Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, it has been nearly a year since the President signed the secretly negotiated CAFTA agreement and has begun the process to bring it forward to the House for an up-or-down vote. No amendments allowed. It is a perfect agreement, of course.

It is only perfect in that it mirrors all of our most recent failed trade agreements, such as its predecessor, NAFTA.

Some would say this is about helping the American economy, putting Americans to work, to help our exporters. That is what they said about NAFTA. And it turned out that the people of Mexico, the aggregate buying power of everybody in Mexico who spent every peso on American goods was slightly less than the State of New Jersey. It was never about the purchasing power of the people of Mexico and the idea that somehow they were going to buy American goods and put Americans to work here at home. It was always about United States capital, multinational corporations, chasing cheaper labor into Mexico and now further into Latin America; chasing lack of environmental standards and enforcement into Mexico, particularly the maquiladora area, which is a total environmental nightmare, further into Latin America; in chase of the lowest standards, the lowest common denominator, the most abused labor.

And that is what CAFTA is all about. It mirrors the NAFTA agreement. Like the NAFTA agreement, it will deliver the same thing. They told us we would gain 140,000 jobs with NAFTA. Well, we lost close to half a million jobs because of NAFTA. CAFTA will be the same.

When we are doing something that is failing the Nation and the Nation's workers and driving down wages here at home and trying to pull down our standards of consumer protection, environmental protection, labor standards, then maybe it is time to think about doing something different, and perhaps the House of Representatives is on the verge of doing that. Perhaps they are beginning to listen to the large majority of the American people. We are going to run a trade deficit this year of $2 billion a day.

Every billion dollars represents tens of thousands of lost jobs, the export of our industrial base, and, now, the export of our knowledge base.

We cannot continue these same failed policies as the President would have us do. I have heard that they have begun the purchasing phase of the CAFTA agreement.

Now, most Americans would wonder, what is the purchasing phase? Well, they have tried the strong-arm phase for the last year. They still do not have enough votes to jam another failed trade agreement through the United States House of Representatives. So I am told by friends on the other side of the aisle that they are about to begin the purchasing phase.

The White House is open for business. What do you need? How much does it cost? What can we do for you? It is not any argument that this is somehow going to deal with our trade deficit, help raise wages here at home, help provide jobs here at home; it is all about what deal can we cut for you so these same multinational corporations can continue to move jobs offshore, and, in this case, a little closer to

home. Perhaps they could avoid some of the transport costs from China or India where they have sent many of our other jobs, or Vietnam, and they can find almost as exploitable and cheap labor in Central America.

The combined buying power of these five nations is less than four days' purchasing power of the United States of America. If every person in these affected nations spent every cent they earned in the next year, it would be totally insignificant to the American economy; and, obviously, they are not going to do that. So it is very much the same as NAFTA: it is to move our plants, our equipment, some workers have even been made to package up their machines and train their replacements in the case of NAFTA, and they will be doing the same thing under CAFTA.

Mr. Speaker, it is time for a major change in policy. It is time for a policy that brings jobs home to America, that puts people at work here in America, that helps maintain wages in our country, and helps bring people overseas up to our standards instead of trying to drag the American people down to the lowest common denominator.

I hope that Members, particularly on the other side of the aisle, will not be bought by the White House in this debate and they will vote in the interests of the people who sent them here to Washington, DC.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from New York for yielding me the time. I also thank the Committee on Rules for making in order an amendment by myself and the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) that will help perfect the Federal flight deck officer program. Many, many pilots are willing to volunteer to undergo rigorous training to certify themselves as Federal flight deck officers to become the last line of defense on our planes. There cannot be an air marshal on every plane. We still do not have secondary barriers in the planes. There are times when the flight deck door is open. There are ongoing threats. It is essential to improve that program and I am hopeful Members will look favorably upon that amendment later today.

With that said, I wish that the rule was more inclusive. My colleague, the ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Aviation, wanted to offer an amendment to mandate that the taxes we are collecting from the traveling public to pay for enhanced security at the airports; that is, to put in-line explosives detection systems at airports that do not have it across America to find explosives in checked bags, and possibly that same equipment could be used for cargo on those planes, was not allowed. It is unfortunate.

Most Americans are under the impression that all of their baggage is being screened. It is not being effectively screened. Some of it is being hand searched. Some of it is being trace searched. Some of it is being looked at. Some of it is being loaded on the plane. And some of it is going through very sophisticated in-line explosives detection systems, and we have the numbers. Where those systems exist, we can find threat objects, explosives a very, very high percentage of the time. Where those systems do not exist, there is a very disturbing lack of detection of test objects, threat objects, explosives.

We also have a huge and gaping hole at the passenger checkpoint. The last wakeup call we are probably ever going to get before the day when planes start falling out of the sky was in Russia where two terrorists, women, boarded planes with explosives, we do not know exactly whether they were in their carry-on bags or whether they were wearing suicide belts, but here in the United States of America we are doing nothing to find suicide belts or explosives in bags. We are still using 1980s technology at the checkpoints, technology that was thrown out of the United States Capitol more than a decade ago as inadequate to the threat, thrown out of the White House and other places. Yet aviation was attacked and aviation in Russia was attacked by what I think, as does the chairman of the committee, is the most likely future threat, which is explosives. We need to move ahead with more robust acquisition of that equipment in the near future and this bill does not mandate that.

I would congratulate the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox) for the first ever authorization. It is a good first start. Remember, the Homeland Security Department started out of chaos. The President refused to create a homeland security Cabinet-level position or department until one day when an FBI agent was spilling her guts here in Washington, D.C., to a committee and Karl Rove wrote out the plan on the back of a napkin. Congress is just starting to make sense of what the Department of Homeland Security will be in the future.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

This amendment which I am offering with the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) of the Subcommittee on Aviation would make a good program even better, the Federal flight deck officer program, the last line of defense on the plane. Arming the pilots on the flight deck makes a tremendous amount of sense. There cannot be an air marshal on every plane, planes lack secondary barriers, and on longer flights pilots have to frequently open the door to receive food or use the facilities. If a terrorist attack or attempt should occur, knowing that the pilots are armed could provide the critical thing to save the passengers on that flight.

This amendment has the strong support of the Airline Pilots Association--I have a letter here--the National Rifle Association and others. This would

make a number of changes. They would be issued badges which they do not currently have and they sometimes have a hard time convincing people they are authorized to have a gun and they are a Federal law enforcement officer for purposes of aviation. It would give them an appeals process for revocation of their certification. It would look toward making the training more accessible for people, particularly the recertification, although the facility we are using now is an excellent facility but we want to be certain that because of distance or time that more pilots are not precluded from becoming volunteers and providing this critical defense.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

Mr. Chairman, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson), the ranking member on the Committee on Homeland Security.

Madam Speaker, this Homeland Security appropriation falls short in many areas: port security, first responders, interoperable communications, and aviation.

In aviation, recent tests by the Inspector General and the GAO show that there are unacceptable, continuing vulnerabilities to our system of aviation, and their conclusion is simple: the performance of finding explosives and other threat objects will not improve until we give the screeners 21st-century technology to fight 21st-century threats. The junk they are working with was thrown out a decade ago because it was inadequate for the United States Capitol before 9/11, but we are still using it in our airports and demanding they find threat objects that the machines simply cannot find. The Subcommittee on Homeland Security of the Committee on Appropriations is failing the test too. They are failing to protect the American traveling public.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, finally, blatantly, 18\1/2\ months after the expiration of the Surface Transportation Act which provides crucial funding for all of the road, bridge, highway mass transit and related work of the Federal Government, spending our gas taxes which are collected day in and day out and being underspent by this administration, the Senate acted to increase funding.

Strangely, this is the one bill, the only place that George Bush in over 5 years in office has said he is going to veto a bill if it spends more money. Now, he will not do that for agriculture subsidies to pay big corporate farms not to pay things. He wanted to cut their subsidies, but the Republicans have refused to do it, and he is not threatening to veto that bill.

He is not threatening to veto bills that are doing wasteful things like the Star Wars Project in Alaska that does not work, has not met a single parameter of its goal. He cannot threaten vetoes there. But when it is spending our gas tax money, this is the only bill where we are in the borrowing money. We are borrowing $1.3 million a minute to run the Federal Government under the Bush budget, but we do not have to borrow money to have a robust highway bill. We just need to spend the taxes we are all paying every time we tank up our car or truck.

This is money that will put people to work. This is money that will maintain and improve our crumbling infrastructure. It will help mitigate congestion, people sitting in traffic, idling, wasting gas, wasting their time. It could better fund mass transit, alternate transportation, all these things; but somehow the President has drawn the line in the sand.

He said last year, not a penny over $256 billion. He wants to underspend the trust fund so he can borrow that money to pay for tax cuts for rich people. Plain and simple. That is what he wants to do with our gas tax money.

We pay money at the pump to improve our roads, bridges, and highways. We have to pay it right there at the pump. He wants to underspend that trust fund, and then he wants to take and divert that money over here to give rich people tax cuts. Now, is that a better way to stimulate the economy of the United States, to improve the business climate, to help the traveling public?

I do not think so. It might help them pay for their corporate jets, but it is not going to help the rest of us who are down there mired in traffic.

So the Senate voted yesterday 76 to 22 to increase funding substantially above the levels the President says he will veto. Well, an override of a veto is 66 votes in the United States Senate. Maybe this will send a message that we have been trying to send to the White House for 2 years.

There is a huge bipartisan coalition, Republican and Democrat in the House and the Senate, who want to invest in our roads, bridges, highways, mass transit, alternative transportation, put Americans to work, help Americans get to work, and help improve the efficiency of our business. Hopefully, they will change their tone down at the White House and stop threatening to veto needed investment.

The President's own Department of Transportation, the people he politically appointed and controls, says this bill should be $376 billion. And the President says not a penny over 256. Now he has come up a little bit to the House level of 284, but that is not adequate to meet the needs of the system. And the Senate wants to spend more of our gas tax dollars on what they were collected for, projects to rebuild and improve the efficiency of the Nation's infrastructure.

So I take this as a very positive move. Hopefully, the Republican leadership can move with dispatch to have a conference committee and get a bill done by May 31. That is when the fifth extension of the long-expired highway bill expires. Because if we do not, hundreds of projects across America will not get built this summer, those jobs will not be created, those bottlenecks will not be solved, those bridges will not be repaired, the traveling public will be impaired.

The White House will be happy with that because then they get to take more money, divert it from the gas tax, and spend it on more tax cuts for rich people. But I do not think the rest of America will be amused by that. So I am hoping the American public will demand that Congress act quickly to resolve the differences between the House and the Senate and get a bill now 18 months overdue to the President's desk. And if he chooses to veto it, then pressure the Congress to override that ill- intentioned veto.

Let him veto something wasteful. Let him veto something that we are borrowing money to pay for, but do not veto a paid-for highway bill with vital investment in America's transportation future.

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment briefly on the $82 billion spending bill that will be approved today for the ongoing U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I will support this bill. I am pleased it includes additional money for body armor and armored vehicles for our troops. It includes money to purchase bomb-jamming devices to protect our troops from roadside bombs. I also support the improved life insurance death benefits for military personnel and their families. And, I am hopeful that the additional funds that are in the bill to train and equip security forces in Iraq all Afghanistan will be expeditious and well spent. This money is critical if Afghan and Iraqi forces are to take over security duties from American troops, which will allow our men and women to finally come home. I have called for negotiating a timeline for the withdrawal of American troops with the new Iraqi government, hopefully to be completed within the year. But, for that to become a reality, well-equipped and competent security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan must be prepared to take our place. This bill will help achieve that goal.

I am also pleased that the final bill retained language inserted in the Senate directing the President to include future requests to fund the U.S. presence in Iraq in his regular budget. We have been in Iraq for more than two years and in Afghanistan for more than three years. The fact that we still have troops in Iraq should not come as a surprise to the budget writers at the White House and the Pentagon. It is not appropriate to continue funding these long-term, ongoing operations via supplemental appropriations bills, which are considered outside of the normal budget procedures and restrictions.

While I support the bill, I am outraged that, more than two years after the U. S. invaded Iraq, the Pentagon leadership has not gotten their act together to adequately protect our troops and to come up with a plan to get them home.

As columnist Mark Shields pointed out late last year, in the three years immediately after Pearl Harbor, the United States produced the following to win World War II: 296,429 aircraft, 102,3351 tanks, 87,620 warships, and 2,455,694 trucks. At the time, the U.S. population was 132 million and the size of our economy was less than $100 billion. Yet, approaching three years into the U.S. occupation of Iraq, the United States, with a population of almost 300 million and defense spending of $500 billion a year, under the failed leadership of the Pentagon, only 6,000 of the nearly 20,000 Humvees in Iraq are factory armored versions and more than 8,000 of the 9,128 medium and heavy trucks used in Iraq are without armor.

Despite repeated promises from the Pentagon leadership that the situation is getting better, a recent article in The New York Times showed that the emperor has no clothes. As the article details, one Marine Company has returned home to expose the reality of their tour in Iraq, ``one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their most competent warriors.''

I have heard similar stories from the Oregon National Guard members I have talked to.

How did this happen?

Since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against our country; Congress has provided the Pentagon with $1.6 trillion--$167 billion in supplemental appropriations bills for fiscal years 2001-2005; and $1.45 trillion in regular defense appropriations for fiscal years 2002-2005. Today's bill will add $75 billion or so to the Pentagon budget. Given that level of funding, it is hard to understand why our troops continue to suffer shortages of critical equipment.

It is hard to understand until you remember that Secretary Rumsfeld and the other civilian leaders at the Pentagon argued that our troops would be greeted in Iraq as liberators with flowers and candy, not the bullets and bombs that have led to more than 1,500 of our soldiers getting killed. Before, the invasion, the Pentagon planned to reduce our troop levels to 20,000-30,000 within a few weeks of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. The fact that 150,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq more than a year and a half after the war began shows how badly the Pentagon leadership miscalculated the post-war situation.

Those miscalculations also led the Pentagon to vastly underestimate the equipment that our troops would need to survive and succeed in Iraq. First, the Pentagon leadership did not even order the necessary equipment like body armor, armored Humvees and bomb jamming devices. For example, under the Pentagon's original war plan, the Pentagon planned to have only 235 armored Humvees in Iraq for the 20,000 troops who would remain after overthrowing Saddam Hussein.

Then, when it became clear that this equipment was necessary, the Pentagon did not procure it with any sense of urgency. As The New York Times article I mentioned above noted, ``The Army's procurement system, which also supplies the Marines, has come under fierce criticism for underperforming in the war, and to this day it has only one small contractor in Ohio armoring new Humvees.''

The performance of Secretary Rumsfeld and his senior leadership at the Pentagon has been a disgrace. Unfortunately, it is our troops who have had to pay the price.

Mr. Speaker, proponents of the so-called free trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement, which I opposed, have long promised endless riches for U.S. workers, farmers, businesses and the economy. Of course, they have been wrong on all counts. But they are not to be deterred. They want another bite of the apple here. They think that the American people and Members of Congress who represent them, those who have lost their jobs, seen their jobs threatened, their standard of living diminished as we have gone into massive trade deficits and exported industries overseas in pursuit of cheaper labor and lower environmental standards, that they can fool us again.

The President finished secret negotiations a year ago the end of this month for what is called the Central American Free Trade Agreement. And they are promising all the same things. I went before the Committee on Ways and Means which reluctantly, begrudgingly, allowed some of us to testify in opposition to this pending agreement.

Now, there is no legislative process. They mark up what is called a mock bill or a pretend bill or a play bill in Ways and Means. They are not allowed

to amend it or change it. The President secretly negotiated it, and it will be brought to this floor for an up-or-down vote, no amendments allowed. Congress has given up all its rights as a legislative body and its constitutional rights as relate to trade agreements between the U.S. and foreign countries.

If this were in the best interests of the United States or an urgent priority, it might make sense; but what it does is perpetuate a failed and failing trade policy. The United States of America, the Bush administration, is setting a record every month this year. Congratulations to the Bush administration. They have us on track for beating last year's trade deficit of $620 billion to $720 billion, $2 billion a day borrowed from foreign interests representing tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of U.S. jobs that have moved to China, India, Central America, Latin America, Mexico and other countries chasing the cheapest labor they can find, the most exploited labor they can find, the most environmental depredations they can find around the world.

They think that this is just working great. The President thinks that it just shows our economy is really strong. That is why we are running these huge trade deficits. So they want to replicate it closer to home so U.S. companies do not have to go all the way to China to exploit cheap labor; they could move a little closer to home in Central America.

When they offered NAFTA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce predicted it would create 170,000 jobs in the United States. Many on that side of the aisle are still talking about all the great jobs that will come from NAFTA. Of course, and now CAFTA, it actually cost the United States 880,000 jobs. So they were off by a million jobs. That is a pretty big miss. CAFTA is likely to accelerate that trend.

They tell us, Oh, it's just that we want to sell things to Central America. Think of the massive buying power of those people in Central America. They earn $2 a day. If they devoted all of the economies to all of the countries that would be included in CAFTA, if every penny in those countries was spent on buying U.S. goods, it would equal 5 days' production in the United States of America.

No, it is not about selling U.S. goods there any more than it was about selling goods to Mexico or selling goods to China. It is creating an export platform for U.S. companies who want to move overseas and have cheaper labor and avoid environmental laws and protections in this country.

The only problem with this theory is what happens to the middle class? What happens to the working people of this country? We are larding them down with a huge foreign debt, $2 billion a day, and they are losing their jobs. How is this model sustainable? It also undermines our sovereignty. As we borrow more and more money from overseas, China, Japan and other countries, they get more and more capable of squeezing our country economically.

And it will hurt farmers. For the first time in our history, the United States of America is going to run a trade deficit in agriculture. That was going to be one of the big winners under the WTO, CAFTA, NAFTA. Oh, it's going to be great for ag. I remember having all these farmers come in, Oh, this is going to help us so much, the wheat farmers in Oregon. They were back the next year saying, You were right. The Chinese bought one shipload and that was it.

Now, they are talking about shipping wheat to the United States of America. We are going to run a trade deficit in agriculture. We are going to become not only dependent upon foreign countries to borrow money and build things that we use every day but to feed us, and we are going to ask them to lend us the money to buy the food to feed ourselves.

This is not a policy that is sustainable and in the national economic interest or the national economic security or defense interest. We need a new model for trade, not replicating the old failed model. I am pleased to see that more and more and more of my colleagues are coming around to this conclusion.

Defeat CAFTA.

Mr. Speaker, well, last week the President finally revealed a few more specifics about the direction he wants to take to deal with the potential, possible, future funding shortfalls in Social Security. He used some unfortunate verbiage. He said Social Security will be bankrupt in 2041. It will not be bankrupt; it will pay 75 percent of promised benefits under very conservative economic assumptions into the indefinite future, or 2053 if we use the estimates of the Republican Congressional Budget Office. So it would not be bankrupt in any sense.

But he did talk about the possibility there could be a shortfall in Social Security starting 40 or 50 years from today. That is progress that he is beginning to talk about that problem. He actually offered a solution, for once. His privatization plan he has admitted would in fact make Social Security's finances worse, has nothing to do with dealing with the future possible potential shortfalls in the Social Security trust fund, the program as we know it today. He said, finally, let us talk about how we might get there.

He cloaked benefit cuts in a veneer in high-falutin rhetoric. He called it progressive indexing of wages. What he is talking about is benefit cuts. Who would pay the benefit cuts? Let us take someone who is 22 years old, graduated from college last year. They are a public schoolteacher. They are going to work the next 40 years as a public schoolteacher and hope to retire in their 60s with a Social Security benefit. If they earn $36,000 average over their lifetime, their benefits would be cut by 16 percent, $3,000 a year. Their proposed benefit would go from $19,800 down to $16,500. These are calculations of the Social Security actuaries of the President's proposed cuts.

Now let us say that young person graduating from college is going to become an entrepreneur, small business person and do pretty well with a truly small business, and they average $58,000 a year throughout their lifetime. What would the President do to them? He would cut their Social Security benefit from $26,000 to $19,800 which would be a 25- percent cut which they could get if Social Security went, under the President's words, bankrupt. That is if Congress did nothing and Social Security had a shortfall starting 40 or 50 years from today. Under the worst-case scenario, that person would get the same. But the President wants to guarantee a cut in that person's benefits. Remember, this does not have anything to do with the President's privatization plan which would further undermine the finances of Social Security and accelerate the date of what the President calls bankruptcy, others call trust fund exhaustion, I call benefit reductions.

The funny thing is that half of the American people pay more in taxes to Social Security than Federal income taxes. They have a lot invested in this program, and they would like to see the benefits when they retire.

Now, it is a little different for rich people. Let us take the President on his modest $400,000 which is a lot less than he earns from his private investments. Let us just take his salary and pretend that is all he has. He stopped paying Social Security taxes on the morning of March 24. That American

that earns $36,000 or $58,000 or even $90,000 pays Social Security tax every day of the year, this year, with the expectation they will get a benefit; but not so for people who earn more, $90,000, including Members of Congress. When income hits $90,000, the tax goes away. The President stopped paying on March 24, and he wants to cut the benefits of people who pay that tax every day this year, many of them a bigger tax than they pay to the Federal Government under income taxes, particularly low-income people.

Let us take some other friends of the President. The heads of Viacom, Tom Freston and Les Moonves, they stopped paying the Social Security tax at 4 a.m. on January 2 because they earn $77,000 a day. So at 4 a.m. on January 2, their obligations to Social Security went away. Despite their huge $20 million salary, they will pay one one-thousandth of 1 percent of their salary to Social Security, but working Americans are going to pay 6.2 percent of every paycheck and self-employed will pay 12.4 percent of every paycheck, and the President wants to cut their benefits. But he does not want to cut the tax cuts for Mr. Moonves or Mr. Freston, and he does not want to cut the tax cuts for himself.

There is a better way to solve the Social Security problem, and I will talk about that another day.

Mr. Speaker, today and pretty much every day for most Americans of this year, they will see 6.2 percent taken out of their paycheck to pay for their Social Security retirement. If they are self- employed, they will see 12.4 percent taken out. That is everyone who earns up to $90,000 every paycheck, day in day out they are paying that tax.

And in paying that tax, they will create a $170 billion surplus to pay for future retirement benefits for themselves. But, now, the President has revealed his true agenda. After talking about privatization for months, something which would, in fact, worsen the financial condition of Social Security, he has now changed the debate to talking about how he is going to reduce the retirement benefits of middle-class Americans.

Now, things are a little bit different from the President. I mean, we will disregard all of his unearned income and all of the things that he has been given and all of those earnings. Let us just talk about his salary, $400,000 as President of the United States. So that means that the President of the United States pays Social Security tax until 3 a.m. on March 24.

Now, that does not seem quite fair. Other working Americans are going to pay that tax all year long. But, let us look at some of Mr. Bush's friends. Tom Freston and Les Moonves of Viacom. They stop paying Social Security tax at 4 a.m. on January 2, because they earn $77,000 a day.

Now, it really is not going to matter or even be noticed by George Bush when they are reduced or Mr. Freston or Mr. Moonves at Viacom, you know, not even their accountants will notice it, but it is certainly going to be noticed by those middle-class Americans.

The President's cuts, which he cast as being fair and progressive, will fall most heavily on middle-income working families in this country. You know, a median, what they call a median earner, $36,000, say a public school teacher, will see, if they retired 40 years from now, a young teacher, they will see a reduction of 16 percent in their Social Security benefits, from $19,000 down to $16,000. I think they are going to notice that; it is going to hurt a lot.

What the President's folk call a high earner, $58,400 a year, well they will see a 25 percent reduction. In fact, the reduction for people who earn $58,000 a year will be equal to or worse than if Congress did nothing about Social Security, because it is not going to be bankrupt like the President says. Social Security will never be bankrupt. Stop saying that.

It will have to, if nothing is done and we have a very bad economy, reduce benefits by, say, 20 percent according to the Republican Congressional Budget Office or 25 percent, so they can pay benefits into the indefinite future, starting 40 or 50 years from now. That is not a crisis. That is not bankruptcy.

But the President would guarantee reductions, at least that big, for many working families to save the program. But that is not all. That is not all the President has in mind. Because, he said, this is based on the Pozen plan, some financial guru out there who he says is a Democrat. Who cares if he is a Democrat or Republican. He is some rich guy, financial guy. And what Mr. Pozen proposed is you not only reduce retirement benefits, you reduce survivor's benefits, and you reduce disability benefits.

That is what the President said he endorses last week during his speech. He is going to reduce middle-income retirees' Social Security benefits 25 percent. And if they should be so unlucky as to become totally disabled, incapable of working, he is going to reduce their disability benefits by 25 percent; or should they have even more misfortune and die, their survivors will get a reduced benefit of 25 percent to, quote, save the program.

The President is not done there, though. He is not only reducing survivors benefits, retirement benefits, disability benefits. He wants to push these people into so-called voluntarily private plans after he has reduced their benefits; and the so-called private plans, the President's privatization has a little something called a claw-back, which is the government is allowing you to divert your Social Security money, but it is considered to be a loan, which will be repaid at the time of your retirement, death, or disability at the rate of 3 percent plus inflation.

Now, if your investments did not do too well, your survivors are going to be writing the government a check; or if you get to retirement and you did not do too well, well, you are going to see your Social Security benefits reduce up to 97 percent under the President's privatization plan.

There are better ways to secure the financial future of Social Security, which I will talk about on another evening.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to claim the time of the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings).

Mr. Speaker, well, America has a serious problem with energy prices. If you just peruse today's Wall Street Journal and New York Times, you will see the airlines are reporting record losses in great part despite efficiencies, despite concessions

by labor because of an increase in fuel prices. You see that General Motors has had a huge drop-off in the purchase of their lucrative SUVs and other larger vehicles that consume more gas, Ford similarly.

We find this in small businesses across America; it has been embedded in everything. And now we are beginning to hear that there are stirrings of inflation beyond the price of oil and gas. This is a serious problem; and, unfortunately, this body, the House of Representatives, to its discredit did not adopt a serious or effective proposal to begin to address this problem in either the short or the long term.

Short term, American consumers need relief from high gas prices. They are being gouged at the pump by Big Oil and the OPEC cartel.

Now, I have asked President Bush numerous times, written to him and asked him, he is a big fan of rule of law, international trade agreements, the WTO, all of those things. I am not a big fan. But he says he believes in rules-based trade.

Well, the OPEC cartel is violating the rules of the World Trade Organization. Seven of the OPEC nations are members. They are clearly colluding to restrict production and drive up the price of oil to make a profit. That is clearly prohibited by the WTO. But the President and his trade representative have failed to take any action against the OPEC companies.

Then we have price gouging by Big Oil. Last quarter saw record profits for most of the industry, $8 billion in one quarter for Exxon Mobile. Their cash reserves have doubled to over $20 billion in 1 year, money extracted from Americans 5 cents a gallon at a time or more at the pump by piggybacking on the cartel activities of OPEC, and Big Oil is getting away with it.

This administration is not doing anything to rein in Big Oil. They merge, close refineries, and then blame a shortage of refineries on environmental laws when they have been closed because of mergers to drive up the profits of the oil industry.

We should reinstate a windfall profit tax on the industry. We should break up a number of these huge companies and begin to get some true competition again in that industry.

We cannot continue to bleed this much money. Every day, Americans are bleeding money at the pump, which is ultimately going to spill over into a tremendous problem for our economy, especially if we look at the failing trade policies of this administration.

Then there is energy efficiency, new technologies, energy independence. These are things that seem very foreign to my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and to the old oil men who are running this country down at the White House and at an undisclosed location.

Energy efficiency, this bill makes sort of a passing chuckle and nod at energy efficiency. It spends 20 times as much money subsidizing the oil, coal and gas industry. Wait a minute, were we not just talking about the fact they had record profits last quarter? Yes, they do have record profits and they are extracting that from American consumers, but they want their hands in both pockets. They do not want to just take money out of your wallet, they want to take money from taxpayers, too.

So there is $8 billion in this bill, supposedly to help with energy problems. Unfortunately, 95 percent of it is subsidies to the wildly profitable oil, coal and gas industry, which will provide no help to American consumers; and a mere 5 percent is a nod toward the idea perhaps America could develop new sources of energy, perhaps America could become more efficient, perhaps America could become energy independent, but that is only worth 5 percent of what they are putting into the bill.

Just think what it would be like to have an energy-independent America relying upon homegrown sources of energy and new technologies and new efficiencies, and how that would insulate us from these problems around the world. But that is not a vision that is shared by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. They have delivered us today something that would not have been a very enlightened energy policy in 1955, but is just pathetic in the 21st century, considering the threats to our economy and to our national security.

Unfortunately, they prevailed today, but hopefully, in the future, we can do better by the American people.

Mr. Speaker, I have nothing against classics. I drove a 1968 Barracuda to work today. But I am looking at hybrids because of the high cost of gas and to get a little more efficient.

The Republicans are offering us a classic energy bill today, firmly rooted in the 1950s: no improvements in efficiency, no investment in energy-efficient technologies, no breakthroughs. Even worse, $8 billion of subsidies to the oil and gas industry. Well, heck, they need it. That was only the quarterly profit of ExxonMobil gouging people at the pump last quarter. They want to give us more of the same.

The President's own energy information administration says this bill will, quote, have only negligible impact on production, consumption and imports of oil. In fact, they said it will probably increase the price of gasoline by 3 cents per gallon. I guess that is to pay for the new subsidies to the suffering oil and gas industry.

That is an energy policy for the 21st century?

Madam Chairman, over the past couple of years I have corresponded with the Department of Energy on an issue of particular concern to me. The Department of Energy continues to spend millions of dollars, over $60 million so far, to defend private contractors who caused injury to citizens downwind of the Hanford nuclear reservation despite provisions of the Price Anderson Act to the contrary. The American taxpayers should no longer have to bear the burden of defending private contractors who have harmed citizens. I would like to submit my most recent letter to the Department of Energy and asked that it be made part of the Record.

March 4, 2005.

Hon. Samuel Bodman,

U.S. Department of Energy,

Washington DC.

Dear Mr. Secretary: Thank you for your September 2003

response to my questions about the Hanford Nuclear

Reservation case. However, I have ongoing concerns about the

Department of Energy's (DOE) willingness to represent DuPont

and General Electric at a cost of millions of taxpayer

dollars. I believe that the Department's financial support is

not only ill conceived, but that it violates the intent of

Congress in passing the Price Anderson Act (PAA).

Regarding question numbered ``2'' of the 2003 letter, we

have been informed that while the district judge accepted the

defendants' standard of proof for injuries, that decision was

soundly reversed by the Ninth Circuit on the merits.

I am concerned that DOE continues to fund, at considerable

taxpayer expense, an ongoing series of technical motions by

the contractors.

It was the intent of the Congress of the United States when

it enacted the Price Anderson Act, to encourage the

development of nuclear energy and at the same time to provide

``full compensation to the victims of nuclear incidents,''

including the people who were exposed to radiation from

nuclear facilities such as Hanford. The actions of the

Department of Energy in spending large sums of taxpayer

dollars to forestall compensation to citizens who were

exposed to radiation releases from Hanford, represents action

by a federal agency that is directly contrary to the intent

of Congress.

I recently learned that federal Judge Nielsen, on March 30,

2004, rejected the motion of DuPont and General Electric that

they be dismissed from the case because they contracted with

the government to run Hanford. In underwriting such a motion

with taxpayer funds the Department violated the intent of

Congress in passing the Price Anderson Act. The fact that the

PAA reimburses the companies when people are injured from a

nuclear incident precluded the necessity for a ``contractor

immunity'' defense as Judge Neilsen held. I have now learned

that you intend to financially support an appeal of that

Order. Any further attempts to evade the intent of the PAA by

the DOE we believe to be a serious concern for the Congress.

Your letter notes that the DOE does not ``disagree with the

proposition that low doses of radiation can cause some forms

of cancer.'' In addition, there are government studies that

show exposure to radiation contributed to the onset of the

claimants' illnesses. Yet the DOE continues to defend the

contractors. It would appear that contrary to the fact that

workers can be compensated for thyroid cancer, non workers

who were exposed to more Iodine 131 than many workers would

be denied similar treatment. I do not understand this logic.

What policy consideration drives this inconsistent behavior?

I also learned that the motions of DuPont and General

Electric to have all cases dismissed as being filed too late

based upon the Statute of Limitations has been dismissed.

More than $60 million of taxpayer funds have been spent by

DuPont and General Electric for 15 years of loosing motions

and adverse rulings. Again, I do not understand why the

Department of Energy continues to spend millions of dollars

paying lawyers to attempt to defeat claims that the Congress

of the United States determined should be compensated.

I further note that the Hanford plaintiffs were just

successful in filing a motion declaring that the operations

at Hanford were an ``ultra hazardous activity.'' This holding

is consistent with Congress' findings regarding the

operations of nuclear facilities. We note again that the

Department of Energy spent thousands upon thousands of

dollars defending this untenable defense (Energy Employees

Occupational Illness Compensation Act of 2000, 42 U.S.C.

Sec. 7384 et seq).

I understand that a trial date has been set, and that

General Electric and DuPont are taking the position that

Iodine 131, which was released in enormous quantities from

Hanford, does not cause thyroid cancer. Is that the position

of the Department of Energy? If not, please explain if the

Department is taking the position that the Price Anderson Act

does not apply to a person exposed to radiation below a

certain dose, and if so what that dose is.

I understand that several million dollars more could be

spent in the next year or two continuing to defend this

action. That would result in taxpayers' money approaching the

$100,000,000 being paid to lawyers to prevent compensation to

victims of radiation exposure from Hanford.

All of the defenses you have previously supported have been

rejected by a federal court. Has the Department of Energy

authorized any amount of money for settlement of this case?

It would appear that more money may well be spent to thwart

the intent of the Price Anderson Act than would be spent in

victims' compensation.

Please provide me with a detailed justification for any

continued payment by the Department of Energy for the defense

of this litigation, including specific justifications for any

motions currently or intending to be filed or appealed

seeking to dismiss most or all of the cases and why such

action does not violate Congress' intent in enacting the PAA.

Sincerely,

Peter DeFazio,

Member of Congress.

Mr. Speaker, well, congratulations to the Bush-Cheney administration. They set another record yesterday, but it is one I am certain they will soon eclipse. The United States of America ran the largest 1-month trade deficit in our history, $61 billion. Tens of thousands of jobs were lost in order to achieve that record. Whole industries were exported to China and other cheap wage countries in order to set that record.

Congratulations to the administration. Their trade policy is a tremendous success for those few multinational corporations who are profiting hand-over-fist with these policies, while tens of thousands of Americans lose their job and we lose our industrial base here at home.

In the first 2 months of the year, a $29 billion trade deficit with Communist China. We are on a par, the Bush administration is on a path, to beat their record trade deficit with

Communist China that they set just last year, a $162 billion trade deficit with Communist China last year; a country which pirates products from small businesses across America, including a number in my district, both hi-tech, furniture and others; a country that does not observe international laws; a country that the Bush-Cheney administration told us, ``Oh, please, give us permanent most-favored- nation status for those Chinese, and then they will clean up their act. Put them in the World Trade Organization and we will use the force of law against them.''

Well, they have only chosen to file one complaints against the tens of billions of dollars of products pirated by the Chinese from American firms, and that was for one of the drug companies, of course. Who else would they go to bat for? Not the small businesses, not the hi-tech business in my district, not the furniture business in my district, not the other businesses across America. Yet their trade policy is working just great.

Now they say two things. Well, if the dollar just drops a little bit, everything will be fine. Well, the dollar has dropped a lot, and everything is not fine, and the dollar is on the verge of dropping one whole heck of a lot more. Even when it gets down to the value of an Indian rupee, it still is not going to solve the trade problem. Because the classic economic theory is, well, if your currency is devalued, then your manufacturers will crank things up and your goods will be bought overseas. That will not happen for two reasons:

One, we do not make things anymore, and many of our companies have moved their industrial base to China and many more are contemplating doing that or being forced to do that, or to Mexico or to other countries where they can exploit labor better. So, for that reason, it is not going to happen.

Second, because the Chinese will not allow our goods in, and they have illegally pegged their currency to ours, so their currency is artificially cheap. It falls with the dollar, so we can never catch up with the Chinese. And the Bush administration has refused to do anything about those illegal actions by the Chinese, the illegal pirating of U.S. goods, theft of jobs, illegal currency manipulations by the Chinese.

The Bush administration will not do anything because a few big companies and contributors are doing very well over there. It is just to the detriment of the majority of the workers and people here at home in the United States of America.

They say there is another reason why the trade deficit is so big, because our economy is growing so fast, faster than other economies. That is why we got a big trade deficit.

Well, that is an interesting argument. So we are borrowing a bunch of money from the Chinese, they are now our second largest international creditor, soon to be our largest, the Japanese are number one, and we use that money which we borrow from them to buy goods that used to be produced in the United States of America. And since those are produced nominally by American corporations, that shows growth here at home.

In the meantime, here at home people are unemployed, running up their credit cards, they have lost their jobs to unfair Chinese competition, and that shows what a robust and growing economy we have.

What a disaster this is for the working people of this country. What a disaster this is for the future industrial might of the United States of America, for our productive capacity. What a disaster it is going to be when the dollar tanks and oil goes up even more because the dollar will have been devalued so much.

There are so many things wrong with this laissez faire trade policy it is hard to know where to start, but the Bush administration thinks it is working just fine because they set a new record yesterday, the largest 1-month trade deficit in the history of the United States of America, and they are hoping they beat it every month this year and beat last year's record trade deficit, because that means jobs are exported, and, in the words of the President's former economic adviser, that is a good thing when we export jobs. It makes the country more efficient.

Mr. Speaker, this year, the United States Government will collect $170 billion more in social security taxes than it needs to pay current benefits. That is $300,000 a minute from the working men and women and small businesses of America. And that money is being used to buy Treasury bonds. It is being put away under the premise that we are creating a trust fund. The full faith and credit of the United States Government backs those bonds.

Now, the President is questioning the full faith and credit, and he is saying there is no trust fund. Now, if the President is right and there is no trust fund, then we should stop taking $170 billion from the working men and women under a false premise. That would be fraud.

We have to do either one of two things: lower the tax on working men and women in this country and small businesses, or honor the trust fund and the debt of the United States of America. I think there is only one choice, and that is to honor the debt of the country. But we have a President who is saying he might not.

Who is he going to pay first? The Chinese, the Japanese? Is he going to pay off his Treasury bonds first and then default on the savings of the working people of this country?

Mr. Speaker, it is an outrageous and reckless statement of the President of the United States to make, and if the bond markets believed the President, there would be an economic catastrophe today.