Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I rise to support the budget proposal of the Congressional Black Caucus. I am voting for this budget, not because I favor every detail, in fact there are choices that the authors of this budget have made to which I strongly object. However, the general trust of this budget is on target. This is a balanced budget. It gets to balance through reasonable cuts in corporate welfare and reductions in waste at the Pentagon. This budget protects Social Security and Medicare. And it provides for an increase in the most important investment we as a nation can make--education. The Republican budget, on the other hand, gives a huge tax cut for profitable corporations an the wealthy. It actually increases military spending, while making deep cuts in Medicare. What's worse, it cuts Social Security cost of living adjustments, violating the promise made by Republican leaders. The Republican budget is a prescription for the continued decline in living standards for working American families.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, balance the budget? We agree, but not this budget, with its mean and misshapen priorities. Balance the budget and start with a tax cut for the largest, most profitable corporations and families earning over $200,000 a year? Tax cuts paid for with $304 billion of cuts in Medicare and qutting programs important to other working American families? No, that is not the way to balance the budget. Mr. Chairman, let us talk about four generations of one Oregon family. We have here 74-year-old Doris Wilson. She visited my office last week and talked a little bit about Medicare. She had to leave her $100 prescription at the pharmacist because she is retired on Social Security benefits and she could not afford to take it home with her. We are going to make her pay another $1,000 a year for Medicare? That is what this budget proposes. Gerri Graff, after she was divorced and her husband walked on the child support, she had a little trouble making ends meet with her secretarial job. She got food stamps for a year and a half, and now has been a productive and taxpaying citizen for many years, without any help from the Federal Government. Tandi Graff, a teenager single mom, is working in my office today, thanks to the jobs program, with a healthy kid, Jordan, thanks to the WIC Program. She had a little problem with a potential underweight and complicated pregnancy. These are the people who have benefited by the proper priorities in this country, the people we want to help, the people we want to extend the ladder of opportunity to, so they can climb up and live the American dream. We do not need to help the wealthy and the Pentagon anymore.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his clarification. It certainly sounds better than the way it was described by some of the earlier speakers in terms of this portion of the bill. However, I guess I will go back to a problem I have had throughout the bill, which is in a number of critical cases we have seen the bill essentially written, rewritten, and amendments sort of mutating as we go along in this process, and no capability of really explaining them. Some might remember my debate over the section 401, hydropower licensing, last Thursday night, where the authors of the substitute amendment could not explain it. They could not explain the laws they were referencing, and what principles would still apply. Mr. Chairman, our water resources are too precious, just too precious, to have either outside influences, polluters, or to have others writing on the back of the napkin and rewriting these laws. This should be a more deliberate process. Certainly, in this case, I thank the gentleman for his clarification. It seems that they have substantially amended the original version and improved it, but I think that this is not the first instance during the consideration of this bill where we have had this problem. I think it should be instructive to the chairman and others that this is not the best way for such an important piece of legislation to be rushed through the House. I do not see a rush. The Clean Water Act has been working substantially across the country, working well. It is one of the few success stories that we can all point to in terms of Federal enforcement. We should modify it carefully and deliberately, where there has been excess, improve upon it. Our water resources are too precious, our progress has been so hard won, that we should not go backward.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Is there another version?

Mr. DeFAZIO. So you are working on another version as we speak?

Mr. DeFAZIO. There is some confusion on this side of the aisle then regarding exactly what it is we are voting on at the moment. I heard the issue of States----

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I have heard an interesting interpretation of this supposedly de minimis amendment. There are a couple of things I find disturbing. Obviously on lines 8 and 9 we strike the word shall and replace it with may, and on page 4 we go to elimination of requirement of enforceable mechanisms. So in fact this does become----

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, what we have been hearing here is, we still, I still see a line 7 and 8, shall and may. So that part has not changed. This was just handed to me. And then I guess perhaps you took out the enforcement part. So enforcement is still in, but it is now, we are going to enforce something that you may do or you may choose. The problem I have here is water pollution does not really follow State boundaries. I heard a lot of talk about States rights here. But water pollution does not rather strictly adhere to States' boundaries. And many of the bodies of water we are talking about in this bill deregulating happen to affect more than one State. In my region, we border California and Washington. We have upstate concerns, upstream concerns with Idaho, Montana, another country even, dealing with the Columbia River. So I have a concern when we begin to move major mechanisms we have to deal with precious coastal estuaries, fragile estuaries, extraordinarily valuable resources in terms of shellfish where we have had shellfish beds close, spawning grounds for our endangered salmon. And we are going to go to something that says, you may, you may, if you so choose, comply. Well, certainly, I do not believe my neighboring State of Washington or California is going to do anything to our detriment, but on the other hand I would be a lot more comfortable if we were applying a uniform Federal standard in this bill and not weakening that standard.

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

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

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I guess the bottom line here is that we often get embroiled in these formula debates here in the House. And I have heard some seemingly convincing arguments on the other side enumerating the number of States that would benefit under one formula or the other. But, of course, part of what is neglected in that argument is the population base on those States. Actually, under the Lipinski amendment, the math is pretty simple for 299 Members of this House and for the constituents of 299 Members of this House. There is not enough money to do everything we need to do in wastewater treatment. I think there should be more money in the budget. I think the Republican budget proposed yesterday by slashing funds for infrastructure and wastewater treatment is going the wrong way. I would be willing to support a higher emphasis on these needs in our Nation. But given the fact we are fighting over a shrinking pie here, there is a pretty basic equation. That is, if you lose under the committee bill, which 299 Members of this body do, far more than a simple majority, those same 299 Members still lose under the Bateman substitute to the Lipinski amendment. So I would suggest, despite all the Rube Goldberging and everything else that is going on around here, that we get back to the basic facts. And that is, the needs are not met in those States represented by 299 Members any better than they are in the other States represented by a minority of Members in this House who would benefit under this amendment. So I would strongly suggest that any of those 299 who vote to gut the Lipinski amendment will perhaps have some explaining to do when they go home to their constituents.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, my understanding is you attempt to achieve 84 percent.

Mr. DeFAZIO. All right; go ahead. I was just trying to get straight for Members what we are voting on. We are voting on the amendment offered as a substitute for the amendment offered by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Emerson].

Mr. DeFAZIO. This vote is on the amendment offered by the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Emerson] as amended; is that correct?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman would yield further, the point is we are exempting them unless it is inconsistent here, and I guess, as the gentleman knows, I think that this is an amendment of such import to the West, to unveil it with no opportunity to have it reviewed by the rather lengthy list of attorney generals--four pages from the West; I am not sure how many are on here, and other States other than the West: Delaware, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine. Well, looks like we went to the East: Pennsylvania, New Mexico, et cetera. It looks like most of the State attorney generals signed this, and to not have an opportunity to run it by all the attorney generals that objected to the original iteration, it seems again, as my colleagues know, that this is something that would perhaps be better left until Tuesday to at least give some of us an opportunity to review it with attorney generals.

Mr. DeFAZIO. So part 1 of the Federal Power Act includes all of those concerns and additions the gentleman just listed.

Mr. DeFAZIO. The qualification I see in here is for such a project, is inconsistent with the purposes and requirement of part 1 of the Federal Power Act. Again, not having been given the time to go back and review the statutes, what protections are in part 1 of the Federal Power Act. Are all the things that the gentleman just mentioned included in part 1 of the Federal Power Act.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. I just like to point out, and I do not know the gentlewoman's relationship with the gentleman, but Allen G. Lance, attorney general of Idaho, was opposed to the last iteration of this that he saw, and I do not believe he has had an opportunity to review this one.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield again?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Maybe I misheard the gentlewoman, but I understood her to water because of quality, water quality, concerns. Well, I would hope that would be the case, and I would imagine that most people in Idaho would hope that would be the case.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield on that point?

Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman will yield, in my State we got to a final answer. FERC approved the project, the State disapproved it, and the project did not go forward, and I would hope that would be the result, but under this amendment FERC would approve it, the State would disapprove it, and FERC would then preempt the State, and I am puzzled that a Western Member would support----