Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would like to yield for a unanimous consent request to Mr. Rogers of Kentucky. (Mr. ROGERS of Kentucky asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. And, finally, Madam Speaker, I yield 45 seconds to another member of the committee, the distinguished Mr. Mike Rogers from the great State of Michigan.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield for 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns). (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. It has been agreed to, I am told, by the Parliamentarian and others, that if I yield to Mr. Sensenbrenner 2 minutes right now, it will come out of Leader Boehner's time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia, the ranking member of the Health Subcommittee, Mr. Deal, for 1 minute.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton) for 1 minute.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield for a unanimous consent request to a member of the committee from the Keystone State of Pennsylvania, Dr. Murphy.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina for a unanimous consent request. (Mr. COBLE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. How much time do I have remaining, please, Madam Speaker?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Minnesota for a unanimous consent request. (Mr. PAULSEN asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. It may have been explained before I got on the floor, so if I am repeating something that has already been said, I want to apologize in advance. But I do want the American people to know what this bill does. It is a bill that takes eight existing laws, and as I understand it, extends them for 1 month. It takes the unemployment insurance fund, extends it for a month; the COBRA premium assistance fund, extends it for a month; the Medicare physician freeze, it prohibits that for another month--or the cut to physician reimbursement under Medicare. An extension of Medicare therapy caps, extension for a month. A very unusual situation where we are going to use 2009 poverty numbers instead of 2010 poverty numbers, because apparently in 2010 the poverty level in the United States went down, so the majority wants to use 2009 numbers so that there will be larger payments for some of the poverty programs, which is interesting given that the deficit is over a trillion dollars this year. An extension of the National Flood Insurance Program, extension of the Satellite Television Home Viewer Act, a program out of the transportation committee to repay furloughed workers on highway projects, those are the eight current laws that are being extended. There is also a technical fix on health IT in terms of the definition of doctors that worked for hospitals or worked for clinics. None of these issues, Madam Speaker, needs to be addressed in the type of an omnibus extension on such a short term. Every one of these on its own has merit. Every one of these on its own could come to the floor in a bipartisan fashion and be debated and probably pass for longer than 1 month. I am trying to understand why the three bills that are in the committee of jurisdiction that I am the ranking member of, the Energy and Commerce Committee, that's the Medicare Physician Freeze, the Medicare Therapy Caps Extension, and the Satellite Television Home Viewers Act, why those three bills have to come to the floor for 1 month in this fashion. I don't know when the majority decided to do this. I know that the minority staff was informed of it at approximately 10 o'clock this morning. We're now on the floor at 3:15 in the afternoon. Take aside the merits of the programs on policy and process alone, we should vote these down on suspension. In a week in which the American public is expressing legitimate outrage because the majority is contemplating bringing the biggest domestic policy bill of this Congress, i.e., the health care reform package, to the floor under a rule that would have a self-executing feature to it where we would deem something passed if we pass the rule, it would seem to me that the Speaker and the majority leader and the committee chairman would not want to pile insult onto insult and bring these bills to the floor under a process where you combine bills from numerous committees of jurisdiction with no notice, for all intents and purposes, and bring them to the floor. At least in this case we are going to get an up-or- down vote on the bill, which is a good thing. But it's not a vote on the rule that self-executes. So I want to commend Chairwoman Slaughter of the Rules Committee for that and Speaker Pelosi. But again, we don't have to operate, the United States of America, like we're a third-world country that doesn't know how to run a democracy. Again, on the merits, Republicans have said for physician reimbursement we believe there should be a fix. We believe that the physicians need to be reimbursed in a fair fashion in the current Medicare reimbursement system. We support some of these therapy cap reforms. We certainly support the Satellite Television Home Viewer Act. So this isn't something that the only way to do it is to put it together in a big package and put it on the floor 1 month at a time. The only advantage I can see is that this just kind of treads water; it provides some sort of a vote this afternoon.

Mr. BARTON

Mr. BARTON. I yield myself an additional 15 seconds. And to be told at 10 o'clock this morning about this bill, which is a compilation of several bills, is just a disservice to the American people. With that, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, Mr. Cliff Stearns of Florida.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would yield myself 30 additional seconds. So I guess the other thing that I need to point out to Members of the body and to the American public is, because of the procedure, this is all deemed, apparently--and I hate to use that word. This is all defined to be emergency, and so it's not paid for. The rule that brought these bills to the floor waives PAYGO, and my recollection is not too many months ago my friends in the majority were beating themselves and congratulating themselves because they had instituted these tough PAYGO rules. But if I am correct, I believe that none of this is paid for and the rule does not require PAYGO. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. How much time do I still have?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I yield the gentleman an additional 15 seconds.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would yield 1 minute to a distinguished member of the Energy and Commerce Committee from Flower Mound and Denton, Texas, Dr. Michael Burgess.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I appreciate the Chair insisting on regular order. It's nice that we have that. That's a good thing, not a bad thing. I am going to yield myself, Madam Speaker, 1 minute. We are here today because sometime this morning the majority decided, or at least they decided to inform the minority, to extend a number of bills, several of which are primary jurisdictional to the Energy and Commerce Committee, of which I am the ranking member. Probably the most important of the bills in terms of economic impact in the short term is the physician reimbursement fix, the DRG fix. If I understand this bill correctly, it has been extended for another month. We also have the Satellite Home Viewer Reauthorization Act, which is totally within the jurisdiction of the Energy and Commerce Committee. And it is also being extended for 1 month. Madam Speaker, we don't have to do this kind of thing. If we could really get to regular order, we could bring these bills up, we could work in a bipartisan fashion, and we could find permanent or at least annual solutions to these bills. We don't have to hully gully this type of thing.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I recognize myself for 1 minute, Madam Speaker.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, we have all seen the television program ``Deal or No Deal'' where you look at this case and you decide whether you want that case or you don't want the case and take the deal or not take the deal. Well, that's what we have, except this time, the Speaker of the House is saying that there may not even be a case, we don't want you to know what's in the case, we just want you to vote for this self-executing rule so that whatever happens happens. Well, that self-executing rule, Madam Speaker, is well named, because the people that vote for it are probably going to be victims of their own execution at the next congressional election. Let's have an up-or-down vote, just as the President has suggested, on a real bill, and make people accountable in their congressional districts whether they are for this massive health care bill, a government takeover of health care, or whether they want to keep the current system of private markets, private initiative and the market- based health care system. Do not make us vote on the self-executing rule.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I rise in support and honor of the late Congressman Charlie Wilson of the Second Congressional District of Texas. I didn't know Congressman Wilson in his salad days. I didn't get elected until 1984. By that time, he had calmed down, apparently quite a bit. But I can now state it, since the statute of limitations has expired, I voted for Congressman Wilson six times. I lived in east Texas, in Crockett, Texas, in Houston County, in the Second Congressional District, and we didn't have a Republican primary, and I don't recall that we had a Republican opponent against Congressman Wilson in the time that I lived in Crockett. And so my choice was to vote for him or not vote at all. I chose to vote for him. I never went to one of his town hall meetings down at the courthouse on the square because I felt like he was doing a very good job for those constituents in east Texas, including myself. He was a strong defender of the military, very strong on what we call Texas values. He worked quite a bit on the Big Thicket in east Texas. He was an environmentalist ahead of his time. When I got elected in 1984, I made it a point to get to know Congressman Wilson, or Charlie Wilson, because I had been his constituent and I knew of his reputation. I just felt like he would be a good guy to get to know. And he was. He was a really, really good person. When his mother died, I felt as a courtesy that I should attend the funeral so that there would be some Texas Congressmen at his mother's funeral in Trinity, Texas. As it turned out, I was the only Congressman that attended. I went up to him. And we didn't really know each other that well, but I said, Charlie, I'm here if you need me to do anything. I didn't really know your mother very well, but I know she must have been a good woman if you were her son. And he never forgot that. From then on, anything I needed from Congressman Wilson, if he could do it, he did it. But he also asked you things. I will never forget out on the steps of the Capitol one time he came up to me and he said, Joe I need a favor. I said, What is it, Charlie? He said, Well, I need a Republican sponsor for an amendment in the Appropriations Committee. I said, Okay. What is it? He said, I can't tell you. I said, Well, how much money is it? He said, I can't tell you. I said, Well, how many years is it? He said, I can't tell you. I said, Well what can you tell me? He said, If you do this for me, I will do almost anything you want in the Appropriations Committee for you. So I didn't know. To this day, I don't know what that amendment was. But after reading some of the history of that time and that era, my assumption is that I was the Republican sponsor of an amendment that got funding for the black box programs in Afghanistan for Stinger missiles. Now I don't know that, Madam Speaker, but that's kind of the way he operated. Another story I can tell you is that I was standing here back behind the rail one afternoon and we had a series of votes going on, and Charlie came up to me and he said, What are you doing in a month or so? I said, I don't know. He said, Well, I'm going to take a little trip. I said, Where are you going? He said, We'll go anywhere you want to go. I said, Where do you want to go? He said, Well, I have to go to Afghanistan, and I have to go to Morocco. And if you'll come with me, after that we'll go anywhere you want to go. I said, Well, I'll think about it. Well, I asked my chief of staff and she said no. I asked my wife, and she said no. So then I had to tell Congressman Wilson that I couldn't go. That's the trip that he took the Miss World on where he ended up going to Afghanistan. Another story that I can tell you is that a couple of us Congressmen were walking down the street one day, and we saw Congressman Wilson walking over to the Capitol, and he had this very strikingly beautiful young woman that he was walking with. Congressman Dan Burton said, Charlie, that woman is as pretty as Miss Universe. And he says, It is Miss Universe. And it was. He also loved cats--I mean the four-legged cats. They ran all over his office and all over the Rayburn building on the floor. As far as I know, House Administration never chastised him. When you walked into his office, right after Afghanistan, he had a live Stinger missile. He was very proud of that. I see that my time is about to expire. So for all of his family members and constituents, there were a lot of Republicans that loved Charlie Wilson. He will be missed. He was a great patriot, a great son of Texas, and somebody that those who knew him, he was very, very loyal to. So God bless Charlie Wilson and his family.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. As a sixth-generation native Texan, I want to commend you for honoring Texas Independence Day, March 2, the 174th birthday of the Republic of Texas. I commend you for the fine work that you do, not just for your constituency in the Houston area, but for the entire State and America. God bless you, Congressman Poe.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to the CALM Act. While I, too, would like to have someone turn down the TV when it gets loud, I've already given that job to my thumb. As a result, I only need one Member of Congress at work on this vital problem, not 435. I appreciate Ms. Eshoo's efforts to protect America's ears from loud commercials and our thumbs from arthritis brought on by overuse, but writing a law to do so seems a stretch. The bill adopts into Federal law the industry-developed standards that are already being implemented, and consumers do not need the government to function as remote volume controls for them. Simply put, the private sector already has acted on this noisy nuisance. If you're not convinced that having a reliable and fully functioning thumb is better for both you and the Nation than having a fully functioning bureaucracy to adjust your TV's sound, there's also this: Many entities are responsible for producing and distributing the content that we all see and hear. Broadcast affiliates, networks, and cable, satellite, and phone companies then transmit the content. Each element of the programming may be recorded and provided to the distributors at different volume levels. Moreover, shows and movies have a broad, dynamic sound range to cover everything from explosions in a car chase to lawyers whispering to juries. Commercials, meanwhile, tend to have a narrow sound range, and they can blare and annoy when they suddenly follow a movie scene that was putting you to sleep. The technical challenges presented by these facts are significant, but with the transition to digital television, industry has responded. On November 5, the Advanced Television Systems Committee, ATSC, announced the approval of the ``ATSC Recommended Practice: Techniques for Establishing and Maintaining Audio Loudness for Digital Television.'' These standards provide guidance to the industry, and focus on audio measurement, production and postproduction monitoring techniques, and methods to control loudness for content delivery. I want to commend my friend, Ms. Eshoo, for working with all the relevant parties and for amending her bill to acknowledge the industry's work. In my opinion, however, there is no reason for Congress to get between me and my remote control. On those grounds, I have to give this measure a thumbs down.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I submit the executive summary document concerning the suppressed comments on the EPA endangerment finding for inclusion in the Record. The entire document, `Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act,' will be available on the Energy and Commerce Committee website. Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under the Clean Air Act (By Alan Carlin, NCEE/OPEI) Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009 March 16, 2009 We have become increasingly concerned that EPA has itself paid too little attention to the science of global warming. EPA and others have tended to accept the findings reached by outside groups, particularly the IPCC and the CCSP, as being correct without a careful and critical examination of their conclusions and documentation. If they should be found to be incorrect at a later date, however, and EPA is found not to have made a really careful independent review of them before reaching its decisions on endangerment, it appears likely that it is EPA rather than these other groups that may be blamed for any errors. Restricting the source of inputs into the process to these two sources may make EPA's current task easier but it may come with enormous costs later if they should result in policies that may not be scientifically supportable. We do not maintain that we or anyone else have all the answers needed to take action now. Some of the conclusions reached in these comments may well be shown to be incorrect by future research. Our conclusions do represent the best science in the sense of most closely corresponding to available observations that we currently know of, however, and are sufficiently at variance with those of the IPCC, CCSP, and the Draft TSD that we believe they support our increasing concern that EPA has not critically reviewed the findings by these other groups. As discussed in these comments, we believe our concerns and reservations are sufficiently important to warrant a serious review of the science by EPA before any attempt is made to reach conclusions on the subject of endangerment from GHGs. We believe that this review should start immediately and be a continuing effort as long as there is a serious possibility that EPA may be called upon to implement regulations designed to reduce global warming. The science has and undoubtedly will continue to change and EPA must have the capability to keep abreast of these changes if it is to successfully discharge its responsibilities. The Draft TSD suggests to us that we do not yet have that capability or that we have not used what we have. We would be happy to work with and assist anyone who might want to undertake such a serious review of the science and hope that these comments will at least illustrate the scope of what we believe is needed. We hope that the reader will excuse the many unintentional errors that are undoubtedly in these comments. Our only excuse is that we had less than four days to draft these very lengthy and complex comments. It has not been possible to fully adhere to our usual very high standards of accuracy as a result. If there should be questions, we will be happy to try to correct any errors that anyone may find, however. It is of great importance that the Agency recognize the difference between an effort that has consumed tens of billions of dollars by the IPCC, the CCSP, and some additional European, particularly British, funding over a period of at least 15 years with what two EPA staff members have been able to pull together in less than a week. Obviously the number of peer reviewed papers that exist and the polish of the summary reports cannot be compared. What is actually noteworthy about this effort is not the relative apparent scientific shine of the two sides but rather the relative ease with which major holes have been found in the GHG/CO2/AGW argument. In many cases the most important arguments are based not on multi-million dollar research efforts but by simple observation of available data which has surprisingly received so little scrutiny. The best example of this is the MSU satellite data on global temperatures. Simple scrutiny of this data yields what to us are stunning observations. Yet this has received surprisingly little study or at least publicity. In the end it must be emphasized that the issue is not which side has spent the most money or published the most peer-reviewed papers, or been supported by more scientific organizations. The issue is rather whether the GHG/CO2/AGW hypothesis meets the ultimate scientific test--conformance with real world data. What these comments show is that it is this ultimate test that the hypothesis fails; this is why EPA needs to carefully reexamine the science behind global warming before proposing an endangerment finding. This will take more than four days but is the most important thing we can do right now and in the coming weeks and months and possibly even years.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I reserve the balance of my time.