Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to explain my vote in favor of H.R. 4818, the massive omnibus appropriations act, which incorporates the nine unfinished spending bills into a single package.

I reluctantly supported this legislation. On the positive side, it includes millions of dollars I requested for important projects in southwest Oregon. For example, the bill includes $2 million for the North Bend Airport Air Traffic Control Tower; $475,000 for the Port of Brookings Harbor Boardwalk Expansion and $418,250 for the Port of Brookings Harbor Seafood Processing Plant; $60,000 for Coos and Curry County METH Reduction and $150,000 for Coos County Law Enforcement Technologies; $265,000 for the Benton County Health Services in Monroe for facilities and equipment; and $200,000 for the Springfield Public Schools, Schools Plus Program.

It provides a significant investment in our Nation's roads, bridges, and water infrastructure. For southwest Oregon, the bill includes $5 million for the Courthouse District Transportation Improvements in Eugene; $2 million for the Lane Transit District Bus and Bus Facilities; $3 million for the Coburg/I-5 Interchange Improvements; and Wastewater Improvement Funds, including $150,000 for Sweet Home, $300,000 for Coburg, and $250,000 for Coquille.

I am pleased the bill restores at least some funding for the dredging of small ports in my district, though more funding is needed. Despite the fact that these small ports are the economic lifeblood of coastal communities in my district, President Bush had proposed to zero out funding for these ports in his budget.

I was also pleased that H.R. 4818 boosts funding for veterans' health care by $1.9 billion over last year and by $1.2 billion above the level requested by the President. Though, as I will discuss in a minute, veterans need and deserve more.

And, I am pleased the bill falls within the spending cap set by the President. Our Nation cannot continue to run up hundreds of billions of dollars in debt every year. Reversing the dangerous accumulation of debt will require discipline on both spending and taxes.

While I supported the bill, I want to note for the record my disappointment with the inadequate funding levels in several important areas. These areas could have been funded at higher levels even within the spending cap

set by the President if lower priority items, such as the President's plan to send spacecraft to Mars or military and economic aid to dozens of countries, were reduced or eliminated.

For example, I am concerned that the bill cuts funding for the Small Business Administration by 19 percent below its current funding level. Small businesses are the primary employers and innovators in our economy. I cannot understand why the House Republican leadership elected to slash support for small businesses in this bill.

As I mentioned, while funding for veterans' health care was increased in this bill, I am concerned that the funding level still falls $1.3 billion below the level requested on a bipartisan basis by the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs.

I am disappointed that H.R. 4818 underfunds the education programs under the No Child Left Behind Act by $9.6 billion. Title I, Head Start, IDEA, and after-school programs, among others, are underfunded. Thousands of children will be left behind by the funding levels in this bill.

Older students won't make out much better. H.R. 4818 freezes the maximum award for Pell grants for the second year in a row, despite the fact that college tuition has risen 36 percent since 2001.

Finally, I think it is outrageous that the House Republican leadership stripped a variety of important provisions that were adopted on a bipartisan basis by the House and, in some cases, the Senate as well. For example, the House leadership cut a provision to protect overtime pay for millions of American workers. And, a provision to allow Americans to safely reimport cheaper drugs from overseas was eliminated at the behest of the pharmaceutical industry.

So, again, I will support this bill, but I will not do so enthusiastically.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. We all salute the innovation and the achievement that we have recently seen in the early days of private space flight, and we certainly do want to encourage that. But we go a little bit too far in this legislation.

I do not understand why the committee has inserted the references to paying passengers and that we would not regulate until after the serious injury or death of paying passengers. It took me a decade here in Congress to strip the FAA of its requirement to promote the industry. That was something adopted in the very early days. It seems to be similar to what is going on here, to say that in the early days the Civil Aeronautics Board would have a charge of promoting the industry and later regulation became more paramount. But up and to and through the 90s until a tragic accident with then Air Tran, the industry was both regulated and promoted by the same agency. I promoted it out for years as a conflict. And it was only after that incident that we finally changed the language and said, no, it would be paramount that they would regulate in the interest of public health and safety.

But here we are again trying to codify the old so-called ``tombstone mentality'' of the FAA by including paying passengers. It is one thing to say, here is someone who invented something or built something and they are going to try and fly it at their own risk here or here is a professional person who is going to try to fly something that was built by this person, fully knowing the risk; but it is another thing to begin to say paying passengers will fall under the same aegis in this bill.

This was not considered by the Subcommittee on Aviation in any form over the last 2 years. It was never referenced to the Subcommittee on Aviation over the last 2 years. There may have been some communication somewhere with some member of the staff or between some member of that committee and some member of our committee, but not the Subcommittee on Aviation who has jurisdiction over these matters.

So I would suggest that there is not an immediate crisis. There is no reason that this bill must be rushed through today in this form. It could well be passed next year. The liability provisions exist elsewhere and would be continued elsewhere, and then we could have a more thorough discussion of when it would be appropriate to begin to regulate for the health and safety of passengers on these space crafts, that is, I think something that is not wise to codify today because it took us from 1932 or 1933 until 1996 to remove that provision in regards to the FAA, 64 years or so that that carried over.

Even though it was long after the time when the industry needed promotion or the FAA should be conflicting itself with promoting the industry, they were still doing that. And people died because of that. And it may not be in the next year or two, but 8 years is a pretty long time to say we are going to go 8 years before there could be any regulation regarding paying passengers.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Reclaiming my time, here we would be looking at presumably much wealthier people paying gigabucks to have the experience. But still I think the point is that it is not necessary to attract entrepreneurs. There are already entrepreneurs out there experimenting. There are professional pilots out there willing to fly these crafts. But to take the next step and say to paying passengers who may or may not be a very knowledgeable and wealthy person or someone of lesser means would be subjected to those risks without any regulation. It just does not seem necessary to promote this industry at this point in time.

It is already moving forward. The liability exemption I believe is the key. But to say that if they are going to go to paying passengers, they could not be regulated, I think that is kind of a bright line where we could draw a line and agree.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would like to reflect on the compromise language he talked about, and, again, since we have not gone through a regular legislative process here, since our committee had no opportunity to review this and it is not amendable on the floor and they would not accept that in good faith, let me point to an unintended effect here.

The way the bill is written, they are granting a blanket exemption to the industry, including paying passengers, until such a point as there is a serious injury or death, and then the full scope of the FAA's current regulations would come to bear.

What the gentleman is proposing here would essentially sanction the experimentation with lighter touch regulation at the outset, and I think that that might actually get us further down this road than what is being proposed here. But the unwillingness of the other side to even consider the implications of extending this to passengers and then whether or not that ever gets sunset or it takes some Member of Congress half a century from now to get that stripped from law, because you know it is 8 years in this bill, but then I can see it being extended and extended and extended and becoming a mature industry, just as the aviation industry did, with that provision still in place, until there is a horrible tragedy.

So I think having this light touch regulation for public interest and safety at the outset, given the expertise of the FAA, would be preferable to all concerned, and it would not stifle or strangle the industry in its nature.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.

Again, we could move forward with the liability exemptions absent this language, and the gentleman says that that would then mean that there would be a more dangerous situation prevailing, or is he perhaps saying we would not do the liability at all? Is that what he is saying, we would do nothing? Why not just move forward the liabilities, absent these provisions and these exclusions in the current legislation?

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. Speaker, how did we get to this point? If the government is so in control, how did they have this first flight if the government is overregulating and overcontrolling them?

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, if we just extended the existing liability exemptions and we were silent on these other issues, how would that be different than the circumstances which led to these first flights?

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York talks about the great mandate the Republicans got in the election. Why did they not have the guts to bring up an increase in the debt limit before the election?

This is no surprise. In fact, we technically reached default over a month ago. They have been borrowing Federal employees' retirement to keep the government floating, but now they say we

have no option but to vote for this today, and they have no plan.

Let us distill it down to something Americans understand. Trillions, billions, they do not get it. This is the third time we are going to ask for an increase in our borrowing on our credit card limit in 3 years under the Republican leadership, $2,000 per U.S. citizen. That is what they are authorizing today to borrow. Now everybody here is going to have to pay that back with interest. With interest. And they have no plan to stop borrowing into the indefinite future. No plan at all.

They will not allow us to adopt a simple principle: If they want to increase spending, cut something else. If you want to cut income, decrease taxes, either get tax increases elsewhere or cut spending. That is all we are saying. It is a simple principle. It is something every American would have to do before their credit card company would give them an increase for the third time in 3 years. That is what they are doing here.

They say, there is no time to do that. We are powerless in face of the Senate.

Come on. Give me a break. Members want to talk about demagogues. You are a champion demagogue. You really are. We are borrowing $1 million a minute to run this government. They want to say let us cut spending.

We can eliminate the entire government, the entire government, far beyond libertarians' dreams, and we would still have a deficit this year. Now we would keep half of the Department of Defense, but we would eliminate everything else the government does, and we would still have a deficit this year. That is how serious this problem is.

And they are borrowing money in the name of the American people who are going to have to pay it back with interest. Our kids are going to pay it back with interest. Our grandkids are going to pay it back with interest. In their scenario, our great great grandkids are going to pay it back with interest to the Chinese and others who are now financing our government and our spendthrift ways.

All we are asking for here is a little bit of fiscal responsibility, a plan, a plan to deal with this mounting debt, a plan that any American would have to have if they asked their credit card company for the third increase in 3 years in their credit card limit, and they were also cutting their income.

Mr. Speaker, it is business as usual after the election here in Washington. Right now they are writing a bill to finance the entire Federal Government, hundreds of billions of dollars, behind closed doors. It will be brought up with one vote, no amendments allowed, up or down. Why not? Maybe because we are borrowing $1 million a minute to run the Federal Government, $1 million a minute.

Yesterday the Pension Benefit Guarantee Fund announced that its deficit has doubled to $24 billion. They are broke. They cannot guarantee pensions. Social Security will collect $163 billion more than it needs, but every penny will be borrowed and spent this year for current consumption. We hit the federal debt limit for the third time in 3 years, but the Federal Government is not in default because they are borrowing from Federal employees' pension savings.

Is this not great? Nothing wrong with this picture. We do not need to change. The majority has a plan: more spending, more borrowing, more tax cuts, more dynamic scoring, which means we pretend none of this exists, and we pass the bill to our kids and grandkids.

Mr. Speaker, as Congress looks for innovative solutions to educate our Nation's children--our next generation of leaders--I'd like to call attention to a nonprofit reading program called SMART: Start Making A Reader Today. SMART is making a measurable difference for Oregon children who are falling behind. It has tremendous potential as a model for the Nation.

SMART's mission is to hook children on reading at an early age. By connecting children with community volunteers for weekly one-on-one reading sessions--and giving each student free books to take home and keep--SMART cultivates a supportive environment where reading skills build quickly and confidence grows just as fast.

Perhaps most importantly, SMART delivers proven results. Independent research shows that children who participate in SMART develop key reading skills faster than their peers, and maintain these gains after leaving the program. In fact, fifth graders who have been in SMART are 60 percent more likely than their peers to reach the state benchmark in reading.

SMART began 12 years ago in eight schools and has since grown to serve more than 11,000 children annually in 31 of Oregon's 36 counties. About 9,000 adults each year volunteer with SMART in more than 260 public elementary schools.

SMART's unique track record of mobilizing whole communities to invest in their local schools has been pivotal to the program's ongoing success. By engaging so many people to make community literacy a priority, SMART is helping to create an educated workforce for the next generation. It is helping Oregon build a solid economic future.

Please join me in making SMART and other proven early reading programs a funding priority this year.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and to thank Frank D. Jackson of Eugene, OR, for his tireless efforts to improve the lives of working men and women and their families.

Frank Jackson is a man of conviction, dedicated to serving his community by strengthening labor rights. His unwavering vision for working America has put him on the front lines in the fight for decent pay and benefits, safe and healthy workplaces, and dignity and respect for the rank and file.

Until he retired in 1992, Jackson worked two jobs for decades-- firefighter and union activist. He has been a steadfast advocate for workers since joining his first union at the age of 15 and was recently inducted into the Labor Hall of fame for his many years of leadership in the labor movement. He served as president and secretary-treasurer of his union, Eugene Firefighters Association Local 851, International Association of Fire Fighters; president and executive secretary- treasurer of the Lane

County Labor Council; senior vice president of the Oregon State Fire Fighters Council; and Executive Board member of the Oregon AFL-CIO.

In solidarity and strength, I am proud to salute Frank Jackson for his wholehearted commitment to organized labor and working people in Oregon.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to discuss H.R. 10, the legislation that ostensibly implements the recommendations made by the independent commission that investigated the federal government's failure to prevent the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Let me say at the outset that this bill is certainly not perfect. But, I am pleased it includes a number of critical aviation security improvements I have pushed for.

It also includes the core recommendation made by the 9/11 Commission to create a National Intelligence Director to centralize coordination and oversight of the disparate branches of our intelligence community.

Therefore, despite some flaws, I will vote for H.R. 10, with the hope that its shortcomings can be resolved in the conference with the Senate.

I want to expand on my comments about the aviation security provisions in H.R. 10. I am pleased that this bill provides $60 million over two years for the deployment of checkpoint explosive detection equipment. The bill also directs the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to give priority to developing, testing, improving, and deploying equipment at screening checkpoints that will be able to detect nonmetallic weapons and explosives on individuals and in their baggage.

This bill would implement the 9/11 Commission recommendation that TSA not wait until the issues surrounding a successor to the CAPPS program are resolved before utilizing all available government terrorist watch lists to prescreen passengers boarding an aircraft. The air carriers currently manage the ``no-fly'' and ``automatic selectee'' lists that they receive from TSA. Because the airlines have access to these lists, some government agencies are unwilling to give their watch lists to TSA because they are reluctant to share intelligence information with private firms. This problem will be resolved when TSA takes over the passenger pre-screening function, as mandated by this bill.

Perimeter security is still a weak link in aviation security as evidenced by the recent events at the Orlando airport in which workers were charged with sneaking drugs and guns aboard commercial aircraft. Importantly, the bill requires TSA to submit a study to Congress on airport perimeter security to determine the feasibility of access control technologies and procedures, as well as an assessment of the feasibility of physically screening all individuals prior to entry into secure areas of an airport.

With regard to strategic planning, the bill requires the Department of Homeland Security to develop a risk-based strategic plan to protect transportation assets in general, and aviation assets in particular. The bill would also require the TSA to develop a threat matrix that outlines each threat to the civil aviation system, and the layers of security to respond to that threat. A strong strategic planning process may avert any future ``failures of imagination'' as cited by the Commission.

The bill also incorporates H.R. 4914, the Aviation Biometic Technology Utilization Act, which I introduced with Chairman Mica. Biometric technologies can improve aviation security, and the TSA must act quickly to promulgate guidelines and standards for biometrics so that airports can equip with biometric access control technology.

In addition, the bill incorporates H.R. 4056, the Commercial Aviation MANPADS Defense Act of 2004, which I also introduced with Chairman Mica. MANPADS have been used against commercial airplanes and we must do what we can to reduce the threat of MANPADS by working to reduce their availability and developing plans to secure airports and the aircrafts arriving and departing from airports against MANPADS attacks.

The bill contains several other important provisions including a pilot program to determine whether federal flight deck officers can be permitted to carry weapons on their persons, as well as directing TSA to: conduct a pilot program for the use of blast resistant cargo containers; continue its efforts to develop technology to screen cargo; conduct a study on the viability of technologies that would provide discreet methods of communication for flight cabin crew to notify pilots in the event of a security breach, and a study on the costs and benefits associated with the use of secondary flight deck barriers. In addition, I am pleased a provision was included to require the Director of the Federal Air Marshal Service to develop operational procedures that ensure the anonymity of Federal air marshals.

I am also pleased that this legislation implements the core recommendation of the 9/11 Commission--creation of a National Intelligence Director. While the bill may not create quite as robust an NID as the Senate legislation, it does represent a useful step in bringing accountability to the intelligence community and improving coordination.

Despite the aviation security provisions I mentioned previously, there are shortcomings in the transportation security provisions of H.R. 10. For example, there is no money to deploy explosive detection systems to screen checked baggage. In the security bill approved by the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, on which I sit, we included an additional $250 million in mandatory spending to deploy these critical devices. Unfortunately, this provision was stripped out of the version of H.R. 10 on the floor today. Further, H.R. 10 does next to nothing to improve rail, mass transit, or port security. These shortcomings need to be addressed in the conference with the Senate.

I am also concerned that H.R. 10 is weak on combating the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The bill just requires a study of how to strengthen our non-proliferation programs. We don't need another study. We already know what needs to be done. In 2001, a bipartisan commission recommended tripling funding to $3 billion a year for programs to help secure nuclear materials around the world from terrorists. The non-proliferation programs under Nunn-Lugar should also be expanded beyond the states of the former Soviet Union in order to secure nuclear materials in other countries, notably Pakistan. The non- proliferation provisions of H.R. 10 should be strengthened in conference.

I am opposed to a provision in H.R. 10 that would violate U.S. obligations under the Convention on Torture by allowing the U.S. to deport suspects to countries that might torture them. While I supported an amendment that was adopted during consideration of H.R. 10 to slightly improve the provision in H.R. 10 authorizing deportation of suspects to countries with atrocious human rights records so it wasn't quite as objectionable, I would rather see the provision removed all together during the conference with the Senate.

I am concerned that the civil liberties protections in H.R. 10 are too weak. H.R. 10 creates a Civil Liberties Protection Officer that is appointed by and reports to the NID, which means he or she is not independent. Under these circumstances, the officer is unlikely to provide robust protection for civil liberties. By contrast, the 9/11 Commission and the Senate legislation propose an independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. The Senate legislation also includes an Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties as well as a Privacy Officer within the National Intelligence Authority. The Board would continually review legislation, regulations and policies for their impact on privacy and civil liberties. The Board would be required to issue reports to Congress at least twice a year and to make the reports available to the public. I hope that the Senate

provisions on civil liberties oversight will be included in any final legislation that emerges from conference.

Finally, I have serious concerns about a number of provisions in H.R. 10 that will expand the law enforcement powers of the federal government. As one who voted against the so-called USA PATRIOT Act because of my concerns about its impact on the civil liberties of average American citizens, I am concerned that H.R. 10 will unnecessarily expand the reach of the federal government in ways that are not necessary to defeat terrorists, but will pose a lasting threat to the rights we are guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution. I would rather that these provisions be considered carefully by Congress next year during the debate over whether to renew the PATRIOT Act rather than having them slipped into H.R. 10 with little debate.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the ranking member for yielding me time and for his work on this issue, and I thank the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Mica) too.

I believe the chairman and I share an opinion, and that is that the greatest threat to today's civil aviation is explosive devices. There are several ways in which the explosive devices can get on the plane. One is cargo. We have already talked about the inadequacies there. This bill does nothing to deal with that. Another is baggage. I had hoped this bill would deal with that.

In fact, our committee dealt with it. We doubled the annual investment in in-line automated baggage screening, but, strangely enough, that money disappeared before this bill came before us today. That is unfortunate.

When you link that to the fact that the majority party has arbitrarily limited the number of screeners we can have so they are not even utilizing the inadequate trace equipment and other things they have, and we have reports on how sometimes they cannot even operate the machines they have because they do not have enough people, we are not investing in the people and we are leaving gaps.

The bill does improve and begins to deal with the threat of suicide bombers and carry-on explosives, $30 million a year. We should do more. The Transportation Security Administration's own expert on this says it is a mature technology, we are using it to guard nuclear plants, military bases, we do not need to be testing it, we need to deploy it.

The $30 million a year in this bill is a lot better than what the administration is doing today. It is still not enough. We should have a goal of immediately purchasing and deploying explosives detection for all passenger checkpoints and carry-on bags, doubling at least the budget for in-line explosive screening, and doing a bottom-up survey to find out how many people we really need to do this job. It has never been done.

We had an arbitrary cut in the number of screeners. 11,000 were cut by the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of jurisdiction. For what reason? Well, he said because we are going to buy new equipment. Then, of course, he did not fund the new equipment.

So we are leaving extraordinary gaps in our Nation's security. This is of tremendous concern and it should be, to the traveling public. This is a foolish place to save money. We can borrow money to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. We can borrow to build infrastructure and provide security in Iraq. But we cannot afford the investment we need in the United States of America to do the things we need to do to make flying safe and prevent a tragedy like happened in Russia, which we have been predicting for more than 2 years is likely to happen here.

I wish that we could get the vote on a bill that would do all of those things. They will not let us do it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for the time.

October 1, 2003: What is important about that date? That is the date that the last highway bill expired. Here we are, almost a year later, legislation that sets the course of all spending on roads, bridges, highways, mass transit in the United States of America has been in suspended animation working under a 7-year-old law for the last 11 months.

I guess if the Republicans controlled things, things would not be like that; that is the kind of thing we hear around here all the time. They control the White House, the Department of Transportation, the House and the Senate. The White House is low-balling the number and underinvesting in America. They only want to spend $259 billion. They want to take our gas tax money and spend it on other things instead of transportation.

The House did a little better, $283 billion, not enough, but they did better. But they do not want to confront the President in an election year. We could roll them easily. It would be embarrassing, though, just before the election for him to be against jobs and investment in America and spending gas taxes on the purposes for which it was collected. The Senate did a lot better yet, $318 billion.

Then, of course, there was the unanimous bipartisan vote of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, on which I serve, where we voted unanimously for $379 billion, $120 billion more than the President is willing to spend, because that is what the President's Department of Transportation said is necessary to take care of the problems in New York and other States. We need another $120 billion over what the President's asking for to deal with those problems.

It is disingenuous to get up here and say, oh, if we follow these lower numbers, nothing is being hurt. We are foregoing new starts. We are foregoing new investments. We are foregoing additional investments that the President's own Department of Transportation says is necessary. Why? Why are we doing that? We collect gas taxes from each and every American every time they fill up their car, a bunch of them, and that money is supposed to be spent on roads, bridges and highways. We have seen the potholes. I have got failing bridges in my district. We could put hundreds of thousands of people to work tomorrow if we had more investment and more spending.

I cannot understand why they will not spend our gas tax money to put people to work and meet needed investment in our infrastructure. So I stand here saying we should be doing more than just this continuing resolution, obviously. We should have sometime in the last 11 months. The Republicans should have been able to get their act together and agree on a highway bill. That has not happened. Well, if we cannot do that, at least let us put a little more money in there, put a few more people back to work, begin to address some of these problems that are out there, begin to take care of some of the new starts that New York has asked for that cannot go forward under this legislation.

My colleagues cannot say, oh, the transportation experts in New York say this is going to take care of all the problems. It is not. It is not even beginning to address the backlog of problems of failing roads and bridges.

Another interesting statistic from the President's own Department of Transportation is that, for every $1 billion we spend on roads, bridges, highways, mass transit, we create 47,500 jobs; not just construction jobs, but those are good jobs and good wage jobs. And guess what? They cannot be outsourced to another country. That is a really good thing about those jobs, but what it also does is it spills over into communities and small businesses. The suppliers, the contractors, the equipment operators, they are all local. They are locally based. It helps our local communities who need more jobs and investment. It helps small businesses, 47,500 jobs.

So, that means by walking away from the higher numbers proposed by the Senate, that is $318 billion, that we are foregoing $34 billion of investment that is needed to repair our failing bridges, roads, highways and our mass transit inadequacies, new starts in New York and other States. I cannot do the math quite here, but 34 times 47 sounds like a heck of a lot of jobs to me, somewhere around 1.5 million jobs. This country could use another 1.5 million jobs. In fact, if the President would sign a bill at that higher number, then he could say he delivered on his promise of creating 2 million jobs during his presidency. Right now, he is kind of short on that.

This is at best an absolutely minimal stopgap that is not meeting the real needs of Americans, that is not putting people back to work, that is not spending their gas tax money in the manner in which it was intended when it was collected and extracted from them, when they bought gas at the pump.

I would say we have apparently no alternative but to support this inadequate level of funding, but the American people should be aware it is inadequate. It does mean no new starts. It does mean that we are not going to address a whole bunch of problems all around the country, and we can do better.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski) for his tireless work because this will be his last action on this legislation. I would like to thank my colleagues on the committee and the chairman of the committee for their work. If we ran things, we would have already completed a much more robust investment in our roads, bridges, highways and mass transit here in the United States, putting millions of people to work and beginning to deal with the backlog of projects.

Unfortunately, we not only have to deal with the House, the other body, the Senate and the White House; in this case the White House has been the big problem. What we are doing here today will mean no increase. This will be the second year in a row with no increase in transportation infrastructure spending, even with the accelerating rate of deterioration of our bridges, even with growing congestion, no new starts. This does not get anywhere near what we would consider a good push toward dealing with those problems and putting people back to work. But the White House has chosen this extraordinarily low number, $256 billion. They would essentially underspend the highway trust fund. They collect gas tax from Americans and they would divert some of that money to other purposes by borrowing from it instead of fully investing it in roads, bridges, highways and mass transit. That means we are walking away from a lot of jobs. For every $1 billion we invest in transportation, the estimates are that we create 47,500 jobs, not just direct construction jobs which are good jobs which cannot be outsourced out of the United States, but also spill over into communities, small businesses, equipment providers, suppliers; all those people would benefit dramatically.

If we were to adopt the numbers proposed by the Senate at $318 billion, we would create nearly another 2 million jobs. We could use those jobs. It would also help the President, who is dragging his feet on this, to deliver on his promise of creating 2 million jobs, which he has not done yet and is unlikely to be able to accomplish before November except with the stroke of a pen and signing a bill and showing that he will create them in the future. But he is refusing to do that.

Unfortunately, there is hesitation with going forward with a more robust level and challenging the President. Someone spoke earlier about how the system works, and we have to deal with the Senate and White House, but we have the power to send something to the White House, allow him to veto it, and then override. The first vote I cast in the United States Congress was to override a much more popular President's veto of a highway bill, Ronald Reagan.

This is not only good for the transportation infrastructure, the economy, just-in-time delivery, small businesses, construction workers, it would be of tremendous benefit to the entire economy.

In closing, I want to thank the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Lipinski). He has been a great mentor and friend to me. I will miss him. I am sure that we will take care of him when we do the highway bill next year. Although we do not know how much money we will have, but if we have lots of money, he will still do well, I am sure, and his State will do well.

Mr. Speaker, I offer motion to recommit.

I am, Mr. Speaker, in its present form.

Mr. Speaker, this is a straightforward motion within the parliamentary constraints of the House. Some might say, because we would ask the bill to be sent back promptly, that we are dooming it to death.

We have been waiting 11 months for a highway bill, 11 months since the last one expired. Give us 2 hours, and we will give them a lot more investment

and a lot more jobs. We can deliver this bill back within 2 hours. The House could pass a bill at the Senate levels this evening.

All across America that would make a big difference. Across the entire country, that would mean that we would have, if we adopted that level ultimately for 6 years, an increase of $37 billion in spending. That is 1.7 million jobs; 1.7 million jobs could be created. We could begin to deal with the 161,000 bridges in this country that are structurally deficient, one in four. My own little State has a $4.7 billion bridge problem.

We are trying to do our own part, as the chairman asked. We have raised registration and other fees. But we need a little bit of help because this is Interstate 5, the federal highway that goes between Canada, Mexico and includes Oregon, Washington, and California. There is some federal obligation, I believe, to help maintain that highway.

This has been a maddening process for those of us who care about transportation, who care about our failing bridges and the potholes and our congestion and the lack of new starts and mass transit, all those things. If we had our way, we would have significantly more investment, according to a unanimous vote of the committee on which I serve, bipartisan. We voted for the number which has been outlined by the President's own Department of Transportation, $375 billion over 6 years. And even that would not take care of all the problems, but it would sure be a lot more to address them. But the President has taken a hard line at $259 billion, far below the number passed by the House, way below the number passed by the Senate, and about one-third below the number recommended by his own experts. This is inexplicable. This is investment. This is paid for out of gas taxes, which each and every American pays every time they tank up their car. We owe them an obligation to make this investment, not to stick with the levels of that are now 6 years out of date under the old legislation but to look at something that will spend more, begin to deal more with the backlog, put more people to work. We could help the President deliver on his own promise. This would create 1.7 million jobs. The President could sign a bill which we could have back and have ready for consideration by five o'clock tonight. He could sign it tomorrow in the Rose Garden, and he could refute the claims of his opponent that he had lost 1.7 million jobs because he would just have signed a bill to create 1.7 million jobs.

For the life of me, I do not understand the reluctance at the White House to invest the people's tax dollars paid for every time they tank up their car in investment in the people's infrastructure, the infrastructure that will benefit not only individuals but businesses all across America who depend upon just-in-time delivery. Just-in-time delivery is pretty hard when they have got to detour a truck over the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, down the far side and then back down again to I-5 because of failed bridges. And that is unique. That kind of thing takes place all across America. Trucks are detouring hundreds of miles out of their way, wasting fuel, wasting time, making us less efficient because the Federal Government says we do not have the money to catch up with this backlog on bridges.

Well, we do have the money. We are taxing the people. We should adopt a more robust level. We should deal with some of the problems and the disparities among the States, the whole issue that States give a whole bunch more in than they get back. But we cannot do that unless we have higher levels of funding. It is impossible.

And that is what this amendment does, very simply. It would bring the bill back later this evening, spending at the levels of the Senate bill, which would put over 6 years, if finally adopted, 1.7 million people to work, 20,000 people in my State, and begin to defray that backlog.

I would hope that we will pass this motion unanimously and make the investment that we need. And I think the President will sign it. I doubt very much he will see fit to veto the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

My staff says that they can do the computer runs and have the numbers within 2 hours, which would give us ample time to get the bill faxed before the President for signature before midnight tonight.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, the administration says time and time again, as if that would make it so, that Americans are safer today. After all, they are spending $10 billion to deploy a defective Star Wars system that has not been tested and could not hit missiles that will not be launched against us, and that makes us safer.

Yet our ports are wide open. Three percent of the containers coming into America will be inspected this year. That is the most likely route of a weapon of mass destruction to the United States, and we are only inspecting 3 percent of them, and 2 percent of the trucks coming across the Mexican border?

No one is going to shoot a missile at us, but they darn well might smuggle it in a truck or container and bring it in and detonate it in a city in the United States. And they are doing nothing about it.

They are doing nothing about plastic explosives being carried on to airplanes, even after the incidents in Russia. We have been warning them for 2 years that they are likely to take planes down. They are still doing nothing to detect plastic explosives at passenger checkpoints or keep people who clean the planes from secreting bombs on to the plane.

America is safer today? Maybe it is safer in an undisclosed location where Dick Cheney is hiding out, but if is not safer for average Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize and to congratulate Martha ``Marti'' Young of Roseburg, Oregon. The Oregon Commission for Women selected Ms. Young as one of the 2004 Women of Achievement. She will be honored on Saturday, October 2nd, at the 20th Annual Women of Achievement Awards Dinner for her determined advocacy, intelligent leadership, and inspired vision on behalf of low income Oregonians.

Marti Young has an impressive record of public service, with over thirty years of active participation. Wherever there has been innovation, progress, and development in human services in Oregon, she has been in the front ranks. She has been an unstoppable advocate, mobilizing resources and providing services to alleviate poverty and enhance the quality of life for the poor, the elderly, and people with disabilities.

Marti Young gets things done--and done well. She has worked with the low income community and community partners to establish Head Start programs, a child care center for low income families, a school lunch program, and an emergency food bank, an energy assistance program, transportation services, shelter programs, and other resources and opportunities vital to the health and well-being of Douglas County.

The world is full of heroes like Marti Young, working every day to make the world a better place. I am pleased to offer her the heartfelt congratulations and warm thanks she so richly merits.

Mr. Speaker, it is 10 years since the Contract on America, the Republican takeover. If people think the country is going in the right direction, then I guess they are doing a great job.

They talk about fiscal responsibility; $600 billion deficit this year. Every penny of the Social Security surplus and trust fund borrowed and spent and replaced with IOUs. We have lower wages, outsourced jobs, unemployed Americans, economic insecurity, and record numbers of uninsured. And they brag about their record on health care, a prescription drug benefit written by and for the pharmaceutical industry at tremendous tax to the taxpayer, subsidies to that industry.

It is time for a new partnership for the majority of Americans, not more government by and for an elite few.

Mr. Chairman, this is not like the label on a mattress that says, ``Do not remove under penalty of law.'' This is a meaningful certification of the manufacturing and the proper equipping of these trucks.

There are many trucks operating in Mexico that do not meet U.S. standards, and what is being advocated on that side is a new faith- based safety standard. Why is it faith-based? Because there is no meaningful inspection going on in Mexico. These trucks do not have a certification on the labels, which they say are meaningless, and we do not have the inspectors at the border to inspect them on the way in because they say we cannot afford it. That is what is going on here.

These trucks will flood into this country. No, there have not been a lot of fatalities involving these trucks because we do not let them go more than 20 miles from our border, but let them go rumbling up I-5 into Oregon and Washington, let drivers who do not have to keep a logbook, they are not trained like our drivers, they are underpaid, operating trucks that do not have the safety equipment of our trucks, and people will die, plain and simple.

Why should there be unequal treatment? Why? That is what my colleagues are advocating here. The people who operate the trucks in the U.S. have to have these labels, which are meaningful. The Canadians have these labels and standards, but these trucks in Mexico, many of which do not meet our standards, do not have the labels.

As the gentleman said, they are all going to be inspected. By whom? Answer that question. The Mexicans will not allow Americans into Mexico to inspect them, the Mexicans are not inspecting them, and we do not have enough people at the border. People will die if we do not adopt this amendment because of unsafe trucks entering our country.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, I want to at this point, since the gentleman is proposing a positive agenda for America, just to sort of put this discussion in context. If people are happy with the status quo, if they think the country is going in the right direction, if they believe that what has happened to our economy in terms of the job loss over the last 4 years, the outsourcing of American jobs, if they think that a pharmaceutical benefit based in subsidies to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries is the way to help seniors and other Americans afford prescription drugs, if they think that borrowing 600, $700 billion a year, 10 percent of our accumulated national debt in 1 year, breaking the debt limit of the United States for the third time in one Presidency, if they look at those things and think that that is a good, sane direction for this country, then they might not be interested in this alternative.

But the alternative that we are offering as Democrats today is something that, instead of benefiting that one tenth of 1 percent or maybe, to be generous, one half of 1 percent of the populace who are doing so well with these policies, then we are offering a different direction.

We do not think the United States of America is on the right path with its fiscal policy, its trade policy, its tax policy, tax fairness, with its Medicare policy and health care policy, and a whole host of education policies, things that are important to Americans. So I want the gentleman to continue to describe a positive alternative because maybe a little later in the hour I will wax a little more eloquent about how bad things really are, from my perspective, the perspective of my district in Southwest Oregon, and I think many other districts around the country. But I just kind of wanted to put the context on this discussion.

Like a Dave Barry routine. Right?

Factually based.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, because he raised a couple of provocative issues, I did a series of Medicare prescription drug forums in my district, and I will get to the point of what the gentleman mentioned, but what was most interesting is I saw well over a thousand seniors in my district.

A total of six had purchased the so-called prescription drug discount card. Two had not gotten them yet, even though they purchased them in June, and this was August. Two got them and said they were worthless. One said, well, it gave him about a 10 percent discount. And then one other guy said he was doing really great. But a bunch of the other people in the audience sort of shouted at him and said, no, he was a partisan guy. Whatever. Out of 1,000 people, that is it.

But the point is, at one of those Medicare town halls an older woman came, worked until she was 70 years old, but all she has got, widowed, is her Social Security, and she is living in subsidized housing. They just raised, as the gentleman referenced about housing, they raised her share to the point where she came, and it was kind of sad, she came in a cab, which was pretty unusual, this town does not have a big cab service, it is a small city, Albany, Oregon. That was a little unusual. So I saw her and greeted her. I kind of helped her in.

She said, ``This is only the second time I have been out in 3 months. I am really sick, and I am taking a lot of prescription drugs, and it is a big burden on me. Medicare does not cover them. I looked at prescription drug cards; it is not going to help.'' She had just gotten notice that her share, she was going to have to pay about $70 more a month for her apartment.

She said, ``You know, I cannot afford that. I do not have the money now.'' She said, ``I am basically eating into my savings and I don't have much savings left.'' It was just incredibly sad to see that.

So she is getting hit on both sides. She is getting hit by a phony prescription drug benefit, which is costing more than half a trillion dollars to the taxpayers in the United States that totally subsidizes the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, but delivers scant benefits to a person like her.

Yes, there are some people who benefit from it, people who are, incredibly, even poorer than she is and have very large drug costs. But very few people will get a net benefit out of it. And then to sock her, this is where we have got to raise money so we can give trickle-down tax cuts to the wealthy, is from women like her, who worked her entire life?

If the gentleman will yield further, this is something a lot people do not realize. It is one thing to have a debate about whether we should cut taxes, pay down the debt or maybe spend more on education for our kids and other programs when we had a surplus. But this President has taken us from record surplus to record deficit in 4 short years.

So we are borrowing the money to finance tax cuts. We are borrowing every penny of the Social Security surplus this year. $160 billion more will be paid in out of taxes that fall only on wage- and salary-earning Americans who earn less than $90,000 a year.

We are giving the money they paid in for their retirement, this Congress is going to borrow it and give it substantially to those people you are talking about in much greater amounts. It will flow to the people who earn over $1 million a year. And guess what? They do not even pay the tax. If they are a investor, they do not pay a penny into Social Security. It is only people who work for wages and salary.

So we are going to borrow all that money, and we are going to borrow another $440 billion. We are going to indebt our kids and grandkids for the next 30 years to borrow $600 billion to run the government this year. Every program of the government except for the Defense Department, and almost half of that, is being run on borrowed money. We are borrowing from our future. So we are borrowing that money to invest in trickle-down tax cuts.

If the gentleman will yield further, this is an excellent point. I do want to get back to the positive agenda, but we are talking about things that people need to think about.

The control that we are giving to the Chinese and the Japanese over our economy, basically 40 percent of the $600 billion trade deficit we are going to run this year, we are borrowing from China and Japan. They are going to get unbelievable leverage over the future of the dollar and the future of the U.S. economy.

And not only that. Of course, they are stealing our technology, and many American companies are aiding and abetting them in that theft of technology, because they want to access the cheap labor and the lack of environmental constraints and other things to move their companies and operate in China.

The Republicans wanted to make a big deal about this satellite launch during the Clinton administration. Boy, that is like quaint history at this point, given the technology transfers and the theft going on today.

You know, the Bush administration has filed one trade complaint. They told us, oh, we will give China, the bloody butchers of Beijing, Castro, he is bad, we cannot even sell him medicine, but the bloody butchers of Beijing that ran over the kids with the tanks and the democracy demonstrators and all that, we are going to give to these people permanent most-favored-nation status.

We are going to pretend they are not a Communist country. We are going to do away with the laws of the United States that say, you do not extend that to Communist countries, Communist dictatorships. But they did with the rationale, oh, put them in the WTO, the World Trade Organization, then they will have to follow the rules.

Well, the Bush administration, despite the document theft I have talked about time and time again, I have a couple of companies in my district that have been cloned in China, a small entrepreneur, a small business that the other side of the aisle cares so much about, except when it comes to, well, if the Chinese are stealing your stuff, tough luck.

But they have filed one trade complaint against China, and it was with the pricing of drugs for the Pfizer Corporation. That is the only trade complaint filed against China. China, who is stealing the entire product of a small company, a beautiful American dream company in my district called Videx. A furniture manufacturing company in my district that refused to sell out to the Chinese, they cloned his entire line. Both these people have gotten calls from all over the United States saying, that happened to us too.

These are the people that care about small business? They do not care about small business. They pretend to care about small business. They care about the mega-corporations that want to relocate to China and access the cheap labor, and they are playing right into the hands of the Chinese, who are an ongoing threat to the United States of America and will be the major threat in this century.

But we are getting a little off track. This is pretty depressing. When I go to my chambers of commerce and I go around my district and I talk about this, people get a little depressed. I think if we talk a little more about the positive agenda, then we will get back to some of the problems.

Mr. Speaker, let us just sort of go back to those two points, because they are very important to a large number of my constituents, Social Security and Medicare.

This year, Social Security will over-tax individuals who work for wages and salary and the self-employed earning less than $89,000 a year. They will pay more in taxes than necessary to support the system, under the theory that that $160 billion we are going to extract only from wage- and salary-earning people who earn less than $90,000 a year, those who are not the big beneficiaries of the tax cuts, to put into a trust fund to pay for their retirement. That would be great.

Unfortunately, this Congress is going to borrow every penny of that money, every penny, and replace it with IOUs. Some good part of it will go to pay for tax cuts, borrowing money to pay for tax cuts for people who do not pay Social Security taxes and do not ever care if they collect a cent because they are so wealthy; they may not even be eligible, because they may have never worked for salary and wages, who have been just investors their entire lives with their inheritance.

Now, remember, we voted seven times; it was before this gentleman arrived, but I believe the gentleman from New Jersey was here. Seven times we voted on a lockbox for Social Security. The Republicans were berserk about that; Lockbox, lockbox, do not spend that Social Security money. Well, I voted for it every time. Guess what? George Bush became President, the lockbox is gone, broke open the door, grabbed the money and ran. And there is no more talk of the lockbox.

So all of that money is being extracted only from people who work for wages and salary and is going to be borrowed and spent. Now, that is extraordinary. And how are we going to honor the IOUs with deficits as far as the eye can see proposed by this President and this majority? How are we going to repay those IOUs?

That is an insult, referring to drunken sailors.

Mr. Speaker, we will move on to the second point the gentleman made about Medicare, and I think that that is an extraordinary point the gentleman made, the largest one-year premium increase in history, far exceeding any senior's Social Security cost- of-living adjustment. A funny thing, when they calculate cost of living, they do not include health care

costs, pharmaceutical costs, it seems. They tell seniors, oh, well, your cost of living is going up 2.4, 2.6 percent. So to a senior, except perhaps wealthy seniors who own their own home; I mean there are very few people who can say, gee, my cost of living is only going up 2.4 percent a year.

The point is that with the Medicare bill that we passed, the White House hid how much it costs. I mean, there is now a former employee who has now become a very highly paid lobbyist, very common with this administration; highly paid lobbyists, go work in the administration and then become highly paid lobbyists again. This guy was head of the Health Care Financing Administration. He told a career employee who was asked by Congress, how much will this bill cost, an actuary, and he figured it out. And he was told, the career employee was told by the political appointee, who is now a million-dollar-a-year lobbyist rewarded by the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, if you tell Congress how much this will really cost, I will fire you.

Well, here is a guy who works for a living, has a family, career civil servant, and he was a little bit scared for his job, so he did not tell Congress how much it would really cost. He wrote it down, transmitted it to his boss, but he did not go to the press. He did not want to lose his job.

Well, now, the Bush appointee has moved on to his million-dollar lobbying job, a little reward that he got from the pharmaceutical industry for having lied to Congress, and we find out that it is going to cost more like half a trillion dollars, maybe six-tenths of a trillion dollars, and most seniors are going to get more cost than benefit. Some seniors will actually pay more, those who have less than $1,000 a year in drug costs will actually pay more under this plan. And seniors in the doughnut hole, well, they get the doughnut hole; we know what that is. And then, some people who have over $4,000, $5,000 a year drug costs, they will get some benefit. But that is their vision. And they prohibited Americans from reimporting less expensive, FDA-approved drugs from Canada, and they outlawed Medicare bargaining for less expensive drug costs for all Medicare recipients.

We could have had a program for nothing, not one taxpayer cent, just like we do with the VA. Everybody in Medicare has a card. Medicare goes out and bargains lower prescription drug costs. Just like I get in Blue Cross Blue Shield as a Federal employee, they negotiate discounts of 60, 70 percent. We could have provided a more meaningful benefit for no money, but guess what? It would not have made the pharmaceutical and insurance industries a huge pile of money. And they were against it and the White House nixed it, and that is now the policy of the United States of America. And there is only one way we can change that, and that is to change the presidency and to change the direction of this Congress, the House and the Senate. And then we can roll it back, and we can give a meaningful benefit at much less cost.

Mr. Speaker, the point the gentleman made is little understood, and I have a whole bunch of

those guaranteed student loans to get through, and what you said just really merits revisiting.

The Federal Government is going to guarantee banks 9.5 percent rate of return for extending loans to students to go to college to get a higher education.

Now, it is a great thing that we can help kids get a higher education. That is good. But the point is those loans are guaranteed by the Federal Government. The bank has no risk. Zero risk. I always thought interest had something to do with risk. So if the bank has no risk, how is it that they are going to get guaranteed?

If we took instead and said, hey, let us go back to a program that we developed in the 1950s, National Direct Student Loans, National Defense Student Loans they were originally called, and said the Government is going to make the loans to its young people, guess what? The Government always knows where to find you.

So the Government could do it without having the banks in the middle and for the difference in what the gentleman is talking about between 9.5 percent and say if the government charged 3.5 or 4 percent, the current Treasury bond rate to the students, we can give one million more Pell grants or a couple of million more loans to students. But instead, we are going to give money to the banks, the poor suffering, long suffering banks. They need the help, the subsidies.

On the other side of the aisle we hear about free market economies and socialism and all that stuff. What is this? Why is the Government subsidizing banks? The second point is made about No Child Left Behind. I have a State that we have got some real problems funding primary and secondary education. I have not seen the number as big as Ohio's, but our number in the tens of millions of dollars that No Child Left Behind is underfunded. It is an unfunded mandate.

Again, early on when the Republicans said no more unfunded mandates, I was with them. I was sincere. I said I do not think we should send down these mandates to local governments, down to schools and other communities. The Federal Government wants to send down new rules, they should pay for them. The President's signature bill. No Child Left Behind, $15 billion underfund, $15 billion being extracted from the States and local school jurisdictions that cannot afford to pay for the President's signature bill, much of which is repetitive.

National testing. We have State testing. We did not need national testing. I voted against the Clinton mandate for national testing. I thought my Republican colleagues were sincere when they joined me in that. Bush becomes President, proposes an identical national testing mandate to President Clinton's, guess what a majority of the Republicans voted for? I voted against it. I voted against a Democrat and a Republican President. It was a stupid idea. It is very expensive. They are teaching to the test. It is a new mandate, and we are not paying for it; Washington, D.C. is not paying for it.

These are the kinds of policies, the hypocrisy that we are getting out of that side of the aisle is unbelievable. The American people need to start paying a little bit of attention to what these people are really doing to them.

Let me just on that, I support the pledge as it is. I learned it that way. I think it is fine. The courts have in fact ruled many times that the use of God on our currency or our coinage or, in this case, under God in the pledge is diminimus. It is not a violation, and there is in fact no current threat.

The one case that was pending against those words in the pledge was thrown out by the courts. There is no threat from the so-called activist judiciary at this point in time because the one that had been filed was thrown out. But instead of addressing real issues for which they have no answer, here is something where there is a non-existent threat, but there is a real threat to the kids who cannot go to college. There is a real threat to the seniors that are cutting their pills in half because they cannot afford them. There is a real threat to the woman I talked about who will be thrown out of her subsidized housing in Albany having worked her whole life because she cannot afford it any more.

There are incredible threats to our troops in Iraq because of a reckless foreign policy, but they have no answer for those things. So they want to distract people with things that most of us agree on. We like the Pledge the way it is. There are a lot of things we love about our country, but they want to divide us on those issues and not deal with the real problems.

I think it is a fair principle to say that the companies that are responsible for the pollution, the companies that made a profit when they created those hazardous waste and those Superfund sites should bear a substantial portion of the burden for cleaning them up. There is a new sort of vision on the other side of the aisle here, the Republicans saying, well, if you want to clean it up, clean it up yourself.

Hey, somebody made money creating that mess. That is what this is all about. They made money. So tough luck. The same thing has happened in my State. We have a major Superfund problem. We have been told, well, sorry, there is no more money to deal with those sites. Maybe you people would like to clean up. We have got to live with it, and someone else created it.

I have not noticed exactly that the oil and gas industries are hurting. Somehow I think I saw the last quarter when they were gouging the heck out of the American consumers with $2 and $2.20 a gallon of gas that they made record profits. So if they made record profits, how is it that they cannot afford a minimal continuation of the Superfund tax which would lower their profits a tiny bit, but not very much.

We do not want to leave accountability because there is a heck of a lot of that missing around here.

Let me ask a very simple question on that. Since every person that consumes electricity in my State is paying about 40 percent more today for the same electrons from the same plant because of the manipulation of the markets by Ken Lay and the fact that the Bush administration with Pat Wood and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission would not do anything about it, does that mean that Ken Lay would finally go to jail?

I support accountability if that is what we will get out of it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss H. Res. 757, legislation commemorating the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against our country.

I remember September 11, 2001, vividly. The weather in our Nation's capital was warm

and sunny. I was giving a speech on the House floor. Soon after I finished, the Capitol building was evacuated. I did not know until I got back to my office that planes had hit the World Trade Center buildings in New York and that a third plane that may have been headed toward the Capitol building was taken down in a field in Pennsylvania. I am profoundly grateful that the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 bravely fought back, thinking of the safety of others, not of their own well-being. Their actions saved the lives of untold numbers of us who were in Washington, D.C. that day.

The resolution on the floor today appropriately honors those who lost their lives due to these heinous attacks. Thousands of husbands, fathers, mothers, wives, daughters, brothers, children, grandparents and others were lost on that day. We must never forget those individuals and their families.

The resolution also honors the heroic actions and sacrifices of our men and women in the U.S. military and their families. I have had the privilege of visiting with dozens of our men and women in uniform, both here at home and in a war zone. I am continually awed by the professionalism, determination, and commitment of our troops.

I am also pleased that H. Res. 757 acknowledges the service and sacrifice of the first responders--emergency personnel, fire fighters, police officers, and others--who aided the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks. While these individuals humbly say they were merely doing their jobs that day, their selfless actions embody some of the best qualities of the American people.

Finally, the resolution congratulates the Congress and the President for various steps taken to improve the security of the American people in the wake of September 11th.

While Congress has adopted some piecemeal improvements on the security front, al-Qaeda will not wait for us to make gradual improvements. Security must be improved today, not after the next attack.

Congress and the Bush administration must stop the finger pointing, turf protection, and minor tweaking that have been the primary features of the Federal government's response to 9/11. It is time for bolder action.

Aviation security is not what it should be. Security screeners need the same upgraded equipment used in congressional office buildings and the White House. We need to deploy technology to detect plastic explosives carried on board planes. We must screen employees and vendors who work on the runways and have access to planes, but who are not currently screened at all. All cargo carried on passenger planes must be tested for explosives. We need effective countermeasures and international agreements to reduce the threat of shoulder-fired missiles. The arbitrary cap on the number of security screeners should be lifted.

A fully unified terrorist watch list that is electronically accessible to necessary Federal and State officials for real-time searches must be put in place now.

Border security is still notably lacking, three years after 9/11. The Federal government should hire 3,000 additional border inspectors and border patrol agents to secure our borders with Canada and Mexico. Existing technologies, like remote sensors, long-range cameras, and unmanned aerial vehicles, should monitor all 7,000 miles of our border 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Astonishingly, on the 3rd anniversary of the attacks, America's police, firefighters, and emergency response personnel still lack the fundamental ability to communicate with each other by radio. Congress must increase funding to help States and local governments purchase essential equipment.

Our Nation has 95,000 miles of coastline and 361 ports. Yet, the Federal government will spend only $46 million on port security grants this year while spending $10 billion to develop a missile defense system that is irrelevant to the threat posed by al-Qaeda. Congress should increase funding for radiation detection equipment to screen every cargo container, beef up the presence of U.S. inspectors at foreign ports to inspect cargo destined for the U.S., and enhance the Coast Guard fleet.

Five times as many Americans travel on trains and transit each day as on planes, but less than two percent of the transportation security budget goes to non-aviation programs. Congress and the Administration should increase funding for passenger rail and transit security. A baseline level of security for the transit systems in the 50 largest metropolitan areas would cost $2 billion.

Most of the 20 tons of nuclear material at 130 facilities in 40 countries has no more security than a night watchman and a chain link fence. In 2001, a bipartisan commission recommended tripling funding to $3 billion a year for programs to help secure nuclear materials around the world from terrorists.

Finally, I want to say that I am disappointed that H. Res. 757 contains several whereas clauses implying a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, and Iraq and the September 11th attacks. A variety of experts, including the 9/11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee, have concluded there was no cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda on the September 11, 2001, attacks or anything else. It is also inappropriate to link Iraq to the global war against al-Qaeda. Iraq did not pose an urgent threat to our national security. Iraq did not have ties to al-Qaeda. Iraq had not attacked the United States, nor is there any evidence Iraq planned to attack us. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, nor any delivery system capable of attacking us.

I supported the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and I continue to support military action against al-Qaeda. But, to use a resolution commemorating the anniversary of 9/11 to peddle discredited theories about Iraq in order to cover for the failures of the Bush administration in Iraq and justify the diversion of resources from the war against our real national security threat--al-Qaeda--does a disservice to the American people.

I will vote in favor of H. Res. 757 because I want to honor those I mentioned at the outset of my statement--those who lost their lives in the attacks, those who tried valiantly to save lives on that day, and our men and women in uniform. But, I want to state for the record that I disagree with some of the rhetoric in the resolution.