Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from West Virginia.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Chairman, I really had not intended to speak tonight on the supplemental appropriation, but I have been locked out of my office due to my own inability to remember my keys, so I have had no recourse but to sit on the floor and actually listen to the debate, which is a very enlightening experience. Now, I got elected in 1984. From 1985 in January when I got sworn in, to 1995 in January, when the first Republican majority took this House in over 40 years, there was one balanced budget presented to the House of Representatives to vote on. One, in the first 10 years that I was a Member of this body serving in the minority, and that was the budget that President Reagan supported. I think it got 13 votes, and I voted for it. There was a reception down at the White House and President Reagan asked all of the folks that were willing to vote for a balanced budget to come down, and I believe there were 13 of us. I think all 13 were Republicans, but it is possible that there were one or two Democrats, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall) and perhaps the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm). I would have to go back and look at that. So the first point I want to make about that is that when my good friends who are in the minority tonight were in the majority, they did not present any balanced budgets for the American people; they did not present any balanced budgets on the House floor. Now, when the Republicans got into the majority, we did. In fact, I remember when President Clinton was in office, we had a partial government shutdown because the Republicans were insisting that there be a balanced budget; and at least in that first year, President Clinton said, balanced budgets do not count. We do not need a balanced budget. He later changed his position, and we got balanced budgets; and I will say for the record that both Republicans and Democrats voted for those balanced budgets. Now we are at a point in our Nation's history where we have had a recession, we have to fight the war on terrorism, we have had to present some budgets that are unbalanced. But let us think about that. There are actually two parts to a Federal budget. There is the discretionary spending budget, and this year that budget is about $769 billion, $759 billion, somewhere in that range; and then there is an entitlement portion of the budget, and that entitlement portion of the budget is over $1 trillion. Then there is interest on the national debt, and that portion of the budget is over $200 billion. Now, I have brought to the floor, in the time that I have been a Member of this House, budget process reform bills to change the way we do budgeting, and I had good support from the Democrats in those efforts, trying to change the budget process itself. But under the system that we are operating under today, we cannot do anything about the entitlement part of the budget; we can only do something about the discretionary part of the budget. The chairman of the Committee on Appropriations has moved heaven and Earth to hold the line on discretionary spending. I am told that the increase from last year to this year in the budget resolution, in the budget the appropriators are working on, is 1 percent, 1 percent. The chairman of the Committee on the Budget that is sitting at the back of the room, the gentleman from Iowa (Mr. Nussle), presented a budget on the floor that has held the line on discretionary spending. So we are going through the budget process under rules that I think need to be fixed. I want to fix them. I talked to the Speaker of the House yesterday about fixing them. But under this budget resolution, the budget resolution that we are operating under, we cannot do anything about entitlements. We can only do something about discretionary spending. This supplemental spending bill that is before us this evening is somewhere between $27.1 billion and a little over $29 billion in supplemental discretionary spending. That is a good number, and we should vote for that and then work together on a bipartisan basis to reform the budget process later on so that we can do something about the larger issue. Mr. Chairman, let us keep in mind that there is politics and there is policy. The policy embedded in this supplemental appropriation bill is a good policy. We should vote for it.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 387) recognizing the American Society of Civil Engineers for reaching its 150th Anniversary and for the many vital contributions of civil engineers to the quality of life of our Nation's people including the research and development projects that have led to the physical infrastructure of modern America.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on House Concurrent Resolution 387.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to commend our distinguished chairman, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), and our distinguished ranking member, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall), for their excellent work on this resolution that was reported on a bipartisan basis from the Committee on Science. I also want to thank the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), my good friend, for his excellent work and for serving as an original cosponsor with myself on this bill. Before I get into my prepared remarks, I want to say a special ``get well soon'' to young Lindsay Taylor, who is 12 years old down in Round Rock, Texas. She is the President of her National Junior Honor Society. She is a budding civil engineer, although I think she wants to go to the University of Texas instead of Texas A&M, where I went to engineering school. She is home sick today and we need all of our young engineers to get well quick, so I hope that she does so very soon. Our first great civil engineer in this country was the man that we now know as the Father of our country, George Washington. George Washington was a surveyor who made his living in between serving as a military commander in the militia, the British forces before the Revolutionary War, surveying and doing engineering work in what is now Virginia and going west, west from Virginia. In 1852, we founded what is now called the American Society of Civil Engineers. If we had been alive at that point in time, the first great project that civil engineers would have worked on for this Nation would have been the Transcontinental Railroad. Can we imagine, if people came to the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore) and myself, or the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall) today and said, we want you to build a transcontinental railroad, could we do it? I doubt it. But the civil engineers of that time said, not a problem, and even as the Civil War was going on, they were racing to build what we now call the Transcontinental Railroad, and they hammered in the golden spike in 1869 and bound our great Nation together. What would we have done if around the turn of the century, President Roosevelt, not Franklin Roosevelt, but Teddy Roosevelt had come and said, I want you to build the Panama Canal to bring together for the first time the Isthmus of Panama, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. I do not think many of us could have worked on that project either successfully, but the civil engineers of that era did that. What about during World War II, if President Franklin Roosevelt had come and said, we need to build a great port infrastructure and we need to improve our highways and we need to build great pipelines, could we have done that? I do not think many of us could, but the civil engineers of that time could. What if in the 1950s President Eisenhower had come and said, Congressman Barton, I want you to build an interstate highway system. I do not think many of us could have done that, but the civil engineers of the 1950s did that. I could go on and on. But as we begin to move into the 21st century, there are still great civil engineering projects to be done, and luckily for us today in the United States, we have over 125,000 members of the American Society for Civil Engineers, registered, professional engineers who have made it their life's work to build a better America. We tend to think of engineers as kind of nerdy people with pencils behind their ears and slide rules in their pockets. Nothing could be further from the truth. They are people helping people. They are building the projects that bind this great Nation together and, more and more, binding this great world together. So, Mr. Speaker, I am delighted, along with the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Moore), my good friend, to sponsor this resolution honoring the 150th anniversary of the American Society for Professional Engineers, because they have truly helped to build a better America. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. Mr. Speaker, let me say that several years ago the American Society for Civil Engineers made me one of their engineering fellows. It is a distinguished achievement award that they really give to engineers who have made a lifetime in civil engineering and have done outstanding feats. They gave it to me primarily because I am one of the few registered professional engineers in the Congress, but it is one of the high honors that I have received as a Member of the House, and the certificate is on my wall in the entry way to my office, and I am very, very proud of that. For that and many, many reasons I think this is a resolution that is very worthwhile passing for this body because of the fine work that civil engineers have done for the last 150 years. So I hope that when the time comes to vote, we can pass it with unanimous consent. Mr. Speaker, I would simply say that this resolution we hope to pass by unanimous consent today and send to the other body and pass it over there so that it actually can be signed by the President and presented to the leadership of the American Society for Civil Engineers sometime this fall when the actual calendar anniversary occurs for the 150th anniversary. It is very, very worth doing, and I hope that we can do it in a very bipartisan fashion.

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

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I object.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, my late father was a plant geneticist. He spent his entire career developing cotton plants and cotton seeds that could be used as food. I wish we would have had this research enabled when he was alive so he could have participated through grants at Texas A&M or the University of Texas to forward this very worthwhile research endeavor. Mr. Speaker, I very strongly support the gentlewoman from Texas and the gentleman from Michigan in their noble endeavor.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I include for the Record a letter from Edward C. Sullivan, the President of the Building and Construction Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, in support of H.J. Res. 87. Building and Construction Trades Department, American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, Washington, DC, May 6, 2002. Dear Representative: On behalf of the Building and Construction Trades Department and our affiliated unions, I am writing to ask you to support House Joint Resolution 87, the Yucca Mountain Resolution, because it is in the best interest of our nation, our citizens and our workers. Our Nation needs a safe, stable and scientifically feasible program for storing used nuclear fuel. The Yucca Mountain location has been thoroughly examined for over 20 years at a cost of $7 billion and has met or exceeded all environmental and scientific standards for storage. It is located on federal land in a remote, secure area. Nuclear energy has proven to be a clean, safe and reliable source of electricity for nearly half a century. Today, one of every five homes, businesses and farms receives electricity generated by a nuclear plant. Since the 1970's growth in the use of nuclear energy has reduced the need for foreign oil in the electricity sector and saved consumers $81 billion in payments for imported oil. But, unless we can begin the process of safe storage of spent nuclear fuel, the future of nuclear energy is uncertain. Yucca Mountain provides a unique public-private partnership with the federal government appropriately shouldering the obligation to manage used material while electricity consumers have provided the $18 billion cost to pay for this program. Finally, this issue is a very important jobs issue. Many highly skilled Building Trades members in your state will benefit from passage of this resolution. If the process set forward by the passage of this resolution was to stop, many good family wage jobs would disappear and a great number of jobs would never be created. I urge you to support this resolution and permit this process to go forward. Sincerely, Edward C. Sullivan, President.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I am sorry, I did not know that he had a pending request. What was the request?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), chairman of the Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, could I ask how much time remains controlled by the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin)?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood), a member of the committee, who is sartorially resplendent.

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

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds. Mr. Speaker, I want to point out that the gentlewoman from Nevada's statement about people dying of cancers because of exposure to tests in Nevada, above ground testing in the fifties and the sixties, there is not one scientific study that shows that there is any greater incidence of cancer in Nevada than anywhere else in this country. That may be an anecdotal tale, but there is no scientific validity to it. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Frelinghuysen).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Kirk).

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, in 1981 and 1982, I was a White House Fellow in the Department of Energy and served at a very low level on the task force that developed the recommendations that later became the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982. Today, I stand on the floor as one of the chief sponsors of this resolution, along with the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher), my good friend. If the Lord shines upon me, I may be fortunate enough to live long enough to be alive the day we ship the first shipment of high-level nuclear waste to the repository, which will probably be sometime in the year 2015 to 2022. If that happens, I will have spent almost 40 years of my adult life in some way or the other addressing this issue. I think it is time to send this resolution to the floor of the other body for a vote so that we can let the Nuclear Regulatory Commission receive an application from the Department of Energy in the next 2 years about this license application. The money has been put into the trust fund. The resolution does not deal with any of the transportation issues; we will deal with those later. There is absolutely tremendous bipartisan support. The time has come to stop talking about this and to vote on it. I hope that we vote in the affirmative at the appropriate time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I would generously allow the gentleman from Massachusetts be allowed to recognize two or three of his speakers in sequence.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Did the Speaker say that the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) had 42\1/2\ minutes?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Tauzin) for yielding me the time. Obviously, I rise against this point of order of my good friend from Nevada. I am shocked, shocked and amazed, that he would think that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) and I would present a bill on the floor that had an unfunded mandate. I am one of the most conservative Members of this body, and I am joined by one of the most distinguished conservative Members, he would say moderate, progressive, Members on the other side of the aisle; and for us to bring forward an unfunded, an unfunded mandate is just beyond the pale. I would point out that since we passed a Nuclear Waste Policy Act in 1982, we have collected over $15 billion in the nuclear waste fund. Every time a nuclear plant generates a kilowatt of electricity, one mil, which is \1/10\ of a cent, goes into this fund; and we are collecting about $750 million a year as we speak into this fund. So this is far from being an unfunded mandate. This is the most overfunded, unmet, unobligated, unconstructed thing that we could have ever done in Federal Government. I would also point out, as my good friend, the full committee chairman, has already pointed out, that when we passed this resolution on a bipartisan basis out of the committee, we sent it to the Congressional Budget Office; and they have given us the requisite report that the chairman has a copy of that says quite clearly that the costs of this for the next 5 years are well under the threshold of the Unfunded Mandate Act. There are a number of reasons for people to be opposed to the underlying resolution. My good friend from Nevada is certainly entitled to oppose it, but there is no reason to support the point of order that it is an unfunded mandate. Nothing, Madam Speaker, could be further from the truth. When it comes to the end of the debate, I certainly hope that the Speaker will throw out this scurrilous point of order so that we can get on with the debate, have a debate on the underlying bill and then hopefully support the underlying bill that the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher) and myself have put to the body.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Parliamentary inquiry, Mr. Speaker. When the total time was only 40 minutes, how does he get 42\1/2\ minutes?

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 6 minutes. (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)