Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, we thank the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) for using his chart once again. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the distinguished chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

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

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to first recommend the gentlewoman of Nevada to look at section 1290 of the bill which is an item that the Senior Centers in Nevada strongly supports. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) for purposes of a colloquy. (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Pombo), the distinguished chairman of the Committee on Resources.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Well, no. I need 1 more minute from somewhere, Mr. Speaker. So if we cannot get it from the other side, I just ask unanimous consent to add 1 minute to the time I control.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 394, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 6) to ensure jobs for our future with secure, affordable, and reliable energy.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to say at the beginning we currently do not have on the House floor the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), one of the opponents of the bill, but when he arrives, I want to assure those who are in opposition to the bill that we will yield time so that they have an opportunity to participate in the debate. With that I want to say that this is a great day. The House is poised to pass the most comprehensive energy policy that we have ever had before this body, at least in the time that I have been in the House of Representatives, which encompasses the last 21 years. In the last Congress, the House was able to adopt a conference report, but the other body was never able to invoke cloture and bring that bill to the floor. This bill builds on last year's bill. It is full of superb legislation. It is a very balanced bill both for conservation and for production. There is a very strong title on energy efficiency. There is a strong title on renewable energy and clean energy. On a bipartisan basis, we have even adjusted daylight savings time to help save energy. The bill before us today is going to promote a new generation of clean coal technology. It is going to promote the use of our Nation's greatest domestic resource, which is coal. It is going to do it in a clean, environmentally safe fashion. We are going to introduce a new generation for nuclear power in this country. There are many innovations that should make it possible the next 3 to 4 years to begin to construct a new nuclear power plant. With the help of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) and Senator Craig in the other body, we have a reform in our relicensing process for hydroelectric plants, which, as we all know, have zero emissions. We also have parts of the bill that are going to vigorously pursue the Hydrogen Fuel Initiative, which has the promise to help relieve some of the dependency on the internal combustion engine which we have developed in this country. We want to give American drivers the opportunity to drive safe, affordable, and reliable, clean hydrogen cars as soon as the year 2020. That is not as far off as it seems, Mr. Speaker. In the short term, we have provisions in the bill to make it more efficient to use our boutique fuels. These are fuels that are a blend of fuels between gasoline and different types of ethanol. Under current rules there are as many as 19 different blends, many of them manufactured or refined in only one refinery. The bill before us reduces that number so that we have greater transportability of our boutique fuels between those regions of the country that need those fuel sources. We have a brand new title on siting new liquified natural gas terminals. We are dependent on about 10 percent of imports for natural gas right now, yet we have not sited a new LNG facility in this Nation in over 30 years. The bill before us will look at the permitting process. It will respect the States rights and local community rights, but it will create a process where they get a decision, and hopefully some of those sites will be permitted in the next 3 to 4 years, and we will be able to import liquefied natural gas for our Nation's economic future. We also have a sector that came over from the other body on a comprehensive inventory in the oil and gas reserves in the Outer Continental Shelves. This particular title is something that is a work in progress, and I expect later today to engage in a colloquy with some members of the Florida delegation to see if perhaps in the near future we cannot refine that title to make it more acceptable to some of the Coastal States that have concerns about the inventory. We have a strong title on research and development that would authorize programs for the study of energy efficiency, renewables, nuclear energy, fossil fuels, and much more. The electricity title is one of the best titles in the bill. It is a title that has been put together over 6 years on a bipartisan, bicameral basis. It is one of the titles that I am most proud of. It is going to usher in for our electricity industry innovations across the board, from the generation of electricity, to the transmission of electricity, to the distribution of electricity, to the consumption of electricity. It is truly a landmark piece of legislation in the electricity title. I want to thank the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), the dean of the House of Representatives, who has been in this body for almost 50 years, for his strong leadership on this bill on the minority side. I cannot tell the Members what a pleasure it was to have him sit with me in the negotiations with the Senate and to have him sit beside me in the open conference markups and educate me on how to do the parliamentary procedure and handle some of the sensitive issues that came before the conference. He is truly a giant among giants, and I cannot more proud. If I am as proud of anything in this bill, it is the fact that the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) signed the conference report. And I think that is a tremendous credit to him and how willing he was to work within the process. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Bonner).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), a member of the committee.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that of the majority time, 10 minutes be yielded to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), and I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) to make a similar request on the minority side.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am in awe, as always, of the gentleman of Massachusetts' rhetorical abilities. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my distinguished friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), a member of the committee and a conferee.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished member of the Committee on Rules for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, I rise, first of all, in strong support of the rule that the Committee on Rules has put forward on this significant piece of legislation. I think it is a very fair rule, and my guess would be that it is going to be passed by voice vote. I really want to talk about the underlying bill because this afternoon, since this is a conference report, there is only going to be an hour of debate evenly divided on each side. So I want to talk a little bit about the policies in the bill right now. Our Nation was founded on the principle that people had freedom and this freedom entailed the opportunity to make choices. As we begin to industrialize that principle of freedom, we begin to be encapsulated in our, for lack of a better term, industrial policies; and part of that policy has been our energy policy. Now, there are some people and there are some countries around the world that think an energy policy for a country should mean the command and control policy where the government dictates, the government owns, the government decides; but that is not what we in America believe. And in the bill that is going to be before us this afternoon, the Domenici- Barton Policy Act of 2005, we decided that ``energy policy'' means government setting the frame work, government deciding the parameters and the ground rules; but fundamentally we still believe in freedom of choice and freedom of opportunity. We believe in private property. We believe in economic choices. So the bill before us does not dictate to the American people or to the corporations and to the interest groups that make up America exactly how we should develop our energy resources. It sets the ground rules. I want to divide the energy sector into two components, stationary energy and mobile energy. On the stationary side, this is the best bill that has ever been before the Congress of the United States of America. It is going to fundamentally transform the way we develop our energy resources to generate electricity, whether it is in our coal area where there is great, great work on clean coal technology; in the nuclear area where we really revitalize nuclear power; or whether it is in the way we do the transmission grids; whether it is the way we site new transmission lines; whether it is the way that we determine what the reliability of our system has to be, has to be maintained. This is an excellent bill. Now, on the mobile source, which is primarily oil which we refine into gasoline, this is a good bill. But I cannot tell the American people that it is a great bill in the sense that it is going to reduce your gasoline prices next week if the House passes it and the Senate passes it and the President signs it. Here is the fundamental problem we face on our mobile energy sources. We consume 21 million barrels of oil every day in this country, and we only produce 8. You subtract the 8 out of 21 and you get 13. So we are importing about 13 million barrels of oil a day. On our best day, the United States of America did not produce more than 10 million barrels of oil a day, on our best day. There is nothing we can do that is going to generate another 13 million barrels of oil produced in the confines of the United States of America. It cannot be done. Now, we can produce more and we have an inventory and the OCS has been under moratory that will at least allow us to see what might be out there. When we come back in September in reconciliation, we are going to pass a provision that allows us to drill up in ANWR and maybe produce as much as 2 million barrels of oil today. And we have a component of this bill that will continue research on the hydrogen economy so that perhaps we can come up with an alternative to the internal combustion engine. And we have incentives in this bill to help our automobile manufacturers develop the hybrid technology so that we can get it more cost effective. We have some credits for people in this bill that could purchase hybrid vehicles. So we are trying to narrow the gap; but as long as we are consuming 21 million barrels and we are only producing 8, we are going to be importing a fair amount of our oil. So we need to find a way to use that oil more effectively and this bill does that. It also makes it possible, perhaps, to build some new oil refineries in our great Nation. We have not built a new oil refinery in the United States of America in 35 years. This bill for the first time begins to take some modest steps to make that possible. I hope when the time comes, we vote for the rule this afternoon. I hope on a bipartisan basis we overwhelmingly vote for the bill.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I want to try to set the record straight about this bill and add some comments that I did not make in my previous statement. The Senate had 14 conferees on the bill, 8 Republicans and 6 Democrats. Thirteen of those conferees signed the conference report. We had all the Republicans in the Senate and five of the six Democrats sign this conference report. In the House, a majority of the House Democrat conferees have signed the report, a majority. Of the Energy and Commerce Committee conferees that were general conferees, a majority of those conferees signed the conference report, including the distinguished former chairman of the committee, John Dingell of Michigan. We have a bipartisan bill that has come before the House. As I enunciated earlier, if your vision of an energy policy is a policy where the government tells you what you can do and when you can do it and how you can use your energy, this is not your bill. But if your vision of America is a vision of America that says it is okay to let the private sector, with the appropriate environmental guidelines and open market transparency rules and regulations, develop its resources for the good of all the people, this is your bill. In terms of incentives for alternative energy, this bill has got more incentives at the individual level and at the general industrial level than any other energy bill that has ever been before this Congress. Whatever your energy source of choice is, there is something in this bill to help you decide if you want to maximize that choice. What this bill does not do is say every American has to drive a vehicle that gets 50 miles to the gallon whether they want to or not. Those vehicles are available right now in the marketplace, and Americans have the right to choose. This bill does not dictate that choice. This bill also makes it possible, again without repealing or fundamentally changing any existing environmental law, to do some at least exploration and in some cases development of our onshore and offshore energy resources. As I said earlier, it fundamentally revitalizes the clean coal technology industry in this country and the nuclear power industry in this country. This is a good bill. It is a bipartisan bill. A majority of the House Democrat conferees and every Republican conferee signed the conference report. Last night when we were before the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Michigan and I were both unanimous in that this should come to the floor under a rule that both sides could support. I want to commend the distinguished Rules Committee, in the gentleman from Washington's view, presenting the best rule that has ever been presented on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, as chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has some jurisdiction on trade, I rise in strong support of the CAFTA agreement. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 3045, the Dominican Republic-Central America-United States Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act (DR-CAFTA). This important Agreement ensures the spread of fair and open markets for American goods and services. I want to commend the Bush administration, the majority leader, and my good friends on the Committee on Ways and Means for bringing this important legislation before the House. The provisions in DR-CAFTA go beyond the mere dissolution of tariffs. This wide-ranging Agreement sets forth detailed requirements to eliminate the non-tariff trade barriers erected by the member countries. Often more nefarious than traditional protectionist measures, these barriers now constitute the principle impediment to achieving free and unfettered foreign commerce. The elimination of all trade barriers to foreign commerce has long been a goal of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. So I want to express my great satisfaction that DR-CAFTA contains numerous chapters resolving potential non- tariff trade barriers. Chapter 6 addresses each country's ability to promulgate needed sanitary measures. It is very important that our countries cooperate closely, and assist one another in protecting human, animal, and plant health. Plant- and animal-borne pests and diseases, including toxins and disease-causing organisms, must be carefully controlled, and the reaffirmation of WTO rules in this area strengthens the Agreement in a significant way. Chapter 13 and 14 focus on telecommunications and E-commerce. These are some of the most important pieces of the Agreement before us. They promote, instead of hamper, growth in these areas. Chapter 13 ensures non-discriminatory access to public telecommunications networks in the Member countries, and requires the signatories to regulate their dominant telecommunications suppliers in ways that will ensure a level playing field for new market entrants; deregulation and technological neutrality are the key goals. Costa Rica is of particular note because of its government-provided telecom services, and the Agreement has special requirements for this country to open its market to American competition. Additionally, Chapter 14 builds on these goals by prohibiting discriminatory regulation of electronic trade. This chapter represents a major advance over previous international arrangements with regard to E-commerce. The protection of Intellectual Property, IP, rights must be a part of any Free Trade Agreement, FTA, and Chapter 15 complements and enhances existing international standards in this area. It requires the Parties to ratify or accede to several existing agreements on IP rights, including two significant World Intellectual Property Organization agreements to which the U.S. is already a Party. Chapter 17 sets out the Parties' commitments and undertakings regarding environmental protection. It draws on the North American Agreement on Environmental Cooperation and the environmental provisions of other recent U.S. FTAs, including those with Jordan, Chile, Singapore, Australia, and Morocco. DR-CAFTA goes further however, and notably is the first American FTA that includes a process for public submission on environmental enforcement matters. The Parties must ensure that their laws provide a high level of environmental protection, and no Party may strive to weaken these laws to promote trade with Another. The Committee on Energy and Commerce has jurisdiction over the areas I have discussed--as well as jurisdiction over non-tariff trade barriers generally--and my Committee plans to continue to exercise its jurisdiction over trade barriers to further the expansion of free and open foreign commerce. Finally--and aside from the actual text of the Agreement--this implementing legislation offers an opportunity to show the people of the developing countries of Central America and the people of the world that when we speak of freedom and liberty and the importance of self- rule, we mean every word of it. The still-struggling, but nascent democracies of the DR-CAFTA countries need political stability to continue to grow. Economic stability and growth are important parts of that goal. Passing this legislation will help to tie these countries' futures to our own, and to reinforce our own democratic principles. Mr. Speaker, I would again like to commend all the parties that made this Agreement possible, and to once again urge my colleagues to support unimpeded trade with foreign nations and to help strengthen economic and political stability in our hemisphere through the adoption of DR-CAFTA.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the Speaker. There is some confusion. I have tried several times today to file the energy conference report. Because of technical glitches, every time we get right to the lip of the cliff, we have to do one little more thing. So I apologize for any confusion. Mr. Speaker, I am here today multi-hatted. In addition to working on energy, my committee has also been working on health care. The bills that are under suspension, the five bills in the House and the Senate, are all moving to make health care better and more affordable and also more understandable for the American people. My excellent subcommittee chairman, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Deal), has worked very hard on this on a bipartisan fashion. The ranking member, the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell) of the full committee level, and the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown), the ranking member of the subcommittee, have worked to make the bills that we are going to consider today very, very good bills as well as very bipartisan bills. So, Mr. Speaker, I am simply saying that the first bill that we are going to consider is very worthy of consideration, and I hope the House will pass it expeditiously and then move to the next four.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to report that sometime this morning we are going to file the energy conference report. This is a piece of legislation that both parties can take pride in. A majority of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Democrats have signed the conference report, including the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Dingell), distinguished ranking minority member. All of the Republicans have signed it in the Senate. Thirteen of the 14 Senate conferees have signed it. This bill is going to transform our Nation's energy economy. It is going to breathe new life into clean coal technology, nuclear technology, renewable technology, and the ethanol industry. It is going to create tens of thousands of jobs for the American economy. It is going to lessen dependence on foreign sources of energy. Regardless of what part of the country or what part of the economy each American is in, this energy bill will be a good deal for all Americans; and I would urge a ``yes'' vote when it comes to the floor sometime tomorrow afternoon.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise just to say that I object to the motion to instruct. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take from the Speaker's table the bill (H.R. 6) to ensure jobs for our future with secure, affordable, and reliable energy, with a Senate amendment thereto, disagree to the Senate amendment, and agree to the conference asked by the Senate.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, how many speakers does the gentlewoman have?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, back in the middle of the Depression in the late 1920s or the early 1930s, the east Texas oil field was discovered, and at that time it was the world's largest oil field. And since it was discovered by a man named Joiner who was an independent, all kinds of folks rushed in to get a piece of that action. It was not discovered by the major oil companies, and so literally tens of thousands of people from all over the country came to east Texas and to Kilgore and to Longview to try to make their fortune. The law enforcement facilities and the personnel were just overwhelmed. So finally in desperation, one of the county judges called down to Austin to speak to the Governor of Texas. He said, Governor, we are being overwhelmed here. We have a riot on our hands. Can you send the Texas National Guard and the Texas Rangers? Could you send us some help so we can restore law and order? The Governor of Texas said, I will be happy to do that. So about a day later, the sheriff and the county judge and some of the county commissioners, they went to the train station to meet the help. And they were expecting hundreds, if not thousands, of troops and Rangers to step off the train; and one lonely Texas Ranger, a grizzled old guy stepped off the train. The county judge says, I called the Governor and I asked for help, where is it? The Ranger said, You are looking at it. The county judge said, We got a riot on our hands. And the Ranger said, How many riots? And the judge said, One. The Ranger said, Well, I am one Ranger. One Ranger, one riot. And he proceeded to quell the disturbance. Well, we have heard from our friends, and they are my friends, every one of them except for one that just spoke is a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. They are all good people. Not one of them voted for the energy bill. That is okay. That is what democracy is all about. You have heard the other side of the story, but that may not be the whole story. There is another side to this story on MTBE, and let us talk about it. Our distinguished minority leader, the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), when she spoke, stood up and said that back when they began to put MTBE in the gasoline, the manufacturers knew that it would leak. They knew that it would leak. Well, let me ask you a question. If you put something in a tank underground and the tank is not tight, is it going to leak or not leak? The answer is it is going to leak if you do not have a tank that is not leakproof. So to say they knew MTBE would leak is to say they knew there were leaking underground storage tanks. You put gasoline in a storage tank underground, whatever is in that gasoline, if there is a leak in the tank, it is going to leak. That is a fact. So when MTBE leaks, which is a fact, it is not just the MTBE. It is everything else in the gasoline. It is the benzene and all the other additives and the gasoline itself. Now, to say that the solution to that is to ban MTBE is to say if I cut my arm and it is bleeding, instead of putting a BandAid on it and stopping the leak, I drain the blood out of my body. That is one way to stop the leak. But that may not be the most cost-effective and the most sensible way. Now, surprising as it may be, under existing law we have a leaking underground storage tank fund called the LUST fund. It was specifically set up in law to prevent tanks from leaking, to have a mechanism to pay to repair these underground storage tanks. Just one problem, the law did not say the money that goes into the fund has to be used just for leaking underground storage tanks. So what have the States done? They have used it for every purpose but that. We set up this fund. We funded it. We put money into the trust fund. We send that money to the States, and the States use it for any purpose. Some States actually do use it to repair and maintain leaking underground storage tanks, but not many. This bill that my friends who have just been speaking voted against has a provision in it that says the States have to use some of the money for the underground storage tanks. And, in fact, it doubles the amount and it sets up a maintenance program where the States have to go out and actually enforce the law in this bill that is pending. That is my first point. The gentlewoman who is offering the amendment said, and she is right, there are 2,600 water systems in this country that have MTBE contamination. She says it and I am going to say it is a fact. I have no reason to doubt that. What she does not say because the reports that she studies do not tell her is what the level is. Now, the EPA standard is somewhere between 20 and 40 parts per billion. Some States have a tighter standard, as low as 13 parts per billion. The problem is, with all of these lawsuits that have been filed, the trial lawyers have found out that you can detect MTBE down to one part per billion. Somebody shows up in your city council office and says, we have a lawsuit on MTBE contamination. Can we check your water supply? Of course they are going to say, sure, check the water supply. They come back and say, you got MTBE contamination, 2 parts per billion. Oh, my God. Let us join up. Well, unless you have got the most sensitive nose, you are not even going to be able to smell it, but it is there. It is way below the standard. Now, if the State wants to set a standard even lower than 13 parts per billion, I have got no problem with that. If the State wants to ban MTBE, which some States have, I have got no problem with that. But to sit here and say that you have all this contamination, well, I could take a thumbful of MTBE and take it out and throw it on the ground out here in the Capitol. And if it rains very quickly after that, the thumbful gets into the water system, the wastewater run-off here in Washington, D.C., and some of that goes to a reservoir and the city of Washington gets some of its drinking water from that reservoir, it might show up at one part per billion. That does not mean it is contaminated in the real sense, but it does mean there is some MTBE in there. So the fact that we have all these water systems that claim contamination, part of that is because the trial lawyers have been going on and recruiting people to join the lawsuit, and they go out and study their water supply and they may actually be able to find a little MTBE in it. The next thing, and my friend from Maine talked about the fact that MTBE was not mandated under the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1991. He is telling you the truth. But, again, as he pointed out, we did not mandate MTBE but we did mandate that you had to put an oxygenate requirement of 2 percent by weight. At that time, there were two ways to do it: One was ethanol and the other was MTBE. Now, since that time, the oil and gas industry has come up with a product called reformulated gasoline that meets the minimum standard for combustion under the Clean Air Act Amendments, so there are now three ways to do it. But at the time there were two, and it was a mandate. So we told the industry, if you are in a nonattainment area, you have to put one of two things, MTBE or ethanol, in your gasoline during certain parts of the year so that you get better combustion in the engine so that you get cleaner air quality. That was a good thing, not a bad thing. And what did they find out? They found out that those communities who used the MTBE, it was much more cost effective. It cost less money; and two, it cleaned the air better, about 40 percent better than ethanol, 40 percent. But, as has been pointed out, if you store it in a tank that leaks, it may leak. And when the gasoline leaks, the MTBE as part of the gasoline leaks and the MTBE does get into the water table and that does cause an odor. Now, the last thing I want to talk about is this study that has been leaked. Is it not interesting we are having a debate about leaking underground storage tanks and a study has been leaked from the EPA? Heaven help us. This study that has been leaked is a draft study. It has not been peer reviewed. It will probably never become part of an actual public document that is presented to the Congress. But the folks at EPA understand the energy bill is about to go to conference, and those that agree that MTBE is not a good thing, somebody over there has conveniently leaked a draft report that says MTBE is now a likely carcinogen. Likely. Well, I drink a lot of Diet Dr. Pepper. And my guess is if I were to drink ten gallons of Diet Dr. Pepper everyday for the rest of my life, I might develop cancer because of that. I do not think that MTBE, under the standard that is in current law, is a carcinogen, and all the studies that I have seen that have tried to prove it have come back just the opposite. So to hang our hat now on a draft study that has not been peer reviewed and has been leaked by the EPA, to me, is pretty weak soup indeed. Let me just say that we are getting ready to go to conference with the other body. That is a good thing, not a bad thing on the energy bill. We need to find a compromise on MTBE. I think that is a good thing, not a bad thing. And I agree with some of the proponents of the Capps amendment that the manufacturers and the distributors and the retailers and the refiners, the people in the chain of custody for MTBE should help pay to clean up the water systems that are contaminated. Should. Should. So the compromise that we have been working on for several months now says that they have to do that. We actually are going to set up a specific fund just for MTBE remediation, and that fund is going to be sufficiently funded to pay for the actual cleanup and remediation of contaminated sites. It is not going to pay for trial lawyers' contingency fees. Not going to do that. But if you are one of these water systems that has real contamination and you want it cleaned up, if this compromise becomes a part of the bill and the bill becomes law, you are going to get your water site cleaned up very quickly and you are not going to have any MTBE contamination in it. If what you are really trying to do is enrich the pockets of the trial lawyers, when they talk about $85 billion or $30 billion or whatever the number is, most of that money is trial lawyer contingency fees. I am not in that game. I am about good government. I am about real cleanup. I am about a cleaner environment. And the bill that I hope to report back as a conference report, if I have anything to do with it, is going to have a compromise on MTBE that does exactly that. The people that have helped cause the problem are going to help pay for it and help to clean it up. The communities that want clean water are going to get it quicker and sooner under the compromise that will be in our bill. I would think that the majority of the House, including 41 Democrats who voted for the energy bill when it went to the Senate, are going to continue to agree with me. And if that is the case, I hope they will vote against this Capps motion to instruct, as they already have done once at the end of the debate on the energy bill, and let us go to conference and find a real compromise to solve this problem. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this resolution, and I am proud to be one of the original cosponsors. I would like to point out a couple of problems with the proposed transaction. Number one, if Unocal was trying to buy the Chinese National Offshore Oil Company, they could not do it, because Chinese law does not allow a foreign company to have a controlling interest in a company in China. That is one problem. Number two, CNOOC is a front company for the Communist Chinese government. Seventy percent of the equity in the company is owned by the Communist Chinese government. The money that is going to be used to buy Unocal comes from the Communist government in the form of a loan. This loan almost doubles the total amount of debt; in fact, it over- doubles the total amount of debt that the company currently has. Number three, if we wanted to sell our products in China, under current law, that probably would not be allowed. So I am in strong support of this resolution. I chair the committee that has jurisdiction over the Committee on Foreign Investment of the United States, CFIUS, and I plan to hold a hearing on this when we get back sometime in the very near future, after the July Fourth recess. There is no reason that we cannot find a buyer for Unocal that meets all of the tests that a company in the United States would have to meet. So I am in strong support of this resolution, and I hope all Members of the House of Representatives will support it.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Energy and Commerce be discharged from further consideration of the Senate bill (S. 1282) to amend the Communications Satellite Act of 1962 to strike the privatization criteria for INTELSAT separated entities, remove certain restrictions on separated and successor entities to INTELSAT, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the President's proposal to reform our Social Security system. I also rise in support of the Members of the House of Representatives that have put forward a plan which would allow each individual in this country that is covered under Social Security to make a decision to have part of their payroll taxes invested in government securities, in U.S. Treasury bonds. There are two differences between this proposal and the current law. Under current law, the surplus in the Social Security fund is invested aggregately in what are called Social Security Trust Bonds. Those are government bonds, except they are not marketable, and they are not in any individual's names. The proposal that some Members of the House of Representatives propounded this week is to allow an individual to take parts of their individual payroll tax and invest it in a government security, a U.S. Treasury security in their name, which would be a marketable security. I think this proposal is long overdue, and I rise first in strong support of the President's proposal to reform our Social Security program and in the proposal that the Members of the House have put forward.