Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, if you listen carefully, you can hear drums faintly in the background. It is not a prayer circle. It is John Bolton down at the White House, beating the drums of war. This is the same John Bolton who thought invading Iraq was a really, really great idea. In fact, he said, ``I expect that the American role actually will be fairly minimal.'' Minimal? The greatest foreign policy mistake in the history of the United States of America fairly minimal? Now he wants to do the same thing in Iran. Iraq was one thing, with Saddam Hussein in a relatively small country. Iran? Really, buddy? He hasn't seen any problem around the world that you can't change by regime change: North Korea, regime change; Venezuela, oh, that worked out really well a couple of weeks ago, regime change; now Iran. What about Russia? He is kind of quiet about Russia. I wonder why that is. It might have something to do with his boss. Now, his boss goes back and forth: War, no war. War, no war. I don't know. We have to hope Bolton doesn't win this debate. He has never repented. He said, in 2019, ``I still think the decision to overthrow Saddam was correct.'' The same guy said, ``I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.'' Chicken hawk.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, 2 weeks ago, the Trump Justice Department filed in court to say that the entire Affordable Care Act should be voided. The President said: Don't worry. We are going to have a great and better plan to replace it. Then Mitch McConnell said: No, no, we are not doing that. Then Trump said: Well, we will run on healthcare in 2020 and promise a better plan. And his consultant said: No, better not do that. So now he has a secret plan that will be unveiled after the next election to replace the Affordable Care Act. Twenty-one million Americans would lose their insurance if it went away tomorrow. We had another guy running for President back in 1968, Richard Milhous Nixon. He had a secret plan to end the Vietnam war. Actually, he didn't have a plan to end the war, but it helped him win the Presidency. Shame on us if a fake promise to have a better healthcare plan undisclosed will come out after the election. 133 million Americans have preexisting conditions. They would lose their healthcare at the discretion of the health insurance industry, 312,000 in my district alone. Twelve million Americans would lose their expanded Medicaid, 350,000 in my district. Medicare would go broke 4 years earlier if President Trump prevails in repealing the Affordable Care Act in its totality.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, may I ask how much time remains.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I won't use that much. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I would like to have a quote here from someone who, I think, is quite prominent: You go under; you go around; you go through it. What they need is more manpower and more technology. That was the Acting Chief of Staff for the White House, Mick Mulvaney, when, perhaps, he was a little more independent as a Member of the United States Congress. That was August 25, 2015. I would ask: What has changed since then? Well, he now works for the President. That is a change. Donald Trump, during his campaign, was real hardline on immigration, but he kept forgetting to mention immigration in some of his speeches. So his staff came up with a mnemonic. They said: Well, he is a builder. If we say ``wall,'' he will remember it. And the President did. It was just an afterthought. It was: How are we going to get him to give his hard line on immigration during his campaign speeches and get rousing going. Let's use the wall. The wall then became a life unto its own, as a campaign promise, not as something that is effective. As we have talked about before, the drugs, use a trebuchet or a catapult. Use a drone, tunnels--really common, tunnels--and, of course, legal border crossings. This is an end conclusion to a campaign promise for his base but not what is in the best interests of the United States of America in terms of preventing the shipment of illegal drugs. Now, I don't know where the gentleman came up with that new statistic that three times as many drugs were intercepted outside the ports of entry, unless he was using the Coast Guard, which he may have been, because the Coast Guard intercepted more drugs than every other agency of the Federal Government, combined, in the maritime route. Unfortunately, as the former Commandant of the Coast Guard said: We can identify 80 percent with our intel, 80 percent of the drug shipments coming in on a maritime basis, but the Coast Guard only has the resources to intercept 20 percent. So I guess that is probably where that statistic came from. The Coast Guard is doing a great job with inadequate resources. In the bipartisan compromise, they got some additional money for air and marine assets, three multi-enforcement aircraft. They could use a heck of a lot more. Why don't we get that 80 percent? Why don't they have resources to get that 80 percent that they know about, and then let's get better intel and get the other 20 percent. And then let's scan 100 percent of the vehicles coming across the border. I have been at the border, when, through intuition, a Border Patrol agent found drug smuggling. I just happened to be there that day. I mean, it was just sort of a: Whoa, Congressman, you might like to see this. The guy drove up to the border. He had a birthday cake and a bottle of tequila on the seat. The Border Patrol guy said: Hmm, something is suspicious. Take the truck over there. They scoped out the gas tank. They found big blocks of drugs in the gas tank. Was that because we had sophisticated technology and when the guy pulled the truck up we could use that technology? No, it was the intuition of the Border Patrol agent. I said: How did you know to go and really search through that guy's vehicle? He said: Well, there was nothing on his key ring. There was only one key in the ignition. He was a throwaway. The cartel was probably paying him 10,000 bucks or something to drive that stolen or purchased pickup truck across the border concealing drugs, and the human element caught that guy. There aren't enough Border Patrol agents. They have openings. They are not adequately compensated. They weren't paid during the shutdown, but they were still working at the border. They are the first line of defense. But they also need new technology. We can't install all that technology to scan 100 percent of the vehicles coming through unless we invest a lot of money in improving the border crossing because we will have trucks backed up 100 miles back into Mexico because of the amount of commerce that comes across. So what are we going to do? We are going to build a stupid, static wall over there and over there, and we are still going to let, probably, 85 percent of the vehicles go through without applying technology. Guzman, sitting in his jail cell, is probably just chortling over this. He is saying: Boy, are those Americans stupid. Why don't they get the technology they need to scan the cargo that we are hiding in very sophisticated ways in tractor trailers, in pickup trucks, in individual passenger vehicles? Why don't they intercept the drugs that are coming in through the oceans that they even know about and they are not intercepting them? No, we are going to build a dumb wall. And, by the way, when the Republicans were in charge, we had a vote on that and it failed. If this was such a crisis and such a great idea when the Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the White House, why didn't they make it a priority? Well, they didn't make it a priority because they thought it was a stupid idea. But now it is a political thing. This is a victory for the President. It excites his base. It energizes his base. He has to have it, so he declares a national emergency. The emergency is political. It is not national security. It is not drugs. We have a humanitarian crisis at the border--yes, we do--and what is a wall going to do about that? They come to the border. They stand there and they say: We want to apply for asylum in the United States. If they come across in a remote area, they hope they come across a Border Patrol agent because they want to surrender at the moment, right there, and get some shelter and get medical care. They are now organizing busloads to come up from Guatemala and Honduras. We are not dealing with the root problems down there, and we are not dealing with the smugglers who are now hiring very nice, luxury buses as opposed to the old ride on that killer train that people used to take to come up, when there were smugglers who would often rape them, kill them, rob them, whatever else. Now they have converted to: Oh, let's put them in a luxury coach and they will have rest stops and everything else. This has become big business. Why aren't we doing something about that? The wall will do nothing about that--nothing. Why, why, why are we going to waste billions of dollars on a medieval fortress that won't work? I urge my colleagues to vote and override the veto of the President of the United States; restore the integrity of the Congress of the United States and the appropriations process under Article I of the Constitution of the United States. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I was just looking up that most of the deaths--or many-- are due to fentanyl, and the fentanyl, of course, is all produced in China. Some of it is shipped via UPS, FedEx, and the international postal service. We lack the screening capability to deal with that. Much of it does go to Mexico and is then smuggled into the U.S., but it is not the classic myth of these people carrying backpacks through remote areas of the desert where, if we only put up a wall, the wall would stop them from getting the drugs into the U.S. If people had paid attention to the extraordinary trial of El Chapo Guzman in New York, which I did, there was testimony after testimony after testimony that he is bringing and they--his successors--are bringing the drugs through our ports of entry, because they deal in volume and sophistication. And what are we going to do? We are going to build a medieval wall over here while they continue to flood this country by modifying pickup trucks, passenger cars, and semis to smuggle humans and drugs into the United States of America. Border Patrol is understaffed. Border Patrol does not have adequate technology. They only screen a very small percentage of the vehicles coming through, sometimes 6 percent, sometimes as high as 8 percent. Wow. Well, then, you have got a 92 percent chance, if you are El Chapo Guzman or some other scumbag drug person from a cartel in Mexico, of getting your product in in an efficient, volumetric way. Why would you pay someone with a backpack to go through some remote area when you can just ship them in that way, or you can use FedEx or UPS if you are Chinese. You can go online and find Chinese selling fentanyl, and they will give you advice about how you should order it from them and how you can get it into the United States. Why aren't we doing something about that? The President is making a big deal about getting tough on China. They are producing all the fentanyl, and it is coming in here in many, many different ways, and this wall will do nothing--nothing--to deal with that. Madam Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), the Speaker of the House.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Espaillat).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Just in response to the gentleman, if he had been listening, he might have heard the gentleman from Texas listing bases in Texas which are going to lose funds for critical military construction projects, yet he launches off into some fantasy about Iraq--I didn't even quite get that part--and also that we are proposing open borders. I am not aware of anyone on this side of the aisle who is proposing open borders. We are proposing effective, 21st century border security at the real threats to America, like drug importation through our legal ports of entry and maritime drug imports that we can't intercept because we don't have the resources, and we are wasting money on a stupid, static wall. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Barragan).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Castro).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, today, we will vote to override the President's veto of Congress' bipartisan action to terminate his so- called national emergency declaration. The bottom line is that this emergency declaration is nothing more than an end run around a majority, a bipartisan majority, of both the House and the Senate, in complete disregard of our constitutional system of separation of powers. There is no doubt that we have a broken immigration system, and comprehensive reform should be a subject of congressional deliberation. But today, in particular, we have a new crisis. It is a humanitarian crisis, but the President has said that this wall will solve that problem. He also says that this is about drugs. Well, let's talk about that, if we could. Here we have walls that are static. It is very old technology that has been used for many centuries, as we know. Most recently, when the French built the Maginot Line, the Germans went around it in 24 hours, similar to what the President is proposing. He wants a wall on part of the border. If the problem were people illegally crossing, they would cross in other areas where there is no wall, but that is actually not the case. He says that this will stop the flood of people who are coming to the border. These are not the historic people who were crossing the border legally to come to the United States for the purposes of work and to remit funds home or those who were illegally smuggling drugs through remote areas. This is a humanitarian crisis. This is recently in Tijuana, a photo of a flood of people coming to actually two areas where we have walls and fences, wanting to surrender to the Border Patrol and claim asylum, or coming to places where we don't have walls and fences, searching for Border Patrol agents so they can claim asylum. A wall is going to do nothing to deal with the humanitarian crisis, and we need to take a much more thoughtful approach to that. Secondly, he says it is about drugs. He makes a big deal about this contributing to the deaths in the opioid crisis, fentanyl, and all that. Of course, the Chinese are shipping in fentanyl in other ways. It is not coming across the Mexican border. Maybe we ought to do something about that. We have tried with walls to prevent the smuggling of drugs. The drug smugglers are very creative. They have used rather primitive devices. That is a catapult. They have used drones. They frequently use tunnels. We found out, in the trial of El Chapo Guzman, that their preferred route is not some remote area that is unwalled but, actually, to come across at the legal border crossings here. It is such a big business, they can modify a semi tractor-trailer, put in a fake floor, and send 10 in a day. We only inspect 1 out of 10. Therefore, they get nine through. They lose one truck, millions of dollars' worth of drugs in a truck, and they don't care. It is a multimillion-dollar business. We need new tools and technology at the legal border crossings. In particular, we need that so we can scan 100 percent of the vehicles. We are going to have to reconfigure the border crossings. We have to bring in the equipment. We have to hire more personnel. These are very expensive undertakings. Instead, we are going to waste money on a static wall, which isn't going to stop the drugs. Even more than that, the former Commandant of the Coast Guard testified that they have actionable intelligence, they think, on about 80 percent of the maritime drug shipments targeting the U.S., mostly from Central America, some from other Asia-Pacific areas. They can only act on one-fifth of the actionable intelligence because they don't have the personnel. They don't have the ships. They don't have the helicopters. They don't have the tools they need to interdict those maritime drug shipments. We are going to waste money on a stupid, static wall. Meanwhile, the drugs are going to flood in on a maritime basis or through the legal border crossings. Last year, the Republicans--this is supposedly a crisis, and somehow it wasn't a crisis when the Republicans controlled the Congress up until the beginning of this year. They refused to appropriate funds for the wall. Then the President shut down the government for 35 days, the longest government shutdown in our Nation's history. More than 800,000 people were either denied coming to work or had to work without pay. Finally, the President agreed to open the government with a short- term continuing resolution, and he said that lawmakers should come up with a comprehensive border security proposal. Congress did that. A bipartisan group delivered compromise legislation that rejected the proposed border wall as ineffective. Alternatively, it made effective, robust investments in border security. Congress overwhelmingly passed the legislation. The President agreed to sign it. Then he issued a national emergency declaration in order to raid funds from other departments to secure funding for a border wall, which Congress has repeatedly voted against. As I already said, he has made it about drugs; the wall will be ineffective. He made it about the humanitarian crisis; the wall will be ineffective. How is he going to pay for it? Well, he is going to take money that the Department of Defense was going to spend on high-priority military construction projects, which will ultimately undermine the training, readiness, and quality of life for our men and women in the Armed Forces. In fact, General Robert Neller, Commandant of the Marines, has detailed that the ``unplanned/unbudgeted'' shift of funds to deploy troops to the southern border last fall has forced him to cancel or reduce training exercises, delay urgent repairs, posing an ``unacceptable risk'' to our Armed Forces' training and readiness. Then he is also going to take, ironically, money from the DOD drug interdiction program, which will further inhibit the capability of the DOD in effectively interdicting drug shipments, in favor of a stupid, static wall. This emergency declaration also violates a number of existing laws. The Military Construction Codification Act only authorizes the Secretary of Defense to reallocate funds for construction projects during a national emergency if the project is ``necessary to support'' a ``use of the Armed Forces.'' Our Armed Forces are not responsible for enforcing our immigration laws. Using these funds in this way is a direct violation of existing law. The administration would also need to seize thousands of acres of private property by eminent domain to build this wall. This is the party of private property rights and local control, and they are going to support that activity, or some are. Currently, more than two-thirds of border property needed to build the wall is owned by private parties or relevant States. In 1952, the Supreme Court held in Youngstown Sheet & Tube that President Truman's declaration of a national emergency, even in the midst of an international armed conflict, did not permit him to unilaterally seize private property. It is unlikely that this thing will get built anyway, but we are going through this process. Because of this likely illegal overreach, the House passed a bipartisan resolution to terminate the national emergency declaration. Even the Republican-controlled Senate passed the resolution, with 12 Republican Senators breaking with the President. With the President's decision to override this resolution, we must send a strong, clear message to the President that we live in a constitutional, representative democracy, and the President and his administration cannot ignore Congress and existing law when they don't like our actions. We must stand up and defend our constitutional system, separation of powers, and Article I of the Constitution of the United States. Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Graves), the ranking member of the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. General Leave

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous material on the veto message of the President of the United States to the joint resolution, H.J. Res. 46.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, you know Danny came to Congress a year after I did. He must have been underage at the time, as you can see the difference in our appearance, but he was working on what was then the House Interior Committee, Natural Resources. He is a veteran, as am I, of many years of working with George Miller in the perpetual water wars in California. I am going to say Danny didn't get that one fixed. But then when we took back over after the election in 2006, and we did some of the best things we have ever done for college affordability and Pell grants in the Education and Labor Committee, Danny was right there working on that. We made loans forgivable through a public service. We limited the length of time you would have to pay them if you were in a low-income job. We greatly increased Pell grants, and we paid for all that by stopping subsidized private bank loans with guarantees that they will never lose any money. Unfortunately, we have lost a little ground since then, but I think this Congress might recapture those things and will look back to the work he did then to make higher education more affordable. Madam Speaker, we had a couple of Members say: Oh, he was so good to me when I didn't know anything and I came in. He was a mentor not only to staff, but to Members, and a good friend to me over many years. I hope Danny enjoys his next iteration, whatever it is.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, yesterday had I been present, I would have voted in strong support of S. 47, the Natural Resources Management Act. I was detained due to severe weather and cancelled flights in Oregon. S. 47 is a compilation of approximately 100 public lands and natural resources bills. One of the main provisions would provide permanent authorization of the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which I strongly support. Also included in this essential legislation are three provisions that I authored to protect critical salmon and steelhead habitats in southwestern Oregon and designate more than 30,000 acres of public land as Wilderness. H.R. 994, the Chetco River Protection Act, would prohibit new mining claims on various rivers and creeks in Southwestern Oregon. The waters protected by this legislation supply clean drinking water to thousands of residents of Southwest Oregon and Northwest California and are critical salmon habitat. H.R. 999, the Devil's Staircase Wilderness Act, would permanently protect Devil's Staircase, a remote, unspoiled area in the Coast Range. The legislation would designate approximately 30,500 acres of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) lands as Wilderness. In addition, this legislation designates approximately 14.4 miles of the Wasson and Franklin Creeks, which support native Coho and Chinook salmon, trout, and steelhead runs, as Wild and Scenic Rivers. H.R. 1056, the Frank and Jeanne Moore Wild Steelhead Special Management Area Designation Act, would designate almost 100,000 acres of public land in the Steamboat Creek Watershed in the Umpqua National Forest that is vitally important steelhead habitat. The legislation would honor Frank and Jeanne Moore's lifelong efforts to protect the North Umpqua River and its tributaries. The lands protected in these bills are some of the most beautiful, pristine, and ecologically-diverse areas in Oregon. To leave these areas unprotected would be to subject them to pollution and mining, endanger drinking water for thousands of families, and devastate local recreation economies. I am proud that Congress overwhelmingly passed this legislation and that President Trump is expected to sign this important legislation into law.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today had I been present, I would have voted in strong support of the bipartisan, privileged resolution to terminate President Trump's proclamation ``Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States.'' I was detained due to severe weather and cancelled flights in Oregon. While there is no doubt that our immigration system is broken, the president's wall and his proposed funding level is an irresponsible waste of taxpayer funds for a structure that would be ineffective and do very little for our national security. The emergency declaration is nothing more than a power grab by the president to fulfill a campaign promise, violating existing law and our constitutional system of separation of powers. Congress has already rejected the president's proposed border wall, and alternatively, by an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote, made robust investments in our border security. These investments include $1.375 billion for approximately 55 miles of physical barrier along the southern border, $564 million for imaging equipment at our ports of entry, $100 million for new, additional border security technology, serious investments in the Alternative to Detention program to provide relief to over-crowded detention facilities, and additional funding for attorneys and courtroom expansion to assist with our country's growing immigration court system backlog. Despite these important investments, the president has proposed taking more than $6.7 billion to build his wall, including $3.6 billion from the Department of Defense's (DoD) high-priority military construction projects. These funds are meant to support much-needed improvements on military bases around the world, and misallocating these funds could undermine the training, readiness, and quality of life for our men and women in the Armed Forces. He has also proposed stripping $2.5 billion from the DoD's drug interdiction program, which could have serious impacts on our ability to combat the flow of illegal narcotics. Furthermore, the Military Construction Codification Act only authorizes the Secretary of Defense to reallocate funds for construction projects during a national emergency if the project is ``necessary to support'' a ``use of the armed forces.'' Our Armed Forces are not responsible for enforcing our immigration laws and using these funds in this way is in direct violation of existing law. Of serious additional legal concern is the fact that the administration would need to seize significant amounts of property not owned by the federal government in order to build a wall. Currently, more than two thirds of border property is owned by private parties or the relevant states. In 1952, the Supreme Court held in Youngstown Sheet and Tube that President Truman's declaration of national emergency, even in the midst of an international armed conflict, did not permit him to unilaterally seize private property. In recent days, more than two dozen former Republican lawmakers and almost 60 former senior national security officials have come out in opposition to President Trump's national emergency declaration. These individuals are united behind the idea that allowing the president to ``ignore Congress'' will deprive the American people ``of the protections of true representative government.'' The bottom line is that the president's national emergency declaration is an abuse of his constitutional authority and an affront to the separation of powers. Congress has the exclusive power of the purse, and the Constitution specifically prohibits the president from spending money that has not been appropriated. Congress entrusted the president with authority to reallocate funds during unforeseen and urgent situations, such as wars and natural disasters. By declaring an emergency when Congress has overwhelmingly rejected his border wall in favor of compromise legislation, President Trump is creating a dangerous precedent for future political disputes. Congress must reject this presidential overreach and assert its constitutional authority.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I missed votes on Monday, February 25 due to inclement weather in Oregon. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on Roll Call No. 89; and ``yea'' on Roll Call No. 88.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time. Ms. JOHNSON-of Texas. Madam Speaker, I support passage of H.R. 876, the Pacific Northwest Earthquake Preparedness Act of 2019, as amended. I commend my friend from Oregon, Chairman DeFazio, for addressing the urgent need to develop better earthquake and tsunami warning systems in the region of our country most vulnerable to such natural disasters. In fact, my own committee, the Science, Space, and Technology Committee, has had for many years a leading role in strengthening earthquake and tsunami preparedness and response in order to minimize the loss of life and property. In December 2018, we enacted a reauthorization of the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP), which was first authorized in 1977 but had not been updated since 2004. In the 15 years since, our scientific understanding of earthquakes as well as how we apply that science to save lives and property have evolved significantly. In the reauthorization, we updated the program to reflect those developments. Four agencies participate in NEHRP. The National Science Foundation and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) carry out fundamental research in the earth sciences that contributes to our understanding of earthquakes. In addition, USGS develops and manages ShakeAlert--the earthquake early warning system. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is the lead agency for NEHRP and also carries out applied research in support of more earthquake resilient building codes. FEMA provides earthquake training and awareness to States and territories and assists communities in creating seismic mitigation plans. Each of these agencies has a unique and essential role as clearly defined in the NEHRP statute. I want to thank my colleague Chairman DeFazio for working with me to ensure that H.R. 876 does not unintentionally create any confusion or uncertainty as to the respective roles and responsibilities of each of these agencies. Our committee also has a lead role in tsunami warning and preparedness. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has run a tsunami early warning system for many years. In 2006, the Science Committee passed the Tsunami Warning and Education Act. We updated that program just last Congress through H.R. 353, thanks to the leadership of another colleague from Oregon and a valued Member of the Science Committee, Rep. Suzanne Bonamici. We all share he same goal of taking advantage of the strengths and resources of our federal agencies to minimize the tragic loss of life and the economic impact of large scale natural disasters. If H.R. 876 becomes law, I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure good coordination and collaboration between the new activities required in H.R. 876 and the ongoing activities under the NEHRP and Tsunami warning programs. I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 876.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan for his support of the bill, and I will look to support him on issues that deal with the Great Lakes in the future or other concerns that he may have. This is just something that, as a nation, as we see threats to our citizens around the country, we should be pushing for preparedness and for resilience. This bill, if we move forward with the plan and put out the instrumentation, will save lives and will be a tremendous benefit to the Nation as a whole. Madam Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of this overdue action by the Federal Government, the Pacific Northwest Earthquake Preparedness Act of 2019, as amended. Next month will mark the eighth anniversary of the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku, Japan. Japanese officials estimate the event caused 100,000 buildings to totally collapse, 270,000 buildings to half collapse, and partially damaged almost 750,000 buildings. Fifteen thousand people died. Most of the deaths were caused by the resulting tsunami and not the earthquake because Japan has an early warning system for earthquakes, and it worked. It sent alarms and text messages warning citizens to take cover and likely prevented many deaths and injuries. Within 15 seconds to 1 minute of warning, depending on location, the earthquake warning system alerted Japan's high-speed rail system to stop trains, reducing deaths and injuries; production lines had time to cease operations; and property damage economic losses were way less than would have been otherwise. I went with then-Chairman Denham over to observe their system and discuss what they are doing now. Now what they are doing is they realize that most of the people died because they did not have ocean sensors, and they underestimated the height of the tsunami. They told people to take shelter in places 10 to 12 feet above wave level. The waves were much bigger and, subsequently, many of those people died. So they are not waiting. The technology currently exists for a realtime warning system that will give them even more notice of an earthquake and will give them more accurate wave heights on the resulting tsunami so people can take proper shelter. We have the same opportunity to do that here in the United States if we take action soon. The Cascadia subduction zone sits off the coast of Oregon and northern California--right at that border, essentially--and experts believe it has generated at least a dozen major earthquakes between magnitudes 8 and 9, which is an awesome earthquake, and resulting tsunamis over the last 5,000 years. This January was the 319th anniversary of the last large quake, and many scientists say that we are overdue and it could happen at any time. It will be essentially a mirror image of the subduction zone off the coast of Japan that caused the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami. The technology is here. The question is whether we want to invest in an offshore earthquake early warning system now or wait until thousands of people have died and catastrophic property damage occurs. We need to invest now rather than later. This bill will begin to address the very real threat of a combined earthquake and tsunami off the Pacific Northwest coast before it happens. Some forecasts say there is a 10 percent chance of a magnitude 8 to 9 in the next 30 years; others predict a 35 to 40 percent chance in the next 50 years. This bill directs the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a plan to identify funds to purchase equipment necessary for an earthquake early warning system and to report to Congress on the implementation of the plan. It also requires the President to establish an earthquake and tsunami task force. The task force will consist of representatives from potentially impacted areas as well as earthquake and tsunami experts to develop a comprehensive strategy and recommendations on how the Nation should prepare for, plan for, mitigate against, respond to, recover from, and adapt to an earthquake, tsunami, or combined event of a large magnitude in the Cascadia subduction zone. We need to take this threat seriously and prepare accordingly. Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this measure, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 876) to direct the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency to carry out a plan for the purchase and installation of an earthquake early warning system for the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam 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. 876, as amended.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, well, the President is increasingly focused in messaging on the need for the wall as being the shipment of illegal drugs into the United States of America and the drug epidemic. I think we are all concerned about that, and we would all like to do something effective to deal with it. Now, as his current acting chief of staff said when he was a Member of Congress about a wall: You go under--tunnels--you go through or over, and what you need is more manpower, more technology. So the President says we need a stupid, static wall at extraordinary costs. Actually, we need something else. What we need are effective measures. The Department of Homeland Security says they need $5 billion to reconfigure our ports of entry and to bring in new technology. El Chapo's lieutenants and others have testified at his trial in New York they don't go across remote desert areas. They buy semi-tractor trailers and they reconfigure them and bring them through the ports of entry. They are very efficient. And that is how they are getting drugs into this country. We lack the personnel and the equipment to detect these shipments. So how about investing there? Oh, and by the way, the people who are screening at the ports of entry, 8 percent of the vehicles is all they can screen today. Probably less today because they aren't getting paid, and some of them can't show up to work because they can't hire childcare or they can't fix their car to get to work or something else. So the President is concerned? Really? I don't think so. And then there is another way that drugs are more and more frequently coming into our country. As you can see from this display of drugs here, the Coast Guard intercepted $5.6 billion of drugs coming in on maritime routes last year. But the retiring Commandant said that is only about 20 percent of the drug shipments we can identify. We don't have the personnel or the proper equipment to intercept the other 80 percent. Oh, by the way, the Coast Guard, they are not getting paid either. But the President is concerned. Well, has he talked about the need to give more resources to the United States Coast Guard? So, hey, it would be great if they get $5.7 billion, and that is one- fifth of the drugs they can identify. That would be $25 billion of drugs being intercepted next year if they had the equipment, the personnel they needed--five times the cost of a stupid, static wall. So if the President is truly concerned about cartels and Asian mobs shipping drugs into the United States, he should be talking about putting money where it is needed: at the ports of entry, the Coast Guard for maritime interception, and other places where it would be more effective. That is the position of the Democrats. We want to have effective 21st century border security, not a failed wall. That has been tried by a number of civilizations. Static walls don't work. Let's do real things to deal with the real problem.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the President has really made his wall argument on the basis of stopping illegal drugs from coming into the country. Last week, I talked about the Maginot Line in France, an impenetrable defense. The Germans went around it. If drugs were being smuggled across the desert, another section of wall isn't going to stop them. They will go around it. But that is not the way drugs are coming into the United States of America. They are coming through our legal border crossings. I talked about that last week. We need more personnel. We need more technology there to inspect a larger number of the vehicles, all the vehicles coming across, with high technology, to find the human smuggling, the drug smuggling, and the weapons smuggling that is coming in that way. But there is another way that drugs are pouring into the United States of America, and here is, last year, just one of the incidents that the Coast Guard intercepted. They intercepted $5.6 billion of illegal drugs being smuggled in through maritime pathways. The recently retired commandant said that is only about 20 percent of the shipments. We could intercept more if we had more personnel. If we had more and modern helicopters, if we had more fast-pursuit boats, we could stop a much larger percentage. But today is a really special day. These brave men and women of the United States Coast Guard will miss their paychecks today, the first time that I know of in recent history that members of the uniformed military are not being paid by their government. 41,000 Active Duty coasties won't be paid. And guess what? The first of next month, 50,000 retired coasties won't be paid. In addition to that, there are 8,000 Coast Guard critical civilian employees who are not being paid. So if the President really wants to talk about intercepting drugs, and he wants to talk about real border security, he should be talking about giving more resources to the United States Coast Guard, not stiffing them on their paychecks and not making them fly ancient helicopters and 50-year-old cutters. But he wants to waste $5 billion on a wall across part of the desert that you can go around, if that is the way they were smuggling in drugs. But as I said earlier, they aren't. Let's have smart border security. Let's use our precious tax dollars in an intelligent, 21st century way, not a vanity wall.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, why are we here today? We are here today because the President is down on the border and he wants to build, along part of the border, a wall, a Maginot Line, if you would have it. The French thought that they could keep the Germans out by building a fortified wall and fortifications along part of their border. The Germans went around it. Well, if the drugs were coming over the border illegally, they would go around it. But that is not where they are coming. They are coming through the ports of entry, where we don't have enough personnel, who, by the way, aren't getting paid today, and where we don't have the technology we need to find the humans and the drugs that are being smuggled through in tractor trailers and other vehicles across the border. If you want to invest in border security, that is a place to invest in border security. Now, the President promised us a grand infrastructure plan. Little did we know it was going to be a partial wall along the Mexican border that he felt so strongly about that he would shut down the government. We have the busiest, most complex aviation system in the world. It is the safest in the world. Today, 14,000 air traffic controllers are working without pay. They all got checks today--I just got a copy of one--for $0. So they are still processing their checks, but the check is for $0. Then we have 3,300 aviation inspectors who are furloughed. They are not essential. We are allowing the airline industry and all the aircraft maintenance facilities and everything else to self-regulate. No one is looking over their shoulder. ``Oh, don't worry about it. No problems.'' Right. Then, of course, there are a few other issues that this bill would deal with. We have a $100 billion backlog to bring existing transit, which is inadequate for today's needs, up to a state of good repair. This is delaying dealing with that problem more and more into the future. We have 56,000 bridges on the national highway system that need substantial repair or replacement. Well, guess what? That is not going forward today either. Last year, we wasted 3.1 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel idling in traffic. A lot of concern about climate change--well, on this side of the aisle, not on that side of the aisle. They don't believe in it. I don't know, maybe the gentleman from Florida does; they are kind of going underwater. But we aren't giving people the options they need to get out of their cars, to be more efficient with transit. Wastewater, the Federal Government used to partner with communities to deal with wastewater. We are not doing that anymore. So are we going to rebuild America? Are we going to deliver on the President's promise of something other than a stupid, wasteful, ineffective wall? How about shutting down the government because Congress won't provide the funding we need to rebuild our infrastructure? That would be, perhaps, a better cause for this President. I urge Members to vote for this, reopen the government, fund transportation and infrastructure, and fund our air traffic controllers who are keeping us safe.