Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, then, we would hope that wiser heads can prevail and the ranking member and the chairman can work on this as I speak and as others speak, because I think there will be a number of speeches. There are few Members in this House who represent more tribes than I do. And we have heard a great deal, wonderfully, in the last few moments for the first time, I think, in my career on the floor of the House about concern for the condition of the Indian people and their health and their well-being. And that is wonderful. And I will admit that the Clinton administration has not been a tremendous advocate in these areas. And the gentleman has done a good job. But there is a different situation before us tonight. For whatever reason, the administration is now advocating significant increases, perhaps seeing the past problems and understanding better the problems of the Indian people. I have not seen that concern reflected in either the Republican budget, which passed the House, the subcommittee budget, which passed in the Committee on Appropriations, the full committee budget, or the consideration before us here tonight. We are talking now about 4 percent, 4 percent, I would say to the gentleman from Washington State (Mr. Nethercutt) of the increase proposed by the President. How many additional doctors, doctors' visits, nurses, nurse practitioners, treatments for persistent TB, treatments for alcoholism, very expensive, how much can we pay for with a 4 percent increase? A pathetic amount. Yes, we might help a few. But the needs are greater. The needs are much greater. And I have not seen that concern before here. I am pleased to see it tonight. But I am discouraged to see it being used in an attempt to thwart money for the arts, that won fair and square in a tough vote that was held for 25 minutes on the floor of the House while the whip and others on that side attempted to twist arms because a very strong political base on that side opposes the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. You lost the vote fair and square. It is not a lot of money in the context of this bill. We could do better than $22 million, I believe, for the American Indian people. And we can do at least as well as the vote which prevailed by the gentlewoman from New York with great persistence.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. In reclaiming my time, this is truly a serious issue. Again, I would hope that perhaps cooler heads can prevail, and they can find other offsets in the bill. I hope we could find $100 million for Indian health and that we could find the minimum amount that the gentlewoman already gained for the arts and humanities. The arts and humanities are important. They are important to us as a culture, as a Nation. They are important to kids who drop out of school. They are important to people to enrich their lives. And health is vitally important for people to be able to enjoy some of those cultural privileges of their own culture, of the culture that might be provided in the amendment by the gentlewoman from New York. I am just bemused. I am saddened, and I am hopeful that we can somehow come to an accommodation of both needs in this bill. I think the money is there.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I would hope it would be offered as an amendment and hope that, if there is sincerity on both sides, that that is where we will end up.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I will first try a unanimous consent request to deliver on the previous gentleman's intent. I would make a unanimous consent request that we fund the arts, the additional amount which was passed in the previous vote, and that we increase funding for Indian health by the amount proposed by the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Nethercutt). I make that as a unanimous consent request in the spirit of the gentleman who just rose.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for that. I do note that before I would consider that, the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps) is particularly concerned. I would like to give her opportunity to speak on the amendment and then we can consider further conversation.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I would first like to recognize that the ranking member, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and the chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula), have been helpful in rectifying some of the problems with the recreation fee demonstration program. Last year, the gentleman from Oregon and I and others brought to the floor the fact that people were required to purchase a multiplicity of passes, up to six or eight different forest passes, just to recreate within their own State at a cost of $25 each. And after a meeting convened by the chairman, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Regula) and the ranking member, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), with the chief of the forest service and the assistant Secretary and other assorted bureaucrats, they did make the program better and simplify it; and I thank the two gentlemen for that. But this amendment goes to another issue. There are certainly sites where fees are appropriately charged, developed, recreation sites, campgrounds, special use sites for Park Service and all of those other sorts of developed sites with high costs. But the question that this amendment raises before this House is whether or not we should charge people to drive their car on a logging road or an old forest service road, active or abandoned or even obsolete, and park by the side of the road and go for a hike in the woods, whether there is a trail there or not. I think there is a real question of equity, but there is an even greater question of enforcement. The Forest Service is going driving 10 miles, 15 miles, 20 miles outside some of these roads to find that someone has not paid a $5 fee and giving them a citation. I had a woman in my district who parked where she had customarily parked just outside of an area being told that was all right. A new ranger came on, and they gave her a citation. She said okay, it is a warning. That is fine, I will leave. And the guy says she will have to pay the fee; she did not. She went home, 2 days later, two Forest Service law enforcement officials showed up at her house to cite her. They threatened to handcuff her and take her away. This is the citation. This is absurd, what a waste of Federal resources. There are real crimes going on in the Federal lands. Is this what our law enforcement officers should be doing? Should we be charging people to go out into dispersed areas just to park their car on a logging road? I believe not. In fact, an evaluation that was done by the Department of Interior and the Department of Agriculture at the requests of this body finds substantial problems with this program of enforcing dispersed recreation. They cite the extraordinary costs, the loss of law enforcement personnel from other activities, the loss of revenue because the funds, if they collect any, in terms of penalties are forfeited and go not back to the agencies and not into this program. The courts are refusing to hear these cases. The Federal judges and magistrates are saying, we are hauling people into my court for what? For failure to may a $5 fee to park their car on a gravel road out in the forest? This is absurd. So I really would suggest that this amendment has great merit, to say that the extraordinary costs and the penalties that are being imposed are not merited for dispersed recreation, this is targeted, would not affect the parks, would not affect developed recreation sites, would not affect campgrounds but would merely say we are not going to charge people $25, $30 I guess now for the annual fee, or $5 a day, to park their car somewhere in a remote area of the forest, where there are no recreation facilities.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I would note the Pennsylvania delegation is slightly out of order. We have, almost have the deck chairs on the Titanic arranged through this debate, and that is interesting, because as a number of people who have spoken before me have said quite truthfully, there is not an adequate amount of money in the Forest Service budget to perform its many diverse functions. Mr. Chairman, I offered earlier an amendment to increase the recreation budget. We earlier had an amendment to take $4 million out of the wild horse management program of which I am a big supporter. But it was to go to a slightly higher priority, which is fighting fires and fire suppression and fuels management. Now, these are choices this Congress should not be forced to make. We should not be starving these resource management agencies. We should be investing in the future, the future of our forests, not starving them. That is what we are doing. Do not try and treat them like cash cows. This amendment, in the past, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) and before that Ms. Furse and others have offered amendments similar to this; but in those amendments, they actually cut the Forest Service budget. From those amendments, they actually transferred the money to other agencies or transferred money to deficit reduction. Tonight the amendment before us is trying to divide a pie which is too small. It is trying to decide whether we should undertake crucial activities on the wildlife side. If we do not fulfill those functions and those activities, we will not be harvesting any timber anywhere because we will not be meeting the needs of the forests as a healthy ecosystem. On the other side, we have the Forest Service struggling to implement in my region the Clinton forest plan, and we are in gridlock again. If fact, I have asked the Clinton administration to begin an early plan update because I believe the plan has failed. It has failed both to protect old growth and to deliver what it said would be predictable supplies of timber. So the question becomes on this amendment, what can we do. Well, unfortunately, we are slicing up and dicing up the pie into little bits and pieces. The amendment of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu) will leave an increase of $10 million in the account for timber harvesting. It will transfer some money to another underfunded account. This is a difficult choice for those of us who live in areas more than half owned by the Federal Government, someone who represents a district like mine that has been formerly the most public timber- dependent district in the United States. So the question becomes, what should we do here? I am going to recommend that this amendment is not going to break the forest gridlock. It is not going to resolve the controversies. It is not going to be an incredible setback for the Forest Service on the timber management side. There are other monies that have been allocated to the committee by other forms of vegetation management. I am certain in conference they can move some of those funds around. I am certain that they can deliver on the promise they made to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu). We will both better fund wildlife and better fund reasonable timber management. But I do not think unless a change is made here tonight that necessarily that problem will be fulfilled. I believe, if this amendment passes, we will get more money for both accounts when we come out of the conference committee. So I will support the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman previously spoke a lot about energy independence. I support energy independence with alternative energy, energy conservation, and a whole host of other things. I did vote against the amendment to strike money from real investigation and real research earlier in energy efficiency on an amendment previously. But this is giving more money to the oil industry which is engaged with its OPEC partners in price fixing. I wonder if the gentleman is a cosponsor of my legislation to require the President, the Metcalf legislation, of which I am a cosponsor, to require the President to file a WTO complaint against their WTO illegal price-fixing activities. They are proud of it. The president of Venezuela says, hey, we are restraining production, we are fixing prices, and we are sticking it to the Americans. And our President and this Congress is silent on the issue. Giving $53 million to a multihundred-billion-dollar industry, which is price fixing with overseas partners, is not good. Do my colleagues think they are not happy with the high price of oil? Do my colleagues think that this money is being spent to bring down the price of oil, $53 million would bring down the price of oil?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, does the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) really believe it is necessary for the taxpayers of the United States to socialize and/or subsidize our oil industry, which is immensely profitable, is price gouging, involved in supporting OPEC in their price fixing, that we need to give them taxpayer dollars to increase their production to go back to old reservoirs and get more production? Does the gentleman really believe that? I mean, does he really believe that they do not have an incentive from the marketplace to go and do this, we have to give them a taxpayer subsidy? This is taxpayer dollars. We are underfunding recreation which millions of Americans enjoy. Yes, we need to become energy independent. This is not about energy independence. It is about subsidizing a vastly profitable industry. How much is $50 million? Is it 1 minute or 2 minutes' profit for that industry?

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, this is an important amendment. As the esteemed chair of the subcommittee refers to the Forest Service as the working man's country club, it is an everyday recreation area for tens of millions of Americans across the western United States. I think everyone in this body would agree, certainly including the members of this subcommittee, that our recreation needs on the Forest Service lands are not being met. There is an extraordinary backlog in trails and facilities maintenance. There is virtually no construction of new trails, with the exception of volunteer activities. Recreation is up phenomenally, and the Forest Service has no capability of dealing with it. This amendment would take money from the petroleum and natural gas industries, the Department of Energy budget. I believe that those industries are quite capable on their own, particularly given the huge run-up we have seen recently in oil prices, in conducting their own exploration, for instance. I do not think that the Federal Government needs to be providing incentives for exploration and in production for the oil industry. Reservoir life extension and management? Certainly the industry, with these extraordinarily high oil prices and gas prices, has its own incentive plus huge tax breaks to invest in that area. Likewise, for exploration and production of natural gas. I just met with my natural gas folks from the Northwest, and they said things are going swimmingly. They are drilling all sorts of new wells up in Canada and in parts of the United States and they did not give me any inkling they felt they needed a taxpayer subsidy to undertake very profitable exploration activities. But we do know that we do not have enough money to fund everyday recreation needs of tens of millions of Americans in the western United States on Forest Service lands. So I think this would be a really great trade-off. Let us give average Americans a break, a break they are not getting from the oil and gas companies today when they go to the pump. It is costing them a heck of a lot more to get to the forests because of the gas prices that they are being charged. And when they get to the forests they find the facilities are overcrowded, outmoded, inadequate. They find their trails are blocked by downed trees. They find that the same areas they have been going to for 30 years are no longer maintained by the Forest Service. Sometimes the roads are gated because the Forest Service cannot afford to maintain them and do the work. This is an amendment for average Americans. Let us give them a break today. Let us take their tax dollars and spend them on something they want, need and enjoy, and not give it as a subsidy to the petroleum and the gas industry. I would urge Members to support my amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, during the debate on the fiscal year 2001 Department of Defense appropriations bill, there was a rather rancorous debate about the future of the F-22. I submit for the record a devastating critique of the F-22 written by retired Colonel Everest Riccioni as well as a letter he wrote correcting misstatements made during the House floor debate. Colonel Riccioni is not just any critic of the F-22. His credentials are impeccable. He was one of three legendary ``Fighter Mafia'' mavericks who forced the Pentagon to produce the F-16 to improve U.S. air superiority. He served in the Air Force for 30 years, flew 55 different types of military aircraft, and worked in the defense industry for 17 years managing aircraft programs, including the B-2 bomber. We should heed his warning that the F-22 will not work as advertised. June 8, 2000. Representative Randy Cunningham, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Cunningham: Your comments during yesterday's floor debate require response. The comment about the F-15 not keeping up with the F-22 does not establish the existence of supercruise, and reflects your lack of insight into supersonic cruise. Cruise means the ability to cover distance and it is not a speed. Proof of supercruise is established by a number, specifically the number of miles that can be covered while at a supersonic Mach like 1.6. This number is never forthcoming because few know the definition of supercruise or are unwilling to reveal it. The fact that the F-16 flown by General Ryan could not keep up with the F-22 is again an irrelevant speed statement on the relative speed of the two aircraft. The requirements for the F-16 specifically stated that there was no requirement that it fly faster than Mach 1.6, a fact probably unknown to the general. Had the general been flying a 40 year old F104A- 19, he could have flown formation with the F-22. Pragmatic supersonic cruise is the ability to sustain significant supersonic speeds (like 1. 6-1.8) for combat relevant distances. For perspective, the original design mission for the Advanced Tactical Fighter, cum F-22 was a 100 mile subsonic cruise-out to the Russian border, 400 NM supersonic penetration at 1.6 Mach, consumption of the combat fuel, a 400 nautical mile supersonic return to the border at Mach 1.6, with a 100 NM return to land with normal reserves. A true measure of the super cruise potential of the F-22 is--the penetration supersonic distance that can be flown at 1.6 Mach out and back, with the same 100 nautical mile legs and the same fuel reserved for combat and landing reserves. The supersonic penetration distance is the validation of supercruise. This number has not been established. The supercruise potential of the F-22 remains unknown. If that number is 50 NM it is a fruitless achievement that the F-104 can easily fulfill using its afterburner. A 100 NM penetration can also be accomplished by the F-104A-19. A 200 NM penetration is not a great achievement; 300 NM means the F-22 is a pragmatic supercruiser, 400 NM will remain a dream. The distance number validates whether the F-22 has it, nothing else. Retention of the wrong definition will forever retain confusion. Sincerely, Col. Everest Riccioni, Rancho Palos Verdes, CA. The F-22 Program--Fact Versus Fiction (By Everest E. Riccioni, Col. USAF, Ret.) The Dream To provide the USAF Air Superiority for the period following 2005. To Conduct--Offensive Counter Air Operation deep in Russia--Its Primary Mission (300 Nautical Mile (NM) Combat Mission--100 NM cruise to the point of penetration--200 NM supersonic ingress and egress plus combat and fuel reserves). To provide a 750-800 Aircraft Fleet to replace the aging F- 15 Fleet. To be designed to a Unit Flyaway Cost Limit in 1986 dollars--$35 Million. To control cost by conforming to a Weight Limit--50,000 lbs (Cost and Weight comparable to the extant F-15--clearly the imagined F-22 would have been a bargain). Dominant Characteristics: High Stealth; Effective Supersonic Cruise; Ultra-High Performance and Maneuverability; and Superior Avionics for Battle Awareness and Effectiveness. Additional Aims: To Rejuvenate the Fleet (Reduce the average age); Design for Low Maintenance (3 man-hours per sortie); and Form a High-Low Mix with the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) fleet. the realization

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, how many strikes would the gentleman accept?

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Chairman, we have Loral down here on 12/8/89, $1.5 million, procurement fraud. The gentleman asked about a specific firm, and I was not going to read specific firms, but Loral has one conviction in 1989. I am looking to see if there are subsequent convictions of Loral. Oh, yes. Loral Electric Systems, DeFective pricing, 10/95, $1.55 million. Loral only seems to have two convictions. So under my previous amendment, they would not have been barred, and I do not know if there is pending litigation against them, but many other firms would be. Although under the modified amendment, which is in order, they would be barred because they have two convictions. So I would hope that the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) would reconsider. If he has concerns about barring firms who have only one criminal fraud indictment against them, DeFrauding the American taxpayer, DeFrauding the military and jeopardizing our military security, that then he would go back and reconsider, accept the original amendment, or accept this amendment with the idea of going to 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 strikes, whatever he thinks would be necessary in the conference with the other body. Personally, I think three strikes with no retroactivity having been put on notice by the $1.2 billion of fines paid in the past would be adequate. I would really hate to have to go and put Members on record on this vote. I think it is a very difficult vote for Members to cast. We would hear that this would hurt the defense of the country because most of our defense contractors have committed fraud at least once and been convicted of it. That is true. That is why I wanted to go with three fraud convictions.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.