Floor Statements

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

I rise in opposition to this bill. Apparently, Mr. Chairman, the Republican majority believes that the greatest threat that Americans face from hydraulic fracturing today is too many regulations. They don't seem to be concerned about the danger posed to our drinking water supplies or the impacts of industrialization on our rural landscapes or the increased risk of earthquakes from wastewater injection or the emissions of methane or other noxious chemicals into the air or the identity of the mystery chemicals being pumped underground nor the disposal of waste safely. Americans are concerned about these things, and so should we be.

The House Democrats are trying to do something about that. My colleagues and I have introduced an entire series of bills designed to address the very real impacts that fracking has on American communities: the BREATHE Act, by Mr. Polis; the SHARED Act, by Ms. Schakowsky; the CLEANER Act, by Mr. Cartwright; the FRESHER Act, also by Mr. Cartwright; and the FRAC Act, by Ms. DeGette. These are attempts to protect the air, the water, the land, and ensure that people know what is being injected into the ground under their homes. The Republicans will not bring any of these bills to the floor, and I doubt they will because, according to the Republicans, the real threat is too many regulations.

This is preposterous, Mr. Chairman. Tell the people who want to know what chemicals are being injected under their homes that the real danger is that the Federal Government wants them to know. Tell the people who are seeing elevated levels of methane in their drinking water that the real danger is that the Federal Government wants to ensure that the wells are built better so they will not leak methane. Mr. Chairman, tell the people living next to the huge open pits of wastewater that the real danger is the Federal Government wants to make sure that States have minimum standards.

Mr. Chairman, I am astonished that the sponsors of this bill and the leadership would even bring the bill to the floor. It will do nothing, absolutely nothing, to address any of the concerns that families have legitimately about the impacts of fracking in their communities. Worse than that, the bill will strip existing protections in place across the entire Nation.

It would eliminate the ability of the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service to regulate oil and gas operations on their own lands. It would prevent the Fish and Wildlife Service from enforcing wildlife protection regulations under the Endangered Species Act and the Migratory Bird Treaty Act--oh, yes, I know my colleagues will say, That is not true; read the bill--and any number of other laws everywhere across the country.

Now I would like to think that these are unintended consequences of a poorly drafted bill, but given past attacks on the Endangered Species Act and such, I think there is reason to suspect that this is an intended consequence.

They will say, This is about states' rights, but Democrats are actually focused on the American people's rights: their rights to clean air; their rights to clean water; to be free of hazardous waste; to know what is happening under their very feet.

I urge my colleagues to defeat this bill and to bring up legislation that will really deal with the health and safety of Americans across the country.

I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), the senior ranking member of the Committee on Natural Resources.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green), a member of the Energy and Commerce Committee and someone who is as expert as anyone in this Chamber on oil and gas industry and regulations.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Cuellar).

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2 minutes.

It is traditional and appropriate in this country that matters dealing with health and safety, clean water, and clean air are handled at the interstate level, at the Federal level. This legislation would remove all sorts of regulations. Best practices that are designed to minimize the environmental impact

of oil and gas legislation for Bureau of Land Management practices would be gone.

It gets rid of requirements to protect sacred sites and historic properties. It would throw out the regulation that prevents occupancy within a quarter of a mile of designated fisheries. It would remove the regulation that you can't do any of these activities in the floodplain of the Yellowstone River, and on and on.

My colleague a moment ago talked about the booming industry in chemicals because of fracking. Yes, that brings up an interesting point about the difference in State regulations. We would hope that anybody in the drilling area would have access to the chemicals that are being injected into these wells under their very feet, under their homes.

But if you look at what some States allow now, they allow chemicals that are confidential, proprietary, undisclosed to be used, and they number in the dozens. Let's see. We have got here oxyalkylated phenol resins; we have terpenes and terpenoids; we have quaternary amines. These are all items that are held confidentially, proprietarily; and under this legislation that we are considering, a State could make sure that they are not disclosed.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, my colleagues say that there have been no cases of contamination from the fracking, itself. What about leakage from poorly constructed wells? What about leakage from unlined pits? Are they prepared to claim that there has never been water contamination because of this? That is what the Bureau of Land Management regulations and rules get at--well construction, wastewater management, the threats to drinking water in neighboring communities. This legislation would gut-- it would remove--any possibility of such rules.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

I say to the gentleman from Washington that we are in the same situation. I was expecting a few other speakers. In not seeing them, I am prepared to close.

I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, here is a partial list of the Federal laws, rules, and regulations that could not be enforced were this bill to become law:

The Endangered Species Act; the Migratory Bird Treaty Act; the oil and gas operations in National Park Service units; the oil and gas operations in National Wildlife Refuges; the casing and cementing regulations, such as should have been applied in the Deepwater Horizon case; the wastewater management regulations; the plugging and abandonment regulations, in other words, when pits or wells are abandoned; the best management practices for oil and gas drilling on public lands; the timing limits of when operations could be conducted with the least disruption to wildlife; the protections for sacred sites, historic trails, fisheries, and wetlands; and much more.

It has been sold as a states' rights bill that would only block the Bureau of Land Management's fracking rules, but it would strip agencies on Federal lands of the authority to enforce almost every regulation on the books because any State that has any regulation that affects these activities means that none of these regulations could apply, that they would all be superseded by the State regulations. That is what the bill says.

As for whether there is any damage done, I would point my friends to this

picture. Maybe you have a little trouble seeing it, but, essentially, it shows burning tap water. No, this is not a staged picture. This happened in a residence. This is methane flaming because the water is full of methane.

Now, I know my colleagues will say, Oh, but that is not because of fracking. There must be some other reason. There must be.

They haven't found it. They have blamed it on all sorts of other things, but it happens where the fracking is occurring.

So this is a case in which the practice has gotten ahead of the science, in which the practice has gotten ahead of our regulations, in which it has gotten ahead of our understanding; and the idea to reduce regulations and understanding so that we could do it faster is preposterous. This is not the way you protect public health. This is not the way you protect public safety. It is not the way you stimulate the economy. It is false economy to proceed in disregard for the protection of the environment.

So, with that, Mr. Chairman, I urge my colleagues to oppose H.R. 2728.

I yield to the gentleman for a question.

I appreciate the advice. It is possible that some of my speakers will arrive. I urge that we vote ``no,'' and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Then I will take just a moment.

Mr. Chairman, in closing, when I showed the picture of the burning tap water, I saw expressions of incredulity from the other side of the aisle. Surely that can't be true; or if it is true, surely it is not because of fracking.

A Duke University study found that methane contamination was in 115 of 141 shallow residential drinking wells that they studied, six times higher than wells greater than a mile from the fracking operations. Now, it is hard to tell when you are deep in the ground where that methane is leaking and what other chemicals, undisclosed chemicals, are leaking with that methane.

There is something here that should be regulated, and this legislation would prevent such regulations. I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

I rise in support of the amendment that I am introducing, along with Mr. Peters and Mr. Polis, to allow the Secretary of the Interior to regulate methane.

Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas emitted in the United States, and the oil and gas industry is responsible for about 30 percent of all methane emissions into the atmosphere.

Methane is a super pollutant more than 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide in warming the atmosphere. Now we know that methane can and sometimes does leak from fracked wells. That is what we see here with the ignited tap water. This so-called fugitive methane also contributes to air pollution as tropospheric ozone, or smog, which threatens public health by triggering asthma attacks and aggravating the conditions of people with bronchitis and emphysema.

In fact, methane leaks have contributed to the Upper Green River basin in Wyoming having some of the worst air quality in the country, at times rivaling the worst air quality days in Los Angeles.

Although discussed as a cleaner burning and more climate friendly energy source, natural gas, which is mostly methane, leaks at every stage of production, not just into the groundwater, and hence into drinking water wells. It does leak, and it does affect the Earth's climate. It is true that burning methane releases less carbon dioxide greenhouse gas to the atmosphere than does burning an equivalent amount of coal, but the methane itself is a greenhouse gas. Fugitive methane emissions in excess of only a few percent remove the relative advantages of natural gas compared to other fossil energy sources.

Aside from issues of climate and health, leaked methane represents lost royalties for the Federal Government, lost revenue for oil and gas companies, and I know that supporting greater profits for Big Oil is something my colleagues should be eager to support.

Our amendment will help prevent the wasteful leakage of natural gas, will limit avoidable methane emissions, and will protect air quality and public health. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the Holt-Peters-Polis amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, the whole point of the underlying bill is to make it impossible for the Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, the Secretary of the Interior to impose regulations. It says if the State has any regulations, then the Federal regulations don't count.

All this amendment would do is say on the important issue of what is called fugitive methane, leaked methane, methane that gets into the atmosphere by whatever means because of the drilling and fracking, should be limited. And it should be limited for several reasons. It is a potent greenhouse gas, and it is lost revenue. So I would think that everyone would be eager to make sure that none of this fugitive methane gets into the atmosphere or into the drinking water.

We know methane can and sometimes does leak from fracked wells. We should want the Secretary to be able to regulate that, because under the underlying bill, the Secretary could not.

This amendment is necessary, and I urge my colleagues to support it.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Chairman, I claim time in opposition to the amendment, although I do not intend to oppose the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I will not oppose this amendment because by itself it does not change anything, but it does underscore the problems with the bill itself. So I would like to speak on that for a moment.

I don't think there is anything wrong with making Interior a one-stop shopping place for State drilling regulations, although I don't know if there are any States that want to keep their regulations secret. So I don't know if that provision actually has any real impact.

Let me read a provision of the bill that this amendment strikes so that everyone understands what the amendment is trying to do. Subsection (b) of the bill says Interior shall defer to all State regulations for all activities related to any component of the hydraulic fracturing process. It then goes on to say ``regardless of whether those rules are duplicative, more or less restrictive, shall have different requirements, or do not feet Federal guidances.''

Apparently the majority, as well as the author of this amendment, recognize that the last sentence was a little excessive and now this amendment proposes to strike that. But it doesn't make any difference because in subsection (a), the bill reads that Interior cannot enforce any of its regulations or guidance for any component of the hydraulic fracturing process.

Subsection (a) strips Interior of their authority to enforce. This certainly has the same effect as the language in subsection (b) directing them to defer with respect to any regulations or requirements.

Even after this amendment is adopted--and we are prepared to accept it--the language in the bill will still require that Interior defer to the States, regardless of whether State rules are less restrictive or adequate or are inadequate or if they don't meet Federal guidelines. That is the problem with the bill. The bill remains the same.

This amendment is really superfluous. I will not oppose the amendment, but it does underscore the fundamental problem with the legislation that we are considering here today. It strips Interior of any authority to protect public health, public safety from drilling and fracking operations on public lands.

Although I will also accept the amendment, I will continue to oppose the underlying bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, as a scientist, I know firsthand how important scientific conferences and meetings are. I opposed H.R. 2061, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act, because it would cut by 30 percent the amount of travel federal employees could undertake for conferences, meetings, and other crucial events.

Although I appreciate the sponsors' efforts to ensure oversight on travel expenditures, I suspect they fail to realize the impact that this legislation would have on the progress of science and technology. Scientific conferences play a key role in American innovation. The informal conversations, formal presentations, and everything else that goes on between scientists from different institutions and different countries lead to new collaborations that have the promise of new discoveries.

Just about any scientific society in this country can give you examples where large numbers of federally sponsored researchers have teamed up to tackle pressing issues of our day at a conference. To give just one example, the American Chemical Society and the American Physical Society have stated that the development of an anti-cancer drug was the result of collaboration between a team of scientists from three laboratories that took place at one of these conferences.

We justifiably invest in federal research efforts, and we should ensure that we maximize that investment. When we deny federal scientists and researchers the ability to travel and collaborate with their peers, we leave them and our country with a diminished ability to make the most of that investment.

This affects not only scientists, of course. It is important for all federal employees to meet with their fellow professionals. If any of my colleagues wonder why face-to-face meetings are important, I would ask, why did they vote for House rules that require all of our votes to be taken in person here in the House of Representatives?

While H.R. 2061 takes some laudable attempts to increase transparency, it will undoubtedly stifle scientific collaboration, and thus I cannot support it.

Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to this misguided, unnecessary, and environmentally harmful piece of legislation and yield myself such time as I may consume.

We all know that under President Obama the United States is in the middle of an almost unprecedented oil and gas boom. Last week, the Energy Information Administration said that for the first time in 20 years U.S. crude oil production surpassed imports. Also last week, the International Energy Agency projected that the U.S. would become the number one oil producer by 2015.

The headlines keep coming. On October 4, EIA reported:

U.S. expected to be the largest producer of petroleum and

natural gas hydrocarbons in 2013.

On October 16, a headline read:

U.S. is already world's number one producer, consultants

say.

Even the Republicans have to admit this energy boom is happening, but they say it has nothing to do with President Obama because they don't want to give him credit for anything. They say all of the increased production--all of it--is coming from State and private lands. President Obama, they believe, is choking off production on Federal lands, and that is why we need the giveaways to Big Oil. That is why we need these attempts in this legislation to stifle public comment. That is why we need drill-at-all-cost measures.

But they are wrong. Flat-out wrong.

What has actually happened to oil production from our public and Indian lands out West since President Obama took office, you may ask? It has skyrocketed. Onshore oil production from Federal and Indian lands, just what we are talking about in this legislation, has gone up every year since the President has been in office. It is now 35 percent higher than it was under President Bush. Yet this legislation would not just reduce environmental productions. It would gut them; it would remove them.

So here is an even more interesting statistic. The nationwide increase in oil production since President Obama took office is 30 percent. The increase on Federal and Indian lands is even outpacing the increase nationwide, including private lands. I believe it is simple enough that anyone should be able to understand this. Oil production for the entire country is up 30 percent. Oil production on Federal and Indian land is up 35 percent.

But the Republicans have this playbook that they just can't get away from, this shopworn 2008 drill, baby, drill playbook. And so they want to try to make things easier for Big Oil while trying to ensure that conservation and hunting and fishing and recreation and renewables, and everything else that these Federal lands might be used for, has to take a back seat to drilling.

The entire premise of this bill is that President Obama is shutting off access to Federal lands and driving oil production down. The premise is false. We are not here because we need this legislation to increase our domestic production of oil and gas, and it certainly has nothing to do with prices at the pump. We are not here because the bill will have any impact on the world price of oil or gasoline at the pump. We are not here because anyone thinks this bill has a chance of becoming law either. We are here because we have a deeply divided Republican caucus, and one of the few things that unites this caucus is the belief that Big Oil should enjoy higher profits, and those profits should come from publicly owned land.

We are here because bills to convert our priceless national treasures into profits on Big Oil's balance sheets are about the only idea that our Republican colleagues can agree on among themselves.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), a lifelong stalwart supporter of the environment and of energy production.

(Mr. DINGELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Madam Chair, I gladly yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Madam Chair, let's summarize what is in this legislation.

H.R. 1965 is a compilation of a number of wishful bills, wishful legislation from the other side. It would shortcut environmental reviews, discourage public participation in energy development decisions, and eliminate thoughtful leasing reforms.

It would require that any public entity or individual that wanted to challenge a leasing decision post a $5,000 protest fee just to be able to access the process.

It would require that the Department of the Interior lease at least 25 percent each year of oil and gas nominated areas, whether or not they are suitable for drilling now.

And, Madam Chair, I get this. It would elevate oil and gas leasing decisions above all other uses of public lands, such as hunting, fishing, grazing, conservation, recreation, and other energy uses.

It would also require a plan to crisscross the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska with roads and pipelines, a network that would be a bonanza for some contractor, I am sure, ignoring the management plan that was approved this year. Why? Not for a good reason. We don't need all these relaxations--``relaxation'' is too mild a word--the gutting of environmental review, the removal of public participation, because oil production is doing very well, thank you.

Let's deal with facts.

Federal onshore oil production, which is what this bill is about, has increased 35 percent. It is actually a faster growth rate than oil production overall in the United States. I am not sure why the other side refuses to acknowledge that. I would think they would want to take that as good news. If you look past their talking points at the actual data, you will see that Federal onshore oil production has increased every year since 2008. That doesn't include Indian lands, where production has also increased every year since 2008. So the fundamental premise of this bill is flawed.

There are, right now, 37 million acres of Federal land under lease for oil and gas development, but two-thirds of that is not in production or exploration. Go figure. Let's go ask these companies why they are bidding on these lands. When you lease land, it is because you think it will be productive, yet they are sitting on them. We don't need to streamline. We don't need to remove any environmental controls in order to stimulate leasing, because 37 million acres of Federal land are under lease now.

Furthermore, even if the other side was right about their flawed premise, even if it was a problem in production, onshore Federal oil is only 5 percent or 6 percent of total production. That is all it will be. So if there were a production problem, if it were not the case that we were producing more than we have produced--we are in better shape than we have been in decades--further drilling on Federal land would not be the answer.

So there is no reason for this bill. It sets back the use of these Federal lands to a free-for-all, unprotected state, and this is bad legislation.

Madam Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), the distinguished whip of the Democratic Party, someone who understands the economic importance of protecting the environment.

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), the

minority member of highest rank on our committee, the Natural Resources Committee.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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

I would like to address the talking points that have been parroted without thinking by speaker after speaker from the other side.

The fact is oil production on onshore public lands, the subject of this legislation, is up by 35 percent. It is not down. It is not flat. It is up. It is up even more than oil production in the country overall. So what is the problem here?

As for employment, it is worth pointing out that oil and natural gas industry employment has increased.

Clearly, there was a falloff with the recession--or let's call it a depression--but in the last half-dozen years, industry employment has increased by more than 162,000--a 40 percent increase. Oil and gas industry jobs decreased in 2009 as a result of the recession, but now the jobs are increasing at a rate even faster than before.

And I have to emphasize that in connection with this because this legislation says that oil and gas would take precedence over all other uses of Federal lands. Federal lands don't exist solely for the purpose of oil and gas extraction.

As I have said before, there is one thing that the Republicans seem to agree on, that we should give away whatever we can to the oil companies. That is why we are doing this legislation, because they don't have any other legislation that they can agree on well enough to bring to the floor. But multiple uses of our Federal lands, aside from oil and gas production, are important to Americans.

As for jobs, the government shutdown that the folks who are proposing this legislation voted for and supported caused the closure of over 400 units of our National Park Service and cost local economies hundreds of millions of dollars and caused delays in the approval of pending permits, by the way.

It is also worth pointing out that this week the Interior Department announced that, because of revenues from oil and gas extraction, the Department of the Interior was able to disburse $14.2 billion--a 17 percent increase over the previous year--to State, local, and tribal accounts. This money goes for the land and water conservation fund, the reclamation fund, historic preservation, and so forth.

So this is a bill to address a problem that doesn't exist--and to do it in a way that does not address the interests of the people at large. It is a giveaway to the oil and gas industry. I urge my colleagues to vote this down.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

I wanted to point out a curious, but revealing, point about this amendment.

In order to get the bill to score properly to fit with the policy of the Republican Conference, it was necessary to cut $5 million out of the authorization in the bill.

So where did they go? To cut $5 million out of renewable energy and let the tens of millions of dollars of authorized funds for the oil and gas to sit untouched.

But I would really like to address something else that the gentleman said that has to do with the whole reason we are here today on this bill instead of doing that important work that Mr. Hoyer spoke of earlier.

The gentleman talked about how we have to increase the supply of oil so that we can drive down prices at the pump and talked about how the policies of President Bush were responsible for the undeniable increases in onshore oil production.

They say that gas was as much as $4 a gallon in 2008. You know whose fault that was.

And then, in 2009, it was $2 a gallon.

Did the supply in the United States change that much in 1 year? No. This shows quite clearly that it is not because of the amount of drilling on public lands. That has nothing to do with it. It has a scant effect on the price at the pump.

It is amazing, Mr. Speaker. When confronted with something uncomfortable, the Republicans always have a convenient excuse.

Gas prices were $4 a gallon in 2008. Oh, that is because Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House.

Gas prices plummet later that year to half that amount. Well, that is because President Bush said we need to drill more.

Then, gas prices shoot up after John Boehner becomes Speaker of the House, but that is because President Obama is in office.

And, now, oil production on Federal lands skyrockets under President Obama, and it is a boom. But that is really because of President Bush.

So if gas prices go down further this year, maybe that is because of, I don't know, was it Eisenhower or Reagan?

Give me a break.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Affordable Care Act:

Nearly 13 million Americans have benefited from $1.1 billion in rebates from health insurance companies;

105 million Americans have received access to free preventive services;

Nearly 30 million women are receiving free preventive services;

Up to 17 million children with preexisting health conditions are no longer denied coverage by insurers;

6.6 million young adults up to age 26 have taken advantage of the law to obtain health insurance through their parents' plans;

More than 100 million Americans no longer have a lifetime limit on their insurance coverage;

More than 7.1 million seniors in the doughnut hole have already saved $8.3 billion on prescription drugs; and

More than 4.4 million seniors have free annual wellness visits under Medicare.

Mr. Speaker, rather than working to make the Affordable Care Act successful, Republicans are telling Americans they want to return to the days when insurance companies could tell those with preexisting conditions, Sorry, you don't deserve and cannot purchase health insurance.

Forty-six times, Republicans have told Americans that if they reach their lifetime limits, that is just too bad. Forty-six times, they have said they want to keep the Medicare part D doughnut hole and keep medication unaffordable for seniors, and that is the way it is going to be.

Mr. Speaker, Americans deserve access to affordable, quality health care.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 3350. This bill has no purpose, other than to destroy the effort to provide excellent, affordable health care to Americans in every walk of life. Yesterday, the President provided a workable solution to allow insurance companies to continue to offer existing policies to people who want to keep their policies. But the Upton bill we are considering today would allow both those that had these plans, and those that did not, to obtain care under these plans. Especially, people could buy plans that

don't really offer much ``insurance'' at all should anyone in their family get sick.

The comprehensive health care reform legislation we passed in 2010 was a sincere and honorable effort to provide every American with access to affordable and quality health coverage. The law was designed to ensure that health coverage would include access to free preventive services, and would also be robust enough to actually help an individual afford critical, life-saving care should they fall ill.

The legislation that we are considering today accomplishes none of those goals. H.R. 3350 would allow insurance companies to continue to sell and attract new customers to substandard health plans that offer little protection.

I have received calls and letters from constituents over the past several weeks who share with me their frustration that their health plan has been cancelled. And I sympathize with them. They tell me in complete sincerity that they like these plans--after all, they are not used to having any choice. They think their previous insurance plan is all they can afford. But under the Affordable Care Act they now have the ability to buy real insurance that will not drop them when their kid gets sick or require them to a huge deductible and with government subsidies in an active insurance marketplace, most will probably save money on their premiums.

But I have also heard from constituents who have fallen ill, and during that time of personal turmoil, learn that their insurance does not cover the treatment they need. Their ``Basic and Essential Plan,'' as they're called in New Jersey, does not cover their basic or essential needs. They are on their own, and they will have to pay out- of-pocket for the chemotherapy, hospital tests, or physical therapy their doctor ordered.

Prior to health reform, in 2007, more than 60 percent of all bankruptcies were a result of illness and medical bills, and nearly 80 percent of those who filed for medical bankruptcy were insured.

We passed the Affordable Care Act not only to extend coverage to the 48 million uninsured Americans, but also to improve insurance for the millions more Americans who are underinsured. H.R. 3350 would undermine the Affordable Care Act by allowing new, additional customers to purchase health insurance that provides limited protection, and little prevention. It would result in even more Americans becoming underinsured and lead to additional family's filing for medical bankruptcy.

Many parts of the ACA are working and have very beneficial effects for ordinary Americans--removing caps that cut off coverage even in the middle of critical treatments, allowing 25 year olds who are trying to get on their feet professionally to stay on their parent's policies, guaranteeing equally good coverage at equal cost for women, increasing access to preventive care, and other things. I would hope the sponsors of this bill would devote their best efforts to making the remaining parts of the legislation work. That is what they owe their constituents, rather than trying to destroy this sincere, honorable effort to make health care as good as possible in America.

The rollout of the health insurance Marketplace has not been smooth, and I am as frustrated as everyone else, but the potential for Americans to gain affordable and comprehensive coverage is still enormous. Nearly one million New Jerseyans lack health insurance, and there are still many more underinsured. I am committed to protecting the provisions of health care reform so that New Jerseyans have access to health coverage that is affordable, comprehensive, and reliable. Therefore, I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing this bill and get to work on implementing the Affordable Care Act so Americans have access to better health care coverage.

Madam Speaker, I rise today as a member of the Safe Climate Caucus to say that climate change is making extreme weather worse and costing us in lives and dollars.

Last week, Typhoon Haiyan, the strongest storm to make landfall in recorded history, struck the Philippines with sustained winds of almost 200 miles per hour. Thousands are reported dead and missing.

Haiyan, Sandy, Irene, Katrina, wildfires, floods, droughts.

If you flip a coin 20 times, it is possible that an honest coin will land on heads every time, but you should start to suspect that there is something wrong with that coin.

Sure, the recent extreme weather event might be coincidence, but as superstorms continue again and again, you should suspect that something is wrong with our climate. We should begin fixing our broken world, not be pretending that all is well.

This week marks the beginning of the 19th U.N. climate change conference in Warsaw, where representatives from more than 190 nations will be discussing climate change and how the world should be responding.

For international climate negotiations to succeed, the U.S. should take the lead, and leading internationally will require us to start here at home.

Mr. Speaker, I want to join my friend from Colorado in lamenting the lack of legislative action on immigration and so many other issues.

I am sure the gentleman doesn't want to leave the impression that Members of Congress do nothing when we are not actually in session. However, the lack of number of days in session, the small number of days in session, is really symptomatic of the problem. It is an unwillingness to deal with the great issues of the day, be they immigration, appropriations and funding for government activities, reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to replace No Child Left Behind, providing workplace training and job creation, the transportation legislation and nutrition programs.

It is worth pointing out that only now--I mean right now, we are about to lose 13 percent in the SNAP program, the food stamp program. For all of those reasons, we should be working here in the Chamber and in committee and elsewhere.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the so-called Retail Investor Protection Act, which is one more attempt to delay and derail implementation of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform law. The financial crisis should be all the evidence we need to know that stronger, not weaker, enforcement; tougher, not weaker, regulations are necessary.

Dodd-Frank is the law of the land. Yet, as with ObamaCare, the Republican agenda consists only of delay and repeal, with no solutions to, in this case, prevent a future economic meltdown.

I want to be clear that, in voting against this bill, I am not stating approval or endorsement of the U.S. Department of Labor's proposed fiduciary rule. In fact, since 2011, I have voiced concerns about how the proposed changes to the definition of ``fiduciary'' might lead to a reduction in financial education and access to investment advice.

Americans are not well prepared for retirement. I have long believed that the more investment advice available to employees the better. They need more advice, not less; more encouragement to invest, not less.

I look forward to continuing to work with the Secretary of Labor to craft a rule to allow more Americans, not fewer Americans, to be better prepared, not less prepared, for retirement.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado for the time.

I thank my friend from New York (Mr. Tonko) for arranging this discussion.

It is well worth recognizing the anniversary of this devastating storm because it might be said this was a storm like we have never seen before. That may be true, but I don't think it is correct to say this is a storm such as we will never see again.

A year ago, Hurricane Sandy devastated New Jersey and much of the east coast. The storm may have faded from the headlines, but New Jerseyans haven't forgotten. It is felt in a very personal and painful way by thousands and thousands of New Jerseyans still today.

These New Jerseyans are not alone. I mean that in two senses. First, we can hear from some who are representative of the millions. But also, when we hear from the younger New Jerseyans who are affected, we understand that they represent the future that will be affected by climate change. Quite simply, superstorms like Sandy are the new normal, and we had better get used to it, even if climate change skeptics claim otherwise.

I think response to Sandy means, of course, tending to the human needs of those who have been victims of the storm, but it also means making significant investments in power engineering and transportation engineering and rail engineering and wireless engineering and shoreline engineering and river flood control engineering and residential planning, and taking steps to deal with the root cause of what we see.

We may not be able to stop hurricanes in their tracks. In fact, we certainly can't. But we can make sure that our infrastructure and our environment and our communities are more resilient when they strike, and if we work hard as a Nation and as humanity, we may be able to stem the climate change that will result in more and more powerful superstorms.

I know some in Washington are skeptical of the role of the Federal Government in fighting climate change, but as Sandy's $83 billion pricetag should make clear, society, our economy, yes, and our government will bear the costs of climate change one way or another. If we make the investments today, as the debts are coming due, we would do far better than to wait to pick up the pieces after other superstorms hit.

I will be happy, as we go along, to talk about some specific New Jerseyans who were affected. I will be happy to talk about some of the science that suggests where we are as a world. Mostly, I just want to make the point that this is the new normal that we should be prepared for.

Some of the repair has taken place, but the recovery takes a very long time.

Today, three New Jerseyans came to visit me.

One, Eric, from Jersey City, had been ready to open his bakery with his wife when Sandy hit. The bakery was flooded by 6 feet of water, and a lot of equipment was damaged. It delayed until fairly recently the opening of that bakery, and of course there was the loss of income to that family.

Norma, from Seaside Park, was displaced by severe flooding, nearly 4 feet. We can talk about the depth of the storm surge or about the record low barometric pressure or what the wind speed was, but we mustn't lose sight of the people who were affected here. Norma had space in her home that was flooded, and so she lost the rental income for that space. She is still cleaning up. Incidentally, she is a science supervisor at a local school, and is now talking personally about climate change and extreme weather.

April, from Jersey City, is a single mother of a child with asthma, who was uprooted because of the flooding from Sandy. She is now dealing with mold issues in her child's school as a result of the flooding, and she has gotten involved in helping low-income families recover from Sandy.

I want to make this point about who is hurt the most.

Researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey looked at families who are employed but who are struggling. These would be asset-limited people, people who are barely earning a living. This makes up, really, about a third of New Jerseyans. They have no cushion. Yet about a third of New Jerseyans incurred more than half of the residential damage--the cost--and are obtaining only slightly more than a quarter of the resources that are available for rebuilding. So low-income families, who tend to have less safe, less resilient housing, are the ones who suffer the most damage. Many who work hourly jobs are less able to deal with the loss of wages that occur from these disasters. Many of them were underinsured, and about 90 percent did not have flood insurance. So it is only a fraction of the people in New Jersey, but it is a very large fraction of the people, who suffered the really severe damage.

As bad as this is in America, the effects of climate change are even worse in developing countries around the world. Developing nations are more vulnerable to crop failure. Tropical diseases are very sensitive to climate change. Malaria and dengue fever and diarrheal disease are more prevalent now because of climate change, and developing nations are less able to afford the damage that results.

I got in some trouble earlier this year--I was challenged earlier this year--when I said we have got to deal with climate change or millions will die. In fact, I looked it up. The World Health Organization estimates that climate change is already causing 140,000 deaths per year--more than would have occurred without the climate change--primarily in developing countries. So it doesn't take very many years before, indeed, millions are dying. That is something of the human cost of what we are talking about.

Mr. Speaker, I want to make sure that all of our colleagues understand that when my friend from New York talks in detail about new energy systems that he is talking about human welfare, that he is talking about addressing the human cost that we were speaking of earlier. In other words, it is not just a matter of providing energy for people to power our economy and provide comfortable daily lives; it is also a matter of doing it in a way that avoids this enormous human cost from climate change. The way we produce and use energy is the greatest insult to our planet. It is changing our very climate, and we must address that. The sooner we address it, the more effective we will be at addressing it, and the more of these costs we can avoid.

It is unmistakable, unequivocal, that global warming has taken place and is taking place. Just in the past month, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change came out with its fifth very carefully prepared report. It says that global temperatures are likely to rise from a third of a degree to 4\1/2\ degrees, roughly, Celsius, and that sea levels will rise. It is certain that the upper ocean has already warmed over the last three decades. It is certain that the upper ocean has already absorbed carbon dioxide, making it more acidic, as we heard from our friends earlier.

Most of the aspects of climate change will continue for centuries with the result in a cost in lives and dollars if the CO2 emissions are not brought under control. In fact, some of these costs will be incurred now even if we bring CO2 emissions under control because of the damage already done, but it is important to emphasize that it comes down to the human cost. That is what we mustn't forget in all of the charts and graphs and scientific discussions of the causes and effects of climate change.

The work of the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Coalition here in Congress is to see that we can move into the future in a sustainable way.

It is completely appropriate that we talk about both energy and environment in this same--really with the same breath. Because as I said, the way we produce and use energy is the greatest insult to our planet. But it is possible to produce and use energy that will power our economy and provide a good quality of life for 10 billion people in the world if we are smart and if we get to work now. We can do it in a way that doesn't ruin the world and condemn all of these billions of people to the kinds of superstorms, the kinds of effects of climate change and spreading diseases and so forth that will result if climate change runs amuck.

New Jerseyans need no further reminder that climate change is real. Evidently, some of our colleagues here do need that reminder. This year, one year after Hurricane Sandy, we are here to tell our friends, to tell our colleagues this is for real, this is serious, and we should get to work. The work of the Sustainable Energy and Environmental Coalition is dedicated to that work.

I thank my colleague, Mr. Tonko of New York, for his work to propel the SEEC coalition.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Florida.

Despite some merits in the WRRDA bills that the Republicans have proposed, they fail to address the number one reason why Corps of Engineers projects are delayed, a serious lack of Federal funding. The bill before us perpetuates a myth that the problem is environmental review of engineering projects and not inadequate funding.

In my congressional District, the Green Brook project has been funded at $11 million per year. If this funding level continues, it will take more than 30 years to complete the project, which will eventually protect several flood-prone communities frequently at risk from extreme weather, and save lives. Until then, the Green Brook residents remain under threat.

Now, every water resource project has effects on the environment and should have good environmental review. Streamlining environmental review will not save money or expedite construction. Limiting the national environmental review limits public participation, prevents identification of potentially costly problems, project-stopping problems.

Environmental review is not something to be tolerated. It is something to be welcomed.

Madam Speaker, today, the House is finally, at the 11th hour, voting to re-open the government and avert a financial disaster by avoiding a default on our debt. The bill keeps the government open until January 15, 2014, and raises the debt ceiling until February 7, 2014. This is a stopgap measure, and my fear is that we will face another manufactured crisis again a few months. We should have never gotten to this point, the majority should have never caved to the vocal minority in the House.

This bill ends an unnecessary, self-induced crisis. It fails to end sequestration's painful cuts in government services. It fails to invest in creating new jobs. It follows costly weeks of government shutdown and unnerving the financial world. It sets up the alarming prospect of new confrontations over the budget and the debt ceiling early next year.

Ever since this phony crisis began, a majority of the Congress-- Democrats and Republicans alike--have sought to reopen the government. Yet Republican leaders, out of misguided deference to the reckless ideologues in their ranks, refused to allow a vote on clean legislation to reopen the government.

Today that finally changed. The Speaker allowed the majority of House members to work their will, and as a result, our government has reopened and the U.S. can resume paying her debts, as we have for centuries. My hope is that, in the months ahead, Speaker Boehner will follow today's precedent and allow votes on other pressing issues, such as job creation and immigration reform, that Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

The alternative would be to continue to follow the extreme minority who shut down the government for no apparent reason, with no clear idea of what they hoped to win.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring to the attention of the House the wise remarks of Dr. Hunter Rawlings, President of the Association of American Universities, delivered at the ceremony installing Dr. Christopher Eisgruber as President of Princeton University, September 22, 2013.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to bring to the attention of the House the eloquent remarks of Dr. Christopher Eisgruber at his installation as President of Princeton University, September 22, 2013.

Friends, colleagues, students, teachers, Princetonians:

I am honored to be standing here this afternoon and I am

very touched, indeed a tad bit overwhelmed by the generosity

of the remarks delivered by the speakers who have preceded at

this podium. I am grateful for their gracious words. I am

also honored by the presence here on stage of three great

presidents of this University, Bill Bowen, Harold Shapiro and

Shirley Tilghman.

In the past weeks, people have occasionally asked me

whether I could have imagined, in the days when I was a

student here, that I might someday be the university

president. I reply very honestly that it never crossed my

mind, not when I was a student and not, for that matter, when

I returned to join the faculty in 2001. My dream job, both as

student and a faculty member, was to be a Princeton professor

teaching about the Constitution. And, when my dream came

true, when I came back to Princeton as a member of the

faculty, I reckoned that I had been very clever. I thought

that by becoming a law professor at a university without a

law school, I had reduced if not eliminated any chance that

large administrative assignments might ever distract me from

the teaching and research that I loved.

Of course, by returning to Princeton, I had also come home

to a university that I loved more than any other, and where

the responsibilities of administration would be more

meaningful to me than anywhere else. Princeton's wonderful

19th president, Shirley Tilghman, realized that before I did,

an she changed my life by offering me the opportunity to

become her provost.

I suppose that all of us, as we move through this

complicated world, require some time to realize what matters

most in our lives. The path to and through adulthood takes

unexpected turns. Childhood heroes show hidden flaws;

youthful causes lose their luster. If we are lucky, though,

we find certain ideals from which we can draw enduring

inspiration and to which we can commit our life's energies.

In my life, there have been two: constitutional democracy, as

manifested personally for me in the American constitutional

tradition, and liberal arts education, as exemplified

especially by the blend of research and teaching at this

great University.

The iconic building behind me combines these traditions.

Nassau Hall was once all of Princeton University, and this

University's alumni still regard it as the symbolic heart of

their alma mater--even if it has now become an administrative

office building into which few students ever venture. Nassau

Hall was also briefly, in 1783, the home of the Continental

Congress, and so the seat of this nation's government. And

Nassau Hall was, as Hunter Rawlings has so movingly

described, the site where James Madison (undergraduate Class

of 1771, graduate Class of 1772) acquired the learning that

eventually made him the father of America's Constitution.

Constitutionalism and liberal arts education also have

deeper connections, ones that depend not on the contingencies

of history and geography but on their relationship to human

nature. Both of them are long-term institutions that

recognize simultaneously humanity's virtues and its

imperfections, and that aim to cultivate our talents, orient

us toward the common good, and make us the best that we can

be.

In one of the most famous passages from his extraordinary

arguments on behalf of constitutional ratification, Madison

wrote, in Federalist 51, ``What is government . . . but the

greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were

angels, no government would be necessary.'' [Madison, Fed.

51; Rossiter ed. 322] Madison used gendered language, but I

have no doubt that in this respect at least James Madison was

a feminist: He meant his skepticism to apply equally to both

sexes. If people were angels, they would cooperate, look out

for one another, and generally do good deeds. They would need

no laws, no courts and no constitutions. But people are not

angels, so they need constitutions that create institutions,

define processes and separate powers.

We might equally well add that if people were angels, they

would have no need for teachers. Students would need no one

to inspire their studies or correct their errors. If students

were angels, they would need, at most, a few syllabi, a

library, some laboratories, a computer and perhaps a few

Massive Open Online Courses. They might then all be more or

less self-taught, as were Benjamin Franklin and Abraham

Lincoln, those almost superhuman, if not quite angelic,

heroes of the American constitutional tradition.

But people are not angels, and very, very few students are

like Franklin and Lincoln. The generations of students who

have come to Nassau Hall, including the great James Madison,

have wanted teachers to fire their imaginations, dispel their

misconceptions, explode their prejudices, stir their spirits

and guide their passions. And students have found mentors

here, not just in professors and preceptors, but also in

chaplains and coaches, counselors and graduate students,

conductors and directors, deans and administrators.

I expect that all of you in the audience today can look

back upon your lives and identify teachers whose support and

guidance were valuable beyond measure and without whom you

could not have achieved the successes that matter most to

you. I am especially pleased that in attendance today are two

teachers whose mentorship has guided me throughout my career:

Mr. Pat Canan, who taught me physics at Corvallis High

School; and Professor Jeffrey Tulis, who taught me about the

Constitution and political theory when I was an undergraduate

at this University.

I have kept in touch with both of these teachers for more

than 30 years now. Thirty years is a long time. As I have

already said, education, like constitutionalism, is a long-

term enterprise. Great teachers, and great universities, make

extraordinary investments in students and research in

anticipation of future benefits that are usually unknowable

and occasionally implausible. Perhaps the seeds you plant in

the mind of 19-year-old students today will guide careers

that blossom and mature many decades hence. Or, to take an

example from our Department of Chemistry, perhaps your

curiosity-driven research into the pigmentation of butterfly

wings will, 50 years later, produce a drug that improves the

lives of cancer patients.

If human beings were angels, we would cheerfully focus on

long-term goods. We would invest enthusiastically in schools

and colleges for our own children and for everybody else's

children, so that they could become productive, engaged

citizens in the future. We would happily support speculative

research projects so that we could reap the benefits of

discovery and innovation. We would gladly nurture humanistic

inquiry because it provides an essential foundation for

understanding what makes life meaningful and sustains the

wellsprings of civil society.

Indeed, we need not be angels to do these things. We would

do them if we were perfectly rational investors, because

economists like Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz have shown

convincingly that education and research are powerful drivers

of economic prosperity.

But we are not perfectly rational any more than we are

angels. We live embodied in the present, sensitive to short-

term pleasures and pains. Notions of the common good and

promises about future returns feel abstract and feeble by

comparison to the intensity of immediate experience.

This bias seems especially fierce in America today. Our

world features a non-stop news cycle, continuous political

campaigns and an obsession with quarterly earnings

statements. We demand that messaging be instant, and we talk

in tweets.

This short-term perspective threatens America's colleges

and universities. Already it has done significant harm. Our

nation has reduced its support for public colleges and

universities, and it has squeezed the funding needed for

research, innovation and scholarship.

In so doing, we risk squandering a national treasure.

America's colleges and universities are a beacon to the

world. Parents around the globe dream of sending their

children here, scholars dream of landing a place here, and

nations dream of creating universities like America's. Yet,

here at home, we see a parade of reporters, politicians and

pundits asking whether a college education is worth it--even

though the economic evidence for the value of a college

education is utterly overwhelming.

People discount this evidence because they worry, quite

understandably, about the cost of college. They say that

higher education should be more efficient so that it can be

cheaper in the short term and equally valuable in the long

term.

Make no mistake about it: Those of us who lead universities

must make our institutions as efficient as possible. We must

also ensure, through financial aid and other programs,

that our colleges are accessible and affordable to

students from every sector of our society. But there is a

difference between expense and inefficiency. Expensive

investments can be both efficient and valuable if their

returns are sufficiently high.

When professors provide individualized attention to

students, their time is expensive and valuable. When scholars

strive day and night to enhance our understanding of the

world, their activity is expensive and valuable. Great

colleges and universities are not cheap. They require big

investments, and they are also among the very best

investments that this nation, or any nation, can make. And,

as I have said in the past, great universities are also

places where the human spirit soars. They are special

communities where students, teachers and researchers strive

to transcend their limitations and, on occasion, to expand

the boundaries of human achievement.

I am grateful to be joined on this stage by Princeton

alumni, and by former Princeton faculty members and

administrators, who now serve as presidents of an

extraordinary range of colleges and universities from

throughout the world. Their presence here today symbolizes

our need to work together on behalf of higher education. It

also reminds us of Princeton's obligation and opportunity to

play a leadership role in public discussions about the value

of research and collegiate education today. Those debates are

urgently important to the nation, to the world, and to this

University's mission, and Princeton University must be boldly

active within them.

Long-term institutions, be they educational or political,

can flourish only if they inspire energetic commitment in the

short term. Madison knew this. Even ``the most rational

government,'' he said, must have the ``prejudices of the

community on its side.'' (Fed. 49, Rossiter 315).

In his famous debates with Stephen Douglas, Abraham Lincoln

called attention to this country's annual celebrations on the

Fourth of July. He insisted that the ``cannon which thunders

[the] annual joyous return'' of our independence serves to

remind us of the basic principles upon which this country is

founded and which unite us as a people. [P. Angle, Created

Equal: the Complete Lincoln-Douglas Debates of 1858, at 130

(Ottawa); see also id., at 40 (Chicago)]. Civic pride, and

the colorful and noisy celebrations that go with it, can

reshape self-interest and motivate people to care about their

collective future.

We, too, at Princeton have traditions of joyous return. We

even have cannons--though our most famous one is buried deep

in the ground behind Nassau Hall and none of them thunder

anymore. But joyous return: We do that very well. ``Going

back to Nassau Hall'' is woven into the music and the soul of

this place. We go back to Nassau Hall for Reunions, for

Commencement and Baccalaureate, for Alumni Day and the

Service of Remembrance, and occasionally for special

ceremonies like this one. In so doing, we renew the

camaraderie that enlivens our commitment to this University,

and we rededicate ourselves to the principles for which

Princeton stands and upon which it depends.

I would not presume to enumerate all of those principles,

but prominent among them are these basic convictions:

That liberal arts education is a vital foundation for both

individual flourishing and the well-being of our society;

That residential and extracurricular experience both

supplement and reinforce the lessons of the classroom,

building character and skills that last a lifetime;

That rigorous research and scholarship are indispensable

for understanding the human condition and improving the

world;

That learning, discovery and understanding are valuable not

only instrumentally but also for their own sake, as sources

of the joy and fulfillment that make a human life worth

living;

That scholarship and teaching are mutually reinforcing

activities--that scholars learn from their students'

questions, and that students learn best when they are exposed

to, and can participate in, research that extends the

frontiers of knowledge;

That we must cultivate new generations of talent

enthusiastically and unselfishly;

That all social and economic groups should have access to

the educational resources of this great University and to

higher education more generally;

That we as a University, and we as alumni, must constantly

rededicate ourselves to the nation's service and to the

service of all nations; and last, but most certainly not

least,

That a great university can and should be the heart of an

alumni community that not only engages in a lifetime of

learning, leadership and service, but that continues to do

all it can to sustain, strengthen and nourish this

University--ensuring that it can live up to these principles

and achieve its highest aspirations through all the

generations yet to come.

I am honored to accept the presidency of this, our beloved

University, and I will work with you enthusiastically to

sustain the excellence of what we are doing now, to realize

more perfectly the ideals to which we are committed, and to

demonstrate by argument and deed the extraordinary value of

Princeton University, and of all the colleges and

universities that help to bring out the best in the people of

this country and this world.

Thank you for welcoming me so warmly this afternoon, thank

you for coming back once more to Nassau Hall, and thank you,

most of all, for your sincere commitment to this place and

this community that matter so deeply to all of us. Thank you!

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I want to follow on the remarks of our colleague from Connecticut.

The SNAP program is in jeopardy, which means children's health is in jeopardy, and we should extend the ARRA-created benefits as well as to fully fund, not cut, the SNAP program.

My colleague referred to the article this past week in The Lancet, the prominent medical journal. Allow me to quote from that.

Many studies have shown positive associations between

receipt of SNAP . . . and a lower risk of anemia, obesity,

poor health, hospital admission for failure to thrive, and

reports of child abuse and neglect. Children aged 5-9 years

of SNAP-participating families have better academic outcomes

and less obesity than children in nonparticipating families.

Between 1961 and 1975, the program was implemented county

by county, thus, allowing for comparison across counties that

differed only by SNAP availability. In SNAP-available

counties there was . . . a significant increase . . . in mean

birthweight for both Black and White Americans, compared with

those counties where SNAP was not available.

As the Speaker knows, that is an important measure associated with infant health.

Children of low-income women in SNAP-available counties

were less likely to have metabolic syndrome [ill health such

as diabetes] in adulthood, and women who had received food

stamps during early childhood were more likely to be

economically self-sufficient.

These are children who had the benefits of SNAP. As adults, they were healthier. This seems, to me, to be a very important point.

The societal benefits of food stamps extend far beyond a temporary reduction of hunger pangs. The benefits last for years--even into the next generation. Why on Earth would we consider reducing support for such an important humane and, yes, economically beneficial program?

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that I may hereafter be considered to be the first sponsor of H.R. 139, a bill originally introduced by Representative Markey of Massachusetts, for the purposes of adding cosponsors and requesting re-printings pursuant to clause 7 of rule XII.

Mr. Speaker, the health care marketplaces are finally open. The only complaint is that people are so eager to learn more about their options and to sign up that too many people logged on yesterday.

Now, to hear my colleagues from across the aisle describe this day, you might expect to look out the window and witness the beginning of, as ``Ghostbusters'' once put it, 40 years of darkness--earthquakes, volcanos, the dead rising from the grave, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria. Perhaps these warnings were overblown.

The start of the Affordable Care Act resulted in exactly zero people locked out of their offices with their paychecks on hold. By contrast, the Republican shutdown has furloughed 800,000 Federal employees.

Exactly zero people yesterday were deprived of their annual flu shots because of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, ObamaCare has made preventive care for things like vaccines free, without copay, to insured patients nationwide. By contrast, the Republican shutdown has forced the CDC to halt its annual seasonal influenza program, just as flu season is getting underway.

Because of the Affordable Care Act, exactly zero infants yesterday were deprived of healthy food and nutrition information. By contrast, the Republican shutdown has put at risk the entire Women, Infants, and Children program, which provides some 9 million Americans with the support they need to feed their children.

The Republican shutdown has also brought to a standstill critical lifesaving biomedical research being conducted at the NIH and NSF. Exactly zero people yesterday went untreated because of the ACA for foodborne illnesses. By contrast, the Republican shutdown has forced the FDA to cease many of its food safety operations.

The Affordable Care Act has not ushered in an era of doom and gloom that the Republicans promised. Instead, it has offered hope and opportunity for good health care coverage.

Here is the reality: The ACA is helping my constituents who previously found health insurance out of reach. The access provided by ACA is long overdue. Rather than seek delay, we should be embracing it.

For years I've been hearing from people like Nicole, from Lawrence, who writes not about the fear of the ACA but, rather, ``the fear that the health care of your family will bankrupt you and that your lack of resources will leave you and your loved ones vulnerable to sickness and death.''

Now, I also hear optimism--optimism--that comes from the options that can now be found in the new marketplace. Just ask Mary, from Princeton, who wrote me earlier this week:

Please do not allow the implementation of ObamaCare to be

delayed. I've been waiting and waiting for a time when my

adult children would be able to afford health insurance.

She goes on to say that the health care marketplace has given her ``the opportunity to review plans with them and to assist them to choose the best plan.''

There is the single mother from Scotch Plains who wrote me:

I am a registered Republican, and I am embarrassed by all

that has been happening for the last few days. The Tea Party

and some Republicans keep yelling that they're speaking for

the people. Well, they're not speaking for me or anyone I

know.

ObamaCare must be given a chance. I have been without

coverage since my COBRA ended 2 years ago. I was unable to

get reasonable coverage at a reasonable rate. I don't want

charity; I'm not looking for a handout. I want affordable

health care. I've been praying I stay healthy. I'm patiently

waiting for the affordable care exchanges so that I can

finally try my luck there. Please, please don't let the Tea

Party take this away from me and so many others who need it.

Now, I wish my colleagues on the other side of the aisle would accept this as the good news that it is. I wish they would accept that their stories of doom and gloom for ObamaCare were wrong. But instead, we're learning that the dire stories were not a prediction, they were a threat.

The Tea Party, confronted with the prospect of a duly passed law that has been upheld by the Supreme Court, have thrown a temper tantrum. They have taken hostage the entire Federal Government, and they have sabotaged the process of self-government--all to

prevent Americans from gaining access to affordable health care.

Let's make the health care law work as well as possible. Let's, together, make our other government services--necessary services--work as well as possible.