Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, the chairman of the full committee got before us and he gave us some mind-boggling numbers. Let us reduce it to something a little more understandable. There are a few people who did not make it into his scale. There are 2,600 young people in the State of Oregon getting State student grants this year who will not get those grants next year because we are zeroing out that program. That is 2,600 Oregonians. That is mirrored time and time again around the country. State student incentive grants are gone. They are zeroed out. They can go over and apply for the increased Pell grants. We heard a lot about the increased Pell grants. It is partially true. They are increasing the amount of the grant, but there are an estimated 221,000 students who would be eligible under this year's income guidelines, middle-income kids, who will not be eligible under their new guidelines. So yes, those lucky few who still get the grants will get a little bit more, but 221,000 middle-income American kids, scholastically qualified to go to college, will not get help with Pell grants next year because of changes they are making in the program. Seven hundred fifty-seven thousand Perkins loan kids are put at risk because of the changes we are making in the program. I got student loans, many of you got student loans. Let us remember back to those distant days. There are others here who are much more wealthy, they never needed student loans. Try and have a little compassion. Try and understand the plight of the average American family. I know it is hard when you are at $133,600 a year and you live in the cocoon of Washington, DC to understand average American families. But just try. They need this help so their kids can do a little better, like we did.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentleman yielding time to me. The issue is, you know, will we transfer a small amount of funds, $1.9 million, to the Office of Alternative Medicine. The director's office from which we would transfer this receives $3.5 million more than the President asked for. The Office of Alternative Medicine is receiving the same small amount of funds it got last year. We are in kind of a catch-22. People say to me, well, Congressman, your idea is here, the ideas expressed by Mr. Moran are not clinically and scientifically proven, but we are not funding the Office of Alternative Medicine so we can conduct those scientific and clinical tests. You know, the problem is many of these potential cures are nonpro- prietary. They are not going to be billion dollar drugs. Many of them are natural substances. Many of them have long been in use in other countries. They cannot be patented in the United States under current law. They are orphans. So unless the Office of Alternative Medicine has the budget to research these substances, to do clinical tests, we are not going to move forward. This is preventive medicine. It can save tremendous amounts of money. You can look at folic acid for heart attack prevention. A lot of documentation in other countries, some in this country, but no clinically scientifically proven tests, so doctors are prescribing other things that perhaps are not even as effective. Degylcyrrhizinated licorice, tough word to say, for stomach problems, as opposed to tagamet and other proprietary drugs, not a lot enthusiasm out there for something that you can buy for $15 a month when you can prescribe something for $100 or $200 a month. If we are going to save money, if we are going to have a healthier populous, we need to begin looking at some of these alternatives, and this small amount of money transferred over to the already existing Office of Alternative Medicine, doing nothing to impact the director's budget which will still exceed the President's request, would move this country forward tremendously, and it would meet the goals of all of us who want to see that Americans have the widest range of choices available to them when they or their loved ones have health problems.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the Chair.

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the gentleman from Wisconsin [Mr. Neumann] for his leadership on this issue. This is an example that if Congress applies the proper scrutiny to the Pentagon, the same scrutiny that is being applied to many other budgets of the Federal Government, there are places to save funds. The GAO report that the gentleman mentioned that a Senator from Iowa and I had commissioned found that the OSA aircraft far exceed the wartime needs of the Pentagon, and they are routinely used for missions that have no urgency, missions where the generals or the assistant secretaries involved could make the same trip on commercial aircraft for a fraction of the cost. The helicopters which are used frequently between Andrews Air Force Base and the Pentagon at a cost of between $400 and $1,600 more per trip, saving 10 to 12 minutes, but boosting a lot of egos, are also a place where this amendment would apply. Mr. Chairman, it is time the same strictures are applied to the Pentagon that we are applying to other parts of the Federal budget. This is definitely an area where funds could be saved. Mr. Chairman, I was not here for the opening dialog, but my understanding is that perhaps the committee is going to accept the amendment. I would like at this point, if I could engage the chairman in a brief colloquy.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Florida. I appreciate the fact that the committee will delve more deeply into this issue. Mr. Chairman, I believe the GAO report is a road map talking about perhaps a unified use, a unified command of all of the OSA, operations support aircraft fleet, perhaps under the Air Force and one of the other services. We could meet all of the legitimate travel needs, particularly the urgent travel needs of the Command and Control staff at the Pentagon, and the Uniformed Services for a lot less than we are spending today, and we would avoid embarrassments such as the unfortunate general and his cat who flew back from Italy at a rather extravagant cost.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, we are getting a little afield here. This is not about reinstating the draft. We are not about that. The military does not want it. In fact, the Department of Defense has said peacetime draft registration, not conscription, could be suspended with no effect on military mobilization requirements. Ronald Reagan said, ``I believe this proposal, draft registration, is an ill-conceived one and should be rejected. Advance registration will do little to enhance our military preparedness.'' That was from Ronald Reagan and the Department of Defense. If this is what we think brings patriotism and citizenship to our kids, not good schools, not decent housing, and all the other things we are eliminating here on the floor, this is an opportunity to eliminate an obsolete Federal bureaucracy and put in place a standby system which uses modern computer technology, if indeed a calamity ever comes, and if indeed we ever have to go back to conscription, which I do not believe we will, but we will have that as a standby system. This is 1940's technology. This is not citizenship, except in some bizarre Publisher's Clearinghouse view of the world where you send in a postcard every time you move. That is not teaching our young people the values that we need to instill.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I am going to reserve the balance of my time to close. I believe I have 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York [Mr. Nadler]. (Mr. NADLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington [Mr. Metcalf].

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Florida [Mr. Foley].

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 2\1/2\ minutes. Mr. Chairman, the issue before us is the issue of Selective Service, a vestigial bureaucracy of the cold war. The subcommittee in its wisdom eliminated funding for the Selective Service, reduced it by $17 million, with the idea that the agency itself would be eliminated. My amendment would reduce the funding by $17 million, but put the agency into deep standby; that is, give it an opportunity to enter into the late 20th century and develop off-the-shelf technology in case of the remote happenstance of a conscription in a national emergency, that they could go forward, but not continue the postcard registration that is in effect today. Mr. Chairman, from the beginning there has been no military necessity for Selective Service and the registration, the roster report. Jimmy Carter's 1979 Director of Selective Service found that 8 to 10 days could be saved by registration, but that because of the bottleneck at the training facilities, not one troop would be delivered one day sooner to the battlefield, and of course that day would not cutback very much on training. In the Department of Defense a 1993 report found that there was no military necessity for continuing draft registration. This is an opportunity to save $17 million over the outyears, that is $102 million in our 7-year objective to balance the budget, which I support. For this year, we would move $17 million into the underfunded VA medical account. We would also eliminate an unfunded mandate. It is an unfunded mandate, because every university in every jurisdiction that administers a college or student loan program is required to determine whether or not those students have registered for the draft and are currently registered for the draft and whether their address is current. So we have an opportunity to eliminate a bureaucracy which has no national security purpose and to save funds. This is a great opportunity for this House to go on record, as the House did 2 years ago for 1 month, until we ceded to the Senate, that this is a bureaucracy whose time has passed. We can save money and remove the burden of draft registration from our young people. Mr. Chairman, patriotism does not come in a postcard, unless you have some bizarre Publisher's Clearing House view of what constitutes patriotism and Selective Service. This is the postcard every young man between 18 and 25 must fill out every time they move. It is time to do away with this bureaucracy and cede to the economic realities.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California [Mr. Rohrabacher].

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reserving the right to object. Although one amendment was proposed, it was found to not be germane. It will be 10 minutes on the underlying amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reserving the right to object, Mr. Chairman, I would like to know what time is anticipated on this amendment?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, continuing my reservation of objection, I yield to the gentlewoman from Kansas [Mrs. Meyers] to explain the amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I object.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, if it can be done in 10 minutes, I would not object.

Mr. DeFAZIO

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the question before the House is not whether these leases will be developed. They will be. It is now economical to go down to several thousand feet. They are predicting they will go to 10,000 feet in the future. An article from Forbes, ``Deep and Deeper,'' interviewing a gentleman who has developed a new company for deep-water exploration. ``We think we can make serious money out of 20-million-barrel fields in 15,000 feet of water.'' An article from Business Day, the New York Times, ``Oil Companies Drawn to the Deep,'' and on and on. The fact is, these leases will be developed. The sole question before the House of Representatives and for the Members to think about before they vote is whether or not the free market will prevail and taxpayers will get a fair return for the depletion of these Federal resources. That is the sole question before the House. Do we need to give the oil companies an incredible break for something they are already prepared to do; something for which the technology already exists; something that is already profitable? Do we want to give them a break to keep doing it? That is the question. Are we going to run this Government like a business? Are we serious about balancing the budget? Or do we have $15 billion to give away to an industry that is beginning to again enjoy record profits? Mr. Speaker, I think the average American parked at the gas pump filling up their tank would say, We do not think these companies need a tax break. They are already gouging us at the pump. I do not want them to gouge me in Washington, DC, too. These leases will be developed without a tax break; without a break in the royalties.