Floor Statements

This weekend, President Trump put out a social media post conflating the actions of a small group of people who broke a window, broke a couple of windows, at the Federal building, with the thousands of peaceful protesters that were exercising their constitutional right to fight against fascism, their constitutionally protected right to assemble, to free speech, and stated that he would send in his Federal goons to Eugene.

Let me tell you: Eugene, Oregon, has a long tradition of speaking out, speaking out and showing up for peace. We will continue to do so.

I would ask President Trump, Kristi Noem, and the DOJ to follow their own rules and not use the excuses of a couple of people who did wrong to tear gas and attack peaceful protesters, not in Eugene. We will not back down.

Thank you, President Trump. We don't need Federal help. We have got it. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Mr. Speaker, at a time when global tensions are rising, the last thing we need is more weapons. That is why it is so important that the New START treaty, set to expire in 21 days, is renewed by the administration quickly and in good faith.

The New START treaty reduced the number of nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia to the lowest level since 1950. This is not the time to start going in the other direction.

Nuclear risks continue to rise, and when we see countries like Russia testing their nuclear delivery systems, the danger grows for everyone, including many Oregonians.

In southern Oregon, the Federal Government rushed to mine uranium in the 1950s to fuel the Cold War. Two open-pit mines outside Lakeview in the Fremont National Forest supplied the material that went to the Hanford site to produce plutonium for nuclear weapons.

When that rush ended, we were stuck with that contamination. It took decades for the EPA to declare the mines as Superfund sites, leaving the land poisoned.

At the Albany Research Center, construction workers built, maintained, and later tried to clean up the nuclear weapons complex, often without being told what they were exposed to. Decades later, workers are still fighting to get screened for cancers and other life- threatening illnesses caused by their exposure to radiation. Taxpayers are still paying the price from the arms race.

The Federal Government has paid out more than $27 million to more than 430 Oregonians who were uranium workers exposed to fallout or downwind of testing. This is what happens when we forget what nuclear proliferation cost us.

Yet, the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy plan to spend more than $900 billion over the next decade to modernize our nuclear arsenal.

The cost of the Sentinel ICBM missile program alone has exploded, pushing the cost per missile to $161 million, an 81 percent increase from its original projections. The cost of nuclear acquisition programs will be 11.8 percent of the Department of Defense's planned acquisition costs over the next 10 years. Remember, this is an agency that cannot pass an audit. This is out of control.

We will always find the money for war, but not to take care of our workers or Tribal partners or to compensate the communities who paid the price for that last generation of weapons, so we must act in good faith to ensure an open-ended arms race does not happen.

Nuclear nonproliferation has not been and should not be a partisan issue. We don't need more weapons. We need more affordable healthcare, upgrades to our transportation infrastructure, expansion of U.S. manufacturing capacity, and to focus our taxpayer dollars on things that benefit the American people and that make our communities safer.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to work with any of my colleagues to develop a commonsense approach to limiting our nuclear stockpiles and to keep this administration from taking us down a costly and destabilizing path, which is why I am proud to have cosponsored H.R. 100, which, again, just reiterates my position on nuclear proliferation. I thank Dr. Foster for all his work.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to the rule and H.R. 2312, the Tipped Employee Protection Act.

When I was a waitress in 1983, the tipped wage was exactly the same as it is now. It is $2.13 an hour. Your ability to budget, to cover rent, to buy groceries, and to pay for gas depends on how much strangers leave on the table.

What makes me angry is what little has changed since the tipped wage was frozen. Rent, food, gas, and childcare have all exploded, but tipped workers are still stuck with a base wage from decades ago. That is wrong.

However, the bigger problem is the system was never built to work. The law says that your employer has to make up the difference if your tips don't reach minimum wage, but in most States there is no real enforcement unless you catch it, document it, and risk retaliation by demanding the pay that you have earned. To put it another way, the law puts the burden of enforcement on the people with the least power.

H.R. 2312 makes this even worse. It would massively expand employers' power to treat far more workers and far more hours as tipped wages.

Oregon does this differently. Tipped workers' wages are higher. Poverty rates are lower, and the restaurant industry still thrives. For workers, that means a slow night doesn't mean that you can't pay your rent.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle rejected my amendment to ensure these workers have the bare minimum wage protections. Again, I will remind people that the minimum wage in this country has not changed in decades.

I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this rule. Protect workers and vote ``no'' on this bill.

Mr. Speaker, tonight the Oregon Ducks are fighting for their first-ever national championship. After dominating Texas Tech in only the third shutout victory of all 49 college football playoff games, the Ducks are only two wins away from celebrating in Eugene.

I want to shout out to Head Coach Dan Lanning. In four seasons, he has posted an incredible 48-7 record, and our team has shined through his leadership.

Our quarterback, Dante Moore, has thrown more than 3,200 yards this year, and a true freshman, Brandon Finney, Jr., is one of the Nation's elite corners.

I am proud to say the Oregon Ducks have one of the best records in the country, 13-1, and that one loss was to the Hoosiers. Tonight, we get to set that record straight. We will be cheering them on against Indiana tonight, and Go Ducks.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. This has been a week. We invaded Venezuela; threatened to invade Greenland; put Cuba, Mexico, and Colombia on notice that they could be next; had the administration and many of my

colleagues, who know better because they were here, try and rewrite the history of what happened on January 6; and an ICE agent shot and killed a woman in Minnesota, and DHS immediately blamed the victim with no pretense of wanting to find out what the facts were. An hour ago we just had two more people shot by an ICE agent in Portland, Oregon.

These are dark times, and it is really easy to get bogged down in the negative, but today, something really good happened. Mr. Speaker, today, 17 Republicans joined Democrats to override the Speaker's attempt to stifle the will of this body to vote to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act for 3 years.

My district is just over 17,000 square miles. It is mostly rural with rural hospitals hanging on by a thread. Some of them have just 15 percent commercial payer mix. Without the Affordable Care Act subsidies, we will have more uninsured people, and these hospitals could go under.

Prior to being in Congress, I worked at the United Way before the Affordable Care Act working on healthcare access, and my county had a 21 percent uninsured rate. We have a lot of farmers, small business people. We have people that couldn't afford insurance. Now our uninsured rate is just under 8 percent. That is because of the subsidies.

I have had people call me. One woman called and said she was paying $87 a month. She now will have to pay over $1,000 a month, and she can't afford her medication or the treatment that keeps her alive. I have people, small business people in my district, that are calling to say this is the first time they have ever had to go without insurance.

The fact of the matter is this is the right policy.

Now, if people want to talk about how to deliver quality, affordable, appropriate healthcare with less money going to hedge fund-owned medical practices or to insurance companies, I would love to work with my colleagues on that. We have a Medicare for All bill that anybody can get on. That is what we should be moving toward.

The bottom line is this: I remember when my mother, who was working as a contractor because her job got shipped offshore, didn't have insurance and she badly broke her leg, lost her home, went bankrupt, lost everything, and had to start over.

Many people in this country will lose everything. This is the right thing to do for right now, and then we should work together and be responsible as Congress to lower the cost of healthcare, take out the middleman, decrease the price of pharmaceuticals, and make sure that people have access to healthcare wherever they are in this country.

Mr. Speaker, I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to do that, and I encourage the Senate to take up this bill and get it done so that we can actually do what we got sent here to do, which is the work of the people.

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

Mr. Speaker, we are here in D.C. during the final week before the holidays. Families back home are struggling with the increasing costs of groceries, housing affordability, natural disaster recovery, and healthcare. That is what we should be working on.

Instead, what has Republican leadership scheduled this week: a bill that is routinely used in Congress to kill time on the floor and that will go nowhere in the Senate.

H.R. 845, the Pet and Livestock Protection Act, would strip Federal Endangered Species Act protection from gray wolves and block courts from reviewing that decision. This bill would force the Department of the Interior to re-issue a 2020 Trump rule to delist the gray wolves that was struck down by a Federal court in 2022.

Why was it struck down? A Republican-appointed judge found that it failed to use the best available science, didn't consider threats to wolves outside core populations, and ignored the needs across their entire range--findings all in violation of the Endangered Species Act.

Instead of accepting that decision, this bill doubles down on bad science and even prevents courts from weighing in.

If you are sure wolves have recovered, then there is no need to block judicial review. However, that is not the case here. Instead, my colleagues want to remove Endangered Species Act protections because of politics instead of science. That is not how the Endangered Species Act works.

Wolves are an Endangered Species Act success story. Their population has increased from fewer than 1,000 animals to over 6,000 today, but recovery remains fragile and incomplete. Wildlife management should be based on science and collaboration. Our natural heritage and the health of our ecosystems are worth protecting for future generations.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this bill, and I am looking forward to hearing further discussions from my colleagues.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, when my colleagues say an activist judge overturned this, it was a Republican-appointed judge who found, again, that it failed to use the best available science.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service just canceled the first-ever nationwide gray wolf recovery plan, which was due this month. This comprehensive, science-based plan would have finally provided a holistic approach to wolf recovery with all stakeholders at the table. This is the type of solution that the courts have been seeking after invalidating five of the six previous attempts to delist wolves.

Unfortunately, H.R. 845 is part of a pattern. Instead of investing time and money into supporting proven paths of success, we are voting on far-reaching and unscientific proposals that don't actually solve the problem and won't make it into law. H.R. 845 would also fragment and make wolf management harder.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Dingell).

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

I appreciate the words of my good friend from Wisconsin. I invite him to come to my district where the manufacturers in my district are paying more for goods that they have to import to build things in the U.S. and my farmers and wine producers and exporters are losing their markets and have less money to pay for things where the prices have risen for their Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner, and presents. But you are welcome to come.

Also, the issue with H.R. 845, after the 2020 delisting, in Wisconsin 30 percent of its wolf population was killed in just 4 days. Idaho passed a law allowing the killing of up to 90 percent of wolves, including the pups. Montana removed wolf protections around Yellowstone raising bag limits and expanded trapping, killing many of the beloved wolves that tourists travel from around the world to see.

The ecological consequences matter. Wolves are a keystone species critical to healthy ecosystems. When reintroduced to Yellowstone in 1995, they provided benefits throughout the entire ecosystem.

Wolves changed elk behavior, allowing willows and aspens to recover. They brought back beaver, whose dams create habitats for fish, amphibians, and birds. One study found a 1,500 percent increase in the willow growth, surpassing 82 percent of trophic cascades in global analysis. Recently, we have seen evidence that wolves are helping to protect deer and elk populations from the spread of chronic wasting disease, a horrifying neurological disease rampaging through the States and causing real problems for hunters.

The State of Oregon has worked to lead the way in wolf recovery, but there is only so much we can do if neighboring wolf populations are wiped out.

We want to see recovery, get the environmental benefits, and also make sure that our ranchers are compensated for any losses that occur.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Beyer), my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I acknowledge that wolf-livestock conflicts do happen and that ranchers deserve support when there is a wolf problem. We already have tools that work to address these conflicts, but this bill does nothing to improve them or to help our ranchers.

H.R. 845 has no funding for conflict mitigation, no support for nonlethal deterrents, and no additional compensation for losses. If we want to delist wolves responsibly, then we need to give Fish and Wildlife Service the resources and direction it needs to work collaboratively, respond to science, and invest in conflict prevention.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from California (Mr. Huffman), who is the ranking member.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I will just clarify. I said that in 4 days, 30 percent of the wolf population was killed, 30 percent, not 30 wolves.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 845 delists the gray wolf across the United States and blocks judicial review of the delisting. This is an antiscience bill that prioritizes politics ahead of species conservation.

This bill will result in hundreds of unnecessary and indiscriminate wolf kills while doing very little to address the legitimate conflicts between some wolves and livestock. I will work with anyone on addressing those legitimate conflicts.

We have tools and funding available to address those concerns--not enough, but we have those--without undermining the progress we have made to recover this iconic species.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on H.R. 845, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, today, we are not voting to reduce the cost of healthcare or make groceries or housing more affordable or to take back the power of Congress from the executive branch in determining tariffs or deciding whether or not we should invade a sovereign nation.

We are voting today on inserting government into private medical decisions. To listen to my Republican colleagues, you would think there is an epidemic of children being forced into unnecessary gender- affirming care. There is not.

The epidemics killing our children are drug addiction, overdoses, gun violence, and preventable diseases like measles. Let's work on that.

Banning doctors from providing healthcare to transgender young people has serious unintended consequences. Politicians are getting in the way of doctors, who have years of training and experience and are practicing according to professional standards of care. They know what is best for their patients. This is their area of expertise, not ours.

Providing care and advice is a doctor's job. Taking care of your children

is a parent's duty. Let's keep it that way.

I am proudly voting ``no.'' I ask my colleagues to do the same.

Mr. Speaker, on March 27, President Trump issued an executive order that took away the collective bargaining rights of more than a million Federal workers at over 30 agencies under the guise of protecting our national security. This includes VA employees, food and safety inspection service workers, health and human service employees, including those at the CDC and the FDA.

These workers now have had their voices silenced and have no whistleblower protection if they report about working conditions or safety or even illegal actions taken by their agency. They have lost their voice to demand fair treatment or due process, and they have lost the protection for their job.

This is coming from an administration who has been clear that they have no respect for the Federal workforce or even in some cases for the rule of law, who has said that they want to put the Federal workforce in trauma to force them to leave.

The Protect America's Workforce Act nullifies this order and restores all collective bargaining agreements that were in effect before March 26, 2025.

These collective bargaining agreements were bargained in good faith and are a contract between the Federal Government and the people that work for us.

Anyone who says that they are looking out for American workers should support restoring and protecting the collective bargaining rights to allow everyday people, our Federal workforce, to achieve economic security and dignity by speaking with one powerful, unified voice. A union helps workers use their power by standing together to level the playing field.

It is disappointing that this bill couldn't come to the floor through the regular process as there is enough bipartisan support to pass this good and critical legislation, but that didn't happen.

I am grateful to my colleague, Jared Golden, for filing this discharge petition. I am proud to speak in favor of it. This is a good bill. I encourage my colleagues to vote ``aye.''

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of a free Iran and in solidarity with the women that are leading that fight. These women are asking for basic human dignity, the right to live without fear, to speak freely, and to make decisions about their own lives.

For too long they have been silenced, imprisoned, and even killed for demanding those very freedoms, but they still courageously protest and persist.

They are fighting not just for themselves but for their daughters and their families, so the next generation can grow up with hope instead of fear and opportunities instead of oppression.

In America, we believe freedom should not depend on your gender, your religion, or where you were born. No government should be able to control a woman's body or take away her voice or determine her future, not here nor in Iran.

In Oregon, where thousands of families with Iranian roots have built their lives, we understand that their fight for freedom is not distant. It lives right here in our own communities.

The people of Iran deserve a future without fear, a future with free speech, free assembly, and the right to choose their own leaders and their own path.

I stand with the women of Iran. I stand with their courage. I will continue fighting for a future where every person in Iran can live free, speak freely, and dream without fear.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to recognize a member of our community doing incredible work to combat hunger in Eugene: Jennifer Denton.

Since 2015, she has led as executive director of Burrito Brigade, a volunteer-driven nonprofit that has hand-delivered hundreds of thousands of warm, nutritious meals to hungry people across Eugene and Springfield. She also created Free Little Pantries, giving neighbors a way to share food directly with those in need.

During COVID, she launched Waste to Taste, a free, no-questions-asked grocery store that now serves more than a thousand families each month.

Time and time again, Ms. Denson has stepped up to serve our most vulnerable neighbors. Her grassroots work has touched thousands of Oregonians and should serve as an inspiration to all of us.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Jennifer for her contributions and am grateful to have her in our community.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Kaptur for yielding time.

Across the central and south coast of Oregon, where I represent, we have seen the real consequences of the Trump administration's reckless tariff policies. These aren't just bad economic choices. They have created ripple effects that hurt working families up and down the supply chains.

Mr. Speaker, 99.4 percent of businesses in Oregon are small businesses. These are small businesses and manufacturers who utilize parts from all over the world.

Rising costs due to the erratic tariff policy of this administration are increasing their costs, which means that they have to increase their costs to consumers. That means that we are losing market share here and abroad.

We also have our world-class winegrowers, and they are facing fallout from the tariffs against some of our closest allies such as Canada, which alone makes up nearly half of Oregon wine's export market. Overnight, those sales went away.

The impact doesn't stop at the vineyard gate. It hurts the farmhands tending the fields, the bottlers, the distributors, the small retailers, and the restaurants that proudly serve Oregon wine.

Some of our manufacturers are also closing up shop and moving offshore to avoid the tariff uncertainty, so the pain spreads to our machinists and our welders and also to the parts makers, the shippers, and the communities counting on those paychecks. That is because people in my District earn their money by the hour, not off of stock dividends.

The through line is clear. These policies have created uncertainty at every level of our economy. They don't just take away jobs. They destabilize the entire supply chain and the communities behind it.

Oregon workers and businesses deserve better. They deserve policies that strengthen industries instead of pulling the rug out from under them. They deserve to know that Congress is standing with the workers to keep our communities running.

Today is the day that we remember the Constitution. The Constitution has directed that Congress should be the ones determining tariffs. It is Congress. The majority has handed away our constitutionally given duty to an administration that is now hurting jobs in my district and across this country.

I am proud to stand with the Congressional Labor Caucus tonight to make sure their voices are heard and to fight for an economy where every worker, from the mill floor to the vineyard to the factory line, has the security and the respect that they have earned.

Madam Speaker, H.R. 183 would amend the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act to provide free America the Beautiful passes to law enforcement officers and firefighters.

Expanding outdoor recreation and ensuring Americans can access and enjoy our public lands is a shared bipartisan priority on the Natural Resources Committee. Currently, the National Park Service offers free national park and Federal recreation land passes to certain groups, including U.S. military members and veterans. This legislation builds on this framework by waiving entrance, standard amenity, and day-use fees at over 2,000 Federal recreation sites for law enforcement officers and firefighters.

These hardworking Americans put their lives on the line to protect and serve our communities every day. An America the Beautiful pass is a small but hopefully meaningful token of appreciation for their public service.

Furthermore, let me say that I am glad to see my Republican colleagues acknowledging the importance of our public servants, and I hope they will join us, in the spirit of this legislation, to do more to support and protect all of our Federal first responders.

These public servants dedicate their lives to serving the American people. The administration has created chaos and confusion that adds to the difficulty of their jobs through Federal hiring freezes, which have left them short-staffed.

In addition to showing our appreciation for these critical public servants and first responders, I hope my colleagues will work with us to make sure that our Federal workers have the tools that they need to do their jobs, to keep us safe, and to also keep our public lands open and operating and in the hands of we the people.

For too many of our public lands and parks, after Federal employees have been fired, let go, or pushed toward retirement, private entities are managing these parks, so the America the Beautiful pass is not able to allow free access to these public servants and people who have put their lives on the line to protect and serve our country.

Madam Speaker, I would love to work with everyone on that, as well. I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleagues that we should defend the police and firefighters. I come from a family of police and firefighters who put their lives on the line every day when they went to work. I will happily work with my Republican colleagues to defend police and firefighters and make sure not to defund them by protecting their public pensions, collective bargaining rights, cancer prevention, training grants, and grants to our local police departments that are now being frozen, putting us in limbo.

This is a very real issue that I know I can work with my Republican colleagues on to make sure that our public lands are not being operated by private entities that refuse to recognize the benefits provided for in this law. This is happening across the country, and in my district, I know specifically, where they refuse to grant free entry for veterans and military personnel. They say that they don't have to because they are a private entity.

I would love to make sure that whoever is operating our public parks is keeping them public and that these people who earned our trust and earned this benefit and every benefit that we can give them are actually able to get that.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

H.R. 131 seeks to address a longstanding water challenge in southeastern Colorado. The Arkansas Valley Conduit is a 130-mile pipeline first authorized in 1962 to deliver water from the Pueblo Reservoir to communities facing ongoing water supply and quality issues. Despite decades of work, the project remains unfinished, primarily due to financial constraints.

This bill would revise certain repayment terms to provide additional flexibility for local stakeholders to help finance the project and begin delivering clean, reliable water to rural communities.

My Democratic colleagues and I are committed to addressing the barrier that rural communities face in securing clean water. That is why we passed historic water infrastructure investments under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Since 2022, the IIJA has provided $500 million for the Arkansas Valley Conduit. These investments are critical for ensuring communities across the West have reliable access to clean drinking water, especially as climate change is continuing to make drought conditions worse.

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Representative Boebert, for bringing this forward. I urge support for H.R. 131, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I rise in support of H.R. 1043, the La Paz County Solar Energy and Job Creation Act, introduced by the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Gosar).

This bill would allow the Department of the Interior to convey approximately 3,400 acres of BLM land in La Paz County in Arizona for renewable energy generation and energy storage. La Paz County has significant solar energy potential and is working to develop the largest solar installation in the United States.

This project represents a step toward our clean energy future and underscores the support for renewable energy development and infrastructure, particularly at the State and local level.

H.R. 1043, led by Congressman Gosar and Arizona Senators Gallego and Kelly, reflect the kind of bipartisan cooperation we need more of in Congress.

After Republicans' reckless budget bill rolled back critical renewable energy programs, I hope this bill signals at least a partial recognition that in America we must keep building, not dismantling our clean energy capacity where possible.

The legislation will help power thousands of homes with affordable, reliable energy, support the creation of good-paying jobs, and boost local economy all while reinforcing our commitment to energy independence.

Importantly, this bill ensures that the Colorado River Indian Tribes and the Tribal Historic Preservation Office are actively consulted to protect any culturally significant artifacts. This is the right way to approach land transfers: collaborative, respectful, and forward thinking.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bipartisan, future-focused bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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

I am excited to see Representative Darren Soto's Sinkhole Mapping Act on the floor today. This bipartisan legislation will direct the U.S. Geological Survey to study both the short- and long-term causes of sinkholes, including extreme weather events, droughts, and groundwater depletion.

Right now, there is no national, comprehensive mapping to track and predict sinkholes, leaving communities across the country more vulnerable to sudden and serious damage. Sinkholes can open without warning and wreak havoc on our infrastructure, damaging roads, bridges, buildings, and utilities and putting people's lives and livelihoods at risk.

We have seen this firsthand on the Oregon coast at Cape Kiwanda, where ocean wave erosion has carved into the sandstone. In 2023, two sinkholes appeared there measuring up to 25-feet wide and 30-feet deep each.

Thankfully, State and local officials acted quickly, identified the problem, and put safety precautions in place to protect the public.

With effective sinkhole mapping, we can do even more. We can identify at-risk areas before disaster strikes and take preventive action, like ground stabilization, to protect lives and reduce the cost of damage.

This bill is a commonsense, forward-looking investment in our communities and infrastructure, especially as climate change increases the risk of sinkholes across the country.

I thank my colleagues, Representatives Soto and Bilirakis, for introducing this bill and their leadership on this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 900, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Soto), the sponsor of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support the legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.