Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Clerk be authorized to make technical corrections in the engrossment of H.R. 1719, to include addition of an enacting clause.

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

Mr. Chairman, our current defense spending is about where it was at the very peak of the Reagan defense buildup after adjusting for inflation. It is about the same as the next eight most powerful military forces on the planet, combined. Six of those eight are already our allies.

The President has proposed adding $54 billion to this. That is the equivalent of adding more than the entire military establishment of Great Britain to what we already have.

Yet we are told, and I do not doubt, that much of our military force is ill equipped and unready for combat. If that is the case, it is not a fiscal problem; it is a management problem. We seem to care how much money is being spent, but not how it is being spent. That is a catastrophic failure of congressional oversight.

In recent years, the Pentagon has warned that its infrastructure is 22 percent bigger than necessary. It has asked Congress for another round of Base Realignment and Closure reviews. Just last month, Secretary Mattis urged resumption of BRAC. He believes it will save $2 billion a year and $20 billion over 10 years. That is enough money to buy 120 FA-18 Super Hornets, 300 more AH-64 helicopters, or four Virginia class submarines if only Congress would get out of the way and allow unneeded bases to close or consolidate.

The Pentagon has the authority to close or consolidate bases on foreign soil, but in the NDAA Congress blocks its authority to close or consolidate unnecessary bases on our own soil.

My amendment removes the NDAA prohibition on this needed process and allows BRAC to move forward as our President has requested. His Statement of Administration Policy on NDAA is crystal clear: ``While the bill contains many promising reforms, it fails to authorize a Base Realignment and Closure round, which would result in substantial recurring savings and allow DOD to align infrastructure with force reduction.''

I have heard three objections:

First, we are told the upfront costs of consolidation can be high. But the results are now in, and the first four

BRAC rounds are saving us $7 billion a year.

Second, we are told local economies depend on these bases, but experience tells us that communities rapidly recover by freeing these assets for productive commercial use.

Third, we are told to wait until we finished expanding our forces, but the excess capacity estimate already assumes force expansion, and a new round of BRAC will only wring out a small portion of the overcapacity.

When we squander billions of defense dollars keeping obsolete military bases open in order to satisfy congressional constituencies, we directly rob our military forces of the resources that we are constantly reminded that they desperately need.

There is an old saying that you can't fill a broken bucket by pouring more water in it. At some point, you have got to fix the bucket. That is our responsibility. We need to take it more seriously.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith), the ranking member.

Mr. Chairman, to vote against these measures, to vote to rob our military of $20 million ofsavings over the next 10 years for military bases the Pentagon itself says are unnecessary, it comes down to that. You cannot provide for the common defense if you cannot pay for it, and the ability of our country to do so is being called into grave question.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Speaker, Kate's Law, the bill that this rule brings to the floor, is very personal to the people of my district because of two other names that we will never forget.

On October 24, 2014, Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Danny Oliver and Placer County Detective Michael Davis were brutally gunned down in one of the most cold-blooded rampages in the history of either county.

It began when Deputy Oliver approached a car in a parking lot to ask if he could help a couple who seemed to be lost. He was shot dead.

A bystander who was too slow turning over his car keys became the next victim. Miraculously, he survived a gunshot wound to the head but vividly remembers the smile on the gunman's face as he pulled the trigger.

The next victim was Detective Michael Davis. His father, a Riverside County Sheriff's deputy, had lost his life in the line of duty on the very same day 26 years earlier.

These crimes should never have happened. Their assailant had repeatedly entered this country illegally. While here, he had been apprehended for committing other crimes and repeatedly deported, only to easily recross the border without being challenged.

I have heard it said there is no evidence that illegal immigrants commit crimes at any higher rate than the general population. Well, that is just not true. It is true that crime statistics don't aggregate by legal status. Some States, like California, no longer even report the legal status of inmates. They can tell us by race, gender, age, background, and jurisdiction who stole a car last year, but they won't tell us how many illegal immigrants did.

By painstakingly piecing together all of the available fragmented data in 2015, FOX News concluded that illegal immigrants are three times more likely to be convicted of murder than the legal population.

According to this report, illegals account for 3.7 percent of the population but are convicted of 13.6 percent of all crimes, including 12 percent of all murders, 20 percent of all kidnappings, and 16 percent of drug trafficking. Each year, 900,000 illegal immigrants are arrested for crimes.

Citing the GAO, FOX reported that 55,000 illegal immigrants were in Federal prison and 296,000 in State and local jails in 2011. The real tragedy is that there should be zero crimes committed by illegal immigrants because there should be zero illegal immigrants in this country.

For 16 years, two Presidents--one Republican and one Democrat-- ignored their constitutional responsibility to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Well, thank God, we finally have a President who takes that responsibility seriously.

This rule brings a bill to the floor that increases penalties for those who return to our country after they have been deported. The other to be debated today adds long-overdue sanctions to local jurisdictions that refuse to protect their own citizens, and I rise in strong support of that bill as well.

It is too late for Officers Davis and Oliver. It is too late for Kate Steinle. It is too late for thousands of other Americans killed by illegal immigrants. But perhaps it is just in time for your neighbor, your family member, or yourself.

Mr. Chair, I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on the Water, Power, and Oceans Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, droughts are nature's fault; they happen. But water shortages are our fault. Water shortages are a choice that we made a generation ago when we stopped building new reservoirs to meet the needs of a growing population.

The unvarnished truth is we will not solve our water shortages until we build more reservoirs, and we cannot build new reservoirs until we overhaul the laws that have made their construction endlessly time- consuming and, ultimately, cost-prohibitive.

For years, the Natural Resources Committee has heard testimony from frustrated water districts unable to navigate the Byzantine maze of regulations and the phalanx of competing, overlapping, duplicative, and often contradictory Federal agencies.

After years spent trying to satisfy one agency, another suddenly pops up to claim jurisdiction with an entirely new set of demands in an often endless permitting process, despite the fact they are studying the same project in the same location with the same data. The burden this places on our ability to deliver water for the next generation is crushing.

The leader mentioned the High Savery Dam in Wyoming--14 years to permit, only 2 years to actually build. The Federal Government has literally studied four storage projects in California nearly to death. One project, the Sites Reservoir, had over 50 alternative

locations studied, and there is no end in sight for the feasibility process on that potential reservoir. Similar delays have prevented the expansion of the Shasta reservoir for 39 years.

Mr. Huffman tells us that no dam permits have been denied because of this. The problem is very few dam permits have been approved because of this. And the costs are caused by cost-prohibitive delays in time that run up millions and millions of dollars in costs until the agencies simply throw up their hands and give up.

H.R. 1654 will bring order from this bureaucratic chaos. It establishes a framework in which Federal agencies with permitting responsibilities for the construction of new reservoirs must work together, coordinate their schedules, share data and technical materials, and make their findings publicly available. The end result will be fewer delays, more efficient use of taxpayer dollars, and, ultimately, more abundant water supplies.

It is modeled on the Obama administration's approach to constructing new electric transmission lines to accommodate its reliance on wind and solar generation. There is nothing new in this process. In October of 2009, the administration formed the Interagency Rapid Response Team for Transmission, a consortium of nine Federal agencies to coordinate a single unified environmental review document for each project analysis.

It is also modeled on provisions sponsored by House Democrats that expedited improvements on the Hetch Hetchy dam serving the San Francisco region. This bill simply says, if there is a potential project on Interior or Agriculture Department lands, then the Bureau of Reclamation will be the coordinating agency for the permits. That is a one-stop permitting agency.

It will call together all of the agencies, the local and State jurisdictions and tribal governments of our Indian nations, establish a timeframe for studying decisionmaking, and then coordinate all the reviews and analyses and opinions and statements and permits or licenses and other Federal approvals required under Federal law.

It also requires transparency, assuring that all data is available to the public online so the science guiding these decisions can be rigorously scrutinized by all interested parties.

It also allows water agencies to fund the review process if Federal funding isn't provided, removing one of the excuses that Federal agencies have made in slow-walking or stalling project reviews.

I want to make this very clear: It does not bypass or alter or waive any environmental or safety laws. It doesn't waive CEQ or ESA or NEPA or any other law. It simply says the process needs to be more efficient, and the government agencies should coordinate and cooperate with each other rather than talking past each other as isolated and often inscrutable fiefdoms.

Five years of drought in California brought entire cities within months of exhausting their water supplies. The epic drought has now been followed with the wettest year on record, and we have helplessly watched our dams spilling millions of acre-feet of water to the ocean because we have no place to store the excess for the next drought.

Perhaps that is nature's way of reminding us that, if we didn't store water in wet years, we won't have it during dry ones, and the economic and social devastation have been immense.

Mr. Chair, if you want to misuse our environmental laws to block any new water storage, well, then you should vote against this bill. We will continue to see increasingly severe water shortages and spiralling water and electricity bills.

But if you want to preserve our environmental laws, you ought to be supporting this bill because it places those laws back within a workable and practical framework, and it places our society back on the road to an era of abundance where our children can enjoy green lawns and gardens, brightly lit homes, and abundant and affordable groceries from America's agricultural cornucopia.

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

Mr. Chairman, first I would point out to my friend from California, if the climate continues to warm, we are not going to be able to store as much water in our mountains as snow, and we are going to need much more surface water storage reservoirs than the laws have allowed us to build because of the delays they have imposed in planning and construction.

The gentleman's amendment gives the Secretary of the Interior the ability to ignore this streamlining law if he determines it could ``cause harm to commercial fisheries.''

Well, now, remember, this bill makes no changes to any of our existing laws or regulations. It makes no changes to the licenses and permits required for a project or the criteria for obtaining those licenses and permits. It makes no changes to any law or regulation that could affect commercial fisheries or, for that matter, anything else.

It simply says that the agencies and jurisdictions involved with these projects have to cooperate and coordinate and communicate with each other, and it requires the science guiding these decisions to be available to the public to review and scrutinize.

So why the amendment? Well, for one reason and one reason only, I think, because for the last 8 years, we have had an administration that was actively hostile to constructing new reservoirs. That administration has used the fragmented nature of the approval process as a way to delay projects indefinitely. That is what this proposal corrects.

Mr. Lowenthal's amendment would allow any administration so inclined to make a specious finding as an excuse to ignore this law. Project applicants would not know from one election to the next whether their millions of dollars of studies and investments would suddenly come to naught, and projects already well along in the planning and approval process could find their efforts coming to a screeching halt.

For our laws to work, they must be predictable and fair. Mr. Lowenthal's amendment is a poison pill to render this law unpredictable and capricious.

The irony is this: the gentleman's constituents in southern California have the most to lose from his amendment because southern California depends on surplus water from northern California. And let me make this very clear to the gentleman and his constituents: northern California has first claim on northern California water.

If we can't store the extra water in the north, there is no surplus for the south, and the gentleman's constituents can look forward to dead lawns and gardens, brown parks, empty swimming pools, astronomical water and electricity prices, spiraling grocery prices, and a future where they will have to ration and stretch every drop of water and every watt of electricity in their parched and sweltering homes. They might want to ask him about that some day.

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

Mr. Chairman, I would first point out that commercial fisheries are controlled and regulated by the Secretary of Commerce, not the Secretary of the Interior, and yet it is the Secretary of the Interior to whom the gentleman would give the power to ignore this streamlining law and impose endless, repetitive, and duplicative delays in the consideration of these projects.

I would again point out that all of the considerations that are given to fisheries, that are given to environmental laws, that are given to engineering laws, everything that goes into the planning process in our dams under

our laws and regulations is fully respected under this measure.

All that it does is say that the agency, that the Bureau of Reclamation, when an application is provided, will pull these agencies together, and all of the jurisdictions and all of the affected parties establish a timetable according to their best judgment of what is necessary, have them talk with each other, and then stick to that plan.

That is what the bill does, and that is why it is so desperately needed in a State that has not built a major reservoir of over a million acre-fee of storage since the New Melones was completed in 1979.

Mr. Chair, by that token, I will include in the Record the support of the United States Chamber of Commerce as well as the Family Farm Alliance and others in support of this bill and the jobs that will expand as a result of its adoption.

Chamber of Commerce of the

United States of America,

Washington, DC, June 20, 2017.

To the Members of the U.S. House of Representatives: The

U.S. Chamber of Commerce urges you to approve H.R. 1654, the

``Water Supply Permitting Coordination Act,'' which would

streamline the permitting process for new surface water

storage projects. The Chamber may consider including votes

on, or in relation to, H.R. 1654 in our annual How They Voted

scorecard.

H.R. 1654 would establish the Bureau of Reclamation as the

lead agency for coordinating environmental reviews and

permitting new or expanded non-federal surface storage

facilities. The bill also would allow the Secretary of the

Interior to accept funds from non-federal public entities and

to use those funds to expedite the permitting process for

designated projects. This type of coordination and

streamlining is essential to the development and construction

of much-needed water storage projects.

The structure of H.R. 1654 tracks the permit streamlining

provisions contained in Title 41 of the Fixing America's

Surface Transportation Act, which was passed during the 114th

Congress. The Chamber urges you to approve H.R. 1654.

Sincerely,

Neil L. Bradley,

Senior Vice President & Chief Policy Officer.

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

Mr. Chair, it really is amazing that the bureaucratic tangle that has been caused by our so-called environmental laws has now reached the point that even dead trees on public lands that threaten to fall on power lines and cause major forest fires cannot be removed without permission from Federal bureaucrats. And then to add insult to insanity, when the bureaucracy denies or delays permission and a fire results, the cost of the fire is paid by the utility's customers through higher household electricity bills.

Mr. LaMalfa mentioned a situation in La Pine, Oregon, where the Midstate Electric Cooperative begged the Forest Service for permission to trim trees that were threatening their power lines, and they were refused. Well, sure enough, when one of those trees fell on a power line and started a fire, the utility's customers were forced to pay the firefighting costs that resulted, a third of a million dollars.

Carbon Power & Light warned the Forest Service of trees threatening their lines. The Forest Service required them first to conduct $1.6 million of environmental studies paid by the utility's customers. If there had been a fire in the meantime, they would have had to pay those costs as well.

Mr. LaMalfa's bill basically does two things:

First, it exempts such projects from time-consuming and costly environmental reviews. After all, there is nothing more devastating to the forest environment than a forest fire. Our environmental laws are now causing these fires.

Second, when a Federal agency delays or denies permission for a utility to remove or trim hazard trees and they end up causing a fire, the liability is placed where it belongs: on the agency and its bureaucrats, not on the utility and its customers; and it gives utilities permission to remove imminent threats to power lines before they can cause a fire.

Mr. Chair, you may have noticed, common sense is not exactly common to government. Let's change that today by adopting this bill.

Mr. Speaker, President Trump's most important mandate is to revive America's struggling economy. This simply cannot be done under the terms of the Paris climate accord.

According to The Heritage Foundation, adhering to that agreement would have destroyed 400,000 American jobs and forfeit $2.5 trillion in lost productivity by 2035. That is about $20,000 in lower annual earnings for a family of four.

There is a reason we suffered the slowest economic growth of the post-war era under Barack Obama: bad deals and bad policies like this.

President Obama bound America to the Paris accord by executive fiat. He committed billions of dollars of taxes paid by American families to an international slush fund for developing countries, and then he set his agencies loose to suppress American industry, regardless of the costs imposed on working Americans.

And for what exactly? The EPA's own modeling predicts that if the accord were fully implemented by 2030, it would reduce global temperature increases by 17/100ths of 1 degree by 2100.

Its advocates have recently dismissed this inconvenient truth by explaining: Well, it would at least send a powerful signal.

Well, we can already see the cost to average families of sending this powerful signal. European energy prices are more than twice as high as the United States, and their economies lag far behind even the anemic growth under Obama.

California has adopted many of these policies and now bears one of the highest energy costs in the country, along with the highest poverty rate. Without the high-tech wealth of the bay area, California's economy would trail well behind the national growth rate.

Paris apologists promise a new era of green energy jobs. Well, as long as consumers are coerced into buying overpriced green products and struggling families are forced to fork over billions of dollars through higher utility bills and taxes, well, of course, politically connected green energy companies will do very well, but at enormous expense to the overall economy.

Those 374,000 solar jobs we hear about generate just 1 percent of our electricity. The 187,000 coal, oil, and gas jobs remaining in this country generate 65 percent of our electricity.

The wide historical fluctuations in both carbon dioxide and global temperature suggest that natural influences vastly outweigh human causes. Paleoclimatologists tell us that atmospheric CO2 levels were five times higher during the Jurassic Period, and global temperatures were 13 degrees higher during the Pleistocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. That is long before humans or SUVs.

In 2016, President Obama came to Yosemite Valley to warn that the last of Yosemite's surrounding glaciers would soon disappear. Ironically, if he stood on the same spot 20,000 years earlier, he would have been buried under about 2,000 feet of glacial ice.

The first IPCC report in 1990, sounding the alarm over global warming, gives us some practical experience with its climate modeling. Actual global temperatures are now well below the lowest of the forecasts that the IPCC made 27 years ago. And 20 years before that, the scientific consensus warned that pollution was about to trigger another Ice Age.

The fact is the current state of science is a long way from understanding the intricate natural forces and interrelationships in global climatology, let alone being able to accurately predict temperature changes over hundreds of years within fractions of a degree. That is perhaps why many prominent and respected climatologists continue to challenge and debate the question, despite claims that 97 percent of the scientists agree and despite calls to silence them as heretics.

As the fable of ``The Emperor's New Clothes'' illustrates, nothing is more menacing to a flawed consensus than a single dissenter. Thanks to our politically incorrect President, the United States has just stepped forward from the crowd and pointed out the obvious.

The Paris accord points the way to a future of skyrocketing energy prices, lower productivity and wages, a massive wealth transfer from America to nations like China and India, and a permanently declining quality of life for our children.

Fortunately, President Trump has a different vision, a future in which families can enjoy the prosperity that abundant energy provides and the quality of life that comes from that prosperity. We can't get there from Paris.

But whichever course we take, one thing is certain, the Earth will continue to warm and cool as it has for billions of years.

Mr. Speaker, when ObamaCare was imposed on the Nation, we were promised lower premiums, increased choices, and improved care, but exactly the opposite has happened.

Last year, premiums increased an average of 25 percent, and this year we are warned they will increase another 40 percent. Last year, only one provider remained in a third of American counties. This year, entire regions have no providers at all. In 2015, American life expectancies actually declined.

The Senate now has before it the American Health Care Act. It goes a long way toward replacing ObamaCare's compulsory one-size-fits-all bureaucratic mess with a consumer-friendly, patient-centered system.

The AHCA repeals the employer mandate that has trapped many Americans in part-time jobs. It repeals the individual mandate that forces Americans to buy plans they don't want, don't need, and can't afford. It changes the premium structure that forced young families to subsidize premiums for those in their peak earning years. It repeals nearly $1 trillion of taxes on the American economy. It repeals the mandates that force an older couple to maintain pediatric coverage, and it maintains the safety net for those with preexisting conditions. It assures that these plans are within the financial reach of every family.

Well, despite the obvious failure of ObamaCare and the urgent need to rescue our healthcare system, opponents have gone into overdrive to frighten people and to distort the facts. The most lurid claim comes from the Congressional Budget Office: that 23 million Americans will lose their health insurance.

Now, we should first remember that this is the same office that predicted that ObamaCare exchanges would cover 26 million Americans by 2017. The actual number was 10 million. It predicted that ObamaCare would result in slight premium increases between 10 and 13 percent by 2016. The actual figure was 105 percent.

So how did the CBO come up with its latest claim? Well, much is based on assuming that people won't buy health insurance unless we force them. In reality, more people are already choosing not to purchase ObamaCare policies, and they are paying a steep tax penalty to boot. The CBO ignored provisions that allow people to tailor plans to best meet their own needs, which is a powerful market incentive for them to purchase plans.

Second, the CBO predicts that in future years Medicaid recipients will leave due to changes that restrain the growth in this program, yet it is precisely these changes that focus resources on services and not on waste and fraud.

Third, the CBO predicts that low-income, older Americans in the individual market will lose nearly $13,000 of subsidies and be priced out of that market, yet it ignores the $90 billion that were freed up in the final House version with the express understanding that the Senate would redirect these funds to replace these ObamaCare subsidies.

Fourth, the CBO predicts some people will choose less expensive plans without all the bells and whistles required under ObamaCare. Well, this, of course, is exactly what choice is all about: people making their own decisions based on their own needs and wants. Yet the CBO classifies them as uninsured.

The other major and false claim is that people with preexisting conditions will lose coverage, despite explicit language in the AHCA that nothing in this act shall be construed as permitting health insurers to limit access to health coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions.

There is one exception. If you are one of the 7 percent of patients in the individual market, and if you have a preexisting condition, and if you live in a State that has requested and received a waiver based on having an alternative program to assure your coverage, and if you have let your insurance lapse for more than 62 days in the past year, then, and only then, can you be charged a higher rate than the general population for your health plan, and then only for the first year.

This year, entire regions of the country will be unable to obtain policies on ObamaCare exchanges; premiums are spiraling out of reach for families that don't qualify for subsidies; and taxpayer costs are skyrocketing. The AHCA offers a way out of this nightmare, restoring a healthy, competitive market, where patients will have the widest range of choices and the freedom to choose a plan that best meets their own needs, along with a supportive tax system to assure that these plans are within their financial reach.

If the Senate can come up with a better plan, let's see it. But one thing should be clear: inaction is not an option.

Mr. Speaker, the last four elections have defined one of the most dramatic political realignments in our country's history.

In these elections, we have seen a net shift of 64 U.S. House seats, 12 U.S. Senate seats, 10 Governors, 919 State legislative seats, and the Presidency shift from Democrat to Republican.

This happened in large part on three overarching mandates from the American people: revive the economy, secure our borders, and restore our healthcare system. If President Trump can accomplish these three objectives, his administration and this Congress will be remembered as one of the most successful and beneficial in our Nation's history.

In working toward these goals, President Trump has faced the most bitter, virulent, and partisan opposition that any President has endured since the election of 1860.

We have seen the radical left in full display across our Nation with its appalling incivility, its intolerance of other points of view, and its disrespect of our democratic process and constitutional institutions. Sadly, this opposition now permeates much of our press and academia.

Yet, despite these obstacles, as we mark the first 100 days of this Presidency, there is ample reason to celebrate the new direction that President Trump and this Congress have taken and the progress that we have made.

Our overarching mandate is to revive our economy and restore prosperity to millions of struggling American families who have suffered the most disappointing decade in more than 80 years, buried under an avalanche of Obama-era regulations and taxes.

American workers finally have an advocate in the Oval Office. This President has signed more legislation in his first 100 days than any President since Harry Truman. And many of these bills, as well as his executive orders, have begun repealing the heavy regulations that have been sinking our economy.

One study estimates these actions have already relieved our economy of $68 billion of destructive regulations. That comes to about $500 for every family in America.

The Keystone pipeline alone will produce thousands of construction jobs, billions of dollars of private investment, and, when completed, 830,000 barrels of Canadian crude oil entering American markets every day.

And what has happened?

Well, consumer confidence is up 3 points since the election. The S&P is up 11 percent, the NASDAQ is up more than 15 percent, and the Dow is up 13 percent. 317,000 more Americans are working today than on the day the President took the oath of office, unemployment has dropped three- tenths of a point, and the labor participation rate has started to inch upward once again.

It is not yet ``morning again in America,'' but the first faint shades of light are appearing on our economic horizon.

The second great mandate was to secure the borders after many years, when millions of illegal immigrants made a mockery of our Nation's sovereignty and our rule of law. Wages for working Americans stagnated, jobs dried up, and social services have strained as a result.

Well, finally, we have a President who takes the Nation's security and the sovereignty of our borders seriously. Renewed enforcement has, by all accounts, boosted morale of our immigration agencies dramatically, and criminal aliens are finally being deported--already showing a 32 percent increase in deportations compared to the last administration. Because of this new resoluteness, illegal border crossings have plunged by some 60 percent.

Now, healthcare reform is the third of the mandates. That requires congressional action, and here is where Congress has let him down. But as we approach the 100th day of the administration, it appears legislation will soon begin moving to the Senate, and, before long, the collapsing, one-size-fits-all bureaucracy of ObamaCare will give way to a healthy and vibrant healthcare market where Americans will have the widest possible range of choices to meet their own needs with the supported tax system to ensure that these plans are within the financial reach of every American.

Ultimately, though, the success of this administration will not be measured by 100 days or by talking points from politicians. It will be measured by a simple question that every American will answer for himself or herself: Am I better off today? As we approach this first checkpoint in the course of this administration, there is strong reason to believe the answer to that question will be a decisive yes.

This is a period of great change, and great change brings great controversy. But I believe that this President and our Nation can take increasing confidence from these first 100 days and can take great strength in knowing that a day is fast approaching when we will awaken and realize it is, indeed, morning again in America.

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

Mr. Speaker, Congress is fundamentally a deliberative institution. Deliberations take time, and they are often messy. In fact, the bigger the issue, the messier the deliberations.

The designers of our Constitution wanted a great, big, ugly debate every time a decision was being made. They wanted the subject held up to every conceivable light and every voice in the country to be heard.

This is certainly true of the effort to replace the collapsing bureaucracy of ObamaCare with the patient-centered marketplace that we have long promised.

These deliberations must continue until they bear fruit because there is no excuse for failure. ObamaCare is only getting worse.

Last year's average 25 percent premium increase is likely to be followed by even bigger increases this year. The flight of healthcare providers from the system is only going to accelerate. The rapid expansion of Medicaid, which could exceed defense spending by next year, is not only fiscally unsustainable, it doesn't even guarantee care.

Dwindling Medicaid providers and lengthening waiting lists means that many Medicaid patients have no recourse but to flood emergency rooms.

The original Medicaid population, the elderly, the blind, the disabled, who were only reimbursed an average 57 cents on the dollar, are pushed to the back of every line by able-bodied ObamaCare expansion patients who are reimbursed at 90 percent.

The American Health Care Act is far from perfect. I have argued vigorously for a comprehensive bill rather than the current piecemeal approach that we are following.

Now, I lost that debate, but I haven't lost sight of the ultimate goal: to restore our healthcare system as the best in the world.

I could list a lot of things that could be made better by the current bill, and perhaps they will be in our extended negotiations, but those who expect perfection in our legislation fundamentally misunderstand our system.

Congress was never designed to make perfect law. It was designed to make the best law that is acceptable to the most people. And it is pretty good at that when we let it be.

When the Constitutional Convention seemed hopelessly deadlocked, Benjamin Franklin declared that he didn't entirely approve of our Constitution, but he had learned, over the years, to doubt a little of his own infallibility and to recognize the limitations of making decisions with others.

He noted that when you assemble a group of people to benefit from their collective wisdom, you also had to accept their collective shortcomings and realize that a perfect product is never possible from such a process.

In another speech, he recalled being an apprentice tradesman trying to fit together two pieces of wood. It was often necessary, he said, to shave a little from one and then a little from the other until you had a joint that could hold together for centuries. In this same manner, he urged them to each join together in each part with some of our demands.

Compromise is not an end in itself. It is a means to an end. As long as that

end moves us forward toward better policy, more freedom, greater prosperity, whatever perfections the measure may include are often precisely what are required to bring it to fruition. I fear we are losing sight of these simple truths.

Ironically, factions within the House who are the most adamant in opposing ObamaCare have become, as a practical matter, its most effective defenders. I know they don't intend this to be, but the reality is that ObamaCare survives today solely because of their actions in this House.

Benjamin Franklin was right. In deliberations of this magnitude, it is essential that we each doubt a little of our own infallibility and that we each part with a few of our own demands, in order to join together and produce the reforms that our country depends on us to enact.

A political minority doesn't need to compromise. It has the luxury of standing solely on principle. But the majority, entrusted with making the actual decisions to guide our country to better days, must compromise if it is to make law that will hold together for the centuries.

Lincoln once reminded Congress that we can succeed only by concert. He said: It is not can any of us imagine better, but can we all do better. He urged us to rise to the occasion, to disenthrall ourselves, for only then could we save our country.

I hope that some of our colleagues will consider this advice during the Easter recess.

Mr. Speaker, I remind the gentleman from Kentucky that every promise made to the American people in support of ObamaCare was rapidly broken. We are now, at this moment in time, watching the death throes of ObamaCare.

More people are paying the State tax penalty or claiming hardship exemptions than are buying ObamaCare policies. In a third of our counties, there is no choice left at all. You get one provider. Soon, we are warned, some regions will have no providers at all. Premiums soared an average of 25 percent last year, and this year we are warned it could be 40 percent or more.

Critics cite the CBO estimate that 24 million Americans will lose their coverage. It is important to understand their reasoning there. The CBO believes that people won't buy health insurance unless we force them to buy health insurance. In fact, people won't buy health insurance that is not a good value for them, and, clearly, ObamaCare isn't.

We replace it with a vigorous buyer's market where plans across the country will compete to offer consumers better services at lower prices tailored to their own needs and wants. And we assure these plans are within their financial reach with $90 billion of additional support that the CBO simply ignores.

The AHCA's biggest achievement is to replace coercion with choice for every American. It ends the individual mandate that forces Americans to buy products they don't want. It ends the employer mandate that has trapped many low-income workers in part-time jobs. It begins to restore consumers' freedom of choice, the best guarantee of quality and value in any market. It allows Americans to meet more of their healthcare needs with pretax dollars. It relieves the premium base of the enormous cost of preexisting conditions by moving them to a block-granted assigned risk pool.

Mr. Speaker, ObamaCare is collapsing, premiums are skyrocketing, and providers are fleeing. This may well be our last off-ramp on this road to ruin.

Mr. Speaker, I simply want to underscore what the chairwoman has already laid out.

When my friend from Kentucky says that his constituents will lose coverage, he is basing it on two premises. He is ignoring the $90 billion of additional funds that we freed up in the Budget Committee to assure that nobody will face sticker shock as we make this transition.

Second, he assumes that the only reason that people buy insurance is if we force them to buy it. The reality is many are refusing to buy ObamaCare policies even when they are faced with these crushing tax policies. The AHCA replaces this heavyhanded and failing bureaucratic nightmare.

Ultimately, we are going to be judged not on polls or fairy tales, but on whether the vast majority of Americans have a better experience with this new consumer-driven market than they had with the bureaucratized, one-size-fits-all ObamaCare system. That system has already been weighed in the balance and found wanting by the American people, and I am here to stake my reputation on the prediction that they will find better policies with better services at lower costs when they are restored the freedom to be consumers in a marketplace with a supportive tax structure that assures that these policies are within the financial reach of every American family.

Mr. Speaker, any discussion of the American Health Care Act needs first to consider where we would be without it.

ObamaCare is collapsing. More people are paying the State tax penalty or claiming hardship exemptions than are choosing to buy ObamaCare policies. In a third of the counties across America, there is only one provider to choose, and we are now seeing counties where there are no providers at all.

ObamaCare premiums soared an average of 25 percent last year, and we are warned that this year will be worse. I have strongly advocated that the House address this crisis in a single, comprehensive bill that fully repeals ObamaCare and replaces it with a healthy, competitive market.

Instead, we have to rely on the reconciliation process in order to bypass Democratic obstructionism in the Senate, and this only allows us to repeal parts of ObamaCare and enact only parts of a replacement. Finishing the job will require administrative actions and followup legislation in the Senate, both somewhat speculative enterprises. So we need to ask if this bill alone is enough to produce a better healthcare system for the vast majority of people.

Its biggest defects are its failure to restore to consumers the failure to shop across State lines and to fully free consumers from having to purchase coverage they don't need and don't want. I am afraid in States that have insurance commissioners who refuse to approve innovative replacement plans, consumers will be stuck in a market still governed by ObamaCare mandates. This will require followup measures.

Critics cite the Congressional Budget Office estimate that 24 million Americans will lose their coverage, but this conclusion is largely based on the premise that unless people are forced to buy health insurance they won't. In fact, people won't buy health insurance that is not a good value for them; and, clearly, they believe ObamaCare isn't.

We envision a vigorous buyer's market where plans across the country compete to offer consumers better services at lower costs, tailored to their own needs and wants. This is the AHCA's biggest achievement: replacing coercion with choice for every American.

It ends the individual mandate that forces Americans to buy products they don't want. It ends the employer mandate that has trapped many low-income workers in part-time jobs.

It begins to restore consumers' freedom of choice, the best guarantee of quality and value in any market.

It allows Americans to meet more of their healthcare needs with pretax dollars.

It relieves the premium base of the enormous cost of preexisting conditions by moving them to a block-granted, assigned risk pool.

In making this transition, though, it is important to leave no one in the lurch, and that is where we need to heed the CBO's warning. The fact that many low-income families could no longer afford basic health care is what produced ObamaCare in the first place.

Now, when fully implemented, our reforms will correct the government mandates that trapped people in restricted markets that forced health care out of reach. But until then, the CBO warns that a 64-year-old, for example, earning $26,500 will see her out-of-pocket health costs balloon from $1,700 to $14,600 per year. This is neither morally defensible nor politically sustainable.

The Budget Committee adopted my motion, on a bipartisan vote, to ask the House to correct this inequity by adjusting the tax credits to assure that health plans are within the financial reach of every family. I want to thank the leadership for responding to this motion by creating architecture in the bill to shift an additional $75 billion for this purpose.

As our pro-growth economic reforms cause incomes to rise and our healthcare reforms bring healthcare costs down, families will be earning more and will be paying less of what they earn for their health care, and reliance on these tax credits will recede.

But we need a bridge from the present to the future, and we simply can't get there without addressing the bill's initial impact on older, low-income Americans.

It is also important that we assure stability in the Medicaid system as we transition to flexible, State-run programs that correct the inequities of ObamaCare that have pushed the elderly, blind, and disabled to the back of the Medicaid line. This bill does so.

I wish it did everything necessary to restore an optimal health insurance market, but it moves us toward that goal. And even as a stand-alone measure, I am confident that it will ultimately create a market in most States that will produce better services, greater choices, and lower costs for the vast majority of Americans.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 88) to modify the boundary of the Shiloh National Military Park located in Tennessee and Mississippi, to establish Parker's Crossroads Battlefield as an affiliated area of the National Park System, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 88, introduced by Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, expands the boundaries of the Shiloh National Military Park to include 2,126 acres of battlefields in Corinth and designates the Parker's Crossroads Battlefield as an affiliated area of the National Park System.

The Battle of Shiloh was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of this Nation and a turning point of which it was once said that, after Shiloh, the South never smiled again. The Battle of Parker's Crossroads was fought later that year and, though not as decisive a battle as Shiloh, was worthy of preservation in remembrance of the fallen.

I would like to add something on a personal note. I would like to speak of Private James H. Ewing, of the Third Iowa Volunteer Infantry Regiment, the fifth of 10 children of James and Agnes Ewing of Marshall County, Iowa. The family had begun in Ohio and journeyed to the frontier of Iowa, following Horace Greely's advice to go west and grow with the Nation. In 1861, that Nation was torn apart by secession. James Ewing met President Lincoln's call to defend her and was 24 years old when he was killed on April 6, 1862, at Pittsburg Landing on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh.

The words of his younger brother, John, written 64 years later, in 1926, expressed both the enduring anguish of that loss with equal parts of enduring pride, saying: ``Brother James gave up his life at the Battle of Shiloh . . . fighting to save our free government.'' That free government survived because of the sacrifices and suffering of these brave young men, and I am honored to speak the name of one of them in this Chamber today.

Private James H. Ewing is one of 3,584 courageous Americans whose graves our Nation has cared for and honored through the generations that have followed at Shiloh. This bill assures that several more of the battlefields they struggled on will be preserved in a cohesive unit. Our family remains proud of him to this day and grateful to Congresswoman Blackburn for bringing forward this bill to assure that the sacrifices, gallantry, and idealism of those young men who struggled at Bloody Shiloh shall never be forgotten by their larger family, the American people.

This bill would preserve approximately 2,126 acres of that battlefield associated with the Siege of Corinth, including the Fallen Timbers, Russell House, and Davis Bridge Battlefields. The National Park Service determined that each of these sites provides extensive opportunities for visitor use and interpretation or the potential for archeological research. An identical version of this legislation passed the House of Representatives last Congress.

I commend Representative Blackburn for her work to preserve these historically significant sites, and I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this measure.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the author of this measure.

Mr. Speaker, I would join in asking for adoption of this measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 228) to amend the Indian Employment, Training and Related Services Demonstration Act of 1992 to facilitate the ability of Indian tribes to integrate the employment, training, and related services from diverse Federal sources, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 228, the Indian Employment, Training and Related Services Consolidation Act, is sponsored by my colleague from Alaska, Congressman Don Young. This bipartisan legislation would make the Tribal 477 Program permanent and make improvements to its administration.

The 477 Program was established by Congress in 1992 as a demonstration program. It allows tribes to combine employment, childcare, and job training funding from a variety of Federal sources and conduct consolidated, comprehensive reporting. The 477 Program embodies tribal self-determination by allowing tribes to provide opportunities tailored to the unique needs of their communities.

The bill improves accounting procedures and reporting mechanisms to uphold the original intent of the program, ensures that agencies treat tribes fairly, and sets a foundation for participants' continued success.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Chairman Kevin Brady of the Ways and Means Committee and Chairwoman Virginia Foxx of the Education and the Workforce Committee for agreeing to help expedite consideration of this bill.

I urge adoption of H.R. 228.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Committee on Ways and Means,

House of Representatives,

Washington, DC, February 22, 2017.

Hon. Rob Bishop,

Chairman, Committee on Natural Resources,

Washington, DC.

Dear Chairman Bishop: I write concerning H.R. 228, the

``Indian Employment, Training and Related Services

Consolidation Act of 2017,'' which was referred to the

Committee on Natural Resources.

As a result of your having consulted with us on provisions

in H.R. 228 that fall within the Rule X jurisdiction of the

Committee on Ways and Means, I agree not to request a

sequential referral on this bill so that it may proceed

expeditiously to the House floor. The Committee on Ways and

Means takes this action with our mutual understanding that by

foregoing formal consideration of H.R. 228, we do not waive

any jurisdiction over subject matter contained in this or

similar legislation, and that our Committee will be

appropriately consulted and involved as this bill or similar

legislation moves forward. Our Committee also reserves the

right to seek appointment of an appropriate number of

conferees to any House-Senate conference involving this or

similar legislation, and asks that you support any such

request.

I would appreciate your response to this letter confirming

this understanding, and would request that you include a copy

of this letter and your response in the Congressional Record

during the floor consideration of this bill. Thank you in

advance for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Kevin Brady,

Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the legendary gentleman from Alaska (Mr. Young), the sponsor of this legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I have no additional speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the measure, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 699) to amend the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009 to modify provisions relating to certain land exchanges in the Mt. Hood Wilderness in the State of Oregon.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 699, the Mount Hood Cooper Spur Land Exchange Clarification Act, was introduced by Congressman Greg Walden and cosponsored by Congressman Earl Blumenauer to address an ongoing land exchange issue in the State of Oregon.

In 2009, the Omnibus Public Land Management Act authorized a land exchange in Government Camp, Oregon. This land exchange was supposed to be completed within 16 months of the enactment of the legislation; however, this still has not occurred more than 7 years later. The long delay, primarily due to disagreements surrounding easement terms, has frustrated local communities such as Mt. Hood Meadows and other local groups.

This legislation, along with the Senate companion, comes as a result of a mediation session held by the Forest Service in September 2015 to resolve longstanding issues between the agency and the local community. Subsequently, the parties released a joint statement that they arrived at mutually satisfactory terms during the mediation session.

H.R. 699 updates the details and process for the land exchange to clarify issues relating to land appraisals and the parameters of a wetland conservation easement on the Federal portion of the conveyance. This legislation also includes several technical provisions, including changes to conveyance conditions regarding wetland boundaries on the Federal land, reservation of a nonexclusive trail easement, and equalization of values of the exchange properties.

This bill was amended in committee last Congress to address concerns raised by the Forest Service, including clarifying language for the easement allowed in the bill and the length of time allowed for the Forest Service to implement this legislation.

It is illustrative of the state of Federal Land Management that the Forest Service has not already carried out the provisions of this bill. This bill previously passed the House in September 2016, and it is my hope that the Senate will see fit to act on the legislation during this Congress.

I appreciate Congressman Walden's continuous efforts to see this issue addressed once and for all, and I hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this bill. I urge adoption of the measure.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am now pleased to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), the author of this measure, whose dogged determination has brought us within reach of resolving this dispute.

Mr. Speaker, we have no further speakers and yet another show of bipartisan comity.

Mr. Speaker, I ask for adoption of this measure.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 863) to facilitate the addition of park administration at the Coltsville National Historical Park, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and to include any extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 863 was introduced by Representative John Larson of Connecticut. Originally, the National Park Service was required to acquire 10,000 square feet of space in East Armory of Coltsville. This measure would allow the National Park Service to acquire that space within any part of the Colt Armory Complex in Hartford, Connecticut.

Coltsville was the home of Samuel Colt's industrial enterprise, Colt's Manufacturing Company. In Hartford, Samuel Colt developed the use of the assembly line and highly mechanized techniques. Colt's Manufacturing Company not only transformed the firearms industry, but it was a major contributor to the industrial revolution by pioneering the use of interchangeable parts and precision manufacturing.

Colt's success brought him fame and wealth. He became one of the 10 wealthiest businessmen in the United States, a pillar of the Hartford community, and was given the honorary title of colonel by the Governor of Connecticut.

This small modification to current law would provide the Park Service flexibility in selecting a location for park administrative offices and visitor services at the Coltsville site. A nearly identical bill passed the House last Congress by voice vote.

I commend Representative Larson for his work on this legislation. I urge passage of the bill.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have no additional speakers, certainly none that could match the detailed knowledge and eloquence of the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Larson).

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption of the measure and look forward to taking Representative Larson up on his kind invitation for the great opening.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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