Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Chairman Ryan noted the false claims upon which ObamaCare was sold to the Congress, and I think they bear elaboration now that we know what is actually in it. It didn't bend the cost curve down. The Medicare actuary admitted to the House Budget Committee last year that it will add at least $300 billion more to our health care costs. It hasn't been good for the economy.

The gentleman from Maryland asks for the Congressional Budget Office's opinion. They admitted to the House Budget Committee last year that, in fact, ObamaCare would cost our economy a net loss of 800,000 jobs. They also told us if you like your plan, you can keep it. Well, the McKinsey's survey of employers reports that nearly one-third expect to drop their employees' health plans as a result of this law, like them or not.

It seems to me three strikes and you're out. We need a system that puts patients back in charge, that provides tax reforms to put health care back within the reach of every American family and restores to them the freedom to make their own health care decisions without the interference of government bureaucrats.

This bill is a necessary first step to get us there.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this amendment finishes the good work begun by the gentleman from Utah on the previous amendment. It saves $3.4 billion by eliminating all funding for the Community Development Block Grant program.

This program was created in 1974 with the stated objective of eliminating blight and providing affordable housing, but in the nearly four decades since then, it has degenerated into a Federal slush fund for pet projects of local politicians and politically connected businesses. It is plagued by profligate waste and outright fraud.

This is an unauthorized expenditure. The legal authority for it expired back in 1994, 18 years ago, and Congress has not bothered to renew it ever since, but we keep shoveling money at it year after year. Madam Chair, $3.5 billion averages to almost $50 from the earnings of a family of four, and they have a right to know where their $50, taken from their family budgets, is going.

Senator Coburn gave some examples in his Back to Black report: Summit County, Ohio, spent $100,000 of CDBG funds to create a doggie daycare and kennel last year, and Nyack, New York, directed $10,000 of CDBG funds to Amazing Grace Circus in 2009 to put on ``A Day At the Circus.''

CDBG funds are being spent creating a ``hip'' atmosphere for employees of an L.A. architectural firm, providing decorative sidewalks in a wealthy Virginia community, and upgrading Victorian cottages in Alabama. Indeed, some communities use these funds to pay off Federal loans they've taken out on projects that are now defaulting because they've utterly failed to produce all of the benefits they've promised.

Even in the best of circumstances, these are all projects that exclusively benefit local communities or private interests and ought to be paid for exclusively by those local communities or private interests. They are of such questionable merit that no city council is willing to face its constituents and say, This is how we have spent your local taxes. But they are more than happy to spend somebody else's Federal taxes, so we end up robbing St. Petersburg to pay St. Paul for projects so dubious that the purported beneficiaries won't pay for them.

And that's all before we discuss the realm of fraud. This program is replete with individuals directing six-figure sums to their personal bank accounts or political activities. The Office of Management and Budget has repeatedly branded this program as ``ineffective.'' That's its official designation for government programs that cannot ascertain how their funds are spent. HUD's own inspector general found that, in a relatively short 2-year timespan, over 150 criminal indictments were issued for false claims, bribery, fraudulent contracts, theft, embezzlement, or corruption in connection with this program.

This a slush fund that cries for abolition, and it should be one of the first places that we look to bring spending under control and stop wasting our constituents' money. Once again, though, this unauthorized program is not targeted for elimination by the Appropriations Committee. It is not even targeted for a token reduction in spending. As we just discussed, the Appropriations Committee proposes spending $400 million more than we spent last year, indeed, $400 million more than even the President requested.

Now, let's be very clear on this. The House Appropriations Committee, with a Republican majority that has a clear mandate to stop wasting money, is about to appropriate $400 million more than requested by the most spendthrift administration in our Nation's history on a program with no Federal nexus, with a solid history of fraud, and that funds the most unworthy of local projects and special interest handouts.

The rules of the House were specifically written to prevent this type of unauthorized expenditure, and they provide for a point of order to be raised if it's included in an appropriations bill. That is exactly what we have here. But, alas, that rule is routinely waived when these measures are brought to the floor, making this amendment necessary.

Madam Chairwoman, this is another critical test of the Republican majority's intention to stand by the promises it made to the American people in the most dangerous fiscal crisis in our Nation's history. I pray that we rise to the occasion.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment eliminates funding for the Community Development loan guarantee program. Like the Community Development Block Grants that we just discussed, these loan guarantees support strictly local projects that have no Federal nexus.

Now, unlike the House Appropriations Committee, President Obama has requested no taxpayer subsidies for this program, and that's a pretty profound statement. Remember, this is the same President who had no problem placing billions of taxpayer dollars at risk for failed schemes like Solyndra, for which he was soundly and rightly criticized by many in this House.

But even the architect of the Solyndra fiasco is unwilling to risk taxpayer money on this loan guarantee program, so, enter the House Appropriations Committee that apparently has money to burn.

What are the recent projects funded by these loan guarantees? Well, $7 million went to the city of Hartford to buy a 393-room Hilton Hotel; $15 million went to build a movie studio in Norristown, Pennsylvania; a $10 million loan to Bass Pro Shops to redevelop the Memphis Pyramid.

Now, why would we put our taxpayers' money at risk for these ventures? Obviously, private investors were unwilling to risk their own money. Obviously, President Obama sees these loans as far riskier than anything that he's loaned in the Solyndra fiasco. But we're about to put our constituents' hard-earned money at risk to prop up these projects.

Now, when Bass Pro Shops takes $10 million to redevelop the Memphis Pyramid, will this mean more jobs in Memphis? Well, yes. And will it mean precisely that many fewer jobs in other regions as, once again, we take from one community to give to another? Unfortunately, the answer is yes to that question as well.

My amendment simply takes taxpayer exposure to these risky loans down to the level of fiscal restraint proposed by the least fiscally restrained President in the history of our Nation. I'd invite my Republican colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to follow.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment forbids further Federal expenditures for the Central Subway project in San Francisco. This project is a 1.7-mile subway that is estimated to cost $1.6 billion. And these cost estimates continue to rise. In fact, its baseline budget has more than doubled in 9 years and shows no sign of slowing. The current estimate brings the cost to nearly $1 billion per mile. That's about five times the cost per lane-mile of Boston's scandalous Big Dig.

Now, it was supposed to link local light rail and bus lines with CalTrain and Bay Area Rapid Transit, but it's so badly designed that it bypasses 25 of the 30 light-rail and bus lines that it crosses. To add insult to insanity, it dismantles the seamless light rail to BART connection currently available to passengers at Market Street, requiring them, instead, to walk nearly a quarter mile to make the new connection. Experts estimate it will cost commuters between 5 and 10 minutes of additional commuting time on every segment of the route.

The Wall Street Journal calls it ``a case study in government incompetence and wasted taxpayer money.'' And they're not alone. The civil grand jury in San Francisco has vigorously recommended the project be scrapped, warning that maintenance costs alone could ultimately bankrupt San Francisco's Muni. The former chairman of the San Francisco Transportation Agency has called it ``one of the costliest mistakes in the city's history.'' Even the sponsors estimate that it will increase ridership by less than 1 percent, and there is vigorous debate that this project is far too optimistic.

I think Margaret Okuzumi, the executive director of the Bay Rail Alliance, put it best when she said:

Too many times, we've seen money for public transit used to

primarily benefit people who would profit financially, while

making transit less convenient for actual transit riders.

Voters approve money for public transit because they want

transit to be more convenient and available. It would be

tragic if billions of dollars were spent on something that

made Muni more time consuming, costly, and unable to sustain

its overall transit service.

Mr. Chairman, this administration is attempting to put Federal taxpayers--that's our constituents--on the hook for nearly $1 billion of the cost of this folly through the New Starts program. That's more than 60 percent of the entire project. We have already squandered $123 million on it that we don't have. This amendment forbids another

dime of our constituents' money being wasted on this boondoggle.

Now, Mr. Chairman, you may be wondering, well, why should your constituents pay nearly $1 billion for a purely local transportation project in San Francisco that is opposed by a broad bipartisan coalition of San Franciscans, including the Sierra Club, Save Muni-- which is a grassroots organization of Muni riders--the Coalition of San Francisco Neighborhoods, and three of the four local newspapers serving San Francisco. Why, indeed. Excuse me, I don't have an answer to that question.

But those who vote against this amendment had better have one when their constituents ask what in the world were you thinking.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

If the House is to live up to the promises the Republican majority made to the American people to bring spending under control, some tough choices are going to have to be made. This amendment, however, is not one of them. This is about the easiest choice that the House could possibly make to put an end to the so- called ``Essential Air Service'' that lavishly subsidizes some of the least essential air services in the country.

This program shells out nearly $200 million a year, including $114 million of direct taxpayer subsidies, to support empty and near-empty flights from selected airports in tiny communities, most of which are just a few hours' drive from major airports. A reporter recently investigating this waste took one of these flights from Ely, Nevada, and was the only passenger on that flight. Our constituents paid $1.8 million for this air service that carried just 227 passengers during the entire year. Ely is a 3\1/2\-hour drive from Salt Lake City International Airport.

Thief River Falls, Minnesota, is considered an Essential Air Service airport, despite the fact that it's just a 1 hour and 9 minutes drive to Grand Forks International Airport in North Dakota. Hagerstown is just 75 miles from Baltimore, but subsidizing their air flights is considered an ``essential air service.''

Now it's true there are a few tiny communities in Alaska--like Kake's 700 hearty souls--that have no highway connections to hub airports, but they've got plenty of alternatives. In the case of Kake, Alaska, they enjoy year-round ferry service to Juneau. In addition, Alaska is well served by a thriving general aviation market and the ubiquitous bush pilot.

Rural life has both great advantages and great disadvantages, but it is not the job of hardworking taxpayers who choose to live elsewhere to level out the differences.

Apologists for this wasteful spending tell us it is an important economic driver for these small towns--and I'm sure that's so. Whenever you give away money, the folks you're giving it to are always better off. But the folks you're taking it away from are always worse off to exactly the same extent. Indeed, it is economic drivers like this that have driven Greece's economy right off a cliff.

An airline so reckless with its funds as to manage its affairs in such a ludicrous way would quickly bankrupt itself. As we can plainly see, the same principle holds true for governments.

This was a temporary program set up when we deregulated commercial aviation during the Carter administration. It was supposed to last a few years to give rural communities a chance to adjust. That was 34 years ago.

In 2010, in one of the most decisive congressional elections in American history, voters entrusted the House to Republicans with a crystal clear mandate: Stop wasting our money.

Last year, the House responded to this mandate by voting to eliminate Essential Air Service subsidies in the FAA reauthorization bill. So what's the response of the House Appropriations Committee? They do not eliminate funding for this wasteful program. They do not reduce funding for it. No, they increase funding by 11 percent in a single year to a new historic high.

Mr. Chairman, our Nation is borrowing 40 cents of every dollar that it is spending. It has lost its AAA credit rating. Its taxpayers are exhausted. Its treasury is empty. Our children are staggering under a mountain of debt that will impoverish them for years to come, and yet the House Appropriations Committee, in defiance of last year's decision by the House to eliminate this program, has just voted a double-digit percentage increase for a program that flies near empty planes across the country.

I think we can do better than that. I offer instead this amendment to stop fleecing taxpayers for this expensive folly. I believe that House Republicans will ultimately prove themselves worthy of the trust the American people have given them in this perilous hour in our Nation's history. I believe that House Republicans can summon the fortitude to save our country from financial wreck and ruin. And I offer this amendment to put that day to a modest test.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 11: Page 90, line 15, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced to $0)''.

Page 150, Line 9, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $6,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 12: Page 89, line 13, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced to $0)''.

Page 89, line 15, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $3,344,000,000)''.

Page 89, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by$60,000,000)''.

Page 90, line 2, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced

by $3,960,000)''.

Page 150, line 9, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $3,404,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 13: At the end of the bill, before the short

title, insert the following:

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Grijalva) stated the facts very clearly. In the 1950s, the Federal Government condemned and seized land and water rights owned by the Tohono O'odham Indian Nation. In 1986, Congress settled the tribe's outstanding claims by agreeing, in part, to take into trust replacement land that the Tohono O'odham might acquire under specific conditions. The tribe has acquired a particular parcel meeting all of the conditions set forth in the law and asserted its rightful claim under that law. This bill retroactively and fundamentally alters that settlement, breaking the promises the Tohono O'odham have relied upon as they've spent many years and millions of dollars acquiring this parcel and planning the project.

Now, why in the world would we want to do such a thing? Well, it's obvious. Like many tribes, the Tohono O'odham want to build a casino on this land. This casino would compete with another tribe's casino in the region, and that tribe doesn't want the competition. Competition is so annoying and inconvenient. It requires offering your customers a better service at a lower price. Tohono O'odham seeks to do that. The other tribe doesn't want to.

So that other tribe, which has a monopoly on gaming in the Phoenix area, created a front made up of antigambling pressure groups and NIMBY activists to try and stop them. They have been defeated in the courts at every turn. So what to do? What to do? They don't want to compete for customers. They don't have a leg to stand on in court. What is left? Well, of course. Get Congress to break its promise, which is why we're all here tonight.

Let's be very clear about what passing this bill would mean. Many in this House have widely criticized the President for killing thousands of jobs to satisfy his ideological opposition to the Keystone pipeline. Well, this bill does exactly the same thing. It kills 6,000 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent, ongoing service jobs by blocking this project on ideological grounds. But the damage only begins there. Federal taxpayers will become liable for hundreds of millions of dollars of economic damages to compensate the Tohono O'odham for lost profits, for the devaluation of their property, and for years of planning suddenly rendered worthless by this act.

So what's the balance sheet here? On the plus side, we satisfy the ideological itch of antigaming busybodies and antigrowth zealots, and we protect a gambling monopoly in Phoenix from any competition. On the minus side, we

destroy 6,000 construction jobs, 3,000 service jobs, and we open our constituents to hundreds of millions of dollars of damages that we are certain to lose in court.

I would suggest that this bill ought to be laughed off the floor, but there's nothing in it to laugh about.

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

Mr. Chairman, on Friday, I offered an amendment to eliminate taxpayer subsidies to the so-called renewable sector, and this amendment eliminates them to the nuclear sector, saving another half billion dollars.

It does not affect the surcharges that electricity consumers have already paid for waste disposal or for military applications or the essential maintenance of our Nation's radiological facilities, but it relieves taxpayers from funding research and development that rightly rests with the nuclear industry, and requires that industry to compete with all other energy technologies to attract capital based on its own merit.

On Friday, I expressed my skepticism of companies like Solyndra that have peddled technologies that just don't pencil out. Let me now declare my confidence in nuclear technology and in companies like General Electric and Westinghouse that have pioneered these technologies. But that is not an argument for taxpayers to underwrite their research and development departments.

Whether Congress is skeptical of the technology or confident in it, we are not intellectually equipped or constitutionally authorized to choose winners and losers among various companies or technologies, or to substitute our judgment for that of individual investors. I realize these companies certainly won't turn down free money extracted from taxpayers, but I don't believe they actually need it. What's more, I imagine that they'll be better off when we stop telling them what designs to use by Federal fiat, and start allowing the licensing of any design submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that meets health and safety standards.

This is the worst of both worlds for our constituents. We force them to pay for the R&D programs of these companies, and these companies then reap the profits. Let their investors risk their own money. Let their investors reap their own profits or losses, and leave the rest of us alone.

That's called freedom. It works, and it's time that our Nation put it back to work.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this is the final amendment I'll offer to remove government from subsidizing energy companies. This one pertains to fossil fuel industries.

The coal, oil, and natural gas industries are profitable and proven and have never had any trouble finding investors to pay for legitimate research.

Once again, I pose the question: Why are taxpayers then being forced to subsidize research and development for energy companies that have every incentive to pay for it themselves if they actually believe it will bear fruit. If it pans out, these technologies have enormous economic value and will richly reward all of those who invest in them; and if they don't, taxpayers shouldn't be left holding the bag.

Today, the fossil fuels industry has opened a new chapter of clean, cheap, and abundant natural gas recovery through horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, a process developed almost entirely through private capital. Our dismal energy situation today is not because of not enough government. It is because of too much government, and the American people have finally figured that out.

We have done enormous damage not only to our energy policy, but to our entire economy by subsidizing inefficiencies, hiding true costs, and slanting the competitive field. If left alone, prices convey an entire world of data. Embedded in the price at your local gas station is information on political conditions in the Middle East, refinery capacity in Benicia, bribery rates in Venezuela, and what the guy down the street is selling it for, to name just a few. Accurate prices are essential for consumers and investors to make rational decisions about the highest and best use of their dollars.

When government interferes in these decisions through subsidies, it corrupts the data that is necessary to assure that every dollar in the economy is spent to its highest and best use. So it's not just the cost of these subsidies to taxpayers; it's the misallocation of resources that those subsidies cost. And that's perhaps the most serious drag of all on our economy.

When government plays this game, risks are masked, inefficiencies go undetected and uncorrected, capital flows from productive to nonproductive use, and perhaps most dangerous of all in a free society, the government begins picking winners and losers. The productive sector becomes more and more beholden to government and less and less beholden to its own customers.

I am told on generally reliable authority that this is what Republicans are supposed to believe in. This Republican House needs to be true to those beliefs and true to the voters who elected us because of those beliefs.

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

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment saves nearly $1.5 billion by ending the failed Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program.

If we're serious about an all-of-the-above energy policy, we have got to stop using taxpayer money to pick winners and losers based on political connections. Instead, we need to require every energy company to compete on its own merit as decided by the customers it attracts by offering better products at lower cost.

For too long we have suffered from the conceit that politicians can make better energy investments with taxpayer money than investors can make with their own money. It is this conceit that has produced the continuing spectacle of collapsing energy scandals epitomized by the Solyndra fiasco. At least Solyndra was funded from a loan program in which the public has a chance to get some of its money back when these dubious schemes go bankrupt. This program is direct spending that funds commercialization projects for ideologically pleasing technologies and the politically favored firms that make them, money that taxpayers have no chance of recovering after it's spent.

This amendment and the two that I will offer soon protect taxpayers from being forced into being venture capitalists by incompetent politicians. It gets government out of the energy business and requires all energy companies and all energy technologies to compete equally and on their own merits.

Most of the money in this program goes to wind, solar, and car research development subsidies. We're told that's necessary to nurture these new and promising technologies. Well, these technologies are not new and they are not promising. Photovoltaic cells, for example, were invented by French physicist Edmund Becquerel in 1839, and in more than 170 years of technological research and innovation and billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies we have not yet invented a more expensive way to produce electricity. So we hide its true costs to consumers through subsidies taken from their taxes.

Nor is there any earthly reason why taxpayers should be forced to serve as the research and development department for General Motors or for any other company or technology. We're told that, well, someday this research might pay us back many times over. We've been told that for 40 years. Now, I hope someday that these empty promises will be redeemed, but that's still not a reason for taxpayers to foot the bill. It's a reason for the actual research and development to be paid for by the companies that will profit from this long-promised breakthrough. And if they're not willing to finance it with their own money, we have no business forcing our constituents to finance it with theirs.

All we've accomplished with these programs is to take dollars that would have naturally flowed into the most effective and promising technologies and divert them instead to those that are politically favored. This misallocation of resources not only destroys jobs and productive ventures, it ends up minimizing our energy potential instead of maximizing it and destroying our wealth instead of creating it.

Madam Chairman, voters entrusted Republicans with the House majority with the very specific mandate to stop wasting money. Moreover, the House is where spending bills must originate. The government doesn't spend a dollar unless the House says that it will spend a dollar.

A day doesn't go by that we don't hear an indictment of Solyndra and its multiplying scandals, and yet here we have the Republican Energy appropriations bill that continues to shovel billions of dollars on the very same folly that produced Solyndra.

Politicians love to appear at ribbon cuttings and issue self- congratulatory press releases at government-supported ``alternative energy'' businesses, but they fall strangely silent when asked to actually account for the billions of our dollars that they've wasted. Well, that day of reckoning has arrived. These policies are impoverishing our country. Our taxpayers are exhausted. Our treasury is empty. It is past time that this House majority proved worthy of the trust the American people gave it more than a year and a half ago.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 2:

Page 20, line 15, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $1,450,960,000)''.

Page 56, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,450,960,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 3:

Page 22, line 3, after the dollar amount, insert ``(reduced

by $514,391,000)''.

Page 56, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $514,391,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 4:

Page 22, line 23, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $554,000,000)''.

Page 56, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $554,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 5:

Page 22, line 23, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $554,000,000)''.

Page 22, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $115,753,000)''.

Page 56, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $554,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. McClintock

Amendment No. 6:

Page 20, line 15, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $1,450,960,000)''.

Page 20, line 16, after the dollar amount, insert

``(reduced by $115,000,000)''.

Page 56, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,450,960,000)''.