencies? Is it one intelligence agency? Is it because of total misinterpretation and incompetence by the administration, or was it selective use, cherry- picking of intelligence, or was it something even worse, deliberate manipulation? We do not know. We simply do not know.

The Senate held one set of hearings on the failure of intelligence. They promised that after the election they would hold yet another set and reveal a report on the use of the intelligence. They are now refusing to do that with an emboldened and enlarged Republican membership. So we do not know. The American people do not know. Something that is costing $1 billion a day, almost 1,800 American lives, more than 10,000 wounded, and we do not know exactly why this administration took us to war and under what auspices they took us to war.

Now we have a memo, the so-called secret Downing Street Memo from British intelligence, saying that as early as July 2002 that many of these facts were known.

Now, a number of us were disturbed by that and we wrote to the President on May 5. Mr. Speaker, 122 Members have now signed that letter. The President has not even acknowledged the letter from 122 duly elected representatives of the United States House of Representatives. He should answer that letter.

But, better still, the majority should stop stonewalling an investigation. If this was all very innocent or if it was just the incompetence of the intelligence agencies, then let us find those who were responsible. If it is something else, let us find those who were responsible. You should not stonewall this important information, so that we can learn from our mistakes and move forward with more confidence in the Congress and the administration when it might come to future threats against the United States of America.

Now, yesterday, we were sent to the basement, led by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers), because we were told there were no rooms available to hold a hearing on this memo and these issues. Unfortunately, it turned out that all of the rooms in that vicinity, which were much larger, were vacant, as were many other hearing rooms.

This Republican leadership should have a full and fair and nonpartisan investigation of how America was led to war.

Mr. Chairman, are we for States rights or not? I often hear from that side of the aisle we are for States rights. I guess we are for States rights until we disagree with policies adopted by a State.

My State and nine other States have by large margins adopted the right of people in a regulated way through physician prescription to receive medical marijuana for certain conditions for which there are few other effective or no other effective treatments. Plain and simple.

It is not about legalization. You say, well, do not cripple law enforcement. Do we want to divert our limited law enforcement resources, who cannot give me a permanent DEA agent to help with the meth epidemic in the rural areas of any district, into chasing around old, sick people growing marijuana? I do not think so. That is not helping law enforcement with their mission.

Let us focus them on things that are a real threat to the American people, not on issues that have been decided by the people of the various States that this is something that should be made available in a compassionate way to help a few people.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a little over a year since the Bush administration secretly negotiated a trade agreement called CAFTA, and we had heard that they were going to bring it before the Congress before the Memorial Day break. Of course, that did not happen, and now it appears it will not happen before the Independence Day break because they simply have not been able to twist enough arms to get enough Members of Congress to vote against the interest of the American economy, the American workers and their own constituents.

This is potentially a turning point in trade policy for the United States. The statistics are staggering. Last month we recorded a $56.96 billion trade deficit; that is, that we borrowed almost $2 billion a day from foreign interests, foreign governments, in the case of China, to finance consumption of goods produced overseas often with U.S. capital, often by jobs that were formerly filled by Americans here in the United States of America.

Now, if you use the broadest measure of the Department of Commerce, that means that is about 7 million jobs; that sort of a trade deficit on an annual basis means a loss of 7 million jobs. It means the undermining of our industrial base. And increasingly, it means the loss of some of our most sophisticated, highest-technology jobs and manufacturing in the United States of America.

This is simply not a sustainable policy, but the reaction of this administration is this is working exactly as planned. It is making a few multinational corporations and a few others very wealthy. So what if we have lost millions of jobs? So what if the United States of America is going in hock to China and Japan and other countries? They think it is working just fine, exactly as intended, so-called free trade.

So they want to extend our failed NAFTA agreement, which has contributed mightily to this deficit, the agreement with Mexico and Canada which promised to bring 800,000 jobs to the United States and instead caused us to lose a million jobs, mostly to Mexico. They want to extend that throughout Central America so that some companies might not have to go as far as China to find exploitable labor who will work for $0.25 an hour or less, oppressed by the governments, not allowed to organize, working in unsafe conditions. But until now, Congress is holding firm, and that is good news. And the American people should be contacting their Representatives and their Senators.

I was very disappointed to see both Senators from my State, a State which has lost a lot of jobs because of NAFTA and these free trade policies, vote to endorse a continuation or acceleration of these failed policies in committee in the Senate just yesterday. But they are not listening to the people of Oregon and the people of America. I am, and a majority of House is today.

So let us make them continue to listen, let us continue to speak out, and let us break the cycle of failed trade policies and begin to work for trade policy that brings and keeps quality jobs, manufacturing jobs, high-technology jobs, high-paying jobs, jobs with good benefits home here in the United States of America.

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 4: Page 117, after line 5, insert the

following title:

Offered By: Mr. DeFazio

Amendment No. 5: Page 117, after line 5, insert the

following title:

Mr. Speaker, the economic disaster wrought by a radical free trade policy on the working people of America is well documented, but I am going to focus on another aspect of this WTO agreement that the previous gentleman spoke about. He said that the secretive dispute resolution panel, which has no conflict-of-interest rules, does not allow outside interveners, only allows the two representative governments into the room, and deliberates secretly and comes up with a binding, a binding, decision and cannot change U.S. laws.

Now, I raised this issue with the Clinton administration when they negotiated this misbegotten agreement; and I said, How can you enter us into an agreement where secretive panels can preempt our laws? They said, oh, you do not understand, you are wrong, just like the gentleman before me. Yes, it is technically true, they cannot reach into the United States and change a law. We can, if they find our rule to be non-WTO compliant, which they have more than 90 percent of the time when complaints are brought against the United States of America, we have an option. We can repeal the law, or we can pay a fine to keep it, a huge fine, in many cases. So environmental protection, consumer protection, buy America, buy Oregon, buy your State, all of those things, we can have those laws. That is right. He is technically right. We just have to pay massive penalties to foreign governments to keep them.

This is an extraordinary undermining of the sovereignty of the United States of America and the interests of the American people. This is not about free trade; this is about corporate-managed trade through a secretive body which is dominated by those very same corporations and many dictatorial governments around the world; and the U.S. is bound by their secretive decisions. This is absolutely outrageous.

To date, the WTO has ruled U.S. policies illegal 42 out of 48 cases, 85.7 percent that has been brought against us. They ruled illegal regulation issued under the Clean Air Act; the United States Tax Code; laws to protect companies from unfair dumping or subsidized foreign products, among others. And it is true. We can keep those laws if we are willing to pay massive fines to keep them.

Now, what kind of sovereignty is that? Next in their sights are buy America laws, those referenced by the gentleman from the Carolinas. What he said is he does not want to see a Social Security program administered from China. Now, people would have thought that was a weird thing to say. No. The WTO requires we cannot discriminate in terms of who the vendors will be. In fact, homeland security can be provided by the Chinese, or maybe even by Iran, under the rules of the WTO. Will that not be just peachy?

This is an extraordinarily radical agreement which we do not need. The U.S. did just fine as the greatest trading Nation in the world with bilateral agreements. We can go back to that system, and we can do better than we are doing under this so-called rules-based system.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman. I thank the ranking member for his leadership on this issue, and I thank the chairman for his leadership.

I know that were we acting independently as a committee to formulate the legislation and set the surface transportation policy for the United States of America, the bill would be much more robust than what is before us today. But we have to deal with the facts that are before us.

We are 20 months overdue on a surface transportation reauthorization. We have extended the old transportation bill seven times at lower levels of funding than under any scenario of bill that will come out of any conference with the House and the Senate. That means that projects have been foregone, investments have not been made, jobs have not been created.

As the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar) point out, people are sitting in traffic. We are not keeping up with demand; we are not keeping up with maintenance as we should.

For every billion dollars we invest, now, remember, we are borrowing a pile of money to run this government, $1.3 million a minute to run the government. Some of it goes to pay people, not to grow things. Some of it goes to other programs of dubious value. But for this program, for surface transportation, for highways, for roads, for bridges, for mass transit, we are not borrowing the money. The American people have already paid the tax. It is sitting there waiting to be spent, spent productively, putting people to work, and moving us more efficiently and moving goods more efficiently. We should not forego that.

A billion dollars, 47,000 jobs are created or sustained for every billion-dollar investment; $6.1 billion in additional economic activity; 32 percent of our major roads are in poor or mediocre condition; 28 percent of bridges are structurally deficient or functionally obsolete; 36 percent of the Nation's urban rail vehicles and maintenance facilities, 29 percent of the Nation's bus fleet and maintenance facilities are in substandard or poor condition.

My State alone, the little State of Oregon, has a $4.7 billion interstate, not intrastate, interstate bridge problem. The interstate that connects Canada, the United States and Mexico; California, Oregon, and Washington, $4.7 billion.

Our neighbors to the north in Washington State have one problem, a viaduct problem in Seattle, an incredible safety issue on an incredible choke point and problem. That is $1.5 billion for that one project. And so it is across the country. Member after Member can come forward and enumerate these projects that are necessary, needed investments.

We need the most robust bill possible. I am hopeful that this is the last extension. I am hopeful this will be a conference that comes to a positive conclusion. We can get this done before the end of June with a sense of urgency and with the leadership of these two gentlemen.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the ranking member for yielding me this time.

I am pleased that we finally have a bill out of the Senate, and I am pleased that we are going to move forward to conference. At this point, given the tardy adoption of the legislation by the Senate, it is necessary that we have, hopefully, one last, final, temporary, 30-day extension.

We are now 20 months overdue on this essential piece of legislation. This is a bill that, if adequately funded, could provide tens of thousands of jobs, putting Americans to work at projects that are needed to improve the transportation infrastructure, failing bridges, roads, highways, congestion management, mass transit; to more efficiently move people to work, from work, about in their daily lives; to move goods to firms for just-in-time delivery. It could be a real boost for an economy that, in my opinion, is still sputtering, and dependent upon too much borrowing and not enough real investment.

This is real investment. This is money we do not have to borrow. We are borrowing $1.3 million a minute to run the government. We do not have to borrow a single penny to build and rebuild these roads, bridges, and highways and move Americans more efficiently about the country.

I have a letter from the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and I think they have said it well: ``An uncertain funding stream has forced the States to slow down planning and design and to delay construction of critically needed highway and transit projects. Further delay in enacting a reauthorization bill continues to reduce the purchasing power of Federal transportation dollars and increase the costs of projects.''

I think that says it well.

So we should act with all dispatch to move forward to conference and resolve the differences between the House and Senate, and adopt the most robust funding level possible, perhaps even having to challenge the White House on the numbers where they have drawn a line in the sand.

I have tremendous confidence in our chairman of the committee and of the conference, the gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), and I know that the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar), of vast experience in a number of past reauthorizations, will lend all the support he can from our side of the aisle, and I will back him up as best as I can.

We need to adopt a permanent surface transportation reauthorization before or by the end of this next extension.

Mr. Speaker, next Monday is Memorial Day. And tonight, in my opinion, a majority in the House of Representatives besmirched that day. A majority, a partisan majority, on a near party-line vote, rejected the idea that our National Guard troops deserve health insurance while they are serving our country. They said, oh, they get it 90 days before they are deployed. Yet many Guard members fail to qualify for deployment because of existing and pre-existing medical problems.

They get it for 180 days after they come back. That should be enough. The chairman of the committee said something extraordinary. He said, oh, they have all got health insurance at their jobs. What jobs? 50 percent of my Guard unit that just came back from Iraq do not have jobs, and they have a very limited health insurance that is going to run out pretty darn soon because of that vote tonight.

Now, they are probably going to go back next year to Afghanistan. But in the interim, we cannot afford health insurance for those young men and women and their families. That is extraordinary to me.

The chairman talked eloquently about 16-year-old helicopters. We need to replace them. What about the 22-year-old Guardsman who does not have a job, just came back from Iraq, whose health insurance is going to expire this summer, who has a wife and a kid and a not really great economy in Oregon and cannot get health insurance through our State because of cutbacks in Medicaid? But we are going to ask him to go back to Afghanistan next year. What is that all about? We cannot afford health insurance for that young family?

We have to buy some new helicopters. Those helicopters are junk without the Guardsmen and the Guardswomen and the regular Army and the Marines, the people who make them work. It does not matter if they are 1 month old, 1 year old, 16 years old. Without those dedicated troops, those helicopters cannot fly.

It is unbelievable to me that the chairman of the committee would force Members of his own party to follow him in this vote.

Fifty percent of my Guardsmen are unemployed. Fifty percent have just returned from Iraq to no job. They do not have insurance. And of the 50 percent that have jobs, despite the chairman's statement, most of those people do not have health insurance either, like so many Americans who work full-time and do not have health insurance.

And we are worried about Guard retention. They are going to have fabulous new bonuses to try and get people to enlist or re-up. How about basics? Basics? Health insurance for those Guardsmen and -women and their families; the same education benefits that people on active duty get.

We are using our Guardmembers indistinguishably from the active duty Army. Indistinguishably. They are performing special operations. They are doing all the same things we ask the regular Army to do. But they do not get the same education benefits. They do not get the same health benefits. They do not get the same retirement benefits, and many times they do not even get the same equipment. They are put in harm's way with inadequate equipment.

It is a disgrace to this House that we were told we cannot afford to add one-quarter of 1 percent. That is about 18 hours' spending out of a year to the military budget in order to provide permanent health insurance for everybody who is still active in a Guard unit in this country. Hopefully, the Senate will act with more wisdom and force a reversal here.

I am proud to have voted with our Guardsmen and -women, and I am proud to have stood up with them and said they deserve better and our country recognizes their service and they recognize it by extending adequate benefits including health care, particularly as we come up to Memorial Day.

So those who voted against it, I hope they are asked on Memorial Day, why did you vote against giving me health insurance? Because there are an awful lot of Guardsmen and -women who would like to know the answer to that question.

Mr. Speaker, not too long ago we passed the so-called energy bill here in the House, and tonight we passed the Energy and Water Development appropriations bill. The question that the American people should ask as we head into the Memorial Day weekend is, what has the Republican Congress done to rein in price gouging by the oil industry and the OPEC oil cartel? The answer, if you look at these two bills, is: Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Nada. Zip.

If you would listen to the Republican President from the oil industry, the Republican Vice President rich from the oil industry, and the Republican Congress replete with donations from the oil industry, they are powerless in the face of so-called market forces to do anything about the price gouging of the American people.

Now, if this were really just supply and demand, maybe, maybe you could understand that. But it is a little more than that. The OPEC oil cartel conspires to restrict supply and drive up the price of oil in violation of all the so-called free trade agreements that this Republican Congress and this Republican President say should rule the world.

The World Trade Organization, well, I have asked this President four times now in writing to file a complaint about this illegal activity by the OPEC cartel. It violates the rules of the World Trade Organization, of which this President is such a great fan. Now, why will he not file a complaint? Of seven of the OPEC cartel, six are in the World Trade Organization and one wants to join. Tremendous leverage. File a complaint about their illegal activity. Save the American people from cartels that price-gouge them.

But, no, the President will not do that. Why is that? It is because the oil companies, from which the President has sprung forth, and the Vice President make a lot of money on this.

Every time the oil cartels raise the price about two bucks a barrel, well, they take that plus another 10 percent for profit. So the higher the price, the bigger their profit.

If you look at the quarterly statements of the largest oil companies in the world, ExxonMobil and others, they are awash in tens of billions of dollars of cash extracted 10, 20, 30 cents at a time in excess profits from the American people at the pump.

Now, this is hurting real people. But this administration says they are powerless. This Republican Congress says they are powerless. They cannot take on the OPEC cartel. They cannot take on the price-gouging oil industry. They pass so-called energy legislation that says maybe 10, 12, 15 years from now, if there is any oil in ANWR, and if we can pump it, and if they do not take too big of a markup or price gouge on that, it will provide some price relief. That is their answer.

Today, in this bill there was nothing. They could not even adopt the minimalist study of what the OPEC cartel is doing to the American people. That was not allowed by the Republican majority. And they certainly could not allow the amendment that would stop the United States Government from buying from the oil companies at this extortionate price and pumping that oil into the ground for a future crisis.

This is a crisis now, today, for working American men and women, people who have to commute to work in my district by car. Small businesses across this country and big businesses and the airlines are going broke. But this administration says they are powerless, they can do nothing.

Well, guess what? The United States of America can do better, but we just have to get rid of the oil cartel. Not the OPEC oil cartel, but the oil cartel running the United States Congress and the White House and the Vice President's office.

Mr. Speaker, last weekend I traveled back to Oregon, as I frequently do, and participated in an Armed Forces Day parade in Cottage Grove, Oregon. The particular focus this year was the return from Iraq of the 2162nd, a National Guard unit which is based in Cottage Grove, in the last 60 days. There was a good turnout among members of the community.

Of course, we are looking forward next week to Memorial Day, which will be a sober event, as we will honor some of those who have recently lost their lives in service to our Nation.

But one thing stands out in both of these celebrations and that is that there is tremendous support for our troops in uniform, but that support somehow is not getting translated in many ways into policy here in Washington, D.C., in the budgets proposed by the President that relate to offset of benefits for disabled veterans, a disabled veterans tax, that relate to other services for veterans or equity in benefits for the National Guard.

Today, as I got to the plane, I saw an article ``Dental Problems Stymie Guard Call-ups.'' This particular article was about the National Guard in Washington State where 30 percent of the 4,500 called up were ineligible for active duty because of dental problems, 20 percent nationally. I do not know the percentage for Oregon; I have not seen it. But when I was meeting with members of the 2162nd, when they were down in Fort Hood prior to their deployment to Iraq, and the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) and I were meeting with them, this one fellow in the front says, I have a problem, Congressman; I would like you to try and help me out here.

He opens up his mouth really wide and he is missing a couple of front teeth. I said, What is going on there? He said, I had two bad teeth. I went to my predeployment physical. They said, You have those bad teeth; we have to take care of them. So they yanked his teeth out and sent him to Fort Hood. But at Fort Hood they said, You are not active duty military. We are not going to take care of your problem. You go to the end of the line and you will be in Iraq before we get around to it.

So he was going to go home to Oregon on his leave before he left to try to get false teeth inserted so he would not spend a year in Iraq with a big gap in his front teeth.

We need equity in benefits and better benefits for our Guard members. We are treating the National Guard indistinguishable from active duty forces, yet they still often suffer in terms of equipment and they definitely suffer in terms of equity of benefits, health coverage for our Guard members before they are activated. All Guard members should receive health benefits during their service in the Guard. That means they will be ready to defend the country at the drop of a hat. They are ready to deploy. But it also is a good way to induce and recognize the service of these people in our National Guard.

This morning when I got to the plane there was another Guard member there from Kingsley Air Force Base who does military police work, on his way to a conference. And he and I got in a little chat and we were talking about the proposed base closure in Portland. Then he said, When are we going to get recognition on our retirement benefits. The fact that Guard members have a set age instead of a set number of years of service, they are discriminated against.

Education benefits, they are discriminated against. Active duty military soldiers serve in Iraq, come back, leave the military, can get education benefits. National Guard soldiers serve in Iraq, come back having finished their contract in their term, want to get education benefits. No. They have to sign up for another term in the Guard.

But the active duty soldier did nothing to earn those benefits.

We need equity in education benefits. We need better health care benefits. We need better pension benefits. We have to begin treating our National Guard members like the essential component they are of the Nation's national defense today.

They are not an afterthought. They are the front line as much as the active duty military. And there can be no more fitting recognition by this House of Representatives coming up to Memorial Day, in the wake of Armed Forces Day, than to deliver on those changes in benefits and those improvements for our Guard soldiers and to better deliver veterans benefits for all of our Nation's veterans so that Lincoln's words do not become a hollow promise.

We will take care of our veterans. We can afford it in the greatest Nation on earth, and we should make good those promises before Memorial Day.

Mr. Chairman, I have always been a strong supporter of funding for arts programs and will continue to be. The arts community in my district is vibrant, and funding for the National Endowment for the Arts is an invaluable part of education and social enrichment throughout Oregon. I was pleased to see the amendment offered by Congresswoman Slaughter and Ranking Member Dicks, which would increase funding for the NEA, approved by a voice vote.

But we have an unresolved crisis on our public lands that needs to be addressed. A lot of members would probably like to believe that by passing the Healthy Forests restoration Act, Congress solved the forest health and hazardous fuel build-up problem. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I fought hard to get funding for fuel reduction projects included as part of HFRA. That bill eventually authorized $760 million annually for critical fuel reduction, but Congress hasn't even begun to approach that commitment as evidenced by the appropriations bill we're considering today.

This Interior bill contains $211 million in hazardous fuel reduction for the Bureau of Land Management and $286 million for the Forest Service. That's an increase of $9.8 million and $23.5 million respectively. I very much appreciate the Chairman and Ranking Member for including these increases in the bill, but they fall far short of what is needed to reduce hazardous fuel and the yearly threat of wildfire throughout the West.

The GAO recently stated that at these anemic spending levels we will continue to fall further and further behind. The GAO says that if we doubled the funding for fuel reduction, we would only stay even with the problem. Earlier this year when the agency testified before the Forests Subcommittee on which I serve, they

said we would need to triple the funding for fuel reduction if we wish to begin to address the build-up of dangerous trees and shrubs in our national forests.

If we tripled the overall funding, more than 60 percent of that money could be spent under the expedited environmental analysis and judicial review authorized by HFRA, instead of using budget gimmicks to only claim that we are fully funding that important law. But the administration thus far has used that authority on less than 10 percent of projects. And the vast majority of those projects are simply burning rangeland, which does virtually nothing to improve forest health and reduce wildfire risk. The bottom line is that we are not even beginning to address the fuel build-up problem on forested federal land and we won't start with this bill. We gave them the authority to get more done in an expedited way, now let's give them the money necessary to do it.

The administration plans to treat only about 1 percent of the acres that they claim are in need of fuel reduction. The money in the amendment offered by Mr. Beauprez would be small compared to the need, but every additional dollar helps. This amendment would allow them to do 60,000 more acres of fuel reduction next year. And not of only burning sagebrush, but actually treating 60,000 more acres of forested lands which are overstocked tinder boxes that could result in catastrophic fires and threaten our communities.

Congress needs to get serious about funding hazardous fuel reduction projects and fullfil the commitment made when it passed HFRA. This amendment would be a small but important step toward that goal and I urge its adoption.