Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman from Michigan. Mr. Speaker, before I yield to the gentleman from Florida, I want to read two more comments into the record from my Facebook page. The first one is from Kevin Hussey, H-U-S-S-E-Y. Kevin says: It's doubled my premiums. Simply put, how is that ``affordable?'' And Laren Engel Schmude comments: My mom is facing having her hours cut, or being laid off all together, not to mention that her company is dropping health insurance for part-time employees all together. Again, these are comments from folks on my Facebook page. I would also like to point out that my wife, Terri Barton, is the marketing director for Ennis Regional Medical Center in our hometown of Ennis, Texas, and it is her job to help the hospital get ready to implement ObamaCare. I have texted her this morning and asked her how that is going, and she has replied that the counselors are all trained and they are ready to help if people call in wanting to sign up. Ennis Regional Medical Center is a certified application center, but so far very few people have called and tried to sign up. That is on the front lines. Ennis Regional Medical Center is a hospital approximately, I think, 60 or 70 beds, in a town of approximately 18,000 people, in the suburbs of Dallas and Fort Worth, Texas. It is on the front lines of ObamaCare as we implement it, if we do implement it. With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Florida, Congressman Yoho.

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman from Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to read a couple of more comments from my Facebook page that have come in in the last days. This is from a gentleman named Richard Lay: Since ObamaCare my insurance rates have gone through the roof. Every teacher I know has seen their monthly insurance rates increase by more than $200 to $300 per month. One teacher's went up by $400. Mr. Anthony Rhodes from Arlington, Texas writes: My rates have increased over 15 percent a year for the last 3 years. Last year and 3 years ago, my deductibles also went up 20 and 50 percent respectively. There has been nothing affordable about my health care for the last 3 years. I have less coverage and it costs me more, and even if I wanted to cancel it, I am better off paying the high prices because I get hit with a penalty tax if I cancel. I get fighting mad just thinking about the mess of legislation that was passed so that we could ``find out what's in it.'' With that, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from the 11th District of Texas, Mr. Mike Conaway, from Midland, Texas.

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman. Before I yield to the Congressman from the Fourth District of Texas (Mr. Hall), let me read a few more comments into the Record from my Facebook page. This is from Kevin Jones: It hasn't hurt me yet, but it will. I don't have medical insurance; don't want medical insurance; don't need medical insurance. I pay my own way. Because I am self-pay, I am able to negotiate some nice discounts on my medical bills. ObamaCare will just be another tax on me. This is from a lady named Theresa Stone: I had a job that I did well in, but because I was expensive and getting old--I'm turning 54 in January--to save money, I was let go in February for absolutely bogus reasons. I am collecting unemployment, but that ends in January. I lost my insurance when I lost my job. I can't afford my bills--house, food and insurance--so I am uncovered. I will never sign up for ObamaCare--ever. With that, I yield to the gentleman from Rockwall, Texas, the Fourth District of Texas, Mr. Ralph Hall, a decorated World War II veteran and, in my opinion, the absolutely nicest man in this Congress.

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman from the Fourth District. I would point out to the Speaker that, yesterday, Congressman Hall was one of the Texas Congressmen who went to the World War II Memorial to make sure that our veterans on their honor flight were allowed in to see it. I want to read one more email into the Record before I yield to the gentleman from Flower Mound, Texas, Dr. Burgess. This has come in as we've been doing this Special Order, Mr. Speaker. Katie Hoffman of Minneapolis, Minnesota, says: Hi, Joe. Keep up the good battle today. I am tuned in to C- SPAN with a close eye. I received notice last week under the Affordable Health Care Act that my insurance will be doubling almost from $113 a month to $207 a month. I am a 35, nonsmoking, healthy female. Who am I paying for? I've had enough. I'm working hard to cover the non-working society-- frustrated. Keep up the fight. Then one more from a gentleman named Tim Ruschi: Dear Representative Barton, I just want to express my support for your efforts. I am watching you right now on C- SPAN. My wife and I received a certified letter recently from our insurance provider, Cigna, informing us that our health insurance plan is being dissolved, effective January 1, 2014. I believe the President knew he was lying when he boldly proclaimed many times that, if people liked their insurance coverage, they could keep it--period. He knew or should have known full well that the Affordable Care Act would cause many insurance plans to shut down, and now this has become the sad reality. I cannot trust anything the President or this administration says anymore. With that, I yield to the gentleman from Flower Mound, Texas, in Denton County, Texas, Dr. Michael Burgess.

Mr. BARTON. If I may let the Speaker know, this was an email sent to me from an American citizen. I was just reading something an American citizen wrote. These are not my remarks.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining in this Special Order?

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, before I yield to Mr. Stockman, I want to apologize to the House for reading into the Record comments from citizens of the United States exercising their First Amendment rights. One of those citizens made a disparaging remark about the President of the United States, and we understand that Members, ourselves, cannot personalize these issues. Some of our citizens that are commenting don't understand the rules, but I do, and I want to apologize to the House because I do understand the rules. I now yield to Congressman Stockman.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, how much time is remaining?

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, to my friends in the body, this is a serious issue. ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, as I said at the start, is a huge new entitlement. At a minimum, we would have a real debate about it. As has been pointed out, it barely passed the House on a partisan vote. No Republicans voted for it, and some Democrats, I think, voted against it. I think it passed by one or two votes. It passed the Senate only because they were able to get around the 60-vote requirement to end debate. It is the law of the land, but it was passed with all Democratic votes and no Republican votes. Before it is fully implemented, I think it is worthy of a debate and it is worthy of the type of situation that's going on now. As I said at the top of this Special Order, if the Affordable Care Act is such a great thing, let's make it voluntary for the next year and let the American people choose whether they want to implement it as it is currently structured. If they don't, let's work together, hopefully on a bipartisan basis, Mr. Speaker, to change it. No one wants the Federal Government to shut down. That's obvious. The Republicans in the House are bringing bills to the floor on a daily basis to try to open up as much of the Federal Government as is possible. Our friends on the Democrat side some days are with us on that and some days are not. They were with us today on paying furloughed Federal workers when they come back to work. Hopefully, next week, they will be with us on paying the veterans, opening the VA, the national parks, funding cancer research, and some of the things that earlier this week they were against. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, how much time does the gentleman from New York control at this point in time?

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution. I am the chairman emeritus of the Energy and Commerce Committee and back in 2006 passed the reauthorization of the NIH, which authorized increased funding, set up some new programs, reformed the agency, and was viewed at that time as a landmark for the NIH. The bill before us today would fund the functions of the NIH for the next fiscal year. We all agree with the programs that NIH is engaged in, trying to find cures for cancer, Alzheimer's, heart disease, lung disease, autism, you name it. Unfortunately, yesterday, apparently the majority leader in the Senate doesn't agree with that. He was asked by a CNN reporter named Dana Bash about supporting this particular bill. The Senator gave a somewhat negative answer, so the reporter came back: ``But if you can help one child who has cancer, why wouldn't you do it?'' The answer from the majority leader was: ``Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force Base that are sitting at home. They have a few problems of their own. This is--to have someone of your intelligence to suggest such a thing maybe means you're irresponsible and reckless.'' The reporter responded: ``I'm just asking a question.'' Mr. Speaker, we should pass this resolution, notwithstanding what the majority leader in the other body says. It is very straightforward. I think in any normal situation there would be bipartisan support for this. Ms. DeLauro and Mr. Kingston have worked very hard on a bipartisan basis. I am not aware that there are any real concerns about the funding that haven't been worked out in the committee. This is an example of bipartisanship that is working. There is absolutely no reason why we can't put our differences aside and pass this resolution. I ask that we support it at the appropriate time.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman from Houston. Mr. Speaker, last night we voted to go to conference with the other body. Our friends on the minority side opposed that. And the leadership in the other body refused to appoint conferees. This afternoon we brought three bills to the floor on the suspension calendar to open our national parks, to give the District of Columbia the local funds that it rightly deserves, and to fund our veterans. These bills are under suspension, which means they need to come to the floor and get a two-thirds vote. We can't pass these bills if my friends on the minority side don't vote for them. And I would point out, on the District of Columbia, the last time the voters of the District of Columbia voted for a Republican for President, his name was Abraham Lincoln in 1864. We need to pass these bills. We're just trying to help. I would point out that being in the minority party does not mean you have to be automatically the opposition party. Let's do what makes sense, what's the right thing to do. Vote for the veterans bill, and vote for the other two bills on suspension. We cannot pass them if our friends on the minority side, some of them don't vote for these bills.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I thank the chairman of the Rules Committee as I rise in support of this resolution. Mr. Speaker, it is past midnight. Officially, the government is shut down. That is not a good thing, whether you're a Republican or a Democrat. We have been arguing politically the last several weeks various proposals to fund the government short term in a continuing resolution. We've been having some debates on the debt ceiling. If you're like me, most of your constituents, regardless of whether they're Republicans or Democrats, they're saying, Why can't you guys just get together in Washington and work things out. I think the Republican leadership in the House has been trying to do that. I know there's some disagreement on the other side about that. In any event, we've come up with the novel idea of going to conference. I know a lot of the junior Members on both sides of the aisle don't know what a conference is. It's where the Speaker of the House and the House minority leader each appoint a certain number of Members, normally senior Members of the committee of jurisdiction, and the Senate Majority Leader and the Senate minority leader appoint Members of their respective parties. If they actually do it, according to regular order, lo and behold, the Members meet and they discuss things. House Republicans would put a proposal on the table, House Democrats would; Senate Democrats, Senate Republicans. They would argue over it and debate it, maybe amend it. Then you take a vote. The House Members vote. If they agree, that's the House position, if the majority agrees. The Senate votes, and if they agree, that's the Senate position. If they don't agree, they have a stalemate. At least we'd be talking, and it would be Members, not leadership, rank-and-file Members. And it's just possible, if they open the conference, C-SPAN could cover it and the American people could see what's going on. There's no preordained outcome, Mr. Speaker, but it would be good for democracy. I can see no reason why my friends on the minority side don't want to go to conference with the Senate. I would assume that the distinguished ranking member, Nita Lowey, would head the Democrat conferees and that Hal Rogers, the chairman of the Appropriations Committee, would head us. That's up to the Speaker and the minority leader to appoint that, but I assume that. I trust them. We can disagree on what the solution is, but for Heaven's sake, I can't see why we can't agree that actually doing what the rules say we should do is somehow partisan and somehow is a negative thing. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the rule, and I rise in strong support of the resolution that we should go to conference with the other body and hopefully make it an expeditious conference and work this out.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I want to thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of the Murphy amendment, and I also want to say we should vote for that in conjunction with the gentleman from Georgia's amendment that was just heard previously. If you walk into a greenhouse anywhere in America, do you know what the average carbon concentration will be? It won't be 350 parts per million. It won't be 400 parts per million. It will be over 1,000 parts per million. We have records that indicate the CO2 concentration in the upper atmosphere has been as high as 5,000 to 6,000 parts per million in the past. The gentleman from California and those adherents of his philosophy would have you believe that having a carbon concentration between 350 and 400 parts per million is somehow cataclysmic. Nothing could be further from the truth. And this new cost of carbon calculation that the EPA and the DOE have begun to include needs to be, at a minimum, made transparent. I think it's fine until we have the facts that it shouldn't be allowed at all. So vote for the Murphy amendment.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman. Madam Chair, this is not about how sincere the NSA people are in implementing this technique. It is not about how careful they are. It is whether they have the right to collect the data in the first place on every phone call on every American every day. The PATRIOT Act did not specifically authorize it. Section 215 talks about tangible things that are relevant to an authorized security investigation. In the NSA's interpretation of that, ``relevant'' is all data all the time. That is simply wrong. We should support the Amash amendment and vote for it.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the rule for the energy and water appropriation bill. This, historically, has been one of the first appropriation bills brought to the floor. I'd like to inform the Members that, as is the practice of the Republicans in the majority, it's an open rule, and there are a number of amendments that will be made. It's my understanding that any individual who wishes to offer an amendment can come to the floor and do so. The bill is coming in at $30.4 billion, which is $2.9 billion below fiscal 2013 enacted and $4 billion below the President's request, so the Appropriations Committee is operating in compliance with the House budget that we passed several months ago. This is a good rule. It's a good bill. I would hope that we can support the rule and obviously support the bill. I would like to also add an editorial comment on the student loan rate issue. Obviously, we want those interest rates to be as low as possible. But I would point out to my friends on the other side of the aisle that the House passed a bill; it's waiting to be brought up in the other body. They can bring it up tomorrow and vote it, send it to the President for his signature. Apparently, the great sin in the House-passed bill appears to be that it moves towards an adjustable rate interest rate as opposed to a fixed rate that is below market rates. We would all like to have zero percent interest, obviously.

Mr. BARTON. I'm told you have all kinds of time, so I will not yield, but I appreciate you wanting to ask me to.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I want to rise in support of Chairman Frelinghuysen's opposition to the Heck amendment. We have heard quite a bit of rhetoric on the floor the last 10 minutes about Yucca Mountain, and I understand my colleagues from Nevada's opposition to a project in their State or their district that was somewhat unilaterally sited there. I will accept that the process by which Yucca Mountain was initially chosen was a political process and was not done the way the original Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982 said it should be done. Having said that, we have collected about $30 billion over the last 30-some-odd years from ratepayers whose electricity is generated by safe, efficient, clean nuclear power--$30 billion. We have spent upwards of $20 billion drilling a tunnel in Yucca Mountain, studying the geology, the hydrology, the environment. My understanding is that the tunnel is completed. In 2010, unilaterally, the Obama administration decided to shut the project down. It is debatable whether they did that legally or not. Having said that, the bill that's coming out of the Appropriations Subcommittee, all it does is allocate money that has already been collected to go ahead and finish the site review at Yucca Mountain to determine whether it is, in fact, a safe place to store high-level nuclear waste. Now, keep in mind that we have over 100 operating nuclear reactors around the country today, and the waste that they generated is stored onsite--stored onsite. There's good security. Most of it is stored in what are called ``wet pools.'' Almost everybody agrees that that's not a long-term solution. I think the Congress on a bipartisan basis can agree that we ought to go ahead and finish the review of the Yucca Mountain site--$25 million does it. It has also allocated some funding in the bill to help the local government entities out there. Let's finally put this thing to rest. The gentleman's amendment is well intentioned, but we need a centralized high-level repository. As of now, the most likely place is at Yucca Mountain. We have spent billions--billions of dollars--on that site. Let's spend another $25 million and finish the job. I join Chairman Frelinghuysen in opposing the Heck amendment and hope the House also does that. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in recognition of Angie McDonald who retired on Friday, June 7, 2013 after 23 years as a public school teacher. Angie, a constituent and resident of Mansfield, TX, was a teacher in the Mansfield Independent School District for 15 years and finished her career as a Reading Specialist serving all of the Mansfield-area high schools. Through her dedicated work teaching students how to overcome reading and writing deficiencies, she gave countless students a greater opportunity to excel academically and succeed professionally. The efforts of teachers like Angie are essential in promoting a more prosperous future for the next generation of Americans and our nation as a whole. I am extremely proud to have her as a constituent and cannot thank her enough for her 23 years of devotion to our children's prosperity. Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the 6th Congressional District of Texas, I ask all my distinguished colleagues to join me in honoring Angie McDonald and her 23 years of selfless work as an educator. We must always recognize those who dedicate their careers to enriching the lives of our children.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I have my 7-year-old son, Jack, with me this week. As we walked on the floor, he asked me, ``Daddy, why is that trophy on that desk?'' And I said, ``Well, son, they won the game last night.'' So I rise in reluctant recognition of the fact that last night, at Nationals Park, the Democrats squeaked out a 22-0 victory over the stalwart Republican team. Our MVP is Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona, who was a Member of this body until last year. We had a number of other Members who played very well--John Shimkus, Bill Johnson, Mike Conaway, Rodney Davis, Ron DeSantis, and the list goes on and on. The fact remains that the Democrats won, and they are entitled to the trophy. Our hats are off to you. With that, I yield to my good friend, the manager from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Mr. Mike Doyle.

Mr. BARTON. I yield back the balance of my time. Amendment No. 22 Offered by Mr. Holt

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word for the purpose of entering into a colloquy with the esteemed chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriation Subcommittee to discuss a matter of importance to our Nation. The United States Army is electing to reduce the number of Lakota light utility helicopters, which are made in my congressional district, that they had intended to purchase over the next 2 fiscal years. These helicopters are cheaper to acquire, maintain and operate than other rotary wing aircraft which the Army has recently contracted for. I respect the Army's wishes to control costs and not purchase additional aircraft that they do not need. But I am hopeful that you, Mr. Chairman, and the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Texan Michael McCaul, will work with me to have a study conducted to see if there is not some way to enhance our homeland security through a cost-effective manner by utilizing Lakota helicopters in operations that could protect the American people and secure our borders. I yield to the chairman.

Mr. BARTON. I want to thank the chairman for his willingness to work with me. Before I yield back, I just want to let the country know that when Texas is working, we get our job done a lot quicker than when Louisiana is arguing. With that, I yield back the balance of my time. Amendment Offered by Mrs. Bustos