Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, gouge them at the gas pump, and stick it to them in their home heating or cooling bill. Seniors have been particularly hard hit, but that is not enough for the energy conglomerates in this country. Now they want to dip into the taxpayers' pockets. The same group that yesterday in the Wall Street Journal was revealed to have tens of billions of dollars sitting around that they cannot figure out what to do with because of the obscene profits they made in the last year by manipulating the West Coast electricity markets, the gas market, and the gasoline market, they need more. They want more. They want it all. And the Republican Party and the President want to deliver because they helped them get elected. Royalty exemption, $7 billion, right from the taxpayers to the oil and gas companies. Tax deductions for nonproducing wells, $1.2 billion, right from the taxpayers to the oil and gas companies. Income averaging. Average Americans, salespersons, people who sell cars for a living, for instance, they cannot do income averaging because that would cost the Treasury too much money. But guess what, this bill provides income averaging for the oil and gas industry. Since they made a $10 or $12 billion profit last year, maybe next year they will only make $6 billion, they should be able to average, unlike normal Americans. Guess what, they cannot afford to pay for the environmental analyses for the drilling that they want to do on our sensitive lands. The taxpayers should pay for that analysis. Absolutely unprecedented. Mr. Chairman, we are opening the Medicare lockbox, and we are taking the trust funds out and we are handing them to the oil and gas industry. They already have billions that they cannot spend. This is not going to get us one more well, one more gallon, one more cubic foot of gas, but it is going to enrich the coffers of these obscenely wealthy companies that are ripping off Americans. Mr. Chairman, we should be ashamed of the thrust of this bill. This is a 1950s energy policy. The only thing that is worthwhile to produce energy here is to send every American a copy and let them burn it in their fireplace next winter because they will not be able to afford their home heating bill.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, some skeptics say that this extraordinary piece of work, the so-called Securing America's Future Energy Act of 2001, all 510 pages, looks more to the past than to the future. Those skeptics say that the emphasis on dig, drill, burn everywhere and anywhere, including the ANWR, is not forward-looking; that the $44 billion in subsidies, including billions to the cash-rich oil and gas industry, which is already gouging American consumers and cannot spend the money fast enough, is not a good idea. They think the new push for nuclear power, despite the fact that we have not resolved what to do with the waste we have already created, is a folly. They ignore the tissue of conservation and renewables that has been drawn over this for face-saving on the part of the Republicans. In fact, they miss the real value of this report. We are going to mail one to every American, all 510 pages, and everybody who has a wood stove or a fireplace will be able to stay warm for a few minutes next winter.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I'm proud to be an original cosponsor of H.R. 427, the Little Sandy Watershed Protection Act. This bill extends the boundaries of the Bull Run Watershed to include the Little Sandy Watershed, ensuring quality drinking water for the Portland Metropolitan area for many years to come. It will also protect water quality and vital habitat for wildlife, including endangered species of steelhead and chinook salmon. The Bull Run Reserve was established in 1892 to provide clean and safe drinking water to the residents of Portland, Oregon, and surrounding communities. Over the next century, logging shrunk the reserve from 142,000 acres to just over 90,000. During the same time, the Portland Metropolitan area swelled to a population of nearly one million people. By protecting the hydrology of the Little Sandy Watershed, this Congress will build on over a century long legacy of drinking water protection for Oregon. H.R. 427 is an important step in providing safe drinking water for Oregon's largest population center. I strongly support this bill and I urge its adoption.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, it is horrible to be in a time of tight budgets and deficits. I have been through that in this Congress. But, of course, that is not the case today. But from the debate tonight on the floor, we would think that that was the case. Earlier we heard, well, we could not afford to improve and enhance veterans' health care. There is just not enough money. We had to make tough choices. They had to make copayments and be deprived of needed health care. We could not afford more money for the YouthBuild program to help reform youth, get them on a straight path, and build low-income housing. Now we are being told we have to choose between the downpayment initiative and the Shelter Plus Care program. I thought we had a multitrillion dollar looming surplus. I thought that was why the Republicans jammed through a $1 trillion tax cut, particularly heavily oriented towards those who earn over $273,000 a year. Most of whom are not homeless, I expect. Mr. Chairman, 3.5 million people are likely to experience homelessness during a given year in the United States, and 45 percent of those people will be employed. They do not meet the stereotypes. Thirty-nine percent are children, as mentioned by the gentleman from Massachusetts before me, and 27 percent are disabled. One-third of families currently requesting shelter have to be turned away for lack of room, families trying to stay together. The family values party does not want to help them stay together because they are not putting the money out to do the job. I am especially concerned in light of the committee's decision to increase the permanent housing set-aside, the 35 percent. Just last year the permanent housing set-aside was raised to 30 percent of all funds under McKinney-Vento. That last-minute change does not sound like it means anything except a percent here, in Washington, D.C.; a billion here, a billion there. But the last-minute change of Congress caused HUD to reprioritize their grants, and new transitional housing projects for homeless families were left on the chopping block. In fact, in my district alone, Douglas County lost $126,458, a county with a very high unemployment rate that has been hit hard because of the recession in the timber industry. Curry County lost $113,637. Benton, Lincoln, and Lynn lost $271,518. Other States lost money because of this additional set-aside. We should not be forcing these sorts of choices; $1.3 million all together for rural Oregon counties and $1 million for rural continuum of care. We do not have to make that choice. If I just went back and pulled out the budget and the rosy scenario and all the things that have been used here on the floor to pass the tax cut that favors those who earn over $273,000 a year, we would find that if we just applied those same assumptions and rosy scenarios, or God forbid we cut back on the big tax breaks for those at the very top, we could afford all these and we would not have to make these choices. So I reject what is being offered on the majority side, saying, oh well, we just cannot afford that this year, maybe next year; and, well, we have to make these tough choices. These are choices that need to be made to hold together the social fabric of this society, to hold together homeless families, to help the 39 percent of homeless kids, and the 27 percent who are disabled. We, the greatest society on Earth, can afford to do this little bit. I urge my colleagues to strongly support this amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. I will not take the 5 minutes. I just wonder how many of my colleagues, particularly the chairman and others on the other side of the aisle, who would restrict this program have visited one. I visited them twice in my district, and it is an inspiration to see young people who have dropped out, who are at risk, whose lives could end up being a total mess, back in school and learning construction skills and building housing for low-income families. Now, what could be a more efficient and more productive use of Federal dollars for housing? We are taking at-risk kids, diverting them from problems, giving them education, teaching them construction skills and building housing for low-income people. This program could use a 50 percent or a 100 percent increase every year and put tens of thousands of kids back on the right track. I urge my colleagues to support this very modest amendment to increase this program.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I support one thing the gentleman preceding me in the well said: let us stop the scare tactics. The scare tactics are contained in this report of the so-called Commission to Save Social Security. It is the Commission to privatize Social Security, not with aggregate investments, but with individual accounts, so Wall Street can better profit by charging 250 million people a little bit of money every month, reducing their benefits, ultimately, by 40 percent. This report, for the first time in the 225-year history of the United States of America, is questioning whether or not the Federal Government will make good on its debts. Guess where the money in these accounts came from? He is saying, we are going to have a cash flow problem. Yes, Americans have been saving. We have been paying more taxes every year than are necessary to support Social Security with the idea that that money was put on deposit for future generations. This fund in 2016 will have more than $5 trillion, and $5 trillion of what? Of securities against the Federal Government. In fact, one of these securities says, this bond is incontestable in the hands of the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund; this bond is supported by the full faith and credit of the United States and the United States has pledged the payment of the bond with respect to both principle and interest, yet the gentleman who preceded me and this so-called commission are questioning whether or not we can or will honor those bonds. There is no question. We must honor those bonds, and we should honor those bonds and that obligation to the American people, through the process that we use to honor all other debts in the United States of America. We either run a surplus and we pay out of that, or we roll over debt. We have $6 trillion of debt. Now, it is okay apparently to honor the debts for people in Japan or industrial investors or anybody else, but we are now questioning whether we are going to honor the debt to the working people of America. Mr. Chairman, this is extraordinary. It is bold in its scope. It is unprecedented that a Secretary of the Treasury, a President of the United States's hand-picked commission, would question whether or not we will honor this debt. This year, Americans will pay $93 billion more in Social Security taxes than are necessary to support the system. If the gentleman who preceded me in the well is right, then let us lower that tax today, because we are defrauding the people of that $93 billion, because we are saying, hey, it is going to be really painful to pay that money back. We are taking it from them now, we are depositing it for them in the U.S. Treasury; we are telling them that it will pay their benefits, but maybe we will not be able to afford to honor that. That is absolutely extraordinary. Social Security is totally and fully sound until the year 2038. It can pay 100 percent of every promised benefit to every American, every recipient, every beneficiary, disabled or dependent. After that, it can afford to pay 73 percent. Now, that means we have a 27 percent problem beginning in 38 years, but what they are going to propose is to destroy the existing system, to steal the $6 trillion on account for the American workers, and convert to something else, and ignore the trillions of dollars in transition costs and benefits. They can only get there a couple of ways. They are going to have to reduce existing benefits, or they are going to have to raise taxes to pay for the existing promises; one or the other. Or, they can honor the debts and fix the program in the future. The simplest way to do it is to lift the cap on earnings. If people earn over $80,000 a year, they do not pay the same tax as everybody else; they pay less. They only pay on the first $80,000. If we just lifted the cap and people paid Social Security on every penny they earn, guess what the actuaries say? The system is solvent forever, and, in fact, we could afford to lower the tax burden on working Americans. Now, would that not be a great solution? But I do not think that is going to come out of a commission hand-picked by President George Bush and supported by the Republican majority in this House, because that would mean the millionaires and billionaires would pay a little bit more to secure the retirement future of working Americans.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Chairman, there are a host of questions that need to be answered by the system of elections in this country, but there is one thing upon which Congress and I believe most Americans should agree: no single American should be disqualified by virtue of using a defective voting machine. Mr. Chairman, it was not isolated to Florida or any other part of the country. My Secretary of State did a study and, strangely enough, twice as many votes were disqualified in counties that used punchcard systems in Oregon as counties that used optical scanners. Now, a lot of people will say we cannot afford to help the States and counties; we cannot afford a system of good technology for the people of America to record their votes flawlessly. Come on. This is the basis, the foundation, of our franchise, what makes this country work. If we cannot afford to pay for that technology, if we cannot afford to have a better election system, then we are indeed headed toward very dark times. This is a modest amount of money to resolve this problem, and this should be approved by this Congress.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, earlier today on the vote to consider the previous question on this bill I intended to vote ``no'' but inadvertently voted ``aye''.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this is a $5 billion Treasury Note. More than $1 trillion of these are on deposit. Let me read from it: ``This bond is incontestable in the hands of the Federal Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund,'' Social Security. This bond is supported by the full faith and credit of the United States of America. The United States of America is pledged to the payment of the bond with respect to both principal and interest. More than $1 trillion is on deposit. Americans will pay $93 billion this year more in FICA taxes than is necessary to support the system, with the idea they are being deposited to pay for their retirement. In 2016, there will be $6 trillion on deposit, and Secretary O'Neill of the Treasury and the Bush Privatization of Social Security Commission is downtown right now like a hive of termites trying to undermine the system and say we might not honor that $6 trillion of debt. Well, if the bonds on deposit backed by the full faith and credit of the United States of America will not be paid for Social Security, what other debts will this government default on?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, there was an extraordinary report published the end of last week which should be required reading for every American. It is a staff draft of the Bush Social Security privatization commission. Now they want to call it the bipartisan commission on the future of Social Security or something, but let us make no bones about it. It is a privatization commission. The basic assumptions under which they are operating and the orders they have from the President are they must privatize at least a portion of Social Security. But that is no surprise. President Bush has taken that position for many years, as have many on the other side of the aisle who have never liked the idea of Social Security. But what is shocking about this report is that on page 14 they say, we have become used to the idea that Social Security is going to have a financing problem beginning in 2038. Beginning in the year 2038, Social Security under current assumptions, without a single change, can pay 73 percent of benefits from that date forward but 100 percent of all promised benefits up to 2038. That is a fact. The Bush commission, the privatization commission, says they question whether Social Security can or will pay any benefits beginning in 2016, which means they are raising the specter first raised by Treasury Secretary O'Neill that they may not honor the debt of Social Security. That is, the fact that we have all paid taxes in excess of that necessary to pay current benefits with the idea we are accumulating a trust fund, the trust funds are held in Federal Treasury securities, and Federal Treasury securities are supposed to be the safest security in the world. Now, Secretary O'Neill and, by implication, President Bush, are raising the question whether the Federal Government will honor those securities. That is unbelievable. That is extraordinary. It is frightening. It could bring about an economic collapse worldwide. Beyond that, they are doing it for one petty reason, because they hate Social Security, they want to attack it, and they want to privatize it. Because the people on Wall Street say, ``Hey, if we could have 250 million separate accounts to manage, we would charge all of them a little bit of money every month, we would make tens of billions of dollars.'' Disregard the fact that those management fees over a person's lifetime would reduce their retirement by 40 percent in that little fund, and, for most lower income workers and others who this report feigns to really care about, they are shocked, shocked, shocked, that the widows and poor people and minorities do not have large retirement plans. They are not offering anything new for them, they are just saying Social Security has not been providing them with a high standard of living. Yes, that is true. But at least it has been there, it has been predictable. This year, Americans will pay $93 billion, ``B,'' billion more in Social Security taxes than are necessary to meet current benefits. We thought that $93 billion was then being deposited with the Federal Treasury with notes and it would be paid back, but Secretary O'Neill and this Commission and President Bush are saying no, we might not pay that back. Well, if that is the case, then let us lower the tax now. You rushed out here to lower taxes for people who earn over $273,000 a year, yet more working Americans pay more in FICA taxes to Social Security than they do income taxes. If you are saying you are not going to honor those debts, then lower that tax today. Give us back that $93 billion extra we are going to pay this year, if you are questioning whether you are going to honor that debt. It is absolutely extraordinary and irresponsible and unbelievable that this group, the Privatization Commission, is going down this path. The trust funds hold not accumulated reserves of wealth, but only promises that future taxpayers will be asked to redeem. That is the same as any other Federal Treasury security. So they are raising a question about whether the full faith and credit of the Federal Government lies behind not only the Social Security trust funds, but the $6 trillion of debt the United States of America has accumulated over the years. If that filters through to the world financial markets, there will be a catastrophic collapse of the dollar, a run on the dollar; U.S. securities will be dumped in the market, and it will bring about economic catastrophe. So I recognize they are trying to do a job here. The President ordered them to come up with the rationale for privatization. But do not do it in this extraordinarily irresponsible way. Just say, look, we want to cut people's benefits so that we can then transition to a privatized plan, and, of course, the models in Great Britain, Argentina and Chile did not work out so well, but we think they will work out better here. Be honest. Do not lie and do not threaten the security of the world by threatening the sanctity of U.S. Treasury bills.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today the scare tactics began. A year ago today we had in hand a Social Security Trustees' report that was actually kind of optimistic. Things were looking up for the system. The day in which it would not be able to pay 100 percent of benefits was put off until the year 2039. That is, Social Security had in hand, under conservative estimates, enough money from our taxes, from the taxes of working people, not the wealthy, because they do not pay on any income over $80,000, but the working people had put enough money in the trust fund to secure it through the year 2039. No question. After that, with no changes, under pessimistic assumptions, it would only be able to pay 73 percent of the benefits. But here comes the Bush administration and the so-called Bipartisan Commission on Social Security loaded with people who have been trying to destroy the system, including, sadly, a couple of Members of the House and Senate who are ostensibly Democrats for more than a quarter of a century. They are doing the work of Wall Street. Wall Street cannot wait to mandate that individuals put money into individual accounts. When they can charge 250 million people a little bit of money to maintain accounts, they make tens of billions of dollars. Guess where the tens of billions of dollars comes from? It comes from future benefits that people would have realized under the current system. This document is extraordinary in that it echoes Treasury Secretary O'Neill. It says that the United States government might not honor the trillions of dollars of obligations it has in special bonds to the Social Security Trust Fund. They are saying the crisis starts the day Social Security has to begin drawing on the funds, the savings we have put aside for our retirement. The Bush administration is questioning whether the full faith and credit of the United States government will be delivered on those debts, those obligations. If that is true, everybody around the world and across the United States better begin cashing in their Treasury bonds. If the United States Treasury in 2016 under the leadership of President Bush and Secretary O'Neill does not put the full faith and credit of our government behind those depository instruments, money that we, the working people, have paid into the Treasury for our retirement, then we are in bigger trouble than I thought. Mr. Speaker, this is an unbelievable distortion of the facts. There is a simple solution to the Social Security problem, but we will not hear it from this administration or Secretary O'Neill who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars, or President Bush who is worth tens of millions of dollars, because it would require that they pay the same amount as every other American. They would rather talk about defaulting on the obligations of the Federal Treasury to honor Social Security Trust Funds than talk about the easiest way to solve this problem: Make every American pay the same amount of Social Security tax on every dollar they earn. They consider that a radical proposal. If that one simple step were taken, if we lifted that cap, if people who earned over $80,000, that small percentage of the people, if they paid in the same Social Security that a minimum wage earner pays, a flat tax, I hear from the other side of the aisle, give us a flat tax. When I suggested this to the Republican chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, he almost had a stroke. Oh, no, not a real flat tax. We are talking about a flat tax that cuts taxes on the wealthy, not a flat tax that would give them the same obligation to pay as working people. If we took that one step, Social Security under current assumptions would be solvent forever; and, in fact, there would be so much money flowing into Social Security that we could give a tax break to working Americans. We could say you do not have to pay any Social Security tax on the first $4,000 or $5,000 of income, a big tax break to minimum wage people and others at the lower end of the spectrum. Mr. Speaker, all we have to do to secure the future of Social Security is just say, hey, the Bill Gates of the world and all of those other people earning hundreds of millions of dollars, the head of Enron, the company which is ripping off ratepayers by manipulating energy prices, he got $123 million in stock options this year. If he paid Social Security taxes on that, on $123 million, tens of thousands of Americans would be assured that their retirement would be made good. The scare tactics have begun, and the American people are not going to stand for it.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. Mr. Speaker, let us turn to a recent statement by President Bush on trade sanctions. Calling sanctions a ``moral statement,'' President Bush ordered stricter enforcement of the U.S. trade embargo and greater support for the country's dissidents. ``It is wrong to prop up a regime that routinely stifles all the freedoms that make us human,'' said President Bush. Unfortunately, of course, he was referring to that puny little nation of Cuba, and not to the giant economic military power, China. God forbid we should apply the same standards to someone as powerful as they are. You know, driven by big business, policymakers in this body and downtown at the White House for more than 100 years have been talking about dramatic policy changes in China. They are coming. If you stacked up all of the agreements on trade, arms control, and human rights that have been negotiated and signed over the last 100 years by U.S. Presidents, you would have a new Great Wall, or more likely I guess you could call it an imaginary line, because the agreements are not worth the paper they are written on. Most recently, the 1992 MOU on prison labor: violated, torn up, thrown away. The 1994 bilateral on textiles: violated, torn up, thrown away. 1992 MOU on market access; 1996, 1998 intellectual property; 1999 grains and poultry: all ignored and violated. But the proponents, or should I call them the apologists, are constantly making new rationalizations, ``and this time it is really different,'' a little bit like maybe Lucy and the football; or perhaps we could say their arguments are as finely packaged as our Navy plane, which is coming back to us in pieces. It is about U.S. jobs, they say; it is about engagement; it is about the dissidents. Well, here is a headline the day after we granted China permanent MFN status last year. The Wall Street Journal ran a front- page story. It said: ``Debate focused on exports, but, for many companies, going local is the goal.'' The gentleman who preceded me talked about dissidents. I sat with a dissident who said, you know, occasionally we were treated better when the U.S. took certain action. Were those actions a doormat giving the Chinese everything they wanted? No. The few times we have gotten tough with China, the dissidents from prison were treated better. If we give them everything they want, like a spoiled child, we will get no change in their behavior. Please, please, this is our last chance. Vote to send a message to China.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Our time is about expired. I do not think really I can end on a much more eloquent note than the gentleman just made, which is that there is sort of two paths that can be chosen for the American people at this point in time. One is a sustainable, reliable inexpensive energy put future, and the other is more of what is going on today, crisis after crisis, higher prices, price gouging, manipulation, and being held hostage by the OPEC cartel and the other traditional proponents of the energy industry. I would like to choose a new path for the 21st century. So far the administration is choosing the 1950 path.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman will remember back 20 years, back in 1980 the United States of America through our labs, Federal labs in Golden, Colorado, was the world leader in photovoltaics, an endless source of energy coming from the sun, that could replace fossil fuels, could provide for quality electric, if we could get the price of photovoltaics down. The Reagan Administration sold that research and all of the proprietary work that had been done to the ARCO Corporation, and then the ARCO Corporation sold it to Siemens of Germany, and now the Germans are the world leaders in photovoltaics based on research payed for by U.S. taxpayers, and some day we will probably be buying photovoltaic solar cells from the Germans, like we are having to buy oil from the OPEC cartel. These future supplies of renewable and sustainable energy are going to be more important to us, and for the United States of America, for the President of the United States to slash investment, which he did in his budget, in these sorts of research, is cutting the legs out from underneath the American consumers, the American people and American business and industry, to make us a sustainable and affordable energy future. We need to be investing more in fuel cells, more in photovoltaics, more in wind energy and tidal sources of energy being used in Europe. All these extraordinary, absolutely benign renewable resources are being ignored with one focus, and that focus is on fossil fuels and the profits of that industry and perpetuating that industry. I had a constituent testify at a hearing, and said Congressman, the stone age did not end because they ran out of rocks. He said they developed new technology. But this administration is attempting to stonewall that new technology. In fact, they want to turn back to the technology of the fifties. They want to go back to nuclear energy, let alone the fact we have not figured out what to could with the waste we have now and it is disbursed all around the country.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, that is exactly it, worshipping the market where there is no market. But, finally, and strangely, after the Senate changed hands from Republican to Democrat and two committees subpoenaed in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and their staff to come in under oath and testify about what was going on in western energy markets, somehow 2 days before they were supposed to testify in the United States Senate under the new Democrat control, FERC held an emergency meeting and imposed some minimal price caps. Now, this is something they refused steadfastly to do for the first 6 months of the Bush Administration. But, suddenly, just because of a little tiny bit of scrutiny, let alone real scrutiny, let alone real regulation, let alone enforcement of the law, investigation by the Justice Department for price fixing, market manipulation, price gouging and all of the other things we know is going on, you cannot take the price of an essential commodity and drive it from $7 billion for the same amount of energy to $27 billion in one year, have profits increase by 300 percent, and then drive it the next year up by another 100 percent, without there being collusion and manipulation in that marketplace. Yet the watchdogs, the toothless, sleeping watchdogs at FERC, led by Mr. Hebert of Louisiana, are just like, oh, we are not quite sure what is going on. In fact, I had some FERC people into my office last week and we talked about there is a new area coming. They are going to game transmission right now. Right now they are just gaming generation, but they figured out a new, bigger, more lucrative potential game for the future, and it is transmission.

Mr. DeFAZIO. In fact, I would quote from a spokesman for Reliant Energy on January 25 from the Los Angeles Times. He stated that ``claims that air quality restrictions were holding back output were absolutely false.'' Similarly, in May in the New York Times, ``Industry executives have been pressing to get relief from environmental laws, most notably the Clean Air Act and land use restrictions, but such regulations are viewed by many executives as nuisances,'' of course, they do not live there and breathe the air there, ``rather than barriers to meeting demand. This is borne out by the ongoing surge in construction of transmission lines and power plants that has occurred without any easing of environmental regulations, despite the best efforts of the Bush Administration.'' So, this is a falsehood that was initially and early widely perpetuated across the West that this was a self-induced trauma. Of course, that was before we had the numbers to show that all these plants were off line and driving up the price. In fact, California was about 30 percent below its maximum production a number of times when the lights went out. The winter is your low demand period. That is when you usually export energy. Yet the prices were sky high and you were experiencing rolling blackouts and brown outs. This was not the fault of environmental restrictions, it was the fault of greedy companies. The interesting thing is they have been reined in a little bit. As the gentleman and I know, we tried to get the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for months to act. Their own staff had found that these prices violated the law, they were not just and reasonable. That was a staff finding by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. But Mr. Hebert, as Chairman, refused to take action and do anything about that, refused to do further investigations beyond one whitewash investigation saying there was no manipulation of the market. We now have a GAO report saying there is no way they could have reached that conclusion. They do not have the documentation to reach that conclusion. Yet he refused, stonewalled, stonewalled, it was called a sit down strike at FERC. I attended one meeting where he said he would pray for us, but that was all he could do.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman would yield back, we have not had yet the extraordinary impact that the gentleman has felt in San Diego but it is coming. We are looking at a 47 percent rate increase this winter with the Bonneville Power Administration because we are having a drought. That normally would not be a big problem because we normally would turn to our neighbors in California and say look, wintertime, you have a lot of excess capacity, we would like to buy some electricity from you for the winter. We have traditionally done that. In the summertime, during the gentleman's high demand season, we have sold to him. We cannot sell to him this year because of the drought, but we would buy from the gentleman next winter and hopefully it will snow and rain next winter and we will be back into that normal equilibrium. Confronted with these kinds of markets, our Bonneville Power Administration has to go to extraordinary lengths to shed load for the coming winter, closing down the aluminum industry, getting all the other utilities to guarantee that they would reduce their consumption by a minimum of 10 percent, and still we are going to see this 47 percent rated increase because they are going to have to buy some power in this outrageously priced wholesale market. In anticipation of that, some of our utilities have already raised their rate. A little tiny municipal utility in Drain, Oregon, raised rates this winter. When I had a town meeting there back in April I had a kid come in from the school and say, do you know that last winter we asked if we could bring blankets to school to wrap ourselves during class because it was so cold in the schools? She says it was so cold in the school, they could not afford the heat, she says that the pipes burst during a cold spell, and we are sitting there wrapped in blankets. Yet, Ken Lay at Enron gave himself $123 million bonus. Some of that money came from the kids' parents in Drain, Oregon. A lot of that money came from the small businesses in San Diego, California. Now this same gentleman is one of the principal authors of the national energy policy. When Vice President Cheney was asked to name who he met, he said I met with lots of people when I developed this document, lots of people. They said, well, name some. He said, well. They said, Ken Lay of Enron? And they said, was that the only person? He said, no, I met with lots of people, but he will not tell us who the other lotses are. He did admit that he met with Ken Lay of Enron, the same Ken Lay of Enron who called the chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who is no friend of consumers, Mr. Hebert of Louisiana, who has refused to act to rein in prices, but he even called him to say that what he was doing was not enough for his company as chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and if he would do what Mr. Lay wanted, well, then they might be able to assure him that he could continue to be chairman. Mr. Hebert, again no friend of consumers, was outraged. He went to the press about this and said I cannot believe that this gentleman called me. Well, this is who is writing the energy policy of this country.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Deregulation is working for a few individuals.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Unfortunately, the President's plans do say something about this, but it says what we should do is spread retail deregulation nationwide. We are going to take the model of California and we are going to impose it on the rest of the States of the United States of America. Now, if there was some place we could turn to and say, well, look, look how great deregulation has worked, well, first off the model was Great Britain. They are still trying to fix the problems they created with deregulation. Their prices are 70 percent higher than the average in the United States. They suffer a much higher percentage of blackouts, brown-outs. They have extraordinary complaints about service. That is the model on which the 1992 deregulation was written. Maybe we have done better in the States. Let us turn to some of the pioneers in the United States. Montana in my region, they have seen rates for industry, which was deregulated, as were the rates in Montana, go up by 1,000 percent because Pennsylvania Power and Light bought all of the generation in Montana, which is a State that can produce 150 percent of its needs and they can make more money by exporting that power, some of it to the gentleman, and charging extraordinary prices for it. So that has not worked out real well in Montana. Rhode Island, another pioneer, prices are up 66 percent. The list goes on and on and on. Everywhere that we have seen energy deregulation, with the promise of competition, lower prices, better service, we have seen higher prices, worse service and now rolling blackouts and brownouts. Guess what? I have never had an Oregonian come up to me and say, Congressman, I am tired of this utility that provides me electricity day in and day out at a reasonable price; I want a chance to choose my energy provider the way I get those phone calls at 5:00 at night from AT&T and MCI and all the others, offering me stuff that I cannot quite fathom and does not ever really seem to work out quite the way they promised it but every once in awhile they send me a $15 check if I change from one to the other. No one has come to me and said I want to impose that system on my electricity, I want to guess whether my electricity, my lights, are going to go on or off, what my bill is going to be. No, they do not want that. Americans want reliable, affordable electricity and they are not getting it under this system. Now some people are doing very well. We have mentioned a few. The gentleman mentioned Duke Energy. Their profits were $1.8 billion last year. That is a 109 percent 1-year increase. That was before they got into this really overt manipulation described by the employees to drive the prices even higher. So we can expect that they will do even better in the next year. El Paso Natural Gas, of course, is now under investigation for having withheld gas from the pipeline. Somehow gas provided in Texas shipped to California, which is a little closer to Texas than New York City, was sold at four times the price in California than it was sold in New York City and somehow they did not use a very significant portion of the pipeline capacity, which contributed to the run-up in the price. They had a $1.2 billion profit, a 381 percent 1-year increase. Not bad, and, of course, they share the wealth. Now do they share it with the consumers? Well, no, not exactly. But they do share the wealth. A number of these companies have very generously shared the wealth with their CEOs. For instance, with Enron, who I mentioned earlier, who had a $979 million, nearly a billion in profits last year, the CEO netted $123 million all by himself by cashing in stock options which the company created, both hurting other stockholders and obviously money extracted from a whole lot of consumers. He only got $40 million in 1999 and ten times what he got in 1998.

Mr. DeFAZIO. They certainly did. They always were favored by investors. They had no problem raising money. It was an industry that was known as a good place to put your money for a reliable and very healthy rate of return. Now, what happened as the gentleman just pointed out with Duke and with all the others, they are no exception, is that they no longer had under deregulation a duty to serve their customers. Their only duty is to serve their stockholders and the people on Wall Street. If they can make more money by blacking you out, shutting you down, closing other businesses for lack of power, it is their duty, their fiduciary responsibility as their board of directors sees it to do that. That is why they tied their floor traders to the plant operators. It is absolutely outrageous to think that that is what the system has come to.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I think the key point and one of my principal objections to deregulation was that it severed the relationship between a utility and the consumer. Historically in this country from 1932 until very recently with deregulation, utilities had a duty to serve. Their highest duty was to keep the lights on. They maintained a buffer over and above their demand or their anticipated demand. They were required to do that. They were required to, except in times of catastrophe, provide as nearly as possible 100 percent reliability.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Just taking up what the gentleman was talking about, tax credits for Americans, for consumers, to help them meet their needs at home or at work or purchase more energy-efficient transportation, to create a market for that and help our people, that unfortunately did not make the cut in the blue book here. But what did make the cut, for instance, is royalty relief. For those poor suffering oil companies, we have got to have some royalty relief. Of course I am certain that they will pass those lowered costs on to the consumers. The estimate is that the Bush energy plan would lower royalties by $7.4 billion over 2 years. That is money that should flow to the Federal Treasury for all the taxpayers in the United States of America because of the extraction in our coastal areas and inland areas of oil and gas, would be reduced by $7.4 billion under the proposal of the Bush administration. Now, of course, these are the same companies that just last year entered into a plea bargain in a criminal case for defrauding the taxpayers of royalty revenues and entering into an unprecedented $443 million civil settlement with the Justice Department. But, of course, that was the Clinton Justice Department, and I do not think the Bush Justice Department is going to be pursuing too many defrauded American taxpayers' royalty claims. In fact, no, they are much more up-front about it: Hey, let's just forgive the royalties altogether. This is the basis for an energy policy. Certainly we do not need to forgive the royalties to get these people to explore or pump oil. Let us look at the profits. Last year, ExxonMobil profits, $15.9 billion, a 1-year, 102 percent increase. Chevron, $5.1 billion, a 150 percent, 1-year increase. Texaco, $2.5 billion, 116 percent, 1 year. Conoco, $1.9 billion, 155 percent. Phillips Petroleum even better, 205 percent. And on down the list. These people need relief? They need encouragement from the taxpayers? They need subsidies from the taxpayers to explore for oil and gas? I do not think so. In fact they should be giving money back to the taxpayers because they are fleecing the taxpayers to show those sorts of profit increases in one year. So the gentleman is exactly right with his orientation of where we should be investing or forgoing revenue for the Federal Government, should be oriented toward small businesses and consumers and others who want to invest in energy-efficient measures, not those who want to go out and extract yet more oil and gas from sensitive areas in our coastal plain, our national monuments and elsewhere. From there, I believe we would be well served to get into the area of electricity. Most recently in the western U.S., the most extraordinary manifestation of an energy crisis that we have seen has been the rolling blackouts and brownouts in California, the fact that the total electricity energy bill in California went from $7 billion 2 years ago to $27 billion last year and is projected to go to over $50 billion this year. The fact that we have found out that even in the Pacific Northwest, we are paying higher average wholesale prices but thankfully thus far have been buffered by our Bonneville Power Administration and our own energy production from having to buy too much; but next winter we may be in the very same soup that California has seen over the last year. Now, the question would be, Is this a justified increase? Is this such a shortage and such a precious commodity that you can justify increases of up to, well, if you went from $30 an hour average megawatt 2 years ago to the high price that has been charged up over $3,000 a megawatt, a 1,000 percent increase in 1 year in the price, there is a real question. There is no one who is more expert on that than the gentleman from San Diego, who comes from ground zero in terms of the electricity energy crisis, market manipulation and price gouging in the western United States. I yield to the gentleman to educate us a bit on what has been going on down in his district.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for her comments. Mr. Speaker, it is important that we look toward the future and not toward the past for the energy supply for the United States of America. We can both have energy sources that are more gentle on the environment and deal with the problem of global warming, and are more stable and more affordable for the people of our Nation so we will no longer be held hostage to OPEC and other cartels around the world who basically blackmail us from time to time in jacking up the price of oil and extorting from American consumers. I think her legislation is a very, very important addition to getting something that looks forward instead of back, and I thank the gentlewoman for her contribution. Mr. Speaker, today we had Secretary Norton come before the Committee on Resources to update us on where they are on the President's national energy policy. In reading her testimony, I was interested to see that she said despite the statements of Vice President Cheney of about 6 weeks ago where he said conservation and renewables, that might be a personal virtue, but it is nothing for a national energy policy to be based upon. Despite the fact that over the last 20 years this Nation has gained 4 times as much energy from efforts in conservation and renewables than from new energy development based on fossil fuels, nuclear and other traditional sources, 4 times as much, the Vice President says that might be a personal virtue, but we cannot base policy on it. Mr. Speaker, there seems to have been a backlash, and the administration seems to be very quickly backpedaling on the statements of Vice President Cheney. In fact, today Secretary Norton said, remember, the President's energy policy, this blue book written by Vice President Cheney, 50 percent of that is based on conservation renewables and other sustainable energy sources. I said, Madam Secretary, that is an extraordinary statement. I said, tell me, 50 percent of what in this book, 50 percent of the projected new energy supply? When I look in the back, I see that they are projecting 2.8 percent of our energy over the next 50 years might come from sustainable renewable sources and conservation, so it was not 50 percent of the new energy. They are projecting 93.2 percent will come from conventional fossil fuels and nuclear power. I said, I am a bit puzzled. Is it 50 percent of the investment? I said, I remember the President's budget dramatically slashed investment in conservation renewables and sustainable energy sources, things that could make the United States of America energy-independent. She said it is 50 percent of the words in this proposal were on conservation, renewables and others. I would even challenge that, but I have not gone back to count up to see really whether 50 percent relates to those things. So words are what we are getting here in this blue book and not a forward-thinking energy policy. The administration again staunchly defended going into ANWR, despite the fact that they admitted that no one has come anywhere near fully exploring the potential of the National Petroleum Reserve, which was just let out for leasing last year by the Clinton administration just before they left office, and the potential finds and the already discovered finds in the former National Petroleum Reserve, it will no longer be a reserve for national security purposes, will be diverted into the existing pipeline system and may well exceed the capacity of that system for some time to come. She admitted, as has every other administration witness, if there was recoverable energy at economic values in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge, they want to lease it now to be sure that it gets drilled; but they do not expect that a drop of that oil will flow for 10 years. Not a drop. So it is not addressing our immediate concerns. Beyond that, I said, Madam Secretary, if it is such a crisis that we have to go into the last pristine area in the United States of America to explore for oil, does the administration think that oil should be kept here at home in the United States of America, as the law provided until 1996 when the Republicans took over Congress, and at the behest of the oil companies lifted the ban on the export of oil from Alaska? She said she would have to get back to me on that. She certainly intended that the oil produced in Alaska should principally benefit the people of the United States of America, but she would not go so far to say that oil ought to be kept home, processed in the United States and used by the citizens of our country; but she will get back to me on that. I pointed out that President Bush could do that tomorrow by Executive Order. There is authority in the law for President Bush, if he believes that there is an energy crisis and a shortage and that is what is driving up the prices, he could tomorrow with a simple stroke of his pen rescind the authority for those oil companies to export our oil from Alaska. Mr. Speaker, that would be a concrete step that could be taken, and certainly sending a message to the American people, and also sending a message to OPEC, which is we are not going to take this. We are not going to let them jack up prices over there and extort our consumers in the short run while hopefully this Congress acts to adopt a more forward-thinking energy policy for the future based on new technologies so we can break our dependence on the oil cartels in the long term. In the short term, we do not want to have consumers extorted and bankrupted by them. Let us send them a strong message. We could do that by the President saying he is going to keep the Alaska oil home. We could do that in a number of other ways to show that we, in fact, in the United States are not going to be patsies, but this administration has chosen so far not to do that. Mr. Speaker, there are so many subjects to be covered in this area, this is just sort of a beginning. I see the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) has joined me, and I wonder if he might like to address some of these subjects.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this evening I rise, hopefully to be joined by others, to discuss the energy situation in the United States of America. It was James Watt, when President Bush unveiled the national energy policy, so-called here in this blue book, who said, ``Well, they just took out my work of 20 years ago.'' This is James Watt, mind you, not exactly an enlightened individual when it comes to present-day energy policy. He said, ``They just dusted off my work of 20 years ago. It is really good work.'' A 20-year-old energy policy for the 21st century? Well, after I read through it, upon hearing Mr. Watt's comments, I would observe it a little differently. I would say this is not James Watt's energy policy of 1980, this is actually our father's energy policy. It is much more 1950s energy policy. It is Dick Cheney's energy policy, and it reflects a bygone era of limitless frontiers, dig, drill, and burn. It is not and does not offer America a new sustainable and more affordable energy path to the next century. So we will be talking about that a bit tonight, about electricity, electric deregulation, and other subjects. But before I go there, I would like to recognize the gentlewoman from California who introduced important legislation today in the area of our future energy supply to talk a bit about her proposal.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman who preceded me in the well quoted from The Washington Post on an editorial about plants. Let us read the editorial The Washington Post wrote about fish. ``The ecosystem may or may not be ready for the first genetically engineered salmon, but the regulatory system emphatically is not. Environmental issues will be covered, the FDA promises, but the environmental and marine specialists who could best address them are housed at other agencies, and no law requires the routine involvement in decisions about the handling of genetically modified organisms that might get released into the environment.'' The gentlewoman who preceded me in the well said there will be virtually no risk because they will be sterilized. But the companies who manufacture these fish admit they cannot sterilize them all. Come on, they are not perfect. So some of them will get into net pans that will not be sterile, and we know some of the fish in net pans will get out. But if we are lucky, it will not be the ones who are not sterile; and if we are really lucky, if they are the ones who are not sterile, they will get caught before they breed. But if they breed, they could cause an unmitigated environmental disaster. That is why a huge number of organizations, of fishers across the United States, bicoastal, and on the Gulf oppose the release of these fish before we know their potential impact on the environment.