Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I rise today to salute the brave men and women of the Vermont National Guard, who will soon begin a year of service to our country in the rugged mountains and forbidding deserts of Afghanistan.

Tomorrow morning at Camp Johnson in Colchester, Vermonters will salute the first 35 Guardsmen and -women to leave the Green Mountain State and report for training at Fort Polk, Louisiana. They'll be followed shortly thereafter by all of the 1,400 Vermonters whose deployment will constitute the largest since World War II.

As we Vermonters bid a temporary farewell to our finest, their families and our communities will prepare to face the hardship of their absence. Yet our State can and will take pride in knowing that our loved ones and our friends and our neighbors who are devoting themselves to the service of our State and to all of the United States of America go with our support.

We stand proud to know that, as in every war since the Revolution, the Green Mountain Boys are serving our State and our country with strength, bravery, and honor.

We salute and look forward to your safe return.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Representative Harman for introducing legislation to provide additional time for states to utilize federal grants made available through the Public Safety Interoperable Communications Grant Program, PSIC. I am proud to be a sponsor of this legislation and commend her for her ongoing leadership on this critical issue.

The PSIC grant program funds state projects that provide public safety personnel with interoperable communications equipment and training for system users. The Act appropriated $1 billion for the program from the proceeds of the auction of analog spectrum reclaimed by the digital television transition.

In our current fiscal environment, public safety needs this assistance more than ever.

Unfortunately, under current law, funding for these critical interoperability projects will expire in September 2010.

Given the enormous importance of interoperable public safety communications during times of crisis, we need to allow states the time and funds necessary to complete projects already underway or in planning stages. If adopted, Representative Harman's legislation will provide this necessary time.

S. 1694 represents the best approach to this problem because (1) it minimizes the regulatory burden on public safety; (2) it creates incentives for public safety to act quickly and (3) it protects public money. More specifically:

The proposed legislation allows all States an automatic one-year extension. This will reduce the regulatory burden on states associated with individual extension requests. Some states may not need more than a year and they can avoid filing an extension request altogether.

The automatic one-year extension also incentivizes States that are on track for completion to complete work rapidly so they do not have to go through the extension request process.

But those States that need more than one year to complete projects will have the flexibility to request an additional year if the head of NTIA determines that their circumstances warrant an extension.

The criteria enumerated in the proposed legislation will ensure that the Assistant Secretary's decisions are based on a complete evaluation of the extension request. This discretion allows the Assistant Secretary to protect public money and ill-advised or mismanaged projects may not be eligible for continued funding.

S. 1694 has widespread support. A number of organizations, including the National Governor's Association and the Association of Public Communications Officers, APCO, ave all expressed support for Representative Harman's bill.

Representative Harman's bill is identical to a bipartisan measure introduced in the Senate by Senators Rockefeller and Hutchison. If we pass this bill today we have a decent chance of making this extension happen in time for public safety to plan and budget accordingly.

One of the painful lessons our nation learned in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11 from the response to Hurricane Katrina was how critical it is for first responders to be able to communicate seamlessly with one another when responding to an emergency. This is as true in a city like LA as a rural state like Vermont, where emergency personnel are sparse in many parts of the state and it is often necessary for multiple jurisdictions to work together when responding to a call. If we are going to ask our first responders to put their lives on the line and work together to protect us, we must provide them with the tools they need to do their jobs effectively.

I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in supporting this important legislation.

I thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Frank) and my colleague. I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Lee) and Mr. Skelton.

You know, Mr. Speaker, one of the things the American people have a right to expect of us in Congress is that when we pass legislation, we step back after its passage and listen to the people affected by it to see if there are some mistakes that we made that need correction, and in this case, there is a mistake. Mr. Lee just outlined what it is and the chairman did the same.

I think a number of us, including Mr. Skelton, when we were home, heard from our credit card companies as to the over-inclusive nature of the legislation that would adversely affect the good work that they're doing. The CARD Act, as you know, had a number of very good provisions, including the 21-day notice requirement. That's intended to make sure that financial institutions give individuals enough time to pay a bill, and it established a minimum level of fairness. But for credit unions and their members, this change would actually have made things more difficult.

Credit unions use consolidated statements, so home loans, auto loans, savings accounts, checking accounts, and credit card bills are all in one package, and that's for the convenience of the consumer, not to create confusion for the consumer. This is the model, in fact, of how the system should work. It's straightforward and transparent.

The 21-day notice requirement would have had an unintended impact of requiring credit unions to split up those consolidated statements and transform transparency into confusion. This wouldn't help consumers and, obviously, wouldn't add to transparency. So the bill that has the support of Mr. Skelton and Mr. Lee and myself would clarify the intention of the CARD Act and allow credit unions to continue the very commonsense and, I think, consumer-friendly approach of sending their customers a single statement every month.

Mr. Speaker, tomorrow the Financial Services Committee will hear testimony from Kathy Miller from the northern Vermont town of Elmore. Kathy and her husband run the Elmore Store; that is the general store, the post office, and the social hub of the small town of Elmore.

Kathy will be testifying in favor of interchange, or swipe fee, legislation which would finally prevent credit card companies from overcharging small businesses like the Millers and others around the country. With every purchase paid for by credit card, they are charged, the Millers, over 2 percent. And as they have with individuals, the credit card companies have come up with ever more reasons and gimmicks to squeeze money out of the bottom line of these small businesses.

Though the store itself in Elmore is a powerful force in the lives of the citizens, the Millers are absolutely powerless against the credit card companies and big banks. That's why Kathy Miller is coming to Washington to support legislation to end these abuses and to add fairness and transparency to swipe fees.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an incredible debate that we have. It's long overdue. We have to have affordable, accessible health care for all our citizens, and we have to have it be affordable for our employers and our taxpayers. We don't have that now. You know, right now in 2009, health care spending eats up about 19 percent of every family's income. Under present trends, that would go up to 31 percent in 2019, and anybody who is working for a paycheck, a wage or a salary, has faced over and over again year in and year out that grim choice of accepting a very small raise--if they're lucky enough to get a raise--in exchange for hanging onto the health care benefits that they have.

So the real challenge of health care is to make it affordable and accessible for the people who have it, but for whom the quality of health care and the cost of health care is slipping beyond their reach.

Now, there are three elements to the health care bill: one is insurance reform, two is extension of coverage to the uninsured, and three is a public option. As my friend from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) mentioned, insurance reform is overdue. The insurance companies make their money, and a lot of it, not by paying claims, but oftentimes by rejecting claims. Not by covering everyone who needs coverage, like my friend from Colorado's daughter who has a preexisting condition, but by writing policies to exclude folks who have a preexisting condition or illness or by refusing to continue insurance for somebody that was covered but gets sick and then needs it.

You can't have a health insurance system that operates that way because at some point each and every one of us is going to need health care coverage. And if health care insurance companies that are supposedly getting paid to provide coverage reject us when we need it so they can pad their bottom line, it's good for them, but it's not sustainable for us.

So health insurance reforms are immensely important. Anybody who has had to use their health care coverage has probably run into the hassles that they've had to deal with, with the pages and pages of billing, with the disputes about whether a particular service is or is not provided, even though it was recommended by your physician; and anybody who's talked to their own physician about the frustrations in that office, all the back-office personnel that they have to have just to

process these claims, knows that it's a nightmare of confusion, incredible inefficiency and very, very expensive.

Now, the sad truth is that this system is as inefficient and frustrating for doctors as it is frustrating for fathers, mothers and families. It works great for the insurance companies. What we've seen with insurance companies is that they're making a lot of money. The head of Aetna one year made $24 million in 1 year. And for what? It's to process claims. The work is done by the medical providers, by the nurses, by the hospitals; and the insurance companies are processing claims. It's something that needs to be done.

But $24 million for the head of the company, where much of what they're doing is slicing and dicing who they'll insure in order to boost up those profits? We've got to change that. We have got to have a system where your health care dollar is paying for your health care needs, not for the $24 million salary of the head of Aetna.

You know, even in my own State of Vermont, which is very small, and we don't have these huge executive salaries, by and large, the head of Blue Cross/Blue Shield, who was there for 9 years, when he walked out the door, he left with $9 million. That's unbelievable in Vermont.

Our farmers are struggling to hang onto a way of life, our workers are working a second and third job to try to make ends meet. When they have to use health care, the can't afford the copay and deductible. Oftentimes they are pulling back from getting the care they need.

So one of the major elements of this health care reform is really cracking down on insurance company practices that, yes, work fine for them but are digging a deep hole for the American economy, families, and businesses. Health care reform is going to require that all insurers compete on a level playing field, that they offer policies regardless of preexisting condition, that they don't have a lifetime cap on what your benefits are if you get an illness that requires significant care, that they can't yank your insurance because you need it.

Then you're going to have insurance companies competing for your business on the basis of the service and the value, not on the basis of how cleverly they can write their policies to surprise you when you think you're going to get it. So insurance reform is a major component. Second is extending coverage to the uninsured. More and more folks are becoming uninsured. Obviously, if we can extend affordable coverage to them, it's very good for them. But, Mr. Speaker, it's very good for any of us who have coverage because it means about an $1,100 savings for each and every one of us.

Finally, is the public option. There has been a lot of debate about that, but what it's about very simply is extending choice to you and me so that if we want to select a public option insurance program that competes on a level playing field with the private insurance companies, we can. It also is not a cram-down for our providers. Our doctors, our hospitals, our medical care folks, they can decide yes or no to be in that public option. So this is a choice. It's adding a choice for us. It's adding a choice for our medical providers, and it's going to create some competition for the insurance companies who, in all candor, have been running roughshod over the American consumer and our small businesses for years.

So I thank my friend from Connecticut for bringing us together, and I yield back to you.

If the gentleman will yield, one of the things that I hear from a lot of Vermonters is that they're frustrated that in Vermont there are only two or three insurance plans that they can choose from. And a lot of times people say what they'd like to do is buy, or have the opportunity to buy insurance from out of State. And the reason that many States don't do that is that the private insurance companies, including some so-called nonprofits, by and large dominate their local market areas. So the frustration that many Vermonters have, very limited choice about what insurance they can buy, that's a frustration folks have in Texas, in Colorado, in New Hampshire, in Connecticut, all over the country.

Now, we regulate insurance with a set of rules that levels the playing field that applies to them and to the public option. So when you as a consumer purchase a policy, you can have some confidence that you actually are going to get coverage for your wife, for your daughter, for your husband. Then that will create the circumstances where we will have competition. And you know what? The insurance companies don't like competition, and they have been very good at restricting it. And then when you deny that choice and you deny competition, the prices, in fact, do go up. The market power of the insurance companies to boost prices, the pharmaceutical companies to boost prices beyond what the competition would allow if there were a freer market is costing the American people an awful lot of money.

So we add a level playing field, a new choice of a public option that's the choice of you from Colorado, me from Vermont. It's going to create competition that is, as many people know from their own experience, going to drive down costs and we hope improve quality, Mr. Perlmutter.

I thank the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important bill that is going to make a real difference in Vermont to about 130,000 seniors. That's the number of people who receive Social Security benefits in the State of Vermont, and 41 percent, Mr. Speaker--about 52,000 people--rely on Social Security for fully 90 percent of their income. They're going to get a zero increase in their cost of living, but on the other hand, they're going to get an increase in premiums which could be $110, $120 a month. That is a hammer to their finances for the month.

We have a bipartisan commitment to Social Security. The situation our seniors face is as a result of the recession, something over which they have no control but are very much affected by. This modest legislation is going to be a lifeline of support for seniors in Vermont, and my hope is that we will pass it on a strong bipartisan basis.

Mr. Etheridge, I thank you for your work. Mr. Miller, I thank you for your work.

I am in strong support of this amendment. The bill is terrific because what it does is take taxpayer assistance and give it to kids and parents rather than to big bailed-out banks.

Secondly, what this amendment does is allow those institutions like the Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, a nonprofit dedicated to getting kids to go to college, to help them navigate the process of financing college and then to contend with the challenges of repaying the loan. It has had an incredible success rate. So this benefit gives the benefit to those local institutions that are nonprofit, student- centered, parent-centered, family-centered, to be able to continue to do that work at the local level.

Thank you for your leadership on this, Mr. Etheridge. It will make a big difference for folks in Vermont.

Mr. Speaker, all of us had the opportunity to spend 5 weeks at home, listening to our constituents. And in Vermont, when I arrived home, such as with many of you, people were very fearful about a health care bill, a health care bill that was going to establish death panels, a health care bill where the government was going to select your doctor, a health care bill that would have as its primary beneficiaries illegal immigrants.

Of course, that is not a health care bill that anyone in this body is considering. But as we proceeded and pushed back on the misinformation, it became increasingly clear that the health care bill President Obama has outlined, which has been passed by three committees in this House to regulate insurance companies so that they offer real insurance, to extend coverage to 37 million Americans--something good for them but also for those of us with insurance, to reduce our cost shift premium of $1,100, and a public option to provide competition and choice--that is a health care bill that Americans support, and we must pass.

I thank the gentleman from South Carolina, and I thank my colleagues on the other side.

You know, Mr. Speaker, sometimes the American people don't pay attention to an awful lot of what we say here. And frequently, when they don't, they're right. If this debate is really about accusations and counteraccusations about who's responsible, we're not going to get anywhere.

The American people know we have to pay our bills. We have to, as a government, just like they have to do individually. And we have some honest debates about what should be our priorities.

I've been an admirer of the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan) in his persistence in talking about fiscal responsibility. I disagree with the gentleman from Wisconsin that the way to fiscal prosperity is by radical reduction of taxes for very wealthy people. That's a fair and honest debate.

On our side, there are some folks who think that the worthiness of the goal of health care for all Americans is its own justification and a way to pay for it. I disagree with that. If it is a worthy goal, we have to turn aspiration into affordable reality by paying for it.

And on the health care bill, which is a major priority for President Obama and for Members of Congress, we are going to bring to the floor a health care bill that is paid for and does not add to the budget deficit.

One of the major reasons that we should do this legislation is so that there is discipline on those of us who are advocating, either for tax cuts, because they believe that will be good for the economy, or for reform in health care, so that before we spend an extra dollar of our taxpayer money, we kick the tires of the system that we're affecting, like health care.

And we have come to the conclusion, on our side, that to achieve one of our greatest goals, and that is health care for every single American, that we've got to kick the tires of the health care system and kick them hard to squeeze out savings that we can.

This legislation, where we're accepting the burden of responsibility to pay for those programs we think are absolutely essential to the welfare of the American people, that we have the obligation of paying for it. And before we even look at taxes, we want to look at how we're wasting money. A dollar saved by cutting down waste is a dollar avoided in taxes.

So this legislation, whatever it is characterized, as a machine for spending, which, frankly, is absurd, is a machine for responsibility. And whether or not our colleagues want to characterize this politically or not, there is a reason, on our side, that we believe fiscal responsibility is a burden we should accept, and we will, with this legislation.

I thank the Budget Committee for its leadership on this.

Mr. Speaker, I'm here, too, to join in advocacy for the PAYGO legislation that is going to come before the House floor this week. PAYGO is what it sounds like. If we have a new program, we have to find a way to pay for it, either through cuts or revenues. If we have a proposed tax cut, we have to find a way to pay for it, either in a reduction in programs elsewhere or a shifting of priorities and spending.

It is a very simple, elemental approach. If you're going to buy something, you have to pay for it. Families know it, in their family budgets, they have to do it all of the time. And government really is no different. It is no different because in the end, if we borrow money, at some point we are going to have to pay it back. We have gotten into a habit in this Congress of not paying for things, in some cases, expenditure programs, and in other cases tax cuts.

We have had some back and forth this morning with our friends on the other side of the aisle, and without getting into the blame game, which doesn't get us anywhere, there is an irrefutable fact, and that is that in the past 8 years with the tax cuts, with Medicare part D that was not funded, with a war in Iraq and a war in Afghanistan on the credit card, we have gone from the largest surplus in the history of this country to the largest deficit in the history of this country.

What it means is that our kids and our grandkids are the ones who are going to have to pick up the tab. Aside from the fact that that is obviously unfair and none of us wants to pass the burden of debt for our spending on to others, it really is going to restrict what it is that generation can do to meet its own challenges to educate its kids, to provide health care to its kids and themselves and to provide for the national defense.

We have the capacity to impose on ourselves the same rule that families have to impose on themselves every month when they sit around the kitchen table and go over their checkbook and try to figure out how, at the end of the month, they are going to make the checkbook balance. And that is to accept the burden of the discipline of paying for our tax cut proposal or our spending proposal when we make the proposal.

Voters know that. They want fiscal responsibility. In fact, their concern about the deficit rightly is at the top of their agenda. We have had extraordinary circumstances here that have required extraordinary actions with the economy going off the cliff, with the stimulus spending and with the legacy of a war in Iraq and Afghanistan on the credit card.

We have restored truth in budgeting so that those two things, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, are now on the budget. So it is painful because we are seeing in black and white what the cost of those enterprises are, and we know that we are going to have to pay for them. We are not trying to hide it. We are being direct.

The American people are entitled to that candor, and they are entitled to have us respond by making certain that we, going forward, adopt pay-as-you-go principles. It is not just good in theory, and it is not just good for conservatives or liberals. It is good for everybody.

I'm a big supporter, I think most of us are, that in this country we achieve the goal of having all of our citizens covered by health care. Every citizen should be covered and have access to health insurance. Every citizen should help pay for it. And if you lose your job, you shouldn't lose your health care. The President has acknowledged that as worthy as that goal is, we must pay for it. And the health care bill that we are now considering has to be paid for. What a difference from what happened with the prescription drug program that was largely put on the credit card and it is not able to sustain itself or pay for itself.

One of the reasons it is so important to have PAYGO is that it imposes the discipline on us to kick the tires of a program. Health care is a great example. We need it. We have good health care in this country. But the cost is going up at two or three times the rate of inflation, two or three times the rate of profit growth, two or three times the rate of wage growth. So people are falling behind. The middle class is getting squeezed. They are facing higher co-pays and deductibles. By adopting PAYGO, it is forcing us to look at our delivery system and ask yourselves how can we reform the delivery of health care to make it more efficient and provide more value for less money?

In fact, there are examples after examples of how we have, in many cases, excess utilization. So this bill is going to be helpful to all of us. And it is very important that we pass this legislation.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Mr. Thompson. It is a pleasure to work with you on this important legislation, on this important resolution.

Mr. Speaker, as my friend and colleague from Connecticut (Mr. Courtney) said, our dairy farms face a crisis they've never ever seen. The crisis they face is not of their own making. Farmers have to live with the uncertainty of nature. They have to live with the uncertainty of a collapse of an export market. That's what happened when there was the melamine scare in China. They have to live with the uncertainty of an economy where prices in the purchasing of cheese in secondary, non- fluid milk products have come down with the recession. Yet the importance of our having local agricultural activities in all of our districts has never been more important.

People want and need local agriculture. In my State, it's dairy. That's the backbone of our agricultural industry. In your State, it may be wheat; it may be potatoes. In States across the country where there is local agriculture, it serves not just the needs of our farmers who make a very good, a very decent and a very honest living from working the land; it serves the health needs of our citizens.

It serves the environmental needs of our countryside. The farmers are the custodians of our landscape. That's certainly true in Vermont, which is to the benefit of all of us. It is certainly to the benefit of our tourism industry.

Mr. Speaker, the crisis that the farmers face right now, particularly in dairy, where there's that disparity between what it costs them to produce milk and what they're being paid, is not survivable unless we do two things:

One, provide short-term relief. We must find a way to increase the milk support payments on a temporary basis to help them get through the fall. If we fail to do that, they will fail themselves, and that would be a tragedy, because these farms, once gone, are gone forever and, with it, the environmental values, the land values, and the benefit to all of us to have local food production.

The average distance of farm to table for food products that we eat is about 1,500 miles. Think about the energy consumption that we're wasting and what we can preserve if we keep production local.

The second thing we have to do is what we have known since the era of the Depression, and that is we have to have stable pricing and adjustments so that farmers can weather the ups and downs in the cycle over which they have no control.

Now, I want to remind folks of something Mr. Courtney said when we were before Mr. Scott's committee. We bailed out the financial industry with

billions and billions of dollars, and the reason was that they were too big to fail. It was not because they had been responsible and had done everything within their power to avoid the catastrophe. In fact, they caused the catastrophe.

Yet because they were too big to fail, in order to mitigate the impact on innocent people, the taxpayers came to the rescue.

Now, is it the case that with our farmers, they are too small to matter? What kind of Congress is it if that's the verdict that we come to when it comes to our farmers who, through no fault of their own-- unlike Wall Street--who through no fault of their own find themselves in a real jam.

Mr. Speaker, we have to take extraordinary action because this is an extraordinary time, and it's deserved because these are extraordinary people. This resolution is allowing us to focus attention where it needs to be on some of the best people among us in this country--and that's our dairy farmers, the folks would work the land, day in and day out, year in and year out, generation to generation.

We appreciate the gentlewoman's hard work on the Agriculture appropriations spending bill. As you know, dairy farmers are currently being paid $11 per hundredweight on milk that costs them $18 per hundredweight to produce. This upside-down pay scale is absolutely unsustainable. It has already forced dozens of Vermont farmers out of business.

We unsuccessfully offered an amendment to the bill to raise the payment rates on the Milk Income Loss Contract program from 45 percent to 79 percent. While the MILC program isn't perfect, it is really a way to put money back in the pocket of farmers.

We appreciate your support, and we believe that you agree that Congress must take action to help our struggling dairy farmers and we cannot wait for more farms to go out of business.

I thank the chairwoman and look forward to continuing to work with her and my colleague from Connecticut.

I thank my colleague.

Madam Speaker, a confident nation acknowledges the challenges it faces. It doesn't ignore them. A confident people, when faced with the challenge, rolls up their sleeves and addresses the problems before them.

Madam Speaker, today, Congress has two questions. The first is will it acknowledge the challenge of global warming that it is real, that it is urgent, and that demands attention now.

And second, will Congress, by this first step of passing this legislation, unleash the power of America to take that step towards American energy independence; to unleash the brilliance of our scientists and engineers to develop alternative and renewable energy; to unleash the competitiveness of our entrepreneurs to bring to market energy-saving devices and to create jobs in America; the frugality and thriftiness of our homeowners and business owners who have buildings to be able to retrofit and make them more energy efficient and save money; the skills of our plumbers, masons, electricians and carpenters to go to work making our buildings more energy independent.

Madam Speaker, every generation faces its challenge, and what we have seen across America is that young people have taken this on, and our question is whether we are going to----

The question we face as Congress is simply this: Will we put to

work those young Americans, those scientists, those entrepreneurs, and allow them to make America energy independent?

The questions we face can be solved. We have to give permission and authority for people to act.

Thank you, Mr. Waxman.

Madam Speaker, although some dispute it, there is little doubt that oil is a finite resource and we are at or near peak oil, that global warming is real, that the threat to our economy is immediate and that the need to act is urgent.

And while our friends on the other side raise questions about how our actions will affect jobs and utility bills, those very legitimate concerns have been exhaustively addressed in this legislation.

But what they fail to acknowledge is that the cost of inaction is great in lost opportunity for jobs, a cleaner environment and a stronger economy. Many of the new jobs in Vermont and around the country are related to the new clean-energy economy.

Madam Speaker, today Congress will make a very fundamental decision. Will America confidently and directly declare a policy of American energy independence? Will it unleash the talents of our scientists and engineers, empower our entrepreneurs and manufacturers? Will it put to work our farmers, carpenters, masons, electricians and plumbers through efficiency, through renewable energy and through the new technology for coal?

The great decisions a nation makes, Madam Speaker, are always about facing our problems, not retreating from them, and about the conquest of hope over fear.

I first wanted to thank Chairman Waxman, Chairman Markey, and the Energy and Commerce Committee staff for their tremendous work and leadership on this legislation. To bring to the floor the first ever bill to address our global warming crisis was no small feat, and while we would all like to see changes in this bill, it represents the best step forward toward charting a new energy future for our country.

If civil rights was the issue of my generation, addressing climate change is the issue of today's. The young people and students across this country deserve great credit for providing the energy--renewable, of course--behind this historic legislation. They have the most at stake; they will inherit this planet and the economy we leave them. Their future must be addressed now.

Earlier this year when we first began taking testimony on this legislation, I had the opportunity to ask executives of some of the world's largest companies whether Congressional inaction for addressing climate change threatened their bottom line, their viability, and our economy. One by one, they each responded: ``yes . . . yes . . . yes.'' These were our nation's economic leaders unanimously recognizing the urgent need for a new, post-carbon economy.

The scientific facts are clear: global warming is real, it is urgent and it threatens our economy, our national security, and our way of life if unaddressed. We must tackle this challenge squarely, like the confident nation that we are.

Addressing this challenge presents us with opportunity--an opportunity to create new, green jobs and build a stronger economy; an opportunity to make our country more secure and energy independent; and an opportunity to save on electric bills at home and turn better profits at the workplace.

This legislation sets us toward the bright future of a post-carbon economy. If we don't make this commitment now, nations like Japan, Germany, Brazil--countries around the world will outpace us and leave us far behind.

In this legislation, we take the bold steps necessary--with a firm cap on carbon pollution, new renewable energy and energy efficiency standards, and investments in renewable energy development. But we also make policy changes throughout our energy economy that will help hard working Americans get and stay ahead.

We create a national Certified Clean Stove Program, building on Vermont's success to encourage those who heat their homes with wood stoves to install cleaner-burning stoves.

We establish the nation's first energy efficiency improvement target.

Among many consumer protection previsions, but critical for states like Vermont, we establish consumer rebates and weatherization efficiency investments to residents in states that rely upon home heating oil.

And we establish The Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) Program to provide billions of dollars in financial incentives to homeowners and business owners to encourage them to retrofit the nation's existing buildings, which account for 10 percent of global carbon emissions. This program, supported by the Home Builders, Realtors, NRDC and others, will create thousands of jobs and help homeowners and business owners save on energy bills.

At less than the cost of a postage stamp a day, through this bold legislation we will make our nation more secure, create a new, more efficiency, more productive, more prosperous energy future.

When President Kennedy said we would put a man on the moon, many thought it wasn't possible. We did it. Today, we take the bold and necessary step to address one of the most pressing and urgent challenges in generations.

As the author of the provisions of this bill that creates the Retrofit for Energy and Environmental Performance (REEP) Program Act, it is my goal to ensure the greatest possible participation in efforts to reduce energy consumption in residential and commercial buildings.

It has come to my attention that real estate investment trusts (REITs) may be reluctant to participate in this program as it is currently crafted. They are concerned that they may lose their REIT status unless the REEP grants are considered qualifying assets that generate qualifying income for the purposes of the REIT income and asset tests.

Listed REITs own and manage over 6 billion square feet of commercial real estate. This is a significant amount of property that, if retrofitted, could yield significant energy savings.

Therefore it is my hope that as this bill moves through the legislative process we will include the necessary clarifications to ensure that REITs will be able to fully participate in the REEP program.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor today to offer a warm welcome home to a soldier who sacrificed for his country and to thank all of those who are working to make his return home a successful one. Private First Class Andrew Parker enlisted in the United States Army after graduating from Lamoille Union High School in 2007. On November 20, 2008, his MRAP vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb near Kandahar, Afghanistan. Andrew suffered injuries that left him paralyzed from the chest down.

During the months that Andrew spent recovering in DOD and VA hospitals, his neighbors and friends in Vermont worked together to complete an incredible project to modify his home to make it accessible to him upon his return. His kindergarten teacher, the Hyde Park VFW and countless other businesses, organizations and individuals donated time, money and labor to make it possible for Andrew to return home to a new addition to his home, a living room, a bedroom, a bath and a bay for his new van.

Now Andrew will have the resources he needs to focus on rebuilding his strength as he works to fulfill his new dream of becoming a teacher. He should know that all Vermonters and all Americans are with him in spirit as he continues on his courageous journey.