Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Chairman Upton and I strongly support the gentleman from Indiana's amendment. We commend him for offering it. We think it adds to the bill.

Mr. BARTON. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON. The gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield), and myself support your amendment and ask that it be accepted.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I do support the gentleman's amendment. I want to commend him for his leadership on this issue. I hope we will accept it on a voice vote. I see Mr. Rush. I am willing to yield to my good friend from Chicago (Mr. Rush) if he wishes to speak on it. I was told he might.

Mr. BARTON. I yield for the 1-minute prayer, not the 5-minute sermon.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition, although I am not opposed to the amendment.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I only would like to say we support the amendment and we will honor the deal we just made on the prior amendment. I ask for a ``yes'' vote on a voice vote on the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. BARTON. If I make a point of order that the motion to recommit is not germane and it, in fact, is not germane, there is no vote. Is that correct?

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order that the motion to recommit is not germane. Oh, it is germane. I withdraw the point of order.

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

Mr. BARTON. First of all, I want to thank the minority for giving us a one-page motion to recommit that I can actually read and understand. I have read it. I don't like it. It is not necessary. It is redundant. I oppose it. Please vote against it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I thank the gentleman from Midland, Texas, the chairman of the Agriculture Committee and a stalwart original sponsor of the bill. I appreciate your leadership, and I appreciate you doing this Special Order. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we are going to have a debate on H.R. 702. It is a bill to repeal the ban on crude oil exports. This is the last remnant of the 1970s era energy policy for America that said we were running out of energy and that the only way to use the energy we did have was to keep it in the United States. As a consequence of the Arab oil embargo, we had price controls on oil. We had price controls on natural gas. We had limits on what natural gas could be used for. We had a very restrictive, defeatist, in my opinion, energy policy. All that has been repealed except for one thing, and that is this ban on crude oil exports. There are a number of opinions about why that has not been repealed, but I think the primary reason is that, until the last 5 years, Mr. Speaker, we really didn't have a significant amount of oil that could be exported. But a funny thing happened. Some engineers in Texas--I have to give my State credit--developed two technologies, one called hydraulic fracturing where you pressurize a formation, and another where you can turn the drill bit and drill horizontally. The combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling has transformed what were considered to be uneconomic reserves, i.e., these tight shale formations in south Texas in the Eagle Ford, in North Dakota in the Bakken, in Louisiana, and up in through Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, into economically producible oil and gas formations. The consequence is, in the last 5 years, U.S. oil production has doubled. It got as high as almost $10 million a barrel about a year ago. Because of the collapse in oil prices, that production level has declined some, but the capacity is still there. So we have created a surplus in the domestic market of this light, sweet shale oil, but we can't export it. So what has developed is a two-tiered price market. You have a domestic price for oil in the United States that is anywhere from $2 to as much as $30 below the world price, which is set by North Sea oil called Brent. That price differential is causing wells in the United States to shut in. It is preventing new wells from being driven. If we can pass our bill tomorrow and the Senate pass it and the President sign it, that price differential, Mr. Speaker, will go away, and we will be competitive to export oil into the world market. If we are able to do that, good things happen. We create jobs in the United States. We put pressure on OPEC and Russia in the world market. We probably bring that world price down slightly, which will result in lower gasoline prices for United States consumers. We will be competitive in the energy markets everywhere in this world. In Asia, in South America, in Western Europe, Central Europe, U.S. oil will be used as an economic product, but also as a strategic asset for the security of our country. So, Mr. Speaker, we hope to have a big vote on that tomorrow, somewhere between noon and 1:00. We have, I think, 10 amendments the Rules Committee has made in order. Some of those we will accept. Some of them we will oppose. But it has been an open process, hearings in a number of committees, including your committee, Mr. Chairman, the Agriculture Committee, open markup in subcommittee of Energy and Commerce, full committee, and amendments accepted from both sides of the aisle that will be on the floor tomorrow. So H.R. 702 is good for America, good for the country. It is a job- creation bill, and we hope that we will get a big vote tomorrow afternoon.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Commerce be authorized to file a supplemental report on the bill H.R. 702.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, if you look up here at the podium right behind me on the Republican side, what do you see? Carved into the balustrade is the word ``liberty.'' If you look on the Democratic side, what do you see? You see the word ``justice.'' If you look straight down the center aisle right between them, what do you see? It is ``tolerance.'' Mr. Chairman, the bill that is before us today is a culmination of 4 years of hard work between both political parties and both leaderships of the Energy and Commerce Committee on both sides of the aisle in which a lot of tolerance has been exhibited. Conservatives on the Republican side haven't gotten everything that we want in this bill, and liberals on the Democratic side haven't gotten everything they want on this bill, but the work product is a culmination of an open process that Chairman Upton and subcommittee Chairman Pitts have put together. Every member of the committee has been invited to numerous working groups--probably 10, 15, I don't know--and have been given every opportunity to have input into what they want and what they don't want. This bill would become law, and it will stay law. It will become law, and it will unite the medical research community. There are things in this bill that I have worked on for 10 years that will help find cures sooner rather than later. Mr. Chairman, I had a woman in my office in Texas 4 days ago. Her son has autism, and he is 11 years old. He is her only child. They literally don't know what to do. He speaks one word at a time. He becomes violent. She has almost given up hope, but we are doing amazing research in autism. This bill will facilitate and expedite that. I am tired of telling parents of children: I don't know. I can't help you. I want to say: Here is what we are doing. This bill does that. Now, Mr. Chairman, there is a $2 billion mandatory program for 5 years called the innovation fund. Some of my conservative friends have said: Oh, we can't vote for the bill because of that program. What was Medicare part D? It was a mandatory program--$40 billion that was not offset. Every Republican in the House voted for that--I might point out every Democrat voted against it--and that was voluntary. The people could participate or not participate, but it was mandatory that the Federal Government had to spend the money. Last year, we voted on a program for veterans, $10 billion. Every Republican in the House voted for that. It wasn't offset. Now, I would rather that we have everything discretionary. I wish the whole Federal budget was discretionary except for Social Security, but it is not.

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, let's come together. Let's vote for something that we can all be proud of so that we can tell the parents of children with autism that there is hope and there is a future. Vote ``yes.'' Please vote ``yes.''

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the Member from Texas for that generous introduction. Mr. Speaker, 4 years ago, I went to then-Majority Leader Eric Cantor and committee chairman Fred Upton and asked permission to create a task force, a bipartisan task force--equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats from the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Appropriations Committee--to work with outside groups and experts to see if there were not some ideas that we could put forward in legislation to improve the ability to find and implement cures for all the various diseases that afflict our Nation. Mr. Upton and Mr. Cantor approved that task force. We had a task force of 24 members. We had an outside group that included several Nobel prize winners, leaders from Johns Hopkins and MD Anderson, former directors of NIH and FDA. That morphed in the beginning of this Congress to a task force that Diana DeGette and Chairman Upton led themselves. That has led to a bipartisan bill that, as has been pointed out, came out of committee 51-0. That is an amazingly extraordinarily positive accomplishment to have total unanimity in support of this type of a bill. We haven't reauthorized NIH since 2006, and that lapsed in 2009. This bill does that. We have taken every innovative idea in the medical community that makes any sense at all and put it into this bill. We are increasing the authorization for spending for NIH. We have the innovation fund, which is a mandatory program for 5 years. It puts a little under $2 billion a year that is offset; it is paid for; it does go away at the end of 5 years, but for 5 years, it is specifically going to innovation research that is a fast track to find the cures that are most applicable to the marketplace today. This bill is a revolutionary bill. We need to pass it, Mr. Speaker. There are lots of problems. There are things that are not in the bill that I wanted in the bill, but this is a huge step forward. It rarely happens that Congress can work together to do something that is totally for the benefit of the American people. This is one of those times. We need to vote for the rule, and then we need to vote for the bill, and we will move forward, united, to find the cures for the 21st century for all Americans and, really, to some extent, for all the world. I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Madam Speaker, I rise with an extremely heavy heart to, once again, have to congratulate my good friend Mike Doyle, the manager of the Democratic baseball team, for another victory. It is sad, but true. Sad, but true. On June 11, the Republicans and the Democrats played the Annual Congressional Baseball Game. It was a spirited game, but for the seventh year in a row, Mr. Doyle's team won. I don't know how to say that. I will say that our team is back. Mark Walker, our MVP from North Carolina, pitched a good game. He struck out Cedric Richmond, which I think is probably the first time Cedric has not gotten a hit. We had new blood: Mr. Costello, Mr. Moolenaar, and several others. Of course, we had our stalwarts: John Shimkus; Kevin Brady; our whip, Steve Scalise. So we played a good game, but the Democrats deserved to win. They beat us, 5-20. I will say that it was a pretty low blow to have the President of the United States come and interrupt the game, take away our momentum right when we had a big rally. I am very proud of the Republican team, but I do want to congratulate Mike Doyle and the Democrats. I yield to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Doyle).

Mr. BARTON. Madam Speaker, I want to thank leadership on both sides: our Speaker, John Boehner; our majority leader, Kevin McCarthy; and our whip, Steve Scalise, who played in the game. On their side, Ms. Pelosi, Mr. Hoyer, and Mr. Clyburn were all there. So both leadership supported the game. It was a good game. We did raise a lot of money for charity. But I will put you on notice, Mike Doyle, the shoe is going to be on the other foot next year. Be ready.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON. I rise in strong support of the gentleman's amendment. I think it is absolutely the right thing to do. It is pure common sense. As you know, these newer bulbs, while they may be more energy efficient, they are much more expensive. I have yet to see one that costs less than $3 or $4. The incandescent bulbs--when you can find them--you can get four for $2.50 or something like that. This is a commonsense approach to let the consumer choose. Certainly, for lower-income Americans that don't have the ability to buy the more expensive bulbs, it makes a lot of economic sense. I support the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. BARTON

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

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

Mr. BARTON. Mr. Chairman, I had offered an amendment for the Record that was a very specific amendment, and I am going to read that: The Secretary shall accept from the Trinity River Authority of Texas, if received by October 31, 2015, $30,191,026 as payment in full of amounts owed to the United States, including any accrued interest, for water supply storage space in Joe Pool Lake, Texas, previously known as Lakeview Lake, under contract No. DACW63-76-C-0106. Mr. Chairman, this amendment was approved by the Corps of Engineers, approved by the Trinity River Authority, and approved by the municipalities that are obligated to purchase water that is stored in this lake. However, only one of those municipalities is actually taking the water, and because of a very high interest rate, it would never be feasible for the water to be taken by the three municipalities that are not taking it. Under this agreement, the Trinity River Authority would pay all principal and accrued interest but at an interest rate of a little over 2 percent. The Corps has accepted it. The municipalities have accepted it. The State of Texas has accepted it. It has all been accepted. The committee of authorizing jurisdiction is supportive of it, which is the Transportation Committee. In principle, on policy, the appropriators of the subcommittee on both sides of the aisle are supportive. However, there is a point of order against the amendment as originally drafted. I respect that point of order. I respect the subcommittee chairman and the ranking member, and I respect the full committee chairman, so I have drafted the substitute amendment, which there is no point of order against. I am told that, if accepted, this will have an effect that, if the appropriators support it in principle, the Corps will accept it, and the municipalities will accept it, and we will get this problem solved. I want to emphasize that the United States Government is going to get all of its money back with interest at the prevailing market rate of the little over 2 percent that exists today. This is not a giveaway. This is literally found money that goes back to the Corps of Engineers, and they, under the leadership of the subcommittee that Mr. Simpson and Ms. Kaptur are responsible for, can designate that money however they think it is best to be obligated. I ask for the chairman of the subcommittee to enter into a colloquy to see if he accepts this amendment in principle and is willing to work with me and Ms. Johnson to implement it in the appropriate fashion at the appropriate time.