Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it is 4:12 p.m., the House has finished its regular business for the day, the government does not yet have a budget for the fiscal year which began 1 month ago today, and no meetings are scheduled. When the Republican leader who stood up on that side to represent the schedule to us on the minority earlier was asked, okay, where are we negotiating?, he said, well, he would try and get back to us with a room number on that. That was after they attempted to castigate this side, castigate the President and others for not negotiating in good faith. They have not, and they, of course, control all the space around here, scheduled a room. Why have they not scheduled a room? Because they have no intention of continuing negotiations. We are limping along day to day because the majority failed to get its work done. They did not have a budget for the fiscal year which began on October 1. We have gone through a series of continuing resolutions. I believe today was the 11th. Now, there was one little ray of hope on Monday. They negotiated all weekend. Everybody designated their hitters to go into the room. And they came to an agreement. They toasted that agreement. They left the room. The White House negotiators went back to the White House and the President said good for you. He stood behind what they did. The Senate negotiators went back to the Senate and their leaders, both sides of the aisle, stood behind them and said good for you. The Democratic negotiators came back to our side of the aisle and we said, Didn't think you could get it done. Good for you. But then in the strangest turn of events, the Republicans, the Republican leadership, pulled the rug out from the people that they sent in as their designated hitters to negotiate. Now they are saying, Well, the President wasn't in the room. Of course the President was not in the room. The President does not sit down for endless hours working on details on legislative bills. That is our job. And we got the job done. But then you, because of the phone calls from the National Association of Manufacturers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other very, very powerful special interest groups who are funding huge television campaigns right now on behalf of the majority and on behalf of the majority's candidate for President and against members of the minority said, No. No, you can't have that agreement. They stood up, saluted and said, okay. It would have provided for additional workplace health and safety for American workers. Hundreds of thousands of workers who are injured every year would have benefited from that legislation and the financial and political masters of the majority on that side told them they could not do that. They were the only people to renege on the deal. Republicans in the Senate stood behind it, the President stood behind it, the Democrats in the House and in the Senate stood behind it; but no, the Republican leadership in the House killed the deal. And now they are pretending they want to work, but they have no discussions set. They do not even have a room scheduled. This is really kind of a sad commentary at this ending of a Congress. I really think that we could do with a little bit of honesty around here. If they do not want to negotiate, if they just want to stay in town to make some kind of a bizarre point, then they should just be honest about it. Do not pretend. Do not go off on this stuff about, Oh, the President's not in the room. You know that no President sits down to discuss legislative details. But when they sent a hitter there, someone to go as a designated person to negotiate, this President stood behind his person. You did not stand behind your negotiators. Guess what? The Speaker was not in the room. The gentleman who killed the bill, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the majority whip, was not in the room. The majority leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Armey), was not in the room. We could have that argument all day long. Oh, your leader wasn't in the room. Oh, your President wasn't in the room. That is not what is going on here. The real shots are being called not over there with the leadership but with their funders, the people who are funding their campaigns. They call the real shots and they jerked the rug out so we do not have a deal. And it is not going to happen before the election because they cannot risk offending those people before the election. So let us just admit that. Let us have the majority admit to that instead of continuing this farce and these false accusations.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, today on the floor and last night I have heard a lot of creative rhetoric and whining from the Republican side of the aisle. They are whining that highly paid Members of Congress, themselves, are here in Washington actually having to work, to be a bit inconvenienced, to even work on a weekend. Well, why do they have to work? They say the president is guilty. Well, in fact, the President is a little bit guilty in this matter. He is guilty, as is any lenient parent in dealing with spoiled children. The budget is due October 1. It is set by law. We all know that. The budget was due on October 1. Were the appropriation bills done on October 1? Heck no. And what did Congress do right around October 1? It went home for a 5 day weekend, and then it went home the next week for a 5 day weekend, and then the next week. How did they get away with that? Well, the president, as I said, being, unfortunately, a little too lenient with the other side of the aisle, allowed them to go home with their work undone by giving them longer term continuing resolutions. I voted against every one of them. I felt they should have been held to a one day standard at the beginning, I think they should be held to a one hour standard now. If Congress has to stay in session 24 hours a day to get the work done, get it done. Now, they say, well, it is the President's fault. Well, gee, how can it be his fault, when you have not even sent two of the largest spending bills downtown yet? He has not seen them. The Senate has not passed them. He has not even had an opportunity to veto them, if he is going to. No, that is awfully strange creative rhetoric. It reminds me a lot of teaching a class, and the kids come in, and they knew all along there was a term paper due, June 1. Well, excuse me teacher, we just did not get it done. Well, gee, I am sorry, someone sick in the family, you sick, death in the family or something? No, we just did not get it done. We would like another week. If the teacher gives them another week, what are they going to say the next week? Hey, Teach, it was really nice; it was early June, the weather was great, we did not get it done. Give us another week. You cannot do that, and that is finally what the President is doing here. He is telling the Republicans, get your work done, one day at a time. You are going to stay here until the work gets done. It is inexcusable to be almost on the first of November. I mean, if they want to score their political points, they can send down defective bills that the president will veto, but they will not even do that. They will not even allow him to veto the bills with the concerns he has. They are just holding them here. So if anybody is holding them hostage, the Republican majority in Congress is holding itself hostage and whining about it. That is kind of pathetic. I heard some awfully interesting things about prescription drugs. Let us get one thing clear: The Republican plan that passed this House gives a subsidy to insurance companies in the hope that they might, might, offer a prescription drug only benefit plan to seniors. However, the head of the Health Insurance Industry Association has already said they are not interested in that. They cannot make enough money on something like that, and, if they did, besides that, the drugs would be really expensive. So the Republican plan not only provides subsidies to the insurance industry, it provides subsidies to the pharmaceutical companies. This is a great plan. But, guess what? If does not put any cap or set any conditions on the premiums that might be offered to seniors if plans were offered under their grand plan. It is a way to shovel more billions into the insurance industry and more billions into the obscenely profitable pharmaceutical industry at the expense of America's seniors, while pretending to address a real concern of America's seniors. That is outrageous. We take a program that is successful, which the Republicans opposed, Medicare, and add an optional, optional, prescription drug benefit. And then, God forbid, they do not like this part at all, we use the market power of Medicare, with 33 million seniors in it, to bargain down the price of drugs. We use the market. The Democrats use the market. That is not price controls. The VA is doing that take today. Blue Cross-Blue Shield is using that today. They use their market clout. They drive down the cost of prescription drugs by saying, hey, we have millions of people in our plan. We want a discount. But they are saying we should not do that. In fact, they are saying we should give subsidies to the pharmaceutical companies. God forbid we should bring down the prices in this country. The prices on pharmaceuticals are more expensive in the United States than any other country on Earth. That is why Americans go across the border to Canada to buy American manufactured drugs for half the price, why they go across the border to Mexico to buy American manufacturered drugs for half the price. What do they want to do? They want to give a subsidy to the pharmaceutical industry and a subsidy to the insurance industry. That solution is outrageous.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, just on the theme of voting, I hear many of the same things that the gentlewoman from Oregon (Ms. Hooley) heard on television last night from some of my own constituents. The government is not relevant to me. What you are doing is not relevant to me. Well, a lot of times it is not. They are right. The fact that we investigate whistleblowers and not oil price company fixing or stealing money from the American taxpayers, it is right, the government is not relevant to their concerns. It is not relevant, because they did not vote. If one does not vote, the government is going to be run by the special interests who are funding many of the campaigns. People must vote. They have to go out and vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, this is the private sector making money off the government. But that is his proud record. I think that causes some grave concern. I mean, not only as chief executive was he involved in colluding with the oil ministers of the OPEC countries and urging them to drive up the price of oil, and he succeeded in that effort, but, then after he finished raising the price of our oil and gas by colluding with OPEC, he then turned to the Federal taxpayers to greatly enrich his company, and then to provide him with a huge payoff as he left. But, remember, he did take some tough steps while he was there. He did lay off several thousand American workers. So he certainly deserved that $30 million golden parachute when he left. We can certainly understand that.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I could not find this earlier in my notes. I know we have covered a lot of ground here, but there is so much to talk about that the conventional press is not talking about. He mentioned the ties of Vice Presidential nominee, former Representative, former Secretary of Defense, former Halliburton Company executive, Mr. Cheney. Mr. Cheney, again, was chief executive for a short 4 or 5 years of this oil services company. During that time, and he says, again, if we recall, nothing to do with the public the fact that they gifted him with $30 million for his tenure there, 5 years. Well, their government contracts during that time period doubled to $2.3 billion. Their two largest customers were, surprise, the United States Department of Defense. Former Secretary Cheney of the revolving door managed to get them contracts with the agency which he headed until just a year or two before that. They also had a contract from the British Defense Ministry. Then they raked in another $1.5 billion in government loans from the Export-Import Bank and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, up from $100 million before Mr. Cheney took over.

Mr. DeFAZIO. It came along without his signature.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, he vetoed it.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman would yield on that, there may be two reasons for Governor Bush opposing this wonderful new program that would not have cost the American taxpayers a penny to better take care of our public lands, to enhance open space, acquire park lands from willing sellers with great private property protections in the bill. I think perhaps it goes back to where we started our discussion, because this thread runs through everything. Dirty air down in Texas is principally due to pollution by the oil industry. The money for the CARA bill is money that comes from lease charges offshore oil and gas drilling. These are public lands. These are public resources. We exact a modest royalty when the oil companies do not defraud the taxpayers, for the extraction of that oil and gas. And the law has said for more than 20 years that that money is supposed to flow to the acquisition of open space, conservation, and park lands. And it has not. Finally, in a bipartisan basis, this Congress came together and said enough is enough. We are going to take that money that is being paid by those oil and gas companies, and we are going to use it for the purpose for which it is intended. We are not going to steal it, and spend it on some other part of the Federal Government or the Pentagon or anything else. Perhaps Governor Bush's concerns come back to the oil industry again, since he made his fortune drilling rather unsuccessfully for oil, but that is not a prerequisite to making money in that industry. Or Vice Presidential nominee Cheney, who headed up an oil services company that consulted with the OPEC countries and got them to successfully constrain production to drive up the prices, also did well in the industry. If I could just reference one thing from yesterday that many people might have missed on the floor, we had a debate over something called POGO, not the comic strip; but POGO is the scandal, where a number of oil companies defrauded the Federal Government. That is, the taxpayers of the United States, from paying their lawful fees for the extraction of oil and gas from Federal lands, from lands that were owned by all the people of the United States. They essentially plea bargained to a one half of a $1 billion settlement. We do not know really how much they stole; but they plea bargained to that. But this Republican Congress has spent all of its time trying to investigate the people who blew the whistle, not the oil company executives who defrauded the American people of hundreds of millions of dollars. But let us find and get and harass those whistleblowers in the Federal Government who exposed this. Do we think that those whistleblowers would be able to keep their jobs in a Bush-Cheney oil company administration? I do not believe so. So to say there is no difference between the candidates for President is absurd, and particularly on all these strains that can come back to the tentacles of the oil industry which has had the largest profits and the largest increase in profits in its history in this last quarter, gouging the Americans every day at the pump, and is responsible for many of the problems we have talked about. Now we are going to put their folks in the White House. I hope not.

Mr. DeFAZIO. A voting record is a very good way to understand someone's future conduct.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, that is the interesting way to deal with air pollution, of course, would be to the change the standards. I think we can actually expect in a Bush Presidency, if there should continue to be a Republican Congress, that that would happen. I remember the bad old days before we had a Federal Clean Air Act, and as a concerned graduate student at the University of Oregon, went to a meeting with people concerned about pollution from a local company. And this was before we had a Federal law and the representative of this rather large company that is now known and advertises widely for being environmentally responsible was to say, that is the smell of jobs, and if you do not like it, we will move to Idaho, because they do not care. Mr. Speaker, that is what happens if you dismantle strong Federal standards, which is exactly what we know would happen under a Bush- Cheney Presidency, if they had a compliant Congress. Let me just turn for a second for clean water. We take it for granted. Water is going to become one of the most precious commodities in this century. Wars will be fought over water according to the CIA. In fact, we are close to that in some parts of the world. We are running out of potable water. We take a lot for granted. At the height of the Republican revolution here, I sat on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, we had a markup that went on for 5 days. We were working on a piece of legislation to reauthorize the expired Clean Water Act. We went through amendment after amendment, trying to fix the problems with the law and lock step, 100 percent of the Republicans voted against us, the Democrats in the minority, and that bill went through the House. And if Bill Clinton, if we had not had a President downtown saying if that bill gets near my desk, I will veto it, shred it and destroy it, that probably would have become the law of the land, and it would have taken us back actually to the days when any industry anywhere could dump. This bill actually embodied a new principle, and this is free market economics. Anybody who wants to can dump whatever they want in the water, and the bill said the public would be obligated if they wanted to use the water for something other than a sewer to clean it back up. It would have taken us back to the 1950s and early 1960s when we had rivers here in the eastern United States that actually caught fire. A lot of people are too young to remember that today. That actually happened, the Cuyahoga River and other rivers, they caught fire, they were so polluted, they were so dead. The Willamette River in our own State was an open cesspool, and it is only because of Federal laws that many of these rivers have begun, begun to restore their health. We are not yet done with that journey, and it is going to come to a screeching halt if not turning back the clock with a Bush Presidency.

Mr. DeFAZIO. An Official Secrets Act. It was made part of the intelligence bill which, of course, we cannot read before we vote on it, and it was put in it before anyone knew it was there. They do have a special room where you can go and read it if you want, but you cannot talk about it, so I do not go and read it. But they put in a clause which would establish an Official Secrets Act in the United States of America. Not even just for national defense purposes, but for anything that any government bureaucrat who is anywhere in the government who has a stamp that says, classified, they can stamp anything on their desk ``classified,'' and anybody who discloses it or second- or third- hand prints it in the newspaper or talks about it, even a Member of Congress, would be subject to criminal penalties. Now, would we ever know about the problems created at the Department of Defense in acquisition or the problems in other parts of the government if all of the States could just be simply classified? So we are going to be turning to the next Supreme Court unless we can get this bill vetoed by the President and sent back down here to strip out the new Official Secrets Act. We will be turning to the next Supreme Court to see whether or not our precious liberties maintain any sort of modicum of control over the government. I mean that is extraordinary. Just think about it. It is not just the woman's right to choice. It is civil liberties, it is States' rights, and in this case, it is free speech. And these things are all important. Mr. Speaker, our current obscene system of campaign finance came from a bad Supreme Court decision. The American people are pretty sick of what is going on with the just unbelievable millions and billions of dollars this year, more than $1 billion, being spent on the campaigns for elected office, and that is a result of a well thought-out reform adopted after the Watergate scandal being thrown out in a bad Supreme Court decision. They affect our everyday lives. It is important. And to have Governor Bush say he wants to have Scalia, Thomas, Scalia, Thomas, Scalia, Thomas as the Supreme Court, and we look at their decisions. It is going to be a very grim day if we care about any of those things.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, a lot of the public does not focus on this on a daily basis, and neither do I. I mean, the Supreme Court is that building over there somewhere. But that is the bulwark we have against bad legislation, bad laws in this country. It is the bulwark we have for our Bill of Rights, our precious individual liberties. Just recently, snuck through the Congress in the intelligence bill is an Official Secrets Act for the United States of America.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, sometimes we have to find a little humor in dire circumstances. I did see a cartoon which is very illustrative of the difference between Governor Bush and Vice President Gore on appointments on the Supreme Court. It was a cartoon which showed a Supreme Court made up entirely of Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas. Of course, Governor Bush has said, and remember, his father thought that Mr. Thomas was the most qualified person for the job, and now, of course, his son has said that he thinks that Thomas, being loyal to his dad, I guess, and Scalia are the shining lights on the Supreme Court and he wants to replicate them on the Supreme Court. His appointments would be more Scalias and Thomases. Well, we can throw out a woman's right to choice with the first appointment of a Scalia or Thomas clone. With the second appointment of a Scalia or Thomas clone, we can throw out the Civil Rights Act and a whole lot of other very important Federal laws that are based on Supreme Court decisions that would be revisited by a very radical right-wing court, and that is inevitable under his stewardship as President.

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman would yield on that a second, we might note that this spring the depletion of the ozone layer over Antarctica is the worst in recorded history and extends well up above parts of New Zealand and Australia, and last summer for the first time we had significant ozone problems over the North Pole. So it is extraordinary that anybody would have derided someone for raising that very serious issue, both of global warming and ozone depletion, which is so detrimental to the future of our planet.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, if the gentleman would yield back, in fact, yes, Haliburton had very large government contracts; and I am certain being a former Defense Secretary may have helped a little bit there, but there is also now some question being raised about whether or not in carrying out those contracts that there was some impropriety. And, in fact, there are investigations ongoing on whether or not the taxpayers were defrauded. So not only was the gentleman given a job which took him from being worth not very much to being a multimillionaire in a very short period of time, in conducting that job, his company was doing business with the Defense Department, where he formerly was head of the Defense Department, and is now under investigation for impropriety. And, thirdly, of course, one way they did raise their profits was by laying off lots of American workers. So this is really a record to brag about. All that leads back to the point that I was trying to make earlier, which is the Governor of Texas came up through the oil industry, has received massive campaign contributions from the oil industry. His Vice President worked in an oil services industry and has become a multimillionaire by dint of a very short stint there and some very generous stock options and other pensions and things. And their public articulations are ridiculous on the issue of energy independence or getting down the cost of fuel in this country, conservation or renewables. They are proposing things that are absurd. Drill ANWR to ship more oil, which they support, to Japan and China, I guess. Yeah, they need oil and gas in Japan and China. I grant you that. So I really have got to wonder what the future would look like for Americans if we find that Exxon, Mobile, BP, Amoco and whatever the name of the one giant oil company is these days is sitting right there in the White House. I do not think that that is going to be a very pleasant future for American consumers and people certainly need to think about that. Not only is there an environmental threat from not dealing with energy efficiency and conservation and renewable resources, which is very large and goes to the issues of global warming which they do not believe in, but there is also an immediate threat to the American public and to the American consumers from the outrageous and extortionate prices that they are being charged by the oil cartels under the excuse of restrictions with the OPEC countries which Vice Presidential nominee Cheney advised the OPEC countries to do. But perhaps since he gave them that advice when he was an oil executive, if he becomes Vice President he will give them different advice and tell them to raise production and lower prices. We can only hope that he will be more generous and enlightened if he achieves office. I would be happy to yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer), for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I think that the area of the environment is perhaps where we find the most stark contrast both between the parties here in the House and between the Presidential candidates. For a minute I would like to turn to energy policy because this is very much on the minds of my constituents. In the West, where there are long distances between towns and many of my constituents live in rural areas, there are no mass transit alternatives and the high price of gasoline is a real problem for my rural communities. Here back, here in the East, where we are stuck today, people are very concerned about projected heating oil shortages, huge run-ups in prices of heating oil and, of course, the energy industry not being particularly competitive. The natural gas folks have taken the opportunity to quickly jack up the price of natural gas to follow that of oil. So even if adequate supplies are available for people in the East to heat their homes during this coming cold winter, the prices are going to be considerably higher than last year. So I believe it is worth examining, particularly, the two candidates for President on the issue of the future of energy policy and how we got here. How did we get into this pickle? Did we not learn back with the gas crunch, back in the 1970s, when people had to stand in line and they had what, the red and the green flags? And people got in fights in lines for gas stations, and you would have to get up two hours before you went to work to go sit in line to buy gasoline for your car. It seemed initially that the U.S. learned a lesson. In the Carter administration, we began a very aggressive policy of development of alternative fuels, conservation, renewable resources; but it all came to a screeching halt with the election of Ronald Reagan. And unfortunately, although the Clinton administration has tried to restore funding in those areas, we have to remember that for the last 6 years, 6 years, Governor Bush likes to talk about well, why has the Vice President not delivered on this or that or that? Why has he not done more on conservation renewable resources, because he has been confronted with a Republican majority who is in thrall to the oil companies. That is why. They do not want conservation renewables. They do not want alternative energy development, and it is really clear. If we just look at this year's budget, we would see that as of this date, the Republicans have cut renewable energy resource $106 million below the President's request in the energy and water bill, and passed a $211 million cut in the President's request for energy research in the Interior bill. What is their solution? Well, we are not quite sure. I mean, Governor Bush and a number of prominent Republicans have talked about drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. Now let us set aside the issues of that spectacular and distant place and the potential for environmental degradation. Just look at the practicality of what they propose. It is laughable. The pipeline today, which is coming from Prudhoe Bay, and I have been to this area, is full. It is full. And it is pumping oil as quickly as it can to the coast, where it is being loaded as quickly as they can on tankers. Now, that should be of some help to us, particularly in the West. But guess what? The Republicans passed legislation at the request of two oil companies in 1996 to export all of Alaska's oil. They have a short memory. We made a promise to the American people. The American people paid for that pipeline, and they were promised none of that oil will go overseas. Guess what? Every single drop is going to Japan and China, where they are paying a lower wholesale price than the same oil companies are charging their refineries on the West Coast for oil which they obtained elsewhere, but profits are up 300 percent. So their solution is we should drill in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, I guess so we can export oil more quickly to Japan and China. I am not quite certain how that helps, but that is the one thing that Governor Bush has been able to say about this. It is clear he cannot say much more, nor can the Republicans over there if we look at the campaign and expenditure reports: Massive contributions from the oil industry. I mean, it is pennies to the oil industry. Their profits are up 300 percent; seven billion dollars in the last quarter, an absolute record. They do not want anybody to rain on their parade, and raining on their parade means we do serious things in this country for energy independence, for conservation, renewable resources, fuel economy standards, mass transit. And time and time and time again our colleagues on that side of the aisle try and kill mass transit. They are engaged right now in trying to kill off Amtrak, becoming the only major industrial nation on Earth without a passenger railroad. They have sat back and delayed better fuel economy standards. Do you really believe Detroit cannot make more economical automobiles? I really think they could; but if they are not forced to do it, well, why should they? And our colleagues on that side of the aisle have been very willingly working with the oil companies and a few of the automobile companies to set back those standards. They do not want to save oil. They do not want to save gas. In fact, former Representative Cheney, the Vice Presidential candidate, felt that his job as the CEO of the Haliburton Company, an oil exploration company, was to drive up the price of oil and he was engaged, as CEO of that company, in colluding with the OPEC countries and advising them to restrict production to drive up the price. Of course, it helped his stock options when he left the company. He said very proudly in the debate with Senator Lieberman that he had not made his dollars in the public sector; he made them in the private sector. Well, guess what? He was playing golf 5 years ago as a lobbyist, a former Member of Congress, with the CEO of Haliburton who took a real liking to him. They had a great time, a good round. He said, I think you ought to take my job, Dick. I am retiring. And he did. So he went from a guy with a lot less than a million bucks to a guy with many millions by working for this oil company. So we have to wonder, who is going to dictate oil policy in the coming administration?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the esteemed chairman said earlier this is a question about whether Congress no longer counts in seeking the truth. The question is bigger than that. The question is does Congress count in seeking the whole truth? This is a scandal of huge proportions. A smaller scandal during the Harding administration, Teapot Dome, rocked Washington and the country, brought down powerful figures. The American people were defrauded of $438 million, at least, by Big Oil. And who is our committee pursuing? A few individuals and a nonprofit. The chairman talked about the huge payments these folks got. Guess what? There may have been some improprieties. It is being investigated. But their huge payments are less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the money of the fraud that was committed by the largest oil companies in the world against the American people, the American public and the Americans' resources. I would be willing to pay one-tenth of 1 percent to uncover these sorts of corruption and underpayment. These are the same companies, of course, that today are ripping off the American consumers. Their earnings have doubled. Number one, of course in doubling of earnings is Exxon Mobil, $58.8 billion. Not bad. They were number three here in defrauding the American public. Now, how much time has the committee spent subpoenaing the very well- paid CEOs and highly paid executives of these companies? None. Zero. None. Not one second has been spent by the majority in investigating what Big Oil did to defraud the American public and whether that fraud is still going on today, because these huge profits are coming from somewhere. We know they are coming from the American taxpayers' pockets. Is it also coming from our precious natural resources? Are they still underpaying? We do not know. Because the committee has no time for that. But it can relentlessly pursue a couple of low-ranking government officials who uncovered this fraud. This is a fraud on the American people. This whole process is a fraud on the American people.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, this is a pretty sad day in the House of Representatives. Yes, as the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) just stood up a moment ago and mentioned, there are a couple of provisions in this bill that actually before today have seen the light of day, have gone through the legislative process, have been voted on by this House, such as the pension reform provisions, which I supported. But one cannot mix those up with a number of other things that have never ever gone through committee, never been voted on, never been published. Sometime between midnight and 7 a.m., behind closed doors, a few Republican leaders cobbled together a year-end tax bill designed to get a veto from the President so they can say, ``Look what we would have done if only Bush, Jr., was in the White House. Look what we will do next year. We will give the HMOs all the money, lock, stock and barrel. We will sell out the patients. No Patients' Bill of Rights. No quality controls. No cost controls. But billions more for the HMO plans, a blank check.'' That is in this bill. There are other outrageous provisions, but I have got to focus on one that is extraordinarily outrageous. Twice, two times, two times the people of Oregon have gone to the ballot box, once by initiative and once by referral from a Republican legislature, to uphold the principle of assisted suicide, death with compassion for people with terminal illness. Now, if the right wingers around here are offended by that, every other day of the week, they are for States' rights. But guess what? When a State does something they do not like, they are not for States' rights anymore. They passed the bill in the House to overturn this, but we got more than a third of the votes. We could uphold the veto by the President. They could not even get the bill up in the Senate. They could not get it through the regular legislative process. And sometime between midnight and 7 a.m., at the behest of a few very powerful right-wing Members of the majority, this legislation overturning the will of the people of the State of Oregon was inserted into this miscellaneous tax bill. This is an outrageous abuse of legislative power.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I'm pleased to rise in strong support of H.R. 782, legislation reauthorizing and amending the Older Americans Act (OAA) and to commend my colleagues for their recent bipartisan efforts to bring this critically important legislation to the floor. Last year, Jo Ann Emerson and I introduced H.R. 773 a bill to reauthorize the OAA. Our reauthorization bill received the bipartisan support of 233 cosponsors and was supported by all major seniors organizations and advocacy groups. Unfortunately, our efforts to reauthorize the OAA were stalled by the House Republican leadership, and an attempt was made to bring an OAA bill to the floor that was not supported by seniors groups. In an effort to allow a vote on H.R. 773 this year, Representative Minge and I filed a discharge petition, which to date has 191 signatures. I'm proud that these efforts, and grass roots activism has contributed to the compromise legislation on the floor today. This bill, H.R. 782, represents a bipartisan compromise that is supported by all the major seniors groups. Throughout its 35 year history, the OAA has enjoyed strong bipartisan support. The OAA is the major vehicle for the delivery of social and nutrition services for older persons. However, the OAA has not been reauthorized since the program expired in 1995. Its programs continue to be funded, but without reauthorization the program's growing needs cannot be met. The typical recipients of Older Americans Act services are women over 75, living on a fixed and very limited income, who need daily help in preparing meals or weekly transportation to a doctor. People over age 75 represent the fastest growing segment of the American population. The primary goal and success of the community service programs, authorized by the OAA, has been to keep millions of frail older persons independent in their own homes as long as possible, avoiding premature institutionalization, and thus saving Medicare and Medicaid resources. The OAA provides a wide range of home and community based services in every locality in the nation. These services include congregate and home delivered meals, in-home care, transportation assistance, elder abuse protection and adult day care. In addition the OAA authorizes funding for nursing home ombudsman services, senior employment programs, senior centers, legal assistance and counseling, and millions of hours of volunteer service by seniors for other seniors are provided. Waiting lists of frail elders in need of these community services exist in almost every town and city in the nation. H.R. 782 will help meet this critical need. I encourage all Members to vote in favor of this legislation.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 1444, the ``Fisheries Restoration and Irrigation Mitigation Act,'' legislation to establish a fish screen construction program for irrigation projects in Idaho, Washington, Montana and Oregon. H.R. 1444 is needed to assist in the effort to protect the Northwest's endangered fish species. The bill aims to decrease fish mortality rates by aiding in the construction of fish screens to prevent juvenile salmon from straying into water diversion projects. Many farms in the Northwest are irrigated by water diverted from streams and rivers. Water is transported to farms via irrigation canals connecting to streams and rivers. The irrigation canals pose a major risk to juvenile salmon, called smolts, migrating downstream to the ocean. Smolts die when they are diverted from the rivers and streams into irrigation ditches. Fish screens placed at entrances to irrigation diversions will prevent smolts from swimming into irrigation ditches and decrease mortality rates for fish stocks in the Northwest. H.R. 1444 sets up a federal program to assist in the construction of fish screens. Under the legislation, participation in the program will be voluntary and a local share of 35 percent of the cost of each project is required. During negotiations over the legislation, there was some debate over which agency will have responsibility for administering the fish screen program. The original House bill put the Army Corps of Engineers in charge of the program while the Senate bill gave the responsibility to the Department of Interior. It was the Senate sponsor's hope that the Bureau of Reclamation, would be responsible for administering the program within the Department of Interior. Under this final version of H.R. 1444, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will have responsibility for administering the program. The Fish and Wildlife was chosen as the lead agency because it has the expertise to most effectively administer the fish screen program. However, I would like to make it clear there are other federal agencies with expertise, capability and an interest in reducing fish mortality at irrigation diversions. Recognizing this, the bill directs the Fish and Wildlife Service to consult with other agencies when implementing the program. I also believe that, in addition to a consultative role, other agencies may contribute funds for programs developed under the authority of the act. I see the contribution of funds from federal agencies other than the Fish and Wildlife Services as especially appropriate from agencies involved in water management in the region and in the operations of the Federal Columbia River Power System, including the Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and the Bonneville Power Administration to contribute the funds for the fish screen construction program. In fact, it is my understanding that the draft Biological Opinion for the Federal Columbia River Power System issued in July calls for offsite mitigation by these agencies. Such mitigation under the draft Biological Opinion can include construction and installation of fish screens at irrigation diversions. I am hopeful that contributions of funds to develop programs under the authority of this act could be credited as offsite mitigation under the finalized Biological Opinion. As a member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee as well as the House Resources Committee, I want to acknowledge the interest that Transportation Committee maintains in the bill and the projects developed under the bill's authority. The Transportation Committee should receive any reports prepared for Congress on the program. The Committee should particularly be included if projects relate to compliance with the Clean Water Act. In addition, the Corps of Engineers and EPA should be consulted on projects developed for compliance with the Clean Water Act. The legislation is supported by numerous conservation, recreation and water user groups including the Oregon Water Resources Congress and Save Our Wild Salmon, a coalition of sport and commercial fishing groups, fishing businesses and conservation organizations. The bill is also supported by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The bill has bipartisan support in the House and Senate. Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) and Representative Greg Walden (R-Ore.), members of the House Resources Committee, are original cosponsors of H.R. 1444. The bill was approved by the House of Representatives on November 9th of last year. A similar measure was introduced in the Senate by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Senator Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) and was approved by the full Senate on April 13, 2000. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this important legislation. I also want to thank my colleagues who helped with this bill, including Mr. Walden of Oregon. Resources Committee Chairman Don Young and Ranking Member George Miller, and Senators Ron Wyden and Gordon Smith. I'd also like to acknowledge the many congressional staff members who worked on this bill including: Kathie Eastman of my personal staff, Lindsay Slater and Troy Tidwell of Mr. Walden's staff; Steve Lanich, Bob Faber and Doug Yoder of the House of Resources Committee; Ben Grumbles and Art Chan of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Joshua Sheinkman, and Eileen McLellan of Senator Wyden's staff; Valerie West of Senator Smith's staff; and former staffers Cynthia Suchman and Martin Kodis.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2389. Stabilizing county payments has been my top legislative priority for the past several years. Enactment of this legislation has been a long time coming. Almost exactly a year ago, I argued for the passage of H.R. 2389 on the floor of the House. Today, I am asking my colleagues in Congress to again support H.R. 2389. This bill is a significant improvement over what the House approved last November and is a product of long and difficult negotiations with the Senate and Administration. Counties in my district are suffering from declining federal timber payments. As a result, county governments are being forced to cut critical county services; work camps, juvenile justice programs, rural deputies and other essential county funded programs. The reduction in Forest Service receipts has also impacted rural road and school funding. Throughout most of the 20th Century, Western Oregon served as the timber basket for the United States. Oregon's fourth congressional district, for many years, had the highest public timber harvest of any congressional district. Its lumber and wood products industry was also the most public timber dependent in the nation. Many rural community economies revolved totally around forestry, lumber, and wood products. Today, timber output on public lands is at an all-time low. The costs to my district from changing public land management include lost high wage jobs, loss of economic infrastructure, and substantially reduced county budgets. I appreciate, and have worked with Members concerned with public land management. I believe a vote in favor of this legislation is a vote of support for better management of Federal forests because you are taking care of the communities which are most impacted. Last year many Democrats had concerns with the environmental impacts of H.R. 2389. I want to directly address those concerns. This revised bill has absolutely no incentive for increased logging. The difficult negotiations over this bill resulted in compromise legislation affording counties increased flexibility for expending guaranteed payments. What was once a potentially controversial set-aside for forest management projects is now expanded to fund salmon restoration work, road decommissioning, forest-related educational training, after- school programs, and critical emergency response activities, search and rescue, and forest work camps. Secondly, the revised legislation has been modified so that any proceeds from a county-funded timber sale are returned to the United States Treasury instead of back to the Forest Service region. While I supported the original House-passed version of H.R. 2389, the revisions address some outstanding concerns expressed by the environmental community and the Administration. Counties in my district have produced a list of non-controversial projects which will fund important activities such as salmon restoration. Finally, I want to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle and in both chambers who have put such long hours and hard work into this legislation. Penny Dodge, Kathie Eastman, my former staffer Jeff Stier, Amelia Jenkins, Chris Schloesser, Erica Rosenberg, Tom Pyle, Doug Crandall, Bill O'Conner, Troy Tidwell, Lindsay Slater, Dave Tenny, Sarah Bittleman, Mark Rey, Sara Barth, Kira Finkler, Brian Kuehl, and Eric Washburn. In addition, I want to thank staff from the Administration who worked in ensuring we could craft a bill President Clinton would feel proud of signing. Thanks to Anne Keys, Chris Wood, and Tom Tidwell. In closing, I want to commend my colleagues in the House and Senate--Representatives Boyd, Walden, Hooley and Goodlatte and Senators Wyden and Craig--who worked extremely hard. I truly appreciate their efforts.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased that the Department of Defense (DOD) authorization act we have before us today makes a number of long awaited, critical improvements to the health care system for our nation's military retirees. These individuals selflessly sacrificed and served our country in order to protect the freedoms we all enjoy. This legislation marks an important step toward providing military retirees with the health care they earned and were promised. However, I am voting against the bill because, as good as the health care provisions are, they don't go far enough. In addition, I am concerned about the astronomical level of overall spending authorized by the bill a decade after we won the Cold War. Let me briefly return to the health care provisions I support. I am pleased the conference report extends TRICARE to Medicare eligible retirees with no co-pays or deductibles. There will also be no enrollment fees or premiums for Medicare eligible beneficiaries. This is one of the provisions in an important bill I cosponsored, the Keep Our Promise to Military Retirees Act. The conference report also expands the mail order pharmacy benefit to all beneficiaries, including those over 64 years of age. This too is similar to legislation I cosponsored, the Retired Military Pharmacy Benefits Act. Expanding the mail order pharmacy program will allow retirees in Oregon, who don't live close to a military base, easier access to necessary prescription drugs. I was also pleased the conference report included a number of other quality of life improvements such as a 3.7 percent pay raise, an accelerated reduction in out-of-pocket housing costs, and targeted supplemental food allowances for the most needy personnel. However, the conference report left out two improvements I have advocated. First, the conference report dropped a provision that was included in the Senate version of the bill to repeal the VA disability compensation offset. I am cosponsor of legislation, H.R. 303, to repeal this offset and contacted members of the conference committee encouraging them to retain the Senate provision. Veterans deserve to keep all of the benefits they earned. I was disappointed this provision was not included in the final version of the bill. I was also disappointed that the key component of the Keep Our Promise to Military Retirees Act, opening up the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan (FEHBP) to military retirees, was not included in the conference report. I have heard from many residents of Oregon who are having difficulty finding providers who accept TRICARE due to low reimbursements rates and burdensome regulations. That may be why TRICARE is sometimes derided by retirees in my district as ``try to get care.'' Therefore, expanding TRICARE as this bill does, may not benefit a number of Oregonians. A more complete option would be offering our military retirees the same health care that Members of Congress and our staffs have access to, the FEHBP. The FEHBP works well in Oregon and would ensure military retirees have the health care security they've earned and deserve. I will continue to fight to make this option available. I am concerned with the overall level of spending authorized by this bill. The bill authorizes $309.9 billion for fiscal year 2001, or more than half of all federal discretionary spending. This is $4.5 billion more than the President requested and $21.1 billion more than last year. We are still funding the Pentagon at 90 percent of Cold War levels a decade after we won. U.S. military spending must also be viewed in the context of what our allies and adversaries spend. The U.S. is spending more than all our adversaries or potential adversaries combined and more than we spend at the end of such Cold War presidents as Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Further, as former Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, Larry Korb, points out, ``The U.S. share of the world's military spending today stands at about 35 percent, substantially higher than during the Cold War. In 1985, at the height of the Reagan build-up, the U.S. and the Soviet Union spent equal amounts on defense. Today, Russia spends only one-sixth of what the U.S. spends on defense. If one adds in the spending of U.S. allies, the picture becomes even more favorable to the United States.'' In fact, the U.S. and its allies account for 65 percent of the world's military expenditures. Russia today spends 85 percent less on its military than the Soviet Union. The combined expenditures of our potential adversaries, as identified by U.S. intelligence agencies, is $13.8 billion, or about four percent of the U.S. budget. In just two days, the Pentagon spends more money than the Iraqi military does in an entire year. In just 16 days, the Pentagon spends more money combined than Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Cuba. In 108 days, the Pentagon spends more than all of these countries plus Russia and China. The U.S. military must remain the highest trained, best skilled, and most technology sophisticated military in the world. However, this can be done with a smaller budget. To do so requires better management, not more money. The Pentagon budget needs to be reevaluated in light of our current national security threats. Cold War weapons systems that serve no national security purpose but merely serve to justify increased budgets should be eliminated. Defense experts of all political stripes both inside and outside government have suggested eliminating or reforming a number of programs like the F-22, the Crusader Artillery system, the Comanche helicopter, and others in order to reduce costs and have a more efficient and deadly military force. Also, as Senator McCain has repeatedly pointed out, the defense authorization and appropriations bills often include billions of dollars in pork projects that are unrelated to national security requirements. This bill is no exception. In this bill, Congress provided the Pentagon billions in unrequested funding such as $150 million for two F-15 aircraft, $125 million for 12 additional Blackhawk helicopters, $51 million for two additional F-16s, and $90 million in additional funding for the DDG-51 Destroyer program. Finally, rather than showering the Pentagon with tens of billions of additional dollars for weapons systems of dubious value and quality, it would be useful to make a serious commitment to eliminating the tens of billions of dollars of waste at the Pentagon. As Representative Kasich, Republican Chairman of the House Budget Committee, noted in a February 2000 report titled Reviving the Reform Agenda, the General Accounting Office annually uncovers billions of dollars going to waste at the Pentagon. It weakens our national defense to have this waste and hurts the morale of our men and women in uniform since it steals funds that could otherwise be spent to boost their quality of life. Mr. Larry Korb, who, as I mentioned was an Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, has developed an alternative defense budget that would be sufficient to meet our national security needs while not strangling and starving the rest of the federal budget. His proposal makes prudent reductions in spending by targeting unneeded weapons, unnecessary deployments, and a downsizing of our forces in recognition of our victory in the Cold War. Mr. Korb's proposal is a serious one that deserves intelligent discussion and consideration in Congress. Again, I congratulate the conferees for the improvements they made on access to health care for military retirees, but I cannot support a bill with the unjustifiable level of spending on weapons systems of questionable value and quality. The Pentagon budget should be based on a realistic assessment of our national security needs, not the wishes of powerful defense contractors or Pentagon brass. I bet the Secretary of Education and the Secretary of Health and Human Services have a funding ``wish list'' too. But, Congress scrutinizes their every request and forces them to prioritize. The Pentagon should be no different.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this long- awaited vital legislation for our counties and schools. I congratulate and thank all those who have been involved in this landmark legislation. I urge my colleagues to support this and send it to the President for his signature.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, today they are going to have a ceremony to celebrate the signing of the PNTR agreement with China downtown at the White House. It would be better if they held a wake to mourn the loss of U.S. jobs and complete capitulation of U.S. interests to the dictators in Beijing. The 1999 trade deficit with China was $68.7 billion. It is headed toward $80 billion this year. The trade deficit with China currently reflects a 6 to 1 ratio of imports to exports, but they only talk about the few goods we export, not about the flood of imports and the value of those imports and the lost jobs from China. The United States International Trade Commission acknowledges that with the adoption of PNTR, and if China joins the WTO, which is becoming very unlikely, they still estimate an increase in the trade deficit with China. Using their model, the Economic Policy Institute estimates the deficits will continue to grow for the next 50 years, reaching a peak of $649 billion in 2048. Our trade deficit with China would not fall below the current level until 2060, 60 years from now, when every currently employed American worker is retired or dead. Even if the trends predicted by EPI only persisted for a decade, our deficit with China would reach $131 billion in 2010. The growth in exports would generate 325,000 jobs, but, unfortunately, the growth in imports would lose 1.14 million jobs. That is a net loss of 817,000 jobs, and those job losses would be reflected across the United States. Let us not kid ourselves: PNTR with China was never about expanding U.S. exports to the Chinese, which would improve our global trade balance; it was about access by large multinational corporations to a low wage, brutalized labor force of 1.3 billion people, in a country with lax environmental standards. The day after the vote, the day after the vote in the House of Representatives, the Wall Street Journal admitted this in a headline: ``This deal is about investment, not exports. U.S. foreign investment is about to overtake U.S. exports as the primary means by which U.S. companies deliver goods to China.'' They went on in the article to quote the chief representative of Rockwell International. ``In China, that is the direction we are going. We are looking for predictability, reliability. With that, Rockwell expects to set up more factories in China.'' The list goes on. GM expects to go from 40 percent Chinese parts to 80 percent Chinese parts. Procter & Gamble, Motorola, Eastman Kodak, Compaq, Coca Cola, a who's who of American businesses are saying this was about them building plants in China with U.S. capital, not about exporting U.S. manufactured goods to China. They talk about all the concessions China made to join the WTO. But China has, as we pointed out during the debate, violated every major trade agreement for the last two decades on trade; all the nonproliferation agreements that they have had; the memorandum of understanding in 1992 on prison labor; in 1996, the bilateral agreement on intellectual property; the bilateral agreement on textiles; and the 1992 memorandum of understanding on market access. Why do we believe them this time? In fact, they are already backtracking. Just after the negotiations, their chief negotiator said that these were only theoretical opportunities for U.S. exports, explaining the incongruity by saying, ``During diplomatic negotiations, it is imperative to use beautiful words.'' China says they still intend to protect machine, electronic, chemical, medical, military, telecommunications, energy, transportation, automobile and agriculture industries, even if they get in the WTO, and now they are saying they will not join the WTO because we are actually asking them to make some changes in their exclusionary practices, to actually begin to allow foreign goods into their country. No, this is a sad day, and not a day to celebrate. A few large multinational corporations based in the U.S. have tilted U.S. policy in a way that is to the detriment of our workers, our national security, the global environment and the people of China and their workers and their rights and any improvement in human rights and labor rights in China. This should not be celebrated; it should be mourned.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Chairman, I yield 7 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).