Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Commerce be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 531) to amend title XXI of the Social Security Act to extend the availability of allotments for fiscal years 1998 through 2001 under the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 531, the bill just passed.

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

Mr. Speaker, when the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), opened this debate tonight in presenting H.R. 1 to the floor, he acknowledged the extraordinary cooperation and the spirit by which our two committees, the venerable Committee on Ways and Means and the venerable Committee on Energy and Commerce, of the House have worked together on this bill again this Congress, with the kind of harmony and dedication to accomplishing a good purpose for this country that is seldom seen between committees that often fight and juggle for jurisdiction. I want to commend him for that statement and acknowledge my personal gratitude for him and the entire membership of the Committee on Ways and Means and their great staff for the spirit in which they worked with the Committee on Energy and Commerce to accomplish this historic moment for our country.

I also want to thank the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) of the Committee on Ways and Means for the extraordinary work she has personally given to this effort and the way in which she has worked with members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, so many long hours, to accomplish this bill.

It is important also that I highlight, while not acknowledging all the staff who contributed so many hours, the head of our health care staff of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, Mr. Pat Morrisey, who has done Herculean work once again on behalf of this effort. And I want to acknowledge and thank, again, Mr. Ed Grossman, who is a legend in the Legislative Counsel's office, in terms of his contribution to this entire body and the work we do in preparing legislation for the floor.

When we began this effort 2\1/2\ years ago to create once again an opportunity for this House to pass a prescription drug benefit for Medicare and, at the same time, to modernize a system that is in deep trouble, we announced that the entire effort in health care would be dedicated to a theme of patients first; the idea that everything we did should be designed to make sure that patients in America continue to have the best health care delivery system in our country and, importantly in this area, that seniors get something they desperately need; and that is that every senior get access to prescription drug coverage and that the Medicare system itself, which has long been absent of that important product in the arsenal of products that keep our seniors healthy and long living in our country, that prescription drugs be added to this system, this important new element of health care in our country that has long been missing from the program.

At the same time, we recognize that the worst thing that can happen to any citizen is to be forced to go to a single store, whether it is a government-run store or a private-run store. We know when there is only one store in town, generally you get bad products and bad services and often bad attitudes. No matter what store it is, no matter who runs it, when more than one store is available, when we have choice, whether it is choice between a government store or a privately-run store, all of a sudden prices become better, products become better, attitudes become better, and service becomes better.

We know that Medicare is described by so many members of the Committee on Ways and Means as being in deep trouble. We know it is on a path toward insolvency. And Medicare, a system by which so many citizens have depended on for years for their health care, is absent this vital asset of prescription drug coverage. So we began our efforts to make sure we could add that coverage to the bill. We have been doing this over several Congresses now, and every year we battle over what is the right number to fund this program and how best to fund it.

I want to point out that we owe a great debt of gratitude to the chairman of the Committee on the Budget, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), for including this year $400 billion for us to fund this effort. In last year's budget, we dealt with considerably less. In fact, in the Democratic budget that was prepared for the year 2002, our friends on the other side allocated only $330 billion to their effort to fund prescription drugs. This year, our Committee on the Budget provided us with $70 billion more than even the Democrats did when they prepared their budget for the year 2002. And I want to thank the Committee on the Budget and Chairman Nussle for that great effort.

With that amount of money available, we have been able to construct this year, as the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) and his team have so adequately described, a much better bill, a bill richer in benefits, more secure in the texture of its structure, to make sure that seniors would, in fact, have more choices. Those like my mother, who want to stay in Medicare, cannot only stay in Medicare but enjoy a prescription drug benefit now; and those who might enter their senior years knowing about choice, liking choice, preferring choice, having the availability of different plans offered in the private sector that they could choose their prescription drug benefit from.

That is the kind of world we hope to create when we pass this bill tonight, a bill that historically modernizes the Medicare system and, at the same time, brings some more stores to town and makes sure that every store, the government store and the private stores, all have the products that seniors need so desperately, and that is prescription drugs.

In this bill this year, we do a number of other things. We address the concerns of many of our health care providers in terms of their lack of proper reimbursement from the government, and we add reimbursements to hospitals and physicians and caregivers across America. We have an excellent, and I thank the Committee on Ways and Means again for their work on this, we have an excellent rural package that will provide $27.2 billion of assistance to rural health care givers and hospitals to beef up care in America where care is desperately short and, unfortunately, hospitals are closing and doctors are leaving their practices.

Indeed, because this bill adds to the mix of choices that seniors will have in the future, there are predictions from CBO that Medicare will get back on its

feet, will not necessarily have to go insolvent. It will have a chance to be one of the options that seniors wish to choose for a long time in the future.

These benefits are going to benefit all Americans. I know there is some talk about how the plan has coverage and then there is a donut hole and there is coverage again for catastrophic coverage. The discounts provided to seniors in this bill will be available at all stages of prescription drug coverage, at all stages of prescription drug use and purchase throughout the bill. Seniors will see lower drug expenses in this bill. CBO estimates, in many cases, by as much as 50 to 70 percent. All seniors will benefit.

And for the seniors who live below 135 percent of poverty, and there are thousands and millions of those seniors living across America, this bill provides a 100 percent subsidy, 100 percent coverage for the drugs they are going to need under this prescription drug plan. And that is a pretty good effort and that is a pretty good reform of our system.

Indeed, we are also going to do some interesting things. We are concerned about the high prices of drugs. And like the Senate, we include reforms in the Hatch-Waxman laws that will speed the approval of generic drugs into the marketplace. And we reformed that awful, that awful wholesale price system that the government currently uses with phony wholesale prices that force seniors to pay 20 percent of phony prices whenever they suffer cancer and have to endure cancer therapies and urinary tract therapies and respiratory therapies. In short, we are going to lower the cost of drugs to America across the board, and we are going to increase the availability of drug coverage for every senior in this country and build new options for seniors to choose from. That is a pretty good package.

I want to again congratulate all who worked on it and all in the two committees who contributed so much to it. In the House Committee on Energy and Commerce we had 65 amendments, I think 29 recorded votes, over 22\1/2\ hours of debate again this year. Are we ready for this vote tonight? You bet we are. Are seniors ready for the debate to end? You bet they are. Are seniors ready for us to really do it this year? You know it. Are seniors ready for this House, the Senate, and the President to come together and actually sign a law that gives them these benefits, instead of constantly just debating the issue? You know that is true.

This is a historic moment, and this is our time to get it done.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Health.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, the Mediscam bill that the gentleman just described is patterned after H.R. 1495, authored by the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) just a few sessions ago in the 106th Congress.

It provided a $220 deductible, 20 percent cost share up to $1,700, a doughnut hole with a $3,000 catastrophic coverage, and no defined premiums. Does that sound familiar? The bill we wrote today is patterned after a bill written by my friends on the other side of the aisle back then, and they complain today that it is Mediscam.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 15 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, just to correct the record, the Democrats did offer a substitute plan in our committee which was defeated, and I think it is pretty close to the substitute plan we will see later tonight.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 seconds to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns).

Mr. Speaker, I first want to take 15 seconds, if I may, to point out that the bill before us does now contain the drug reimportation provisions similar to the Senate provisions and adds language directing the FDA to conduct rulemaking to make sure that there is safe packaging, to make sure when we do get drugs under any such program, that they are safe and effective.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood), distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, our grand inquisitor.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from the great State of Nebraska (Mr. Osborne).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to ask a question. If this plan funded at $400 billion is prescription drugs on the cheap, what do you call the $330 billion that was allotted by the Democratic budget for the year 2002?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Carolina (Mr. Burr), the distinguished vice chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Ferguson), one of our newer members on the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

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

Mr. Speaker, now that we have heard from the doctor of showmanship, we are going to hear from a real OB-GYN doctor.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

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

Mr. Speaker, what is absolutely true is that 529,000 citizens of Ohio are given free coverage under this bill because they live under 135 percent of poverty.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Rockwall, Texas (Mr. Hall), a Democrat and my dear friend.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds. I want to point out our bill provides 430 million new dollars to oncologists in America, twice that provided to any other specialist for nonpractice expenses, twice as much as any other specialist.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Barton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

(Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Burns).

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side?

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

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

Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield), a distinguished member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Mr. Speaker, how much time remains on each side?

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

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

Mr. Speaker, who has the right to close?

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time and the right to close.

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

Mr. Speaker, when we test the arguments made on the floor of the House on a major piece of legislation such as this, it is important to test the credibility of those arguments. The best way to test that credibility is to first of all tell Members a fairy tale.

Once upon a time Bill Clinton proposed Medicare prescription drug coverage for America. Once upon a time my Democratic friends, the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the gentleman from California (Mr. Waxman), the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel), the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), and many others introduced a bill, H.R. 1495.

Once upon a time Democrats recommended a bill with a $200 deductible, 80 percent cost sharing by the government up to $1,700 of drug expenses, a doughnut hole, and then $3,000 out-of-pocket catastrophic coverage with no defined premium. And guess what, once upon a time their bill provided that the benefits would be provided through a PBM. Members might ask how would the PBM be selected: By competitive bidding.

Members might further ask how would the contracts be awarded under this privatization of Medicare, and the answer in a fairy tale world would be shared risk capitation of performance. But the truth is this is not a fairy tale. It happens to be the truth. That was the Democratic proposal on Medicare prescription drugs, but tonight Democrats have come to the floor one after the other and criticized this plan because it contained many of those same features. Different, however, in some respects because this plan provides better coverage for seniors on the bottom. In fact, while some of my friends came to the floor and called this a sad day and said how sorry they were for the citizens of California, this bill we proposed would put 1.4 million California senior citizens in plans that would cost them no premiums, no deductibles, free entry for drugs in California for 1.4 million senior citizens, half a million in Indiana, half a million in Ohio, half a million in Pennsylvania, almost a million in Texas, and so on and so forth, free drug coverage under this plan, and yet the fantasy plan offered by the Clinton administration just a few years ago containing many of the same elements is somehow forgotten. It is somehow put away in a closet. It is somehow not to be remembered, and this plan is to be attacked. When we test credibility of arguments on the floor of the House, test them against the reality of the plan offered by the Democrats and the reality of the plan offered today.

I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) for the courtesies and the respect and the statesmanship he has always shown me in debates in committee and on the floor of House. The gentleman is a dear friend. I wish I could say that about all Members all the time. But let me say something, I am offended that anyone would come to this floor and accuse anyone in this House of wanting to get old people. Do Members think for a second they love their moms and dads any more than we love ours?

I ask the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), do you really believe that? God bless them. That is the sort of unstatesmanship that should never enter the halls of this House.

There is nobody in this House that loves their mother more than I love my mother. I challenge Members on that. She is a three-time cancer survivor, she is 84 years old, and she won first place at the Senior Olympics this year in shotput, and if you give her trouble, I will sic her on you.

There are Members who have come to the floor and said seniors cannot understand choice. Let me tell Members something, I grew up in a poverty family. My mom and dad never earned above poverty. They made hard choices all their life for us. They sent three out of their four children to college. They fed and clothed us and gave us a great education and a chance for me to come to Congress. I love that woman and I loved my dad as long as I had him. How dare anyone suggest otherwise. We love our parents and grandparents the same.

We differ on how to structure this program today. Apparently we did not a few years ago, but we do now. That is a legitimate debate and that is worthy of this House, but to suggest that any of us care less about old people, to suggest that any of us love those citizens who gave so much and made those hard choices for us any less than we do is a shame. My parents made hard choices. My mother knows how to make hard choices. If we give her choices, she will make the right ones, just like she did all her life. I trust her and I trust seniors in America. We are going to give them drug coverage in Medicare and we are going to give them other choices, too, if they want to make those choices. And if Members do not want to help us do it today, I suggest in a month from now when the conference

committee report is back after a compromise with the Senate, you might want to join us then.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 1.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 15 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) or his designee, and ask unanimous consent that he may control that time.

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

Let me join in expressing the sorrow of the folks in Louisiana for your loss in South Carolina. We will pray for his soul.

Mr. Speaker, the Democratic substitute in this debate can be summed up rather easily. According to CBO, it will spend over a trillion dollars. It busts the budget. Therefore, it is on the floor with a budget waiver. It at the same time excludes and does not contain any of the reforms that the base bill includes, that are designed to save Medicare from failure, from insolvency. I am not predicting Medicare's failure or insolvency. CBO is. CRS is. Everyone who has estimated the strength of our Medicare system predicts very soon, in our lifetimes, it will go insolvent. None of the reforms that are designed to save Medicare from insolvency are here. In fact, the Democratic substitute piles on a trillion dollars' worth of expenses to the Medicare system with no reforms to make sure the system is saved.

When I mentioned earlier that you ought to test the credibility of arguments on this floor by what is said and what is fact and what is of record, let me take you back to the statements of the distinguished gentlewoman from California who criticized the base bill because CBO said it might mean that as much as 30 percent or so of employers might drop their retiree coverage under the base bill in favor of the plans we offer. CBO estimated the Democratic substitute, too, on that point.

How credible is an argument against the base bill that complains about a potential 30 percent loss of employer coverage when CBO estimates that 100 percent of employers will drop retiree coverage under the Democratic substitute? That all taxpayer dollars will be used to substitute private dollars? And the Medicare system, already crushed and about to go into insolvency, will have to assume all that responsibility, too? If you really believe in Medicare, why would you burden it so? Why would you eliminate private coverage in America, as CBO estimates would happen under the Democratic substitute?

This substitute busts our budget. It purports to provide more drug coverage than the base bill but no reforms, it does not save Medicare; and on top of that it virtually eliminates private retiree coverage in America. Why would we want to go that direction? We rejected that direction during the Clinton years when Mrs. Clinton presented us with one-size-fits-all health care for all Americans. We recognized then that if you do not have the competitive choices in America in health care, just as we do with so many other services, that things go bad in this country and that sooner or later the crushing weight of benefits added upon benefits added upon benefits means the working people of America have to pay more and more and more taxes. In fact, it is estimated that within 70 years, if we do not begin today making decisions like we ask the House to make, entitlements in America will eat up every tax dollar paid into the Treasury by every citizen in America, and we will have no money for any other function in this country. That is where this substitute takes us, and that is why we need to reject it.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Greenwood), the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Mr. Speaker, it is almost like Minister of Information Baghdad Bob just arrived here.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Mr. Speaker, I do not yield.

Mr. Speaker, I want to illustrate one of the real inadequacies of the Democratic substitute. In the main bill we reformed something called average wholesale price. I hope everyone knows what that is. I am going to illustrate it for you tonight. Under average wholesale price systems built into Medicare by the Democratic Party all these years, this is what happens. A person goes in for cancer therapy, a senior citizen, and the doctor needs a drug that costs $10; so the doctor buys a chemotherapy drug for $10. The patient ought to have to pay $2 under that, 20 percent co-pay under law. But that is not what happens. Under the average wholesale price system devised by Democratic administrations in the past under Medicare, this is what happens. The government has a phony average wholesale price posted. It might be $200 for that drug that only costs the doctor $10, and the poor patient has to put up 20 percent, not of the $10 but 20 percent of the $200. The patient puts up $40 for a drug that only costs the doctor $10 when the patient should have put up $2. That is called the average wholesale price system. It is rotten. It stinks. Our bill gets rid of it. And we replace it by reimbursing oncologists in America for not one time what their practice expense really ought to be reimbursed under the law, but we double it.

We give them $430 million, twice what CMS estimates they ought to get.

So we get rid of this stinky system that is charging American seniors 20 percent of phoney prices and costing the government Medicare system tens of times what the drugs are really costing the doctors, and we replace it with a rational, a rational reimbursement system.

Now, the Democrats try to settle that system too. Let me tell my colleagues what they do in their substitute. They substitute this average wholesale price system with a system of reimbursement that, according to CBO estimates, is going to cost $14 billion over 10 years; and it is going to cost seniors another $3 billion of copays. We ought to reject that solution.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham), our fighter pilot commander extraordinaire.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that despite what you may have heard on the floor tonight, our basic package contains $27.2 billion of assistance to rural health care. That is the largest package of rural health care we have ever voted on all the times we have voted on Medicare prescription drugs.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

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

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how many minutes are left for each one of the four who have allocated time.

Mr. Speaker, we reserve the balance of our time. If anyone wants to use some more time at this time would be a good time to do it.

Mr. Speaker, I move a call of the House.

Mr. Speaker, in order to close this historic debate, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hastert), the distinguished Speaker of our whole House.

Mr. Speaker, it is with great sadness and great appreciation that I rise today to commemorate the retirement of someone who has been a treasure to the United States Congress for the last 28 years.

Ms. Francie de Peyster will be retiring from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on June 30, 2003, after many years of distinguished leadership and of tireless dedication to improving our Nation's public health.

Ms. de Peyster's prestigious career in public service began right here in the House of Representatives for what is now my committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee. She worked for more than five years for Representative Tim Lee Carter on the staff of the Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce. Following her tenure in the House, Ms. de Peyster went to work for the CDC in its Washington office in 1980. Ms. de Peyster became Deputy Director of the CDC/Washington office in 1984. In June 2001, she received the Secretary of Health and Human Services' Award for Distinguished Service. And just last year, she worked closely with my Committee as we drafted and passed into law one of the most important public health and national security initiatives in recent history--the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002.

Ms. de Peyster's professionalism, civility, experience, and dedication will be greatly missed by her friends and colleagues in the Senate and the House, and we will remain eternally grateful for her outstanding contributions to this Nation. I know all my colleagues would want to join me in expressing our sincerest thanks and wishes of happiness to Francie as she enters retirement.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Commerce be discharged from further consideration of the bill (H.R. 2312) to amend the Communications Satellite of 1962 to provide for the orderly dilution of the ownership interest in Inmarsat by former signatories to the Inmarsat Operating Agreement, and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2312, which will extend the deadline for Inmarsat to conduct the initial public offering required of it by the ORBIT satellite privatization law. H.R. 2312, introduced by Representatives Shimkus and Markey, is unopposed.

The ORBIT Act was enacted in March of 2000 to promote a competitive market for satellite communications through privatization of inter- governmental organizations, one of which is Inmarsat. The Federal Commications Commission has since found that Inmarsat has indeed satisfied the privatization criteria of the ORBIT Act.

In addition, ORBIT called on Inmarsat to conduct an initial public offering (IPO) by a date certain--December 31, 2001. However, as that December 2001 deadline approached, it became quite apparent that the volatility in the financial markets in general, and the telecommunications sector specifically, necessitated a grant of additional time within which Inmarsat could conduct its statutorily mandated IPO. As a result, Congress took the prudent step of including language in the Commerce-Justice-State FY 2002 Appropriations bill to provide an additional year to conduct the IPO, and also provide the FCC the ability to grant a six-month extension if warranted by market conditions. This action was non-controversial.

Unfortunately, the market conditions have not improved to a point where it would be reasonable to require the IPO and the current deadline (June 30, 2003) is now less than a month away. H.R. 2312, the ORBIT Technical Corrections Act, allows Inmarsat until June 30, 2004, to conduct its IPO.

The purpose of this IPO requirement was to substantilly dilute the ownership of the privatized Inmarsat by its former owners, many of which are foreign governmental entities, so as to further ensure its independence. I fully supported this goal when we enacted ORBIT, and still do today. Indeed, the action we take today, in my view, is consistent with this policy objective.

If forced to move ahead with an IPO at this time, Inmarsat will probably receive a reduced price for its shares offered. Foreign entities that still own significant portions of Inmarsat would likely be discouraged from offering their ownership interests for sale. Instead of resulting in substantial dilution of prior owners as envisioned by the ORBIT Act, a current year IPO might not achieve much dilution whatsoever. In that instance, Inmarsat would have complied with the procedural requirement of ORBIT without the substantive result that we in Congress sought: dilution of previous government owners. Given the state of the markets, the only way to ensure the dilution sought by ORBIT is to allow Inmarsat to further delay its IPO. That result is good public policy that is also good for the long-term health of the satellite communications industry.

The health of the satellite communications industry and ORBIT's implementation are important to the Committee on Energy and Commerce. We are currently exploring the possibility of holdings hearings on the state of the industry in the future. At the appropriate time, we need to examine ORBIT's implementation, and the efficiency of the existing regulatory regime. For instance, New Skies Satellites has fulfilled the requirements of ORBIT and now is a fully independent competitor in the international satellite marketplace. Some have questioned whether it makes sense to hold New Skies to a continuing list of regulatory restrictions and requirements. I look forward to working with my colleagues on the Committee to ensure that current law reflects the current realities of the satellite industry. However, today we need to enact H.R. 2312. I thank my collleagues for their support and I urge the prompt passage of this legislation.

The bill was ordered to be engrossed and read a third time, was read the third time, and passed, and a motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 2312, the bill just passed.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton); and I want to congratulate him on his hard work and the work product that we debate here on the House floor today.

I particularly also want to congratulate and thank my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), the ranking member of the subcommittee, and my dear friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the dean of our House and the ranking Democrat on the full committee, for the extraordinary cooperation that has been shown on this and so many pieces of legislation that our Committee on Energy and Commerce brings to the floor in the course of a year.

This is one of those rare occasions where the administration, the Democrats and Republicans are all on the same page. We all agree this is of vital importance to the national economy, to the advancement of important wireless technologies for the good of our consumers in America and for the good of the lead that our Nation has played in world telecommunications technologies and commerce.

This is one area where we can immediately begin to assist the Nation's economy in recovering, where we can immediately begin to do something to advance the cause of third-generation wireless technologies, the video and data links that are going to provide new services, equipment and products, built in America, made by American hands and used by Americans to advance the progress of their lives and their social contact with one another.

This is a good day for America, because we have come together and realized that all the handicaps, all the internecine battles that may have been fought between agencies and those in the private sector who wanted spectrum to begin to develop these new technologies, all of these fights about who is going to pay the relocation costs to get the spectrum made available to have these things happen in our country are now being resolved by this relocation trust fund, a concept that says the trust fund is going to be there to make sure the relocation costs are taken care of so the FCC can move these new and exciting technologies to the forefront so Americans can enjoy them and our economy can grow again.

This is a good day, but I want to point out to Members how without this kind of legislation things go wrong. We passed a bill on this House floor, again with the extraordinary bipartisan support of our friends on the Democratic side of our committee in this House and with the President's support, called E911. E911 is a concept that says when a person makes an emergency 911 call, it would be good to know where they are calling from; and when they are using a mobile telephone it would be certainly extraordinarily helpful if the person who received the 911 call could identify the location of the caller, because often the call is made in times of distress, an accident on the highway, a mugging in a park, a call of distress made by a citizen who is lost or in trouble on the highway and needs assistance, someone who has been seriously injured and cannot get help, cannot leave the automobile.

One of my dearest friends a few years ago was in an automobile accident in the middle of the night. His car got flipped off the road, and he landed in one of those wonderful Louisiana marshes on the side of the road and no one could see him on the highway. He spent the night there, crushed, bleeding, broken, until a garbage truck driver spotted him from the highway the next morning.

He nearly died. He went through incredible, horrible operations that might have been avoided if only E911 were in place, where he could have picked up his mobile phone in that car, called 911, and immediately somebody could have known where he was and an

ambulance could have come to his rescue.

That is what E911 is all about. E911 is literally taking the ``search'' out of ``search and rescue'' and making our mobile systems work much more efficiently so we can, in that first incredible hour where we can save lives and save limbs on the highway, we get to the person who has been injured, who made the call, and we rescue them. In that important 20 minutes when someone's child is being abducted, or a house is being broken into and somebody sees it on the highway and calls from a mobile unit, we can immediately identify that location.

When those kind of things are happening in our society, when we pass a bill to facilitate this kind of technology, and we find out that the funds that are derived from the telecommunications companies to pay for the deployment of this service are being diverted by State and local governments to other purposes, even when 911 is not deployed in our communities, we should get upset.

So today I take this opportunity to congratulate the House on moving forward on this Spectrum Relocation Fund and emphasizing how important it is to get the ball rolling on these new technologies and also call upon our colleagues at the State and local level to stop raiding those E911 funds. They are set up, like this relocation fund, to get that technology deployed.

In the E911 case, it is not just to get a technology that is going to enrich our entertainment values or satisfy our need for information exchanges and mobile services. In E911 it is going to mean somebody's life. It may mean someone you love survives. It may mean my friend would not have had to go through all of those operations and not have had to spend the night broken and wounded in the swamps of Louisiana waiting for rescue. That is how important it is.

So I hope, and I know my friends on the other side agree with me on this, we need to urge our friends at the State and local governments to take a good example from what we are doing on this relocation fund and make sure the funds that have been allocated to deploy E911 are used to deploy E911, not to cover deficit problems at a State or local government or divert it to other purposes.

E911 funds ought to be used to deploy E911. Americans ought to demand it. Any State and local government that is diverting those funds ought to be put on notice today that you are taking a chance on somebody's life when you do not deploy those services.

Here today, this House, this Congress, this government says that if we have government spectrum that we can make available to important uses like this, we are going to set up a relocation fund to make sure nobody touches it.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Iowa (Chairman Nussle) of the Committee on the Budget, who helped make this suspension day possible for us by helping approve this bill. I want to thank the chairman of the Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), because the appropriators and budget chairmen have surrendered the right to control this money. This money is going to be in this fund to do what it was intended to do. They did the right thing when they approved this legislation.

I want to again thank the Defense Department and the head of our Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter), for working with us, because in so many cases the spectrum we are talking about is now under the control of the Defense Department. That is the spectrum that might make the new generation of wireless services available for Americans.

I want to thank all of them for working with us on this legislation. This is the best example of Democrats and Republicans, of government agencies, of the White House, of everybody agreeing that we can do something good for the American economy, great for telecom resurgence in this country, great for new consumer services, great for all who produce and develop and work for the technology companies that make these incredible products available to us in America and to people all over the world. This is a good day for this House and for this government and for this country, and I urge approval of this legislation.

Under clause 2 of rule XII, bills and reports were delivered to the Clerk for printing, and bills referred as follows:

Mr. TAUZIN: Committee on Energy and Commerce. H.R. 2122. A

bill to enhance research, development, procurement, and use

of biomedical countermeasures to respond to public health;

Rept. 108-147, Part 1, referred to the Committee on Armed

Services for a period ending not later than June 11, 2003,

pursuant to clause 1(c), rule X.

Mr. Speaker, I rise to enter into a colloquy with the chairman of the Committee on Armed Services, the gentleman from California (Mr. Hunter).

It is my understanding that the bill before the House contains three sections that are largely based upon H.R. 2122, the Project BioShield Act which the Committee on Energy and Commerce ordered reported just last week; is that correct?

I yield to the gentleman from California.

The Committee on Energy and Commerce worked in a bipartisan fashion at the request of the President to report a strong BioShield bill. We expect the bill to be on the floor very shortly. However, just this week I learned similar DOD provisions have been incorporated in the bill that may not be wholly consistent with our efforts in this area.

We accomplished many of the gentleman's objectives in our bill. Because my committee will not have a chance to work its will on the gentleman's BioShield provisions, may I have his assurance that he will work with me as the bill heads to conference to ensure that any provisions agreed to there are properly drafted and not inconsistent with the President's proposed program?

I thank the chairman and look forward to working with him and the administration in ensuring that we properly implement the BioShield program and congratulate him and the committee for, again, a great effort in this bill to help secure our country and protect her.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 3 minutes.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to urge all Members of the House to support the passage of the Tauzin-Brown amendment to H.R. 1298, the United States Leadership Against HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria Act of 2003. I want to commend my colleague from the Committee on Energy and Commerce, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) for his assistance and support and advocacy of this amendment.

First, the Tauzin-Brown amendment strengthens H.R. 1298 by adding additional accountability measures to ensure that our fight against HIV/AIDS and TB and malaria has a greater chance of success. That is what we all want.

Our amendment establishes priorities to be followed by the global AIDS coordinator for the distribution of resources based on factors such as size and demographics of specific nations to ensure that the countries who need assistance the most receive it first.

Next, our amendment utilizes an independent third party to examine the success of strategies implemented by the global AIDS coordinator. The Institutes of Medicine, the IOM, will be responsible for examining the achievements of the programs funded by the global AIDS coordinator and then comparing the success rates of various methods that have been used by the coordinator.

Second, the Tauzin-Brown amendment also strengthens the existing authority and the accountability measures in H.R. 1298. Our amendment specifically states that if at any point administrative expenses within the Global Fund exceed 10 percent of total expenditures of the fund for any 2-year period, then the U.S. will withhold an equal amount from its contribution the following year. This is to ensure that this fund does not get gobbled up in bureaucrats and administrative expenses. We believe this is fair and, at the same time, will ensure that the Global Fund remains fiscally responsible to its purpose. That is, getting dollars in to actually combat AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis in the world.

These two accountability measures represent provisions ensure our approach to this problem is not only morally responsible, it is fiscally responsible as well.

Finally, the amendment requires that the HIV/AIDS coordinator make available to Congress basic information on the Global Fund. Specifically, the coordinator is required to submit to Congress a detailed report outlining all financial and accounting statements, copies of the reports provided to the Global Fund by organizations contracted to audit recipients, and project proposals submitted by applicants and grantees. In the past we have had great difficulty getting this information from the Global Fund. We are confident the coordinator will do a wonderful job in delivering this information to Congress. I urge my colleagues to support the Tauzin-Brown amendment.

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

Mr. Chairman, I am honored to yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde), the chairman of the Committee on International Relations.

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

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from the great State of Michigan (Mr. Upton), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, the intent of the language is to study the question of the illegal diversion of drugs for improper purposes, that is, for resale and that sort of thing. We describe the purposes within that amendment. So the gentleman is accurate in his statement.

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

I simply wanted to thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) and the members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce who worked on this amendment, as I said, to help coordinate the fine work done by the chairman and the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) on this underlying bill. This is an excellent piece of legislation. I hope we have improved it.

I will commit to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) that we will continue to work with him to clarify the concerns he has. We do not want to create those problems. We are simply trying to add more accountability, not less; and more clarity, less confusion.

Finally, let me point out to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) that it has obviously come to our committee's attention that a great deal of work is going on domestically by a number of pharmaceutical companies in testing, et cetera, in attempts to find some sort of vaccine to combat HIV/AIDS and some of these other diseases, particularly HIV/ AIDS. And when and if that discovery is made, as we all hope it is, we will be back on the floor with legislation to establish some sort of national framework for us to utilize that scientific breakthrough, when and if it does occur, in a way that humanely administers that kind of a hope and expectation of cure and prevention to all Americans without regard to the Americans' capabilities or financial capabilities to take advantage of it.

We will have to think that through, how do we make sure everybody gets to take advantage of those scientific breakthroughs when they occur. We have done some preliminary work on it; and I invite my colleague from Ohio, and others, to stay in touch with us as we move forward. As we see these breakthroughs coming, we will want to talk with the gentleman and others on the committee to see if we cannot advance legislation to make sure that every American has the advantage of those breakthroughs when they occur.

I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Green).

(Mr. GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and let me again offer my sincere thanks to the chairman and to the gentleman from California (Mr. Lantos) for accepting this legislation and urge adoption of it.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Pitts amendment.

The Federal program on abstinence is not a mandated program on the States. In fact, States have to put up dollars to get into the abstinence program. And States readily do. Do my colleagues know why? Because it works. We have heard story after story after story before the Committee on Energy and Commerce that abstinence works. Not only does it help prevent the kinds of disease we are talking about, but it literally is the best way to make sure that other venereal diseases are not spread and other cases of awful calamity are avoided for young women as they are growing up.

We learned, for example, that condoms do not stop the spread of many new venereal diseases that are viral in nature, and nevertheless ruin a woman's chance of reproduction as they grow up and try to become young married women and have a family.

We learned a great deal in the Committee on Energy and Commerce. The most important thing we learned is that abstinence works. It works in our States, it works in this country, and it can work in this program.

The second thing to keep in mind is that every time we have promoted abstinence programs in this country, the argument on the other side is abstinence-only should not be the deal. This is not abstinence-only, this is abstinence as one-third of the program.

I urge Members to support the Pitts amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding. I, too, will not object, Mr. Chairman; but let me hopefully make some points that are critical as we go forward not only in this conference committee to construct a comprehensive energy policy for our country but to continue the work of the Committee on Resources in developing the 5-year leasing plans of our government and the ability of the coastal States to work with the Federal Government and the consultation process that is required under those 5-year plans.

I want to remind my friends who may not have been here back when, in the early days of the Reagan administration, his own Interior Secretary appeared before the Committee on Resources on the 5-year plan and explained the question of moratorium to the committee. What that Interior Secretary did, Mr. Chairman, was to define for us a process by which the Interior Department divided areas of potential coastal development and/or protection in several categories.

On the one hand, there were categories of areas that were highly environmentally sensitive and very low in potential hydrocarbon content or potential. On the other hand, there were areas of very high hydrocarbon potential and very low environmental sensitivity, in other words, areas that could easily produce oil and gas for America in ways that had very little consequences or concerns for damage to the environment. That was a pretty logical way of dividing the universe of areas off the coast of the United States that might be subject to production.

He went on to say that what we have tried to do as an Interior Department is to recommend for moratoria, no activity, those areas of low hydrocarbon potential and high-environmental concern and to recommend instead for production and development those areas of low environmental consequence concerns and high hydrocarbon potential for the country. We accepted that logical analysis, only to find out that there were a number of areas that had been listed for moratorium, for no activity whatsoever, that were in fact high hydrocarbon areas and very low in environmental consequence potential.

So we asked him, what is the deal here? You told us you had a pretty logical way of figuring this out. Yet you have set down for moratorium areas that really should be over here in this category. Why did you do that? His answer was, ``Politics.'' His answer was politics, that I do not want to get in the face of the politics of the State of California in that case because they do not want to drill those areas; and, therefore, we are just going to list them as moratorium areas.

Politics was making the decision. We saw some politics on the floor last night when it came to ANWR and the fight over whether or not we ought to produce the high potential of a small area, tiny little area, less than one-tenth of 1 percent of that vast area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, high in hydrocarbon potential. We had a fight over that last night. In the conference work last year with the Senate, John Breaux asked the question that was enormously, I thought, profound. As we were debating with Senators who were saying no to the question of any kind of production, he said, if we reduce the area down to 1 acre, would you still oppose, and they said absolutely. One acre was too much. He said, well, if you won't let the people who live in ANWR produce their own private property, wouldn't you let them at least have a two-acre footprint to get a pipeline to get their own product out to market? And they said no. He even suggested building a pipeline like the St. Louis arch, way up in the air, way down where they would not have any footprint, would they at least let

them do that. No, no. It was like some kind of a religious shrine instead of a logical argument. That is the problem with the way in which much of the process of the discussions over what can and what cannot be developed for our Nation's good has gone. Politics intervenes all the time.

And so we offered in the Committee on Resources a simple proposition: Let us at least inventory. Let us at least know. If you want to put areas off-limits, for political reasons, other than logical reasons, we at least ought to know what we are giving up for America, what kind of vulnerabilities we are creating for our country because we will not produce in areas we could produce in. We at least ought to know. We ought to have a right to know as a people what we have and what we do not have in this country in terms of resources. And so that is why this language was written in the Committee on Resources. But lo and behold we are met with an argument that we should not know, we should not inventory, we should not even look, we should not even think about the question of whether or not we made wise decisions.

And so this amendment comes. We are going to accept it; we are not going to have a fight over it. But where is the symmetry? Where is the symmetry here? If we had areas under development that had environmental concern for you, would you not want to inventory those environmental concerns? I would. I want to know just how well those 100 wells are producing in Mandalay National Wildlife Reserve in Louisiana. I would want to know if there is any consequences to those natural resources that we have to protect against harm. I would want to know everything I could know about that. And if you offered an amendment to say we need a national inventory to find out what those wildlife reserves look like and resources look like, I would support that. I think it is a good idea. We ought to know. We ought to make wise decisions about conservation protection and development in America.

But how do you make wise decisions if you close both eyes and you shut both ears? You will not listen, you will not look, you will not learn. You do not want to know. I think you make unwise decisions when you do that. In a country, a free country like ours where we prize free speech and information, an information society where knowledge is power, where we make good decisions because we know more, not less, this is a strange amendment.

And so, Mr. Chairman, I will not object, because my chairman of Resources has asked us not to object and to accept this amendment, but as we go forward with 5-year leasing plans in the future, I am going to continue to press this question upon all of you. What have you got to hide? What are you afraid to know? Why do you want to act in the dark? Why would you rather make decisions without the facts instead of making decisions with the facts? And if you would rather make decisions in the dark, do you not see that one day we are going to all be in the dark? We are going to be without power. We are going to have parts of this country that suffer the way California did one day. Do you not think that at least we ought to know what is coming and we ought to make wise decisions?

I thought the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) was very statesmanlike last night when he talked about ANWR and he talked about his own trips there. I have been there, too, as the gentleman knows. It is a fascinating place. It ought to be protected in whatever we do there. That was a very statesmanlike statement, knowing, seeing, understanding and then making wise decisions. That is the way we ought to proceed, not sticking our head in the sand and refusing to know the facts.

So we will accept this amendment, but I want to put everybody on notice that I am not through with this debate. I think we need to continue talking in the 5-year plans of this country about what we know and what we do not know and what we ought to know and what we do not know in terms of all resources development of this country.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

It is not my intention to recommend the reinsertion of this language, no. I will say again, though, it is my intention to continue this debate with you on every 5-year plan, leasing plan, every discussion we have at Interior about how and what we know and do not know about resource development of this country, just as it is to help you find out everything we can about our environmental resources.

I just want to make the point, my State contributes 25 percent of the oil and 25 percent of most of the gas that this country uses. We do it with some consequence. We benefit in the economy, but it also affects our lives dramatically. I am just telling you, there is a limit to the willingness of anyone like the people of my State to continue doing it for the country when others refuse. Just understand that, please.

I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

Mr. Chairman, this un-Kind amendment is typical of the reaction we get from the other side when we try to produce a comprehensive, balanced energy bill for America. We are asked to include efficiency titles and conservation titles and renewable fuel titles and alternative fuel titles and we do.

Then we have one title to help maintain pro-production in this country, the vital fuels, the hydrocarbon fuels, the oil, the gas. It is critical to keep electric plants working to keep this economy going, to keep people warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and we get an amendment like this to strike that part of the bill, to totally unbalance it, so it does not have the pro-production features that a balanced energy policy ought to have.

The President, in asking us to pass this bill, did a study of the Nation's needs in natural gas alone. He predicted we needed 1,600 new major electric plants in this country to supply this country with energy, and most of those plants were going to be natural gas plants because it is the environmental fuel of choice in America to produce electricity.

Where is that gas going to come from? Do my colleagues think it comes from the sky? Do they think it comes out of the wall? I mean, they did a survey in California. Believe it or not, a huge percentage of people in California, when asked where electricity comes from, they said, the wall; and when asked who put it there, they said, the contractor put it there. They had no idea that there was somebody out there drilling an oil well, producing gas, putting it in a pipeline, putting in an electric power plant to make electricity for American families.

This amendment would shut the pipeline down. This amendment would say, let us not put any more gas in the pipeline to fuel those power plants. This amendment would shut off the incentive program that Bill Clinton signed into law, the royalty relief program that Bill Clinton executed during his time in office, the program that Bill Clinton put in that was predicted, if it worked, to produce $400 to $500 million for the United States Treasury.

Do my colleagues know what it produced? It is now predicted to produce $7 billion in new royalties that would never have been obtained, but for the deep-water drilling that occurred because Bill Clinton had the wisdom to sign the act we passed in Congress on deep- water drilling.

This bill contains a similar incentive for deep-well drilling in the shallow fields, and the only place in America that most of my colleagues will allow us to drill is the offshore of Louisiana, Texas and Alabama. This bill is likely to produce enough natural gas to double the production of natural gas that the whole OCS produces in America.

This amendment would shut it down. This amendment would say, let us not produce any more natural gas for America from these exotic fields below 20,000 feet. That would never get produced without this incentive, and even Bill Clinton understood that and signed a bill and executed it into law. And the $7 billion that produces, by the way, includes $1 billion that goes into the Land and Water Conservation Fund that goes into historic preservation in this country, money that would not be available for these environmental causes but for the deep-water drilling program that Bill Clinton signed into law. This bill extends further into authorization and extends into the deep drilling of the shallow fields.

If we think natural gas and oil only powers power plants, think again. The liquids that come from these fuels, the propylenes, the ethylenes, the chemical building blocks that build most of the products we in our kitchen, shut them down, shut down American kitchens as well, shut down the entire chemical processes. That is what the un-Kind amendment does. We need to defeat it.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor) and would like to enter into several colloquies with Members.

I yield to the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. Chairman, it has come to our attention that the gentleman has very serious concerns that residents of the State of Virginia may not benefit from certain provisions in the electricity title of H.R. 6, and it is for that reason we have this colloquy;

and I want to give the gentleman certain assurances today.

Mr. Chairman, I recognize and acknowledge that we will need to work further on the specific language in the savings clause of the Native Load provisions to address the gentleman's concerns.

The exemption of this bill may have unintended consequences in States and regions of the country which are transitioning to RTOs and ISOs. I intend to continue to work on that language to ensure that any load- serving entity that wishes to avail itself of the statutory provision is able to do so.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Goodlatte), and would now enter into a colloquy with the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).

I yield to the gentleman from Kentucky.

First, let me acknowledge the great work of the gentleman and others like the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito) for their support and the enactment into this bill of the Clean Coal Power Initiative that is contained in the underlying bill.

However, I believe, as the gentleman does, that the vital role of coal in our Nation's future will continue to grow and expand. At this juncture it is not possible to predict the precise tax measures that will be adopted by the full Senate. I certainly favor enactment of tax incentives for clean coal to complement the work we have done in our title on the clean coal technology programs.

The gentleman can be sure that I will work with the gentleman and with our colleagues on the Committee on Ways and Means as this matter is considered in conference with the Senate.

Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. This is the final amendment which has been authorized by the Committee on Rules for consideration on the comprehensive energy package, and so, with the adoption of this amendment, which we will support as it is, by the way, the same amendment that was adopted on the House floor that was offered by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Rogers) last year on a 345-85 vote, we will accept this amendment.

But I wanted to join in, first of all, thanking my friends and colleagues, the chairman of the Committee on Resources, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, the chairman of the Committee on Science, as well as the chairmen and members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Committee on the Judiciary, Committee on Agriculture, and Committee on Financial Services, all of whom worked with us in a cooperative fashion, so many committees, to develop a comprehensive energy policy for our country.

And as the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) indicated, there is an awful lot of staff, too many to name because we would miss someone, and I do not want to do that, but so many staffers who spent so many late hours. Members cannot imagine the hours these staffers have put in.

I do not know if they are appreciated enough by the people of this country. These young people who could do much better in the outside world and earn greater salaries, but they come because of their love of this work and love of this institution and who devote so many hours in helping us do the right thing and in a way that is accurate and, again, advances the cause of our great Nation. To all the staffers I want to say a big broad thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the great help they give to all the Members of Congress as we try to do this work.

We will shortly adopt this amendment, and then we will go back into the full House; and it is my understanding that the minority will offer a motion to recommit which we will oppose and we hope the House will reject that motion to recommit, and we will move on to pass, I believe, the most important energy bill in the past 50 years, the most comprehensive and far-reaching statement of American energy policy that will advance not only national security but begin the process of rebuilding this incredible American economy. So to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo) and everyone, again, I thank them so much for their cooperation. Mr. Chairman, for all of the chairmen who sat in that chair during these long and arduous hours, I thank them and their staffs and everyone who has participated.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the motion to recommit.

Mr. Speaker, let me first thank my friend, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), and the members of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in particular for the cooperative spirit and civility in which we have passed out of committee and onto the floor this immensely important bill for our Nation's future. And I thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) in every way for those courtesies.

Let me, on the other hand, greatly oppose this motion to recommit. There are three great ironies here. Let me first set the stage for my colleagues.

The amendment that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) offers in the motion to recommit is, in fact, the position the House took last year. It was agreed to as a condition, as part of the package of a bill that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) agreed to support last year, and we were pleased to get his support for it.

On the other hand, the Democratic Senate passed a hydro provision, and guess what, the provision in our House bill today is nearly identical to the Senate-passed hydro provisions of last year under a Democratic-controlled system. It is nearly identical to the hydro provisions passed out of the Senate committee this week, and it is a much better version of the hydro provisions that we contain in this bill that would get stripped by the Dingell motion to recommit.

Let me tell my colleagues why. Let me tell my colleagues the ironies here. The irony, number one, hydropower is the number one renewable fuel in America. It provides more renewable clean energy than wind, solar, all other renewables combined. One would think we would want to encourage relicensing of hydro plants. It is the cleanest, the safest, most renewable energy in America. Our bill's hydro provisions helps to relicense and continue hydropower in America.

The other great irony of this bill, of the motion to recommit offered by the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) is that while everything the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) will set forth in his motion to recommit some very arbitrary standards, under which the Secretary has to do this relicensing, he actually provides such a limited list of alternatives to the Secretary that if anyone comes up with a better way of protecting fish, that would be illegal.

The greatest irony is that this amendment in the nature of a substitute is offered for fish, and it cuts off alternative designs that would better protect fish and it leads to bureaucrats in the Department to make decisions about what rules to apply on a case-by- case basis when it comes to conditions on the license.

This is not a good hydro provision. The hydro provision the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) offers this House will cripple the relicensing provisions of the bill. It will hurt hydropower. It will make it more difficult for us to have the number one, cleanest renewable fuel in America, and we ought not to adopt that kind of a policy in a good bill.

Let me tell my colleagues the greatest irony. The greatest irony, while I do not have the gentleman from Michigan's (Mr. Dingell) support on this bill, I have the support of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, the American Farm Bureau, the American Petroleum Institute, the National Mining Association, the Domestic Petroleum Council, the Edison Electric Institute, Large Public Power Council, the National Farmers Union, the Teamsters Union, the Association of American Railroads, the National Gas Vehicle Coalition, the Solar Energy Industries Association, the Renewable Fuels Association, the National Corn Growers Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and on and on and on.

This bill is great for America. This motion to recommit would cripple an important part of renewable, clean energy, and we need to defeat it.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments.

Let us vote this motion to recommit down and let us give America its first good shot in the economic arm. Let us get this country rolling again with national security and economic growth.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.