Brian Bilbray

Mr. BILBRAY

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I think any reasonable person is going to recognize that the issue of giving grants out is quite appropriate, but that debts owed should be taken care of first. Any responsible person would always say that debts should be paid before you start giving out funds.

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, any reasonable person would say you pay off your debts before you start giving out loans. Any person would recognize that there has been an outgoing debt that is continuing to be placed across this country that the Federal Government has walked away from. In fact, this body has talked last year very strongly about the issue of deadbeat dads, and making people live up to their responsibility, and not allowing individuals to walk away from their responsibilities, not just to be punitive, but to bring people to face their responsibilities for everybody concerned. Mr. Chairman, this issue really addresses the biggest deadbeat dad in the country, and that is the Federal Government of the United States. It has walked away from our baby, the Federal Government's baby, illegal immigration. What this says is that now we must pay child support for the responsibilities that we have out there. It is not just for those of us that are in States that are impacted severely. Across the board, Mr. Chairman, that will help us address this issue.

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. BILBRAY. In closing, Mr. Chairman, as somebody who has had to fulfill these obligations, I think all of us will recognize that this will help us fulfill one of the items in the contract, and that is for the Federal Government to address this issue comprehensively. Until we address the responsibility that we are placing on other people, but with the irresponsibility of the Federal Government, we are not going to really grapple with the reality of what is out there. I think this amendment really does make us responsible to the responsibility and the problems we have committed before and allows us to address those in an appropriate way.

Mr. BILBRAY

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, since 1985 approximately $200 million has been invested in the San Diego Supercomputer Center [SDSC]. Of this amount, the National Science Foundation has contributed $150 million, the State of California $21 million, and a large number of other government agencies and industrial partners $25 million--in cash and kind. This investment has Caused businesses to invest their computing dollars in California.-- MacDonnell Douglas has purchased a large subscription of supercomputer CPU time to do design work on its new passenger aircraft, the MD-12, and the space station Freedom. General Dynamics housed all of its advanced computing in SDSC. Encouraged start-up businesses and research consortia to site their headquarters in California.--SDSC's presence was a key reason the international thermonuclear experimental reactor [ITER] project sited its headquarters in San Diego. This project, valued at $1.2 billion, is a 10-year international collaboration among scientists in the United States, Germany, Russia, and Japan to develop a nuclear reactor design. Similarly, Supertek, a producer of minisupercomputers, decided to site its operation in California. The company has since which has productized the machine to expand the range in capability and price of the supercomputers it sells. As a result of close relationships with SDSC management, the editor of the journal Supercomputing Review decided to site his publishing operation in San Diego. The journal has since renamed itself High- performance Computing Review and has established a commercial electronic news service, which now serves over 11,000 subscribers. Produced spin-off companies.--Two operations that were spun off from SDSC are Distributed Computing Solutions [DISCOS] and the California Education and Research Federation Network [CERFnet]. DISCOS produces a long-term file storage software product, called DataTree, that runs on a variety of hardware platforms. A UNIX-based version of this product, called UniTree, is now also being marketed. These systems have been purchased by a large number of supercomputing facilities around the country. DISCOS, formerly a division of General Atomics, was sold recently to Open Vision Technologies, Inc. CERFnet, a division of General Atomics, is a regional communications network that connects academic institutions and private industry mainly in southern California with the Internet. It was begun with a grant from NSF. Recently, as a result of its success in operations and service, CERFnet was awarded an additional $4.5 million contract from NSF to establish a commercial business to provide information on electronic resources and services available on the growing, and itself increasingly commercial, Internet. Employed over 110 professional staff and, at any given time, some 30 part-time students.--DISCOS and CERFnet together have provided an additional 3 dozen jobs in San Diego. sdsc's impact in other areas SDSC has had an impact on San Diego and the State in other areas that are more difficult to quantify. This impact has been noticeable in: A more highly trained work force.--SDSC has trained hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, many of whom have remained in California as skilled professionals in high-technology industry. The next group SDSC has targeted for training is high school science and math teachers through the Supercomputer Teacher Education Program, funded by a $1.575 million grant from NSF. SDSC will work with over 40 teachers from primarily minority high schools in a 3-year program to teach them about computational science and help them incorporate the techniques into their class curricula. Each of those teachers, in turn, will train well over 100 students per year. Advancements in computational hardware and software.--SDSC supports close collaborations with various vendors and academic researchers-- many of them within California--to develop, implement, and integrate parallel processing systems, link them by high-speed networks, and develop software such as code debuggers, performance analyzers, resource managers, and accounting tools. The goal of this work is to make powerful computer systems easier to use by large numbers of researchers. Greater scientific understanding of problems affecting day-to-day life. In some cases this insight has led to legislative action to curb the problems.--SDSC is involved in scientific collaborations that are leading to greater understanding of scientific problems such as AIDS and Alzheimer's disease, air/water pollution, and global change. One project is focused on designing a drug to inhibit the HIV protease. The HIV protease consists of two molecules; separated, they are harmless, but when docked together they produce AIDS symptoms. Researchers are trying to inhibit the harmful activity by creating a drug that looks like one of the molecules so it will dock with the other, but has different chemical properties so the docking will not produce harmful effects. Researchers from SDSC, Duke University, and UCSF have produced such a model using Sculpt, a program that interactively models the underlying physics and chemistry of a molecule as it is designed. This work could not have been done without Sculpt, which removes human guesswork from the process and runs 100 times faster than other commercially available systems. The next step is to synthesize and test the molecule in the laboratory. In another project, a study of smog in the Los Angeles basin led to changes in local abatement policies. This work was done in collaboration with the California Air Resources Board. In a third project, Project Sequoia 2000, SDSC is part of a research team to develop an advanced information management system to improve the productivity of global change scientists. This system, with advanced storage, data management, visualization, and networking capabilities, is likely to have application to a wide range of other scientific disciplines. SDSC's participation in this project was critical to the University of California winning the $15 million Digital Equipment Corp. grant. For additional important scientific projects, see ``SDSC's Effectiveness,'' below. A heightened awareness among government and industry of the economic benefits to be derived from computational technology.--Because of SDSC's success, there is now interest in establishing a satellite supercomputer facility in San Jose that will create jobs, attract industry to that area, and promote local area networking. SDSC and San Diego city government are discussing how to provide CPU power and computational expertise to local-area business for defense conversion and to enhance product engineering. They are also discussing how to implement a county-wide network to link government offices, academic-research institutions, libraries, medical facilities, and, eventually, homes to enhance information exchange, improve medical services, and promote economic development in general. In fact, SDSC Director Sid Karin has become a member of the City of the Future Committee created recently by San Diego Mayor Susan Golding. An early focus of this committee is county-wide telecommunications. SDSC has some 45 industrial partners. These partners gain a competitive advantage by obtaining access to state-of-the-art computational technology for use in product engineering. This technology helps such businesses produce better quality goods in a shorter period of time. In addition, such businesses gain the opportunity to experiment with various hardware platforms. This allows them to choose the most appropriate systems for their needs without facing the impossibly high startup costs in hardware and personnel associated with establishing a full- featured high-performance computing facility. sdsc's effectiveness Additional evidence of SDSC's effectiveness is shown by the broad scope and tangible effect of the research being conducted. Below is a sampling of projects leading, for example, to new commercial products; a cleaner, safer environment; the development of new materials; and medical breakthroughs. Many of these projects are collaborative efforts lead by researchers at universities in California and State and Federal agencies. Industrial engineering.--Plastic injection mold design work by GenCorp to create a more durable Corvette car body; and design work by Caltrans to simulate a crash test bogie, a typical small, 1,800-pound car used to evaluate the safety of breakaway sign and lighting supports along roads and highways. Another project involves evaluating the characteristics of a potential new material for pavement consisting partly of recycled tires. Environmental and Earth science.--Modeling a sewage spill off the coast of San Diego, which provided important information about sewage outfall engineering, containment, and cleanup. Similarly, scientists have demonstrated the effects of tides, currents, and atmospheric conditions on the distribution of pollutants in San Francisco Bay. This work was done in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, CA; modeling regional and global climate to understand interactions between the atmosphere and oceans or to study specific problems such as the periodic development and dissolution of the ozone hole over Antarctica; and studying fluctuations in the Earth's gravity field to better understand the formation of the Earth's surface and the movement of continental plates. Materials science.--Studying the structures of various molecules to better understand their properties and evaluate their potential use in synthetic materials. Medical science.--Studying the causes of fibrillation in heart tissue, which can lead to sudden cardiac death syndrome killing some 500,000 people per year in North America alone; reconstructing ultrasound data computationally into three-dimensional images to diagnose health problems noninvasively; simulating the coiling and knotting processes of DNA, which have implications for fundamental biological activities such as replication, transcription, and recombination; and calculating the stress exerted on developing bones-- this is one area where stress has been shown not only to be beneficial, but crucial for proper development.

Mr. BILBRAY

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, we have heard a lot of Mexico again this week, administration when it comes to Mexico. I happen to represent the city of San Diego, the proud home of the championship San Diego Chargers. But sadly we happen to be the home of one of the biggest car theft rings in the United States. Mr. Speaker, the citizens of San Diego County have to put up with their vehicles being stolen and shipped to Mexico and sold on Mexican markets. This is not the kind of free trade, Mr. Speaker, that we support in San Diego. In fact, in the treaty of the 1920's and in 1981, it specifically stated that stolen cars that were inappropriately exported to Mexico would be returned within 45 days, 45 days, of the time that they were recovered. Well, Mr. Speaker, not only are the vehicles not returned within 45 days, but they are actually held, used by Federal and State Mexican officials for their personal and public use. And, Mr. Speaker, here is a photo of a Mexican agent driving a United States stolen car. What is the issue here, Mr. Speaker? The issue is that there is a fine line between being a nice guy and being a patsy. And frankly I am not so sure that the Clinton administration knows where that line is when it comes to foreign policy. In San Diego we strongly support cooperative efforts with our neighbors to the south. And when I say neighbors, I mean neighbors. I live on the border with Baja California, and I am proud of the way we have been able to work with them. But this administration sent a letter 6 months ago, Mr. Speaker, asking the Federal Government to address this atrocity against the private property rights of the people of San Diego. It has been 6 months, and all this administration has said is that ``We'll talk to them.'' Mr. Speaker, the Clinton administration wants us to approve a loan guarantee, that they will be rough and tough in case Mexico doesn't come across. Well, we have treaties today, and these treaties are being thrown away and discarded by both governments. And frankly, I have to say to the President and his administration that if they do not have the guts or the wherewithal to be able to recover our stolen cars when they are being used by Federal agents in Mexico, my God, how do they expect us to be able to trust them with a $40 billion-plus guarantee? Mr. Speaker, I spent 20 years working with Mexico and 20 years working with the Federal Government, and it is sad to say that this administration shows me no ability to do what is right for the people of the United States when it comes to representing us in the world outside our boundaries. This administration has sold us down the river and refuses to stand up for the rights of our citizens. I know that there are those in Mexico who will not want to hear this, but frankly I don't blame the people of Mexico and I don't even blame their Federal Government half as much as I blame the Government that my citizens have not only elected, but they pay the salaries of to represent them and fight for them. The fault does not lie with Mexico. It lies with a Federal administration that does not have the guts to stand up for its citizens. Mr. Speaker, we look forward to good cooperation with Mexico. We want to see free trade, the right kind of free trade. We want to see the great social and economic and political bonds that are possible with our neighbors to the south. But if this President and his administration does not understand that before we can harvest the crop of economic and social prosperity with the NAFTA free trade and other relationships, if they don't understand we must first pull out the stumps and the boulders out of the field of environmental problems, of uncontrolled crime along the border, then this administration just does not get it. It is taking short cuts that are leading to a dead end. I stand here today to call on the administration to tell the people of San Diego County when they can expect to have their cars returned. And it does not take very far to look, Mr. Speaker. All you have to do is go to the federal agencies in Baja California, and you can find American cars with California licenses still on the car, still on the car driven to official raids by the federal agencies. That is not a hidden agenda. That is a public agenda, and now it is up to the President and the administration to make sure this agenda is addressed and the property of the citizens of the United States is returned to its proper location. Maybe then we can talk about what kind of guarantees we can work with. But only after they have taken care of the existing treaties.

Mr. BILBRAY

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. world that has been impacted by pollution for over 14 years. My constituents have lived with the impact of pollution from foreign countries. I do have a problem with the position that somehow the Federal Government has protected the citizens of this country from pollution. It exists today and continues to exist with the oversight of the Federal Government. I oppose the amendment and support the chairman's position for a lot of reasons. One reason, Mr. Chairman, is because I have served as a member of the State Air Resources Board for the State of California, a small intimate group of 32 million people, and have also served as a member supervising the environmental laws pertaining to hazardous waste for 2.5 million people. Let me tell you, the biggest problem in protecting the public's health out in the real world, out there in America, is not the fact that we do not have enough Federal mandates but the mandates that are placed down are not based on protecting the public health. Many times the mandates care more about the procedure than the protection. If my colleagues who have raised this issue that the Clean Water Act has done such great things, frankly, if they think the Clean Water Act is a perfect document, I would debate that to the end. We today have pollution that is flowing, that is federally allowed. I think that one of the things I would ask you to look at is that all we are asking for is we look at the cost-effectiveness, we look at the benefits the public is either getting or not getting and that the well-intentioned and misguided strategies of the past need to be put under the light, the light of reason, to be able to see if they really did do what you mean them to do. Did they accomplish the protection and would the dollars being spent on these programs be better spent on programs that could truly help the public and protect the public health?

Mr. BILBRAY

Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Speaker, this week the Commerce Committee begins hearings on extremely important legal reform. The Common Sense Legal Reform Act (H.R. 10) will restore commonsense to Federal securities laws by limiting strike lawsuits--suits filed by class action attorneys on behalf of shareholders whose stock investments have failed to live up to their expectations. Currently, a sharp drop or increase in a company's stock price can trigger a lawsuit, even if movement was caused by normal market events. Mr. Speaker, high-tech, bio-tech and other growth companies are the job creators in our economy. American businesses like these, struggling to remain competitive in a global marketplace, fear these abusive strike lawsuits for good reason: Because these companies stock prices are the most volatile, and they can least afford the endless litigation resulting in huge legal fees, they are the targets of these frivolous lawsuits. These lawsuits effect businesses' competitiveness on several levels. To settle these speculative suits, companies may be forced to layoff employees or simply never hire them at all. Worst of all, U.S. competitiveness on an international scale is shackled with a tax on innovation. Why? Because strike suits hit the most innovative, entrepreneurial firms in America. Finally, Mr. Speaker, the small independent investor is the one who stand to gain the most the one deprived of timely information by gun-shy managers, who see capital allocated to R&D diverted to pay legal bills and settlements, and who are robbed of the time and talent of managers distracted by lawsuits. Commonsense legal reform, that we promised in the Contract With America, and we are delivering with H.R. 10, is desperately needed to unshackle companies and investors from these abusive lawsuits.