Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy hearing from the gentleman. He is right that we are underspending the Land and Water Conservation Fund, but it is not a tax assessed individually on the American people as a sales tax. It is fees paid by the oil and gas industry, which you can say: Oh, they are having to pay a fee to use Federal land, to take and extract a resource. Therefore, it is not quite the same thing.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I reclaim my time. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would research that. He can't name one. Mr. Speaker, we are taking this money. It is a sales tax. The American people are paying it. It is like some of you live in sales tax States. I don't live in a sales tax State, but my people are still paying this sales tax on imported goods, and they expect the money, as Ronald Reagan signed that bill, to be spent on maintaining our harbors. And I can list the needs in my harbors that aren't being met today because the Corps of Engineers are underfunded. But we are hearing, ``We can't do this.'' And the other argument here is: This busts the caps and it breaks the agreement. No. All of this money which has been taken from the American people and deposited in the Treasury is subject to appropriation. So it gives discretion to the appropriators to determine whether or not we will finally honor our compact with the American people and spend the harbor maintenance tax on harbor maintenance, not on illusory deficit reduction. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, the Federal gas and diesel tax hasn't changed since 1993, so the American people are not paying for that. The price of oil goes up and down according to speculation and wars and conflicts and all sorts of other things. But the fact is that is a fee paid by the oil companies that might or might not come out of their profits and goes into a fund, which is being underspent. To be consistent, I fully support and have supported fully expending the Land and Water Conservation Fund on a permanent program, on its intended and legislated purpose, and that is the same thing here. But this is, again, a little different. Anybody, today, who bought a good that came into a port in the United States of America in a container is paying a very small sales tax increment on that good on a bill signed by Ronald Reagan. That money is supposed to be spent to maintain our harbors. Our harbors are silting in. Jetties are falling apart. We can't accommodate, in some harbors that want to accommodate them, the new largest class of ships in the world. The most efficient way to move goods is on water. The least carbon- intensive way is to move goods on water. But we are impeding that by not spending this tax for the purpose for which it was intended and which is legislated in law. That is all we are asking to do here today. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time, and I reserve the right to close.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, ``So we can't do it now. We would like to do it another time.'' I have heard that on the floor for the last 6 years when we did the Water Resources Development Act that came bipartisan and unanimous out of the Transportation Committee when the Republicans chaired it and this year when I chaired it, bipartisan out of the committee. ``We will fix it later, because the technical Budget Act is going to be violated and the caps are going to be violated.'' Well, I would observe that I believe the gentleman was here and the gentleman voted for the tax cuts. And in that, when Obama left office, we had a deficit of $587 billion. This year, it is $984 billion due to, principally, the tax cuts. So waive all the rules when it comes to cutting taxes, but when it comes to taking a tax--and it isn't just collected from the shippers. Every American pays more for every imported good that comes through a port, with the intention, in a bill signed by Ronald Reagan, that that money would be spent to maintain those harbors. As I pointed out, this has been a bipartisan problem: Clinton, Bush, Obama, all of them. And even the budgets proposed by Mick Mulvaney in the name of the President would further cut harbor maintenance. So we would continue to collect the tax from the American people for harbor maintenance and continue to divert it over here. How can you increase the deficit in any rational world when you are spending taxes that have already been collected, that are deposited in the Treasury of the United States and can only be spent on harbor maintenance, and you are not spending them? That is increasing the deficit? Seriously? Oh, come on. Now, I would note that, in a rare moment, we have a list here of 70 organizations who support this legislation, including the Association of General Contractors of America, who are going to key-vote this issue. They realize how critical this is for the future of the American economy, a great maritime nation. The Association of General Contractors will key-vote this issue. We also have the National Grain and Feed Association and a long list of others on here who support this. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record a list of supporters of H.R. 2440. Supporters of H.R. 2440, the ``Full Utilization of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund Act'' (Updated: October 28, 2019) American Association of Port Authorities, American Association of State Highway, Transportation Officials, American Great Lakes Ports Association, American Petroleum Institute, American Society of Civil Engineers, Associated General Contractors of America, Association of Equipment Manufacturers, Big River Coalition, Boat U.S., Cedar Bayou (Texas) Navigation District, Columbia River Bar Pilots, Columbia River Pilots, Columbia River Steamship Operators Association, Dredging Contractors of America, Florida Ports Council, Great Lakes Small Harbors Coalition, Gulf Ports Association. High Line Grain Growers, International Liquid Terminals Association, Lake Carriers' Association, National Association of Manufacturers, National Association of Waterfront Employers, National Conference of State Legislatures, National Grain and Feed Association, National Marine Manufacturers Association, New York Shipping Association, The Northwest Seaport Alliance (NWSA), Oregon Coastal Caucus, Oregon Public Ports Association, Pacific Northwest Waterways Association, Port of Alsea, OR; Port of Arlington, OR; Port of Astoria, OR; Port of Bandon, OR; Port of Brookings Harbor,

Mr. DeFAZIO. So, we can talk a lot about making a major investment in infrastructure. We have been hung up on how are we going to pay for service, transportation; 47,000 bridges need repair or replacement; 40 percent of the National Highway System is deteriorated to the point we have to rebuild it, not just recoat it; and there is a $100 billion backlog in transit just to bring it up to a state of good repair. Those are just the needs in surface. Then you go to wastewater. Then you go to airports. Then you go to drinking water. But guess what? For every single one of those things, we are going to have to raise revenues one way or another. But this one thing, the need to invest in our harbors, we have the money. It is sitting in the bank, and we are being told, because of the budget caps, it can't be spent. Seriously? The President himself said, when I was there, ``Spend that money.'' So if we get the bill through the House, if they don't derail it and it gets through the Senate, the President will sign it, plain and simple. This is common sense outside the beltway, but just budget weirdness inside. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, this has been a long time coming. Ronald Reagan worked with the Democratic Congress and passed a tax, a tax paid by every American, Americans in Arkansas and every other State. Every time you buy an imported good that came through a container into our country, you pay a minuscule sales tax. Most Americans don't know that, but Congress is well aware of it. And for decades, Congress has been stealing that money. The money was intended to maintain our harbors and our ports, critical to a maritime nation, critical to our competitiveness in the world economy. And our ports are in pathetic condition around the Nation. As we hear so much about our crumbling infrastructure, the surface bill that I am working on--our wastewater, our drinking water--we don't have any money. Well, here we have the money. We actually have the money. We have taken it from the American people. They have paid that tax, but Congress is stealing it and not applying it to harbors. This has been a bipartisan problem over the years. It was Republicans and Democrats who created this program, and it has been Democratic administrations and Republican administrations that have been diverting these needed funds. On a daily basis, our largest ports have only about 38 percent of their authorized capacity. That means longer lines of ships out to sea and more costs in the movement of goods and particularly for our exports. I will note that this bill is strongly supported by the Senator from Alabama, Senator Shelby, and Senator Shelby supports it because of the need to export from his State. And guess what? A bunch of those exports come from the State of Arkansas. Why would someone from that State where half of their soybean crop is exported, where they have $3.1 billion in agricultural exports, be opposed to more efficiently moving their goods out of the country and adding costs to their farmers? I don't understand. But there are some people inland who think ports don't affect them. Ports affect every single American every day. Goods that are imported cost more when our harbors aren't dredged properly. And our trade deficit grows when we are not competitive in the world economy. I started working on this 23 years ago with a guy named Bud Shuster. His son, Bill Shuster, succeeded him as chairman of that committee over the last 6 years before we took back over the House. Twice we moved that bill out of the committee unanimously, including provisions to spend the harbor maintenance tax on harbor maintenance. Now, that is a radical idea to some people inside the beltway in Washington, D.C., people who just have their focus right here in Washington. They are not focused on the Nation, the needs of the Nation, the needs of their farmers, the needs of others who are exporting and importing goods, about a great maritime Nation that is falling behind, that isn't going to be ready to accept the largest new ships because we don't have the money to dredge the harbors. Well, we have the money. $10 billion of it is sitting over in the Treasury, but there are those here who do not want to spend that money on its lawful purpose. They will say, oh, my God, it breaks the budget caps. Really? The budget caps? The deficit this year was $397 billion higher than when President Obama left office. Now, who has been in charge the last 2 years? Who wrote those budgets to put us up to nearly $1 trillion? And now we are going to say we can't afford to dredge our harbors, that we should just shut them down. Shut them down. Let them silt in. Let the jetties decay. No, we can't afford it. We can afford it. This is one place with bipartisan support where we can meet our infrastructure needs without raising a new tax on the American people. This administration actually had some concern about the underspending of the tax and the diversion of the money to the Treasury, so the President's budget proposed to cut the tax instead of dealing with our harbors and saying let's spend the money. But that was written by Mick Mulvaney, the President's Chief of Staff, and OMB. The President himself, when I was in a meeting with him discussing infrastructure and I said, ``We have $10 billion, Mr. President, sitting in the bank ready to be spent on infrastructure needs at our ports,'' he turned to Larry Kudlow and he says, ``Spend that money.'' That is where the President stands. That is where Senator Shelby stands. He has been trying to get it into any and every bill moving into the Senate. Every one of these budget deals, he is trying to get it in. So here today we are going to hear arguments that we can't afford to spend the taxes that have been taken from the American people on the purpose for which it was intended. I do not agree with that argument. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on the Budget, Washington, DC, June 26, 2019. Hon. Peter A. DeFazio, Chairman, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman DeFazio: I write to confirm our mutual understanding regarding H.R. 2440, the Full Utilization of the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund Act. H.R. 2440 contains provisions that fall within the rule X jurisdiction of the Committee on the Budget. However, the committee agrees to waive formal consideration of the bill. The Committee on the Budget takes this action with the mutual understanding that we do not waive any jurisdiction over the subject matter contained in this or similar legislation, and the committee will be appropriately consulted and involved as the bill or similar legislation moves forward so that we may address any remaining issues within our jurisdiction. The committee also reserves the right to seek appointment to any House-Senate conference convened on this legislation or similar legislation and requests your support if such a request is made. In particular, the committee should be involved in any discussions regarding creation of adjustments to discretionary spending limits and how they relate to the appropriate level for overall discretionary spending limits. Finally, I would appreciate your response to this letter confirming this understanding, and I ask that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be included in the committee report on H.R. 2440 and in the Congressional Record during floor consideration of

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Stewart) would just stand there for a moment, I will yield him some time for a colloquy. Name another program with a dedicated tax where we are diverting the money over to the Treasury instead of spending it on a well-documented need. Just name another program where we do that.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2440, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2440) to provide for the use of funds in the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund for the purposes for which the funds were collected and to ensure that funds credited to the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund are used to support navigation, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman said he wants healthy trust funds. Well, we got a heck of a healthful trust fund when it comes to harbor maintenance, but we also have a massive deficit in harbor maintenance. We are projecting that we are going to need an extra $15.8 billion between now and just 2020 to meet the demands of larger and heavier ships that are going to come through the Panama Canal and come here. How are we going to meet that? Well, we could spend the harbor maintenance trust fund on harbor maintenance, but, no, it wasn't part of the budget caps. Go out and tell that to people who are dependent upon getting their goods in and out of the Nation's ports and say: Oh, well. Sorry. We can't do that jetty. We can't dredge that harbor because we can't spend the money that we took from you and put in the bank, even though the need is not being met. I don't think that is a real winning subject outside the beltway. But inside the beltway, it resonates with certain people. Again, I am pleased to hear from the National Taxpayers Union. The Association of General Contractors will key vote this issue. This is a program created during the Reagan administration, signed by Ronald Reagan. The money has been diverted by both Democratic Presidents and Republican Presidents for years. It is time to stop doing that. This President expressed personally to me, in a meeting, that he wants to stop diverting that money. Mick Mulvaney, following the line of arguing we are having here, keeps trying to cut the spending on harbor maintenance so they can divert more of the tax paid by the American people to create illusory deficit reduction by putting the money in the bank. How does that reduce the deficit? It doesn't reduce the deficit. It doesn't. In the real world, it is the Budget Act and its definitions that we are talking about here, not the real needs of the American people, not the real needs of the American ports, not the real needs of our shippers, and not the real needs of our exporters. That is what we are talking about here today. We can hear tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. ``We will get to it some other time.'' Twenty-three years ago, I started working on this with Republican Chairman Bud Shuster--23 years, a quarter of a century. This is something we can do for the American people. The President ran on providing trillions of dollars of infrastructure investment. So far, all the budgets written by Mick Mulvaney and that hench-person he has over at OMB now actually have proposed reductions in transportation spending and have proposed reductions in harbor maintenance, even though we have a dedicated tax that can pay for it. In any sensible world, we would take the dedicated tax and spend it on its lawful purpose, and the only lawful purpose is to get into our ports and rebuild the jetties and dredge for the larger ships that are coming to America so we can be more competitive as a maritime nation and maybe reduce the trade deficit. There was a lot of discussion about the deficit. Again, I would just recall that the deficit is up almost $400 billion in 2 years--2 years during which the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House. I think it had something to do with a tax cut, $3 trillion. Didn't hear much about budget caps or deficit concerns. Oh, wait a minute. It is going to pay for itself. It was going to raise revenues. It didn't raise revenues. Revenues didn't get raised. And, oh, by the way, it didn't pay for itself. So I would hope that Members here will realize that the vast number of Americans--I bet if you went out and polled them, saying, ``You are paying a little tax here for harbor maintenance, and it is being deposited in the Treasury to make the deficit look smaller; do you think that is a good idea?'' I think that would be one thing that people on both sides of the aisle, all across America would say, no, spend the money on our ports. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in support of the bill introduced by the gentleman from Minnesota, Representative Stauber. H.R. 1775 would create a task force to review existing methods for presenting notices to airmen and -women, or NOTAMs--maybe we have to add a W after the M, we will work on that-- to pilots. NOTAMs provide pilots with essential real-time information regarding abnormalities or issues in the National Airspace System. For example, NOTAMs alert pilots to potential hazards in the airspace or at an airport, such as, more mundanely, closed runways or taxiways. They are also used during space launches and things like that. While pilots are required to review all NOTAMs before flight, there has been concern about the lengthiness and completeness of the critical information contained in NOTAMs and how the information is displayed to and organized for pilots. Under H.R. 1775 the task force will determine best practices for organizing and presenting flight operations information to pilots in the most optimal manner and make recommendations to improve the presentation of NOTAM information while ensuring their accuracy and completeness. Recommendations from the task force could help prevent future aviation accidents and near accidents. We saw that in July 2017 an Air Canada A320 almost landed on top of five jetliners with more than 1,000 people onboard awaiting take-off at San Francisco International Airport before executing an emergency go-around. The aircraft came as close as 60 feet above one of the planes on the ground. That would have been catastrophic if that plane had just descended a little bit more. There were no injuries, but this could have been catastrophic, as I said. The National Transportation Safety Board determined the probable cause of the incident was the pilots' misidentification of the taxiway for a runway based in part on their ineffective review of NOTAMs. NOTAMs can and must be better and more clear for pilots. I expect the task force established under H.R. 1775 will lead to good work and recommendations that will improve safety, hopefully, in the near future without any sort of lengthy rulemaking process. Mr. Speaker, I urge all my colleagues to join me in supporting the legislation. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I regret that Representative DeSaulnier couldn't be here today because he partnered with Representative Stauber on this legislation. He has been very concerned and has been raising this issue with me repeatedly because of the incident at San Francisco and general concerns he had about runway intrusions and other problems. So he is on an airplane, as we speak, flying here, hopefully, safely. That is unfortunate since he won't be here to actually get credit on the floor, but I want to extend that to him. I want to thank Ranking Member Graves for his support on this and the other Ranking Member Graves for his support on this and Representative Larsen who is probably also on an airplane somewhere. It is rare that I would be here on a Monday, but the harbor maintenance bill attracted me to be here. Mr. Speaker, I urge that this be adopted, and I urge a ``yes'' vote. This is one more little bit of an addition, or a major addition, to our safety culture in aviation in this country with the largest and most complex airspace in the world, and this is a necessary step to make it safer. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1775) to establish a task force on NOTAM improvements, and for other purposes.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 1775.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be standing on the floor here with my colleague, Mr. Meadows, at this time, perhaps a bit more in agreement. So this bill, H.R. 1306, the Federal Disaster Assistance Coordination Act, was introduced by Representatives Meadows and Peters. It amends the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, DRRA, so-called, to help Federal agencies streamline and consolidate information, collection, and preliminary damage assessments following disasters. When a disaster occurs, Americans don't have time to wait around for the bureaucracy to get the assistance that they are entitled to. Today, there are too many barriers that stand between emergency response and Americans in crisis due to a disaster, whether it is a flood, a hurricane, a wildfire, or an earthquake. Whatever the disaster might be, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other Federal agencies are supposed to be there to help. Currently, the implementation of those recovery efforts and that disaster assistance is hampered by inefficient information collection and assessments conducted by multiple agencies. Some of them even come in like a year after the fact and say: Wait a minute. We didn't authorize that. That kind of thing has got to stop. So this will remove information collection barriers that currently impede disaster aid. It creates a working group to identify duplicative assessments--we don't need to waste money on those--and it proposes getting rid of them by administrative rule or, if necessary, by legislation. Further, it would streamline Federal disaster recovery efforts by concluding that a single agency is sufficient to conduct damage assessments to account for the needs of disaster victims. Again, we have multiple agencies with conflicting opinions and numbers, and sometimes they come back to communities and want money back. Really? The other agency approved the money. Oh, but you didn't think--this has got to be done better, more efficiently, in coordination with a single lead. So I am pleased that this bill is before us today. Mr. Speaker, I obviously recommend an ``aye'' vote, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I don't see any additional speakers, so I am prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, just in reference to what the gentleman said earlier, once, when Barney Frank used to serve here, I was friendly with one of the recording clerks, and she would rate how many words per minute people could talk. Barney was faster than me. Sometimes I would be sitting here and people would say: What did he say? And I said: Oh, I can translate that. So I grew up in that era. But, returning to this bill, this is important, and this is not the end of our reforms. As the gentleman from Louisiana pointed out, just think of it this way: We had a very rare, bizarre snow event last winter, and I had five trees fall on my house. The insurance adjuster came out and said okay. We agreed on what it would take to fix the house. Now, imagine if that company had sent five different adjusters on different days and they all came up with different figures. The house was just finished last weekend. It took 9 months, but I would still be waiting, probably, for the repairs to start. That is what happens to people in some of these disasters. They are still waiting for the approvals they need to go forward and do the repairs, or they got funding from one agency for emergency housing assistance and then they are being told they can't get housing assistance or they can't get their home repaired because they took that money, even though no one told them when they took that money that that was going to disqualify them from some other agency. It has got to get straightened out. The Federal Government needs to coordinate this response, and this is just, I believe, the beginning of reforming these disaster assistance programs. And, oh, by the way, the National Flood Insurance Program is broke, and we have got to do something about that, too, including some reforms. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 2502) to amend title 40, United States Code, to require certain prospectuses for public buildings to be made publicly available, and for other purposes.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in strong support of H.R. 2502, the Transparency in Federal Buildings Projects Act of 2019, introduced by the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Palmer). It is simple, but it is important. It is also common sense and contributes to government transparency. Mr. Speaker, you know that the Federal Government through the GSA is the largest lessor or owner of commercial office space in the United States of America. The program can use some improvement, and this will help shine a light on some of the issues and concerns we have as we look for some reforms in the way we acquire property in the most cost-effective manner for the American taxpayer. Sometimes GSA does things that make little or no sense when they get into lease agreements, like they did with the Department of Transportation, a beautiful new building. We are now going to buy the building for the second time, essentially, by having paid for the lease for a number of years. These things can be done more effectively and more efficiently, and this legislation will help set a path to that kind of cost savings. It requires the General Services Administration to publish on its website all prospectuses for leasing, design, or construction activity; update the information quarterly, and maintain the information for no less than 10 years in a readable, accessible, and--this is key--a searchable form, not just post it and it is like, oh, sorry, there is no index. It has to be searchable. Mr. Speaker, this is a good-government bill designed to provide taxpayers with information regarding the GSA's leasing, design, and construction projects for Federal agencies. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this legislation, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on H.R. 2502.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, in closing, again, I congratulate the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Palmer) for proposing this new transparency legislation. I am certain, in the end, it is ultimately going to save the taxpayers money and lead to GSA, perhaps, performing in a more efficient manner. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``yes'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.