Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the B-1 bomber.

This is a very simple amendment. Basically, it just says it prevents any funds in this bill from being used to retire the B-1 bombers during the coming fiscal year.

Currently, as you know, about 163 planes are in our bomber fleet, which is about 3 percent of our total fleet. Currently, we are going through an analysis of what our bomber fleet is going

to look like in the future, and part of that is from the START Treaty. What we feel is appropriate is for us to not look at reductions in the bomber fleet on a piecemeal basis, but to look at it as a total picture once we have done the analysis and seen how many of the planes will not be needed for nuclear capability moving forward.

The B-1 is kind of an interesting plane. It doesn't get a lot of attention, but what it does is it works 24-7 and has in the theaters that we're involved in for a number of years. In fact, it has been our number one bomber of choice for a number of years and until recently was the only bomber seen in active duty.

I am pleased to be supported in this effort by Congressman Thornberry, who is vice chairman of the Armed Services Committee, as well as my colleague, Mr. Conaway.

At this time, I would like to yield to one of the cosponsors of this amendment, the gentlewoman from South Dakota (Mrs. Noem).

I yield to the distinguished chairman.

I thank the chairman, and I urge our colleagues to support a strong national defense and making sure that we have the appropriate number of bombers, and to vote in favor of the Neugebauer amendment.

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

Would the gentleman yield?

I agree with the gentleman. And I think that our bomber fleet is extremely important, the B-1, the B-2, and obviously the B-52s. And as the gentleman knows, as we do not have a replacement bomber in the works at this particular point in time and until such time as we develop that, I think it's extremely important that we be strategic about what level we maintain our current fleet until we know what the replacement is going to be. And I agree with the gentleman.

Offered By: Mr. Neugebauer

Amendment No. 89: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman.

I rise today to honor a fallen soldier from the United States Army. Sergeant Chris Davis of Lubbock, Texas, was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Georgia. He joined the Army in September of 1999 and proudly served four tours in Iraq, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2007. On June 23, 2007, while deployed in Iraq, Sergeant Davis was killed in action when his unit was attacked by insurgents using improvised explosive devices and small arms. He was only 35 years old.

The bill currently under consideration, H.R. 1632, would designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 5014 Gary Avenue in Lubbock, Texas, as the Sergeant Chris Davis Post Office. I believe it is important for Congress to honor the sacrifice of this soldier and his family, and I urge my colleagues to support this measure.

Chris was born October 25, 1971. He grew up in Lubbock, Texas, and graduated from Estacado High School. He later enlisted in the Army in 1999. Before enlisting, Chris was a welder in a machine shop.

Sergeant Davis wanted to serve his country from a very young age. According to his father, Ray Davis, he said that while Chris was in school, he expressed a desire to join the Army. His family remembers that he used to say, I want to fight for my country. I want to do something for my country and this is what I will do. And he said, So if something happens, don't be mad at anyone.

Chris earned quite a few awards during his honorable service to our country: one Army Commendation Medal, three Army Achievement Medals, one Presidential Unit Citation, one Good Conduct Medal, one National Defense Service Medal, one Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal, one Southwest Asia Service Medal, one Iraqi Campaign Medal, one Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal, and one Global War on Terrorism Service Medal.

Sergeant Davis will be remembered as a valiant soldier and a wonderful son, father, husband, and brother. He loved his family and was known to always place others before himself. His sister Margaret remembers that Chris loved to have barbecues just for the opportunity to give him time to spend time with his family. He was known to make people laugh. He had the knack for cheering up anyone around him who was having a bad day. Chris was proud to be an American, and he bravely served his Nation that he loved.

Chris is survived by his wife, Debbie; his daughter, Taylor; his son, Zachary; his parents, Raymond and Herminia; and nine siblings, who I am sure are watching today.

On behalf of the United States Congress, we thank you for your sacrifice. As I speak these words, I'm reminded of the words Abraham Lincoln used in his famous letter to Mrs. Bixby, the mother of five sons who were killed during the Civil War:

``I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.'' Abraham Lincoln, November 21, 1864.

Mr. Speaker, with the 4-year anniversary of Sergeant Davis' death just a few days away, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 1632, in honor of Sergeant Chris Davis, and designate the facility of the United States Postal Service located at 5014 Gary Avenue in Lubbock, Texas, as the Sergeant Chris Davis Post Office.

I move to strike the last word.

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

American farmers and ranchers are citizens, too. I represent West Texas District 19 in Texas; 29,000 square miles, 27 counties, made up of a lot of farmers and ranchers and farm families and ranch families. They're concerned about the deficit as well. They're concerned about the growing debt and the legacy that that will leave for our children and our grandchildren. They're willing to step up and take their share of the burden of being able to get our country headed back on the right track again. In fact, that process started in the 2008 farm bill, where a lot of these farm programs were reduced. And for the last few years, for example, countercyclical payments have been nearly nil in many of those commodities because the program was operating the way it was designed.

So I appreciate my colleague's efforts to be a budget hawk and in many ways and at many times I have supported a lot of his amendments and ideas, but today I come to the floor saying that this is not the place to write the farm bill; that we have that process coming up next year. Farm families are stepping up in this particular appropriation bill. As the chairman so appropriately pointed out, major cuts to agricultural programs occur in the bill that we're considering today.

So I'm going to urge my colleagues, let's write the farm bill when it's time to write the farm bill. Let's put together programs that are good for production agriculture. I would remind a lot of folks that when we look at this farm bill, a lot of people don't understand all of the things that are in this. And it's called a farm bill, ag appropriation bill. But quite honestly, a majority of this bill is about food stamps, it's about nutrition programs, and a very smaller percentage of this bill really has anything to do with production agriculture. And I think one of the things that we have to be extremely careful about here, and that's the reason we need to get this right and that's the reason we need to do it in regular order, is today America is dependent on 70 percent of its oil in this country. In other words, every day we get up, 70 percent of our oil has to be imported in this country. And just recently, the United States of America, half of its credit is due to foreign countries.

And so today we are importing oil. Today, we have to import money to finance our deficits. And what we want to be extremely careful about is that in the future Americans don't have to wake up and determine who's going to feed them because we have eliminated the farm industry in this country. And so I think that's the reason it's important to do this carefully. It's important to do it right. And I look forward as a member of the Ag Committee, as we move into 2012, sitting down with my colleagues and writing farm policy that will be good for America, be good for our budget long term, and that's the appropriate time to do that. So I'm going to urge my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Chairman McKeon, for allowing me to speak today.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in support of the B-1 bomber. My district, the 19th Congressional District of Texas, is home to 5,000 military and 1,000 civilian personnel at Dyess Air Force Base, located in Abilene, Texas. The Dyess houses, among other missions, the 7th Bomb Wing, representing 36 of the 66 remaining B-1 Lancer bombers.

As I testified before the Armed Services Committee last month, I am concerned about the proposed cuts to the B-1 fleet. Let me tell you why. Since 2001, the B-1 has flown over 70 percent of the bomber combat missions, while representing only 40 percent of the bomber fleet. Before combat in Libya, the B-1 bomber was the only bomber to be used in combat since May of 2006, and was used heavily at that. In fact, the B-1 is in the air, supporting troops deployed to the Middle East, almost every day.

The B-1 has flown over 8,000 sorties for the past several years, and it has logged over 93,000 hours of operation over Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade. Last year alone, it flew 1,253 missions and dropped 741 bombs. By any measure, the B-1 is the backbone of the bomber fleet.

I am very pleased that the committee has decided to change the recommendation of the administration. And I look forward to working with the chairman to make sure that America's bomber fleet is at the cutting edge in the future. We don't have a replacement for the B-1; and it's important until such time we get a replacement bomber that we make sure that we maintain the fleet that we have today, because particularly the B-1 is one of our most used weapons systems currently in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I look forward to working with the chairman and the committee as we make sure that America's security is never compromised.

Mr. Speaker, Betty Jean Verett Pepper was born on April 28, 1931, in Crosby County, Texas, to Charley and Maggie (Fenoglio) Verett. She was the youngest of the family's nine children who were raised working on the family farm. Betty Jean graduated from Ralls High School and went on to graduate from Texas Technological College in Lubbock, Texas, in 1952.

At Texas Tech she met Herbert Leslie Pepper and they married in 1953. Leslie and Jean moved to the San Antonio area where their three sons were born and raised, also working on the family farm and in agriculture-related businesses.

Now back in Lubbock and known as Mama Jean to her own family and the expanded Verett families, she not only remembers the birthdays, anniversaries and other special occasions of this group, but personally calls each one on those special days.

That is why we want to take this opportunity to remember her 80th birthday on April 28, 2011, and to wish her many more joyous celebrations with her sons, six grandchildren and three great- grandchildren.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

I want to thank Chairman Mica, Chairman Hall, and Congressman Graves for their support of this amendment. I appreciate the work of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee and of various stakeholder groups that have helped throughout this amendment process.

Mr. Chairman, in recent years, our lives and our world have changed. We have a much more digital world today, and we have a lot more towers that provide us cell service and Internet service. We have the new industry of wind energy that is basically taking over a big part of my district. So, over the countryside, the landscape has changed. We have a lot of new towers, windmills, wind turbines, and all sorts of things that are beneficial to our economy but that also provide a certain amount of hazard for those people in the aviation industry.

In recent years, we've had a number of fatalities due to low-flying aviators who didn't know the existence of one of these obstacles, so this amendment really does a commonsense thing: It would direct the FAA to conduct a study of how we can put together a database of where these new obstacles are, giving their GPS locations and allowing people who are going to be flying in that area or utilizing that area to access that information. For planning purposes, it would also provide an opportunity for new infrastructure in those areas.

So we really think that this is a very commonsense amendment, provides for safety, and that this study hopefully will yield some very positive results that will be beneficial to the aviation industry.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica).

It is also my pleasure now to yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Farenthold).

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the chairman of the House Small Business Committee, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves).

I just would close by saying this is a very commonsense amendment. I think it uses the technology of today to bring air safety to our country, and I would encourage all Members to support this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

First of all, I commend the gentleman from Texas for his good amendment. I think it is interesting that we keep talking about the country, and certainly that is important and the taxpayers are important. The other flaw in this program is that it encourages these people to get further in debt. And quite honestly, the level of debt they have is their primary problem. It is the same mentality that has kind of gotten our country in the jam it is in where we will have to have a vote here in a few weeks about raising the debt ceiling. It is the reason a lot of individuals and companies and governments around the world are overleveraged.

So what we are saying is the way to fix someone's problem that has too much debt is for them to take on more debt. It is absurd to think that is good for these borrowers.

I would like to yield to my good friend from Texas (Mr. Canseco).

Madam Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

Well, as the ranking member knows, it has been billed as a loan program, but what we're saying is that it is, in fact, a grant program.

Will the gentleman yield?

I think one of the things that points out how terrible this program is----

I have a question for the gentleman: Do you think this is a loan program or a grant program? Which do you think it is?

It's a question of----

Will the gentleman again yield?

Does the gentleman think that the language in the legislation as it is written now represents it as a loan or as a grant?

Madam Chair, I offer an amendment as the designee of the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen).

Thank you, Madam Chairman.

I offer this on behalf of my good friend from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen). It is a good amendment. It would add military servicemembers and veterans who have service-related injuries, as well as survivors and dependents of such individuals, to be included in the study in this bill.

These families often face new hardships. They will likely need modifications to their houses to help them get around, especially if the servicemembers are now disabled. There may be significant changes in their ability to move around and in the skills they are able to perform. This will ultimately have a significant impact on their livelihoods.

It is my hope that we can gain a better understanding of how we can best provide for the families of those who have served our country and who have paid the ultimate price.

With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Will the gentleman yield?

I think the bill says that it's a loan, so as soon as that individual takes an advance in this program, it becomes the liability of that individual. Now, there are certain ways in this bill, either from forfeiture or through some of the provisions, where that indebtedness is forgiven; but I will tell you that the proper accounting is that the day that the individual payment is made on his behalf it becomes the liability of that individual.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

I want to read a portion of this amendment filed by the gentlewoman from California. It says, ``The Emergency Mortgage Relief Program, which would have provided unemployed homeowners with low interest rate loans to assist them in paying their mortgage, has been terminated. If you are unemployed and concerned about not being able to pay your mortgage, please contact your Member of Congress.''

You see, that's what is so confusing about the arguments by my colleagues on the other side. They can't decide if this is a loan or a grant--one time it's a loan, one time it's a grant--but, in fact, the program says it's a loan. In fact, HUD, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the title of their rule is Emergency Homeowners Loan Program.

The other reason I rise in opposition to this is that we're terminating a program that has had zero customers. So it seems ambiguous here to have the Federal Government go through a process here where we're going to notify homeowners of a program that never was instituted, never was used, that it does not exist anymore. That seems a little wasteful and I think in many ways could be misleading. Obviously, when you look at the way that the program is structured, it becomes a grant program. And so we're misrepresenting that in the sense that, well, it says it's a loan, but it's really not a loan. It's a grant.

And so I think this is something that is one of the things that the American taxpayers are really kind of tired of is the government out there misrepresenting or creating confusion to homeowners that may be seeking assistance. So I would just say that at this particular time this is not necessary and that we should not put a confusing piece of information out there on the Web site.

I yield to the gentleman from Michigan.

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman, and I think he makes a great point. In fact, it is a program that has not had an application, has not been promulgated. And so there is a reason why we feel like this is not necessary, and I encourage my colleagues to vote against this amendment.

Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, this discussion we have been having for the last 3 or 4 days is really about what the American people said on November 2. They said that these huge deficits are unacceptable. The fact is that we're going to run a $1.6 trillion deficit this year and our debt is almost $14.1 trillion. Projections are that if we continue on this pace, that will double in the next 10 years.

Mr. Chairman, the American people said this is unacceptable. And so what are the American people doing in their own lives at home? Well, they're addressing needs versus wants. And what they're saying is there are some things that they need, and then there's some things that they want. But what they understand in these tough economic times, where we have a number of our American citizens unemployed, is that a lot of people are having to prioritize how they spend. And maybe there's a fence in the backyard that needs replacing, or maybe the deck in the backyard needs new boards, but they're postponing those.

And so basically this is a very simple amendment. Basically, the White House has two accounts: one for basically daily maintenance. That account has $13 million, and this amendment does not address that account. But as they do in Washington, do you know what happens if you want to get more money? You add more accounts, and you just rename them. And there is another account called renovations and upgrades. And so what we're saying is that there's $2 million worth of upgrades that the White House would like to do. It includes things like doing a plumbing survey and some things like computer system upgrades. We think that possibly those are items that can wait until our economy gets rolling again, until we quit having these record deficits.

And so it is a very simple amendment, Mr. Chairman. We just think that the White House can postpone those expenses, things that they would like but not necessarily need. This will still allow the White House to mow the yard, do the painting, do the maintenance at the White House; but it says these capital expenditures of over $2 million should be postponed for another year or two until we get our deficit spending down.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Well, I would say to the gentlewoman that there is ample money for maintenance involved in the White House. As I said, in section 1519, there is $13 million available for electrical issues, for painting issues, for maintenance issues.

I think what we are saying, and I would be glad to work with the gentlewoman in the conference report if she wants to be more specific, but the three projects that this administration requested actually totaled $2 million: $1.5 million for an electrical system, computer system upgrades of $255,000 and a plumbing system survey. This is a set of drawings for $250,000.

I would submit to you that the American people are making some pretty tough choices and that certainly the White House is a treasure of this country; but, Mr. Chairman, so are our children and our grandchildren a treasure. And if we don't start making some tough choices here, then we are not going to have a future for our children, which should be one of our more treasured assets.

I would be glad to work with the gentlewoman in a conference report. But this amendment has merits because basically it says to the President--and I think the President would agree--you know what, if other American families are not making improvements to their house right now that aren't necessarily necessary this year, I don't think the President would want his either.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I kind of resent the insinuation that my amendment is addressed to this President. It's not addressed to this President. It's addressed to this country, and by the way, I was over at the White House during the White House Christmas party. The White House looked like it was in pretty good shape, and I can attest that the plumbing was actually working as well.

But what I would say, Mr. Chairman, is there's a lot of people that would want to come to this floor tonight and make excuses why we can't begin to cut spending in this country. You know what--the American people are tired of our excuses. This is a good amendment. There's been a lot of good amendments. Yes, these are difficult choices, but these are the kind of choices that we're going to have to make if we're going to ensure that our American families have a future, that we get this economy back going, that we create jobs, and we do not leave a legacy of debt for our children and our grandchildren

With that, Mr. Chairman, I urge passage of it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the Holt amendment.

In listening to the banter that we've been hearing back and forth, you would think that we were trying to eliminate the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but, in fact, what we're trying to do is limit it.

One of the things, if you look at the history of this entity, is that it's the typical answer in Washington. When we have other regulators that aren't doing their job, the solution always is let's throw more regulation, more regulators, and more money at the problem.

And so what did we do with this new bureau? Well, we said--guess what?--we're going to throw $700 million at this new agency. We're going to take $500 million out of the Fed and we're going to give them the ability to come and ask for another $200 million.

Now, what is going on right now is that we don't even have a Director at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, yet they are standing up a new organization. So basically what we have from this administration is another czar. I don't know how many czars that they have over there, what the latest count is. But here we are, an agency that has the authority to spend millions of dollars, yet we can't even get one of the most egregious parts of this right.

And it was very clever by the other side. They realized in the last days of the 111th Congress that there was possibly going to be a change in November. They tucked this entity over into the Fed, trying to be able to limit Congress' ability to have oversight over this organization. So I want to applaud the Appropriations Committee for figuring out a way to bring some accountability to this organization.

Now, what is at play right now is that this entity in August received $18.4 million. In December they received $14.37 million. And if you annualize that rate, they are going to need less than $65 million, and yet what we're saying is Republicans want to limit that to $80 million. The Holt amendment wants to increase that another $63 million.

Madam Chair, what is exactly wrong and the reason we've been having these hours and hours and hours of debate is the American people spoke very clearly last November. They are tired of Big Government. They are tired of government trying to make all of their decisions. And what this new entity is going to do is it is going to hurt consumers in that it is going to drive the cost of consumer credit up for many Americans. Some of the financial services that they have been able to enjoy, this new czar will have the ability to say that those new products cannot be offered anymore.

So bringing this kind of accountability into this process is a very positive thing. It was a mistake to put this entity into the Fed to begin with. It's a mistake to let this administration continue to stand up this organization without going through the appropriate constitutional requirement that this person be confirmed by the United States Senate. It's an egregious use of the Executive power. And one of the things that we hope that the President will do very quickly is nominate someone to oversee this organization.

Basically, we have people that haven't been nominated or confirmed by the Senate making very big decisions, spending millions of dollars over here, standing up an entity, quite honestly, that will not, in fact, do what a lot of the folks in this building think this entity is going to do, and that's provide consumer protection. What this entity is going to do is provide more cost to consumers.

With that, I urge defeat of this amendment.

Offered By: Mr. Neugebauer

Amendment No. 151: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Neugebauer

Amendment No. 150: Page 229, line 6, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $2,005,000)''.

Page 359, line 10, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $2,005,000)''.

Madam Speaker, I wish I didn't have to rise today in support of this resolution because it was a sad day for America last Saturday.

But let me say this: On behalf of the people of the 19th Congressional District, whom I represent, we send our heartfelt condolences to the families and the friends and the loved ones of those who were killed in this senseless attack.

We also offer our prayers for Gabby and the others who are making recovery from this act as well. You know, as I read through this resolution, and as many of you like I have been watching TV, Saturday was a bad day. It was a horrible day for America. Dana and I were in the grocery store shopping when I got the notice that my friend Gabby, our colleague Gabby, had been shot, along with others. It was terrible. As we have gotten an opportunity to watch over the last few days, what we learned is that out of this horrific act, we saw some of the things that make America great. We saw people tackle the attacker. We saw people offer assistance to Gabby and others. We saw a man shield his wife from the attacker. We saw the first responders do remarkable work in getting people to the hospital in what would be record time. We saw so many of the good things about America at a time when we saw one of the bad things.

You know, as I was walking over here, I was thinking about Wednesday, I guess a week ago today, coming down on the elevator with Mark and Gabby and her parents. We had a wonderful visit. I have had an opportunity to serve on the Science Committee with Gabby. I went to lunch with her. She has a little interest in space, in case you didn't know it. And how sometimes we take for granted our friends and acquaintances and life itself, and how in just a moment life can change.

So today we offer this resolution to recognize some good things about our country, to wish our good friend Gabby a complete recovery and to come back here, and we offer our thoughts and prayers for our country. God bless America.

Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 584, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. Speaker, today is December 1, just 25 days until Christmas, but the American people have Christmas on their mind right now. In fact, they sent a list of some of the things that they do and do not want on November 2 to this administration and to this body. They said we want jobs, not more taxes. They said we want jobs, not more spending and deficits. We want jobs, not more Big Government.

If we want to make sure that the American people have a very merry Christmas, let's pass H.R. 4676, which I introduced, which brings taxpayers certainty and gives every American taxpayer tax relief that they both deserve and need.

Let's give the American people a merry Christmas. Let's do the right thing for the American people. Let's do the right thing for the future of our children and our grandchildren. Let's get to work and quit naming post offices in this country and go to work for the American people.