Sherry Boehlert

Mr. BOEHLERT

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I submit the following letter for the Record. Committee on Science, House of Representatives, Washington, DC, May 15, 2003. Hon. Duncan Hunter, Chairman, Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: I understand that the Armed Services Committee has requested that the Committee on Science waive its right to a referral on several sections of H.R. 1588, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004. It is also my understanding that the Parliamentarian's office has confirmed that the Science Committee has jurisdiction over several provisions in H.R. 1588. To expedite the consideration of this bill by the House, the Committee is willing to waive its right to a referral, provided that the Science Committee's right to participate as conferees on those provisions within its jurisdiction is also protected. I would also appreciate if this exchange of letters could be included in the record of debate on H.R. 1588 during floor consideration. Thank you for your consideration in this matter. Sincerely, Sherwood Boehlert, Chairman.

Mr. BOEHLERT

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today, along with Representative Nick Lampson, Chairman of the Congressional Missing and Exploited Children's Caucus, to announce the introduction of a resolution expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the United States Postal Service (USPS) Stamp Advisory Committee should issue a stamp to raise awareness about the plight of missing and exploited children. It is only fitting that such an action should occur today, on National Missing Children's day. My local community was shocked one afternoon in August 1993 when 12- year-old Sara Anne Wood was abducted near her home in Sauquoit, NY. Far too many parents have had to suffer with the agony of not knowing if their child was safe--we need to be more vigilant in protecting our nation's children. The idea for this stamp should be credited to the Missing Children's Stamp Committee, a grass roots organization of concerned citizens from my district whose goal is to convince the USPS Stamp Advisory Committee to issue a commemorative stamp to raise awareness about the plight of all missing and exploited children nationwide. The Missing Children's Stamp Committee was formed in January 1996 by Chairman John L. Brezinski, a Herkimer County Legislator, and is a subcommittee of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (Mohawk Valley Branch). In its first year of existence, the Committee received over 35,000 letters of support for their efforts from across the globe, but has run into many hurdles along the way. In the past, the USPS Stamp Advisory Committee has refused to approve such a stamp. Forty-five other sponsors of this legislation and I are calling on the USPS Stamp Advisory Committee to act and issue a stamp to address this critical issue. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, 800,000 children are reported missing each year--that's almost 200 each day. According to a recent Zogby International poll of 1,401 adults, more than two-in-three Americans say the USPS Stamp Advisory Committee should issue a stamp raising awareness about the plight of missing and exploited children. The people have spoken and we must respond. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me and the forty five other original cosponsors and show their support for this resolution, the need to raise awareness, and the need to protect our children.

Mr. BOEHLERT

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1904. The bill before us represents a compromise achieved after arduous and intense negotiations which began in earnest last fall. It is certainly not everything that I would have wanted, that is the nature of compromise, but it is a noteworthy attempt to deal with a very real problem of forest fires on lands where fire has been too long suppressed in regions that are increasingly populated. If used properly, the tools provided in this bill will ease the path of projects that are carefully designed to reduce the risk of fire in those forests where fire would most threaten lives and homes and water supplies. This is not meant to be a bill that increases commercial logging or to give the Forest Service carte blanche. The projects undertaken through this bill ought to be environmentally sound and carefully planned, especially given the remarkably immature nature and state of our knowledge of forest ecology and fire management. The compromise negotiated with the gentleman from Virginia (Chairman Goodlatte), the gentleman from California (Chairman Pombo), the gentleman from Colorado (Chairman McGinnis), and the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden) and the White House is designed to help ensure that the vision of this bill that I just outlined is actually the one that comes to pass. Let me describe some of the key elements of the compromise. Most important, the compromise rewrites section 107 to ensure that courts still have the latitude they need when they consider whether to grant injunctions. It does this in several ways. First, it makes clear that this bill does not change the basic test courts use when deciding whether to issue an injunction. Instead, the bill lays out some matters that must be weighed when courts apply two of the standard tests. Specifically, the bill makes clear that both undertaking a project and not undertaking a project can have short-term and long-term costs and benefits that need to be weighed. Balancing harms, to use the legal term, is not a simple matter that involves assuming that a project would produce harms that matter only in the short-term or that it would produce nothing other than benefits over the long term. Third, the bill makes clear that while the court should give weight to the views an agency holds concerning balance of harms, the court has no obligation to defer to the agency and no reason to heed the agency at all if its findings are arbitrary and capricious. In other words, the agency cannot, and I emphasize, cannot, do as it pleases when it pleases. What all these technical concerns add up to is this: courts will continue to be able to issue injunctions against forestry projects that harm the environment, either while a case is pending or permanently. The compromise also puts in place other protections against questionable projects. To be more specific, it limits the geographic reach of the expedited projects created by the bill; it requires that an environmental impact statement or environmental assessment be conducted on every project covered by this bill; it removes language that could be construed to weaken the Roadless Rule; it ensures that notice and comment periods will be sufficient to allow genuine airing of fire projects; and it requires experimental projects in response to insect infestations to be treated as true experiments with an objective, outside peer review and with recourse to the courts. In short, while this bill does create expedited procedures, it is not devoid of safeguards to protect our forestlands, which belong to all the people of our Nation, today and in future generations. This bill will require careful monitoring along the way; and if the version emerging from conference is worthy of support, our task will have just begun. Implementation must be carefully monitored to make sure the new law lives up to its intended purpose. Those purposes are worthy, the protection of lives and property; the implementation of sensible forestry projects to prevent fire; the return of our forests gradually to something more like their natural fire cycle. Right now, this bill is our only chance to achieve these goals. I urge its adoption, and I oppose the substitute.

Mr. BOEHLERT

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

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, we are working this out. So the gentlewoman has kindly withdrawn her amendment from consideration; and during this interim period, the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson- Lee) will be up next with her staff. Staffs are trying to work out language that assures both sides that we get what we want, active citizen participation.

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

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, let me observe here that I am not unwilling to spend the taxpayers' money for a good reason, to support a wide range of programs that provide for a better lifestyle and improvement in our society. But one of the reasons why our government is so big and so all- pervasive is that we have a bill like this and we say, now, we want everybody involved in a national nanotechnology initiative to be concerned about societal and ethical concerns; and we want all of these grants, and we want the grantees to pay attention to that. Then we say, in addition to that, we are going to build this new center over here, and I do not think we need the new center. If we were silent on this very important subject area in the rest of the bill, then I would probably be jumping up and down in support of the Jackson-Lee amendment, but we are not silent. We have had the whole history of our committee deliberations, the whole history of this floor debate, and congressional intent is very important and it is clear in our intent: we want to address societal and ethical concerns. But there are going to be a whole bunch of people financed by the Federal Government saying that we do not need a brand-new center to do it.

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

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 766, the National Nanotechnology Research and Development Act. As is the practice of the Committee on Science, this is a bipartisan piece of legislation that reflects the important contributions of both majority and minority members of the committee. I am going to keep my remarks brief today because nanotechnology is a subject on which there is already broad agreement on both sides of the aisle, in the administration and, indeed, in the country at large. Nanotechnology can be a key to future economic prosperity and might improve our lives, and the Federal Government has an important role to play in supporting the basic research that will make this possible. Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating and characterizing matter at the atomic and molecular level. It is one of the most promising and exciting fields of science today, involving a multitude of science and engineering disciplines with widespread applications in electronics, advanced materials, medicine, and information technology. Nanotechnology represents the future of information processing and storage. Other future applications include new sensors to detect biological agents, stronger and lighter building materials, new cancer treatments, and more environmentally friendly chemical processes. Some have estimated that a $1 trillion global market for nanotechnology will develop in little over a decade. With this in mind, I introduced H.R. 766 with the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda) and with senior members of the Committee on Science on both sides of the aisle as cosponsors. The committee held two hearings on the bill, one on nanotechnology research programs and commercialization efforts, and one on societal and ethical concerns related to nanotechnology. The academic and industrial research communities were articulate in their support of this legislation and on the need to consider the societal, environmental, ethical, and economic questions that will arise as new nanotechnology applications are developed and enter the marketplace. H.R. 766 authorizes the President's National Nanotechnology Initiative and supports and improves the Federal Government's nanotechnology efforts in a number of ways. It emphasizes interdisciplinary research, it strengthens interagency coordination, it supports increased research on societal consequences of nanotechnology, it encourages commercialization of nanotechnology applications, it requires outside reviews of the program, and it provides incentives for Americans to pursue degrees in science and engineering. H.R. 766 builds on the excellent budgets that have been put forward by the administration for nanotechnology. It has been endorsed by leading industry groups, and that is very important. A companion bill, S. 189 sponsored by Senators Wyden and Allen, is moving forward in the Senate; and I am optimistic that this bill will be sent to the President's desk in the near future. In closing, I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Honda) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hall) for their able leadership on this important piece of legislation. It has been a pleasure working with them, and their contributions have made this bill a better bill. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Smith), the distinguished chairman of the Subcommittee on Research.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, no, I am not prepared to go that far, and I usually go very far in trying to accommodate the wishes of all the members of my committee, regardless of affiliation or position on the dais. But the fact of the matter is we have made a conscious determination that rather than focusing on one center we are going to weave this into the entire fabric of the whole nanotechnology initiative. For that reason, I think we better address the issue. Therefore, while I am reluctant to oppose, I do oppose the gentlewoman's amendment.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I have additional requests for time, but those requesting the time are not yet here. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Was it Will Rogers that said I do not belong to an organization? No, never mind, I will not go into that one. The fact of the matter is we are in general agreement on societal and ethical concerns and we have to pay a lot of attention to it, as we should. But I am unwilling to say that we have to devote an entire center to that one subject area, when in fact we are addressing that need by asking all of the centers or all of the research engaged under the National Nanotechnology Initiative to take into consideration societal and ethical concerns. So I think we are actually broadening it in a way, without being so prescriptive that says we have to have brick and mortar in one location in America, and that is the solution to the problem. I do not think that is the solution to the problem. I think it is to energize every single person who is operating under a research grant under this National Nanotechnology Initiative to be ever-mindful of the societal and ethical concerns.

Mr. BOEHLERT. I yield to the gentlewoman from Texas.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, during the time that the gentleman has been speaking so eloquently, the majority and minority have reached an agreement on the gentlewoman from Texas's (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson) amendment which has been withdrawn, and now she is willing to offer a compromise amendment that we are prepared to accept. So I thank the gentleman for his input, and I anxiously await the words of the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Eddie Bernice Johnson).

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

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

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 766.

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

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Mr. BOEHLERT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. BOEHLERT. Let me state at the outset that I support and the administration supports broader public participation. We have been assured by the administration that every meeting will have a set-aside period for public participation, the type of participation that the gentlewoman wants and is a cherished part of our system. So I applaud the gentlewoman's objective but the fact of the matter is we do not need a whole bunch of new panels. Let me point out, if you want me to use some additional time, this is modeled after the Danish system. I was told that research puts that into question, that sort of formalized structure. A scholarly study on the impact of just such a citizens panel in the United States, not in Denmark, here, concluded that not even those engaged in organizing the U.S. citizens panel thought it had any actual impact. Let me quote from their report: ``The single greatest area of consensus among the respondents was that the Citizens Panel on Telecommunications and the Future of Democracy had no actual impact. No respondent, not even those government members of the steering committee or expert cohort, identified any actual impact.'' Having said that, does that mean that I agree that we do not need any citizen input? Not at all. I agree with the gentlewoman that we do need citizen input. I applaud her effort, but I have to oppose this particular amendment to be so prescriptive and just to set in motion just who has to do what and when.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, who can be against clean, inexpensive energy? I am not, but does it make sense to pick out this one laudable goal and hold it up above all others, including medical advances, homeland security, technology that can drive faster economic growth? Yes, energy is important and this bill recognizes it. It is an important part of H.R. 766 and it is demonstrated by the portion of the bill that authorizes $265 million for nanotechnology research at the Department of Energy next year alone. That is significant. But energy is not more important than many of the other things that nanotechnology will do. Would you say it is more important than finding a cure for cancer? Or more important than protecting our borders in our fight for homeland security? These are all important, laudable goals, and the bill covers them all. Once again, we are not just throwing petty cash at this subject. We are devoting $265 million to it. The administration opposes this amendment, and so do I because it is too prescriptive. Therefore, I would urge a ``no'' vote.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in reluctant opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I share the commitment of the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) to ensuring that research is conducted on the social and ethical issues relating to nanotechnology, but believe that this amendment does not take the preferred approach. Our committee has given this issue a great deal of consideration, and we decided rather than going to just one center, but to fully integrate research on the social, environmental and ethical issues into the research being conducted under the entire National Nanotechnology Initiative. This ensures that social, ethical and environmental implications research will be fully grounded in the science of nanotechnology and that scientists conducting nanotechnology research will be aware of and be active participants in research on the social and societal implications of their work. The provisions were further strengthened in committee by amendments offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman) and the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Bell). The Jackson-Lee amendment is derived from a provision contained in the Senate bill that takes us in the opposite direction. It creates a stand-alone research center financed by the National Science Foundation. Based on our experience with the Human Genome Program, this will undermine our effort to ensure that social, ethical and environmental issues are part of the fabric of each nanotechnology center grant, and nearly guarantees that research on important societal and ethical concerns will not be relevant to or influence the research actually being conducted. So rather than just focusing on one center, we wanted to build it, weave it, into the entire fabric.

Mr. BOEHLERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the committee amendment in the nature of a substitute be printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.