Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, this bill would deceive consumers. It would say that there will now be an FDA definition of ``natural.'' The FDA has never, ever wanted to try and define ``natural'' and that it would include GMOs. Something labeled as ``natural''--Cheerios, naturally flavored--if it contained GMOs, they wouldn't have to say that. So consumers often, in fact, confuse the ``organic'' and the ``natural'' label. In fact, some polls show that consumers more often think ``natural'' is natural and they are not quite sure what ``organic'' is. This bill is going to muddy those waters further, deceive consumers, and have them buy things labeled ``natural'' that contain genetically modified organisms. Why is that in this bill? We can fight over the labeling standards for disclosure. Why are you going to muddy the waters and confuse things and create a new mandatory Federal definition and label for ``natural'' that contains GMOs? Again, here we have all natural vodka creamy marinara. Wow, that is something. And again, this has a number of things in it that very likely contain GMOs that wouldn't be disclosed. But they do have to disclose, and she does, cellulose, sorbic acid, whey, xanthan gum, vodka--of course, it is vodka sauce. But in the future, natural, contains GMOs, no disclosure. This is really, really I think probably the most egregious part of a very egregious bill--preempting states' rights. Remember, this is the party of states' rights. Until a State does something they don't like, then we have got to preempt it. Then they say, well, we can't have proliferation of labels. Well, there is a very simple solution, my bill, one mandatory standard Federal label that would say, ``contains GMOs.'' Then that label could be sold into the European Union. You would be able to sell to about half of the world's economy with one label; whereas, today, you have got to have one label for the EU, one label for the U.S., and then a multiple of other countries where 50 major corporations sell their products. This is so disingenuous. It is very discouraging.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Now, we heard a lot about pesticides. This is great. Let's talk about Monsanto and glyphosate-resistant corn. They are using more pesticides today on cornfields than they did historically, more, and they had glyphosate-resistant corn. They dumped the glyphosate on the corn: Don't worry. There will never be a glyphosate-resistant weed. Oops. They were wrong. Weeds everywhere now taking over the cornfield. Let's change that up. We are now going to have 2,4-D--remember Agent Orange? Pretty darn close--resistant corn. They are going to dump thousands, millions, of tons of 2,4-D over this corn. That is the net result of this sort of forward movement that they are touting as helping us deal with pesticide and herbicide issues: Oh. Don't worry. There will never be a 2,4-D resistant weed. If there is, don't worry. They will get an even more toxic chemical. They are addicting farmers to their products and addicting farmers to buying more and more of their pesticides. We have now seen milkweed wiped out in the Midwest, causing a crisis with monarch butterflies, who are actually a pretty critical pollinator. Most people don't know that, apparently. And that is the result of all this glyphosate and the coming of 2,4-D. I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have listened with interest to the speakers who preceded me, and the gentleman from Massachusetts is absolutely right. The simple solution is to adopt a uniform national mandatory standard that would give that information on the label. Eighty-eight percent of the American people who regularly are polled say: We would like that information on the label. It will not add cost any more than printing ``red dye no. 2'' on the label adds cost to the label. It will add no cost. It would have a uniform national standard. You wouldn't have to worry about a proliferation of the States, and then you wouldn't have to contradict yourselves as Republicans when, every day, you are down here screaming about states' rights, and now, when States do something you don't like: Oh, my God, states' rights, out of here. It is not just the labeling. Yeah, there are three blue States that have labeled, and you don't care if you preempt their laws--got that; but there are a lot of red States and purple States and blue States where the departments of agriculture have recognized the reality of GMO and the potential pollution of conventional non-GMO and organic crops. We had a little incident in Oregon where all our wheat export was stopped because GMO-modified wheat was found in the middle of a very large conventional farm. Until they could figure out how it got there and how much pollution there might be or cross-contamination of Oregon's huge wheat exports, they were all stopped because 64 countries around the world require this labeling, and somehow, the U.S. conglomerates who make food and export processed food are able to label over there. I have a Hershey's label from the EU. I will show it tomorrow. It's beautiful. It's got an American flag on it, made in the USA, contains GMOs. They can do it over there, but they can't do it here because it would just drive the price up stratospherically. That seems odd. In fact, this would help them. If we adopted a national standard here--and the way my bill is written, it would be essentially the same as that required in the European Union and 64 other countries--then they could ship their food to all 50 States, the territories, and 64 countries around the world without having to make any changes. They might save some money then if labels are so expensive. But, no, we are going to have a meaningless, voluntary label. Even worse, we are going to create a new label. We are going to say that ``natural'' means GMO. When you mate a flounder with a tomato plant-- which is what they do, just like hybridizing, flounders, tomato plants, they get together all the time--then that is natural. Or when you take a salmon and you introduce an eel gene--they mate, cross-breed all the time--well, no, actually, they don't--and the salmon grows twice as fast as normal salmon, then that is natural. You won't be able to say ``contains GMOs'' if you can say ``natural'' and ``natural'' means contains GMOs, unless they want to voluntarily go on and say: Well, under the new ``natural'' label, I can have GMOs, but I am going to put it is natural, but it contains GMOs. This has the prospect of causing tremendous chaos with a new, very confusing label for the American consumers. Back to the cross-contamination--again, this is not just a blue State issue; it is a red State issue. We have huge export markets, and those 64 countries will not accept products that contain GMOs. If you strip out State regulations, how they claim they have fixed the bill, and they don't strip out all the State department of agriculture regulations in some 35 States around the country, many of them very red States.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, they claim to have fixed it, but the language is still a little bit ambiguous. Many people who have read it--experts say no, actually, it looks like we are preempting State department of agriculture on separation and buffer zones and other things to protect conventional farmers, organic farmers from the GMOs. I had a very simple amendment that would just say this does not preempt any State department of agriculture which has adopted for the purposes of redacting conventional crops, non-GMO, and organic crops for reasonable buffer zones and other sorts of provisions to prevent that cross-contamination. That is wiped out by this bill, in my opinion and the opinion of many other experts. My amendment was not allowed. I am thankful that I had one amendment allowed which will say, if you are already labeling it in countries all around the world, you have got to label it here. That is good, but preferably, we would have uniform labeling of everything in the 50 States and internationally by just requiring that you disclose that it contains GMOs. There is another amendment that will be offered tomorrow which will do away with this new ``natural'' standard, ``natural'' meaning mandatorily under Federal law contains GMOs. ``Natural'' can contain GMOs. I think that is pretty disingenuous, and I am not sure who slipped that little beauty in there. If you want to talk about confusing consumers, ``organic,'' ``natural.'' Whoa, what is the difference between ``natural'' and ``organic''? Well, I like ``natural.'' ``Organic,'' that sounds kind of complicated; I will go with ``natural.'' Oh, that contains GMOs. Well, it doesn't say that. No, it doesn't. It says ``natural.'' ``Natural'' contains GMOs. If the gentleman is really concerned about consumer confusion, you should support that amendment tomorrow to do away with this new disingenuous label.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I must say it is one of the most bizarre and fanciful things I have ever heard. There never was a viable plan to go to year-end. The Republicans never proposed the revenues. They just recently found revenues under couch cushions to get us through to December 18th. And they have not meaningfully addressed any long-term funding, despite having been in charge 4\1/2\ years, and he wants to blame us. They just held the first hearing ever in Ways and Means on revenues just a couple of weeks ago, and the chairman started by saying, ``No user fees.'' Well, you have now ruled out the traditional way of paying for infrastructure. So they are going to have to come up with something else. But that was totally bizarre. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Ironically, it was exactly 1 year ago today that the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee said they needed time to come together for funding a 6-year surface transportation bill investing in our transportation system, 1 year ago today. There was an extension until the end of the year, then there was an extension until May, and then there was an extension from May until now--temporary extensions, I think 34 temporary extensions we have seen now. Now, we are talking about another temporary extension with the hope that maybe they can find some money under the couch cushions or pass tax reform and cut taxes on rich people and use dynamic scoring and say it raises money and then put it in the trust fund. I don't know what their solution is. We have had a user fee funded transportation system in this country since Dwight David Eisenhower was President, followed by Ronald Reagan who doubled the tax; and Ronald Reagan also put transit into the highway trust fund, saying we should not ignore our population centers and actually our centers of economic growth. Then in 1993--granted, Democratic President and Democratic Congress, but we didn't quite have the votes to increase the gas tax--and Bud Shuster, Republican chair of the Transportation Committee back then, actual relation to current chairman, he brought us quite a number of Republicans to vote with the Democrats to go to 18.3 cents a gallon; and there it stood since 1993. We are hearing now you can't increase the gas tax, so I have offered alternatives. Let's eliminate the gas tax and put a tax on a barrel of oil, the fraction that goes into taxable transportation uses, which economists say means Wall Street might eat part of that because they are speculating so much, ExxonMobil might eat part of that, OPEC--hey, we might get Saudi Arabia to pay for a little bit of our infrastructure; but I am told, no, they can't do that. I proposed just indexing the existing gas tax and bonding, pay it back over time with that increment. Now, if we double index the gas tax, it might go up 1.7 cents next year. There is apparently a fear in this place that if gas went up 1.7 cents a gallon--unlike ExxonMobil jacking it up 25 cents while you are driving by in May because Memorial Day is coming--but of the Federal Government to invest in filling in the potholes, fixing the bridges and the transit systems and raised it 1.7 cents, oh, my God, people lose their elections. Well, we have seen six Republican States raise their gas tax this year, all red, deep red States; and those same States have said to us in testimony: It is not enough that we are raising the gas tax; we need more Federal investment. The system is falling apart--140,000 bridges, 140,000 need repair or replacement. Forty percent of the surface national highway system needs to be not just resurfaced; it needs to be dug up and rebuilt--and that our transit systems, $84 billion backlog to bring them up to a state of good repair. It is so bad in Washington, D.C., that they are killing people; they are killing people on the transit system because it is so outmoded. Now, if we made those investments and we made them in a more robust level than we are doing now, we could put hundreds of thousands of Americans to work. It is not just construction workers; you are talking manufacturing; you are talking small business; you are talking minority business enterprises; you are talking engineering; you are talking technical. The Buy America requirements are the strongest in the whole government. It would have an incredible stimulative effect on the economy. In addition, it would put 300,000 people back to work, and we could begin to climb back toward where we were. Dwight David Eisenhower gave us a system that was the envy of the world. We were number one in infrastructure. We are now 16. We are dropping like a rock. Pretty soon, we will be down there with Third World countries in terms of state of our infrastructure in this country. It is embarrassing. It is pathetic. It is not necessary. Today, we should be considering a long-term bill. We have introduced a viable long-term bill. We propose today a way to pay for the first 2 years of it by just saying Benedict Arnold corporations can't buy a drugstore overseas for a major pharmaceutical company and then say: Oh, that is our home headquarters, although we are still here enjoying all the protections of American citizenship law and our military, but we don't want to pay for it and our infrastructure. There are ways forward. There seems to be an incredible reluctance on their side, so here we are again saying let's do a patch until December 18. Meanwhile, the Senate over there has been in who knows what kind of circles. They are proposing to get most of the money by reducing retirement for Federal employees. Now, that is a tremendous relationship to infrastructure and user fees. Let's not get too far away from the idea of user pays. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan).

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Brendan F. Boyle).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close. Investing in infrastructure in America has always been extraordinarily bipartisan over the entire time I have been here. Recently, we have kind of gone off the tracks. It means we both have to cooperate on policy and on funding. For the life of me, why has the Republican Party drawn a line in the sand, saying we cannot have user fee-based investment in transportation which benefits people who drive cars, pickup trucks, buses, everybody who moves goods in America, we can't do that anymore, we have got to come up with some fanciful tax reform which may or may not happen? It is very sad. I proposed doing away with the retail gas tax, imposing a barrel tax, where some of the costs would be paid by ExxonMobil, Wall Street speculators, OPEC, Saudi Arabia, and, yes, they would probably pass a lot of it through at the pump, but that would be a fair way to move forward to make the massive investment we need to put hundreds of thousands of people back to work and get America moving again. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), the ranking member of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire as to the time left before we proceed?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. As we have heard, a year ago today, the House passed a temporary extension of 1 year. Chairman Ryan of the Ways and Means Committee, who was supposed to figure out how to pay for this, said we will use this year to put the transportation highway trust fund on a sustainable path so we can avoid stopgap legislation in the future. Well, that didn't happen, but they were occupied with much more important things. For instance, they said that estates worth more than $10 million shouldn't pay a penny in taxes--none, zero. That cost $289 billion. If we had dedicated that to surface transportation, we could have basically doubled spending over 10 years. So today, the Democrats are here to offer a real, 6-year, long-term increase in investment in America's failing infrastructure. There are 140,000 bridges that need repair or replacement on the National Highway System. Forty percent of the pavement is at the point where you have to dig up the underlayment and rebuild the whole road. We have an $84 billion backlog just bringing our existing transit systems up to a state of good repair. It is so bad that people are dying on Metro here in Washington, D.C., because of the decrepit condition of the system. With the Buy America rules, we would create a phenomenal number of jobs. In fact, under our funding proposal in our bill, we would create an additional 300,000 jobs a year. And we need those jobs here in America, and they are good-paying jobs. They are not just construction jobs. They are engineering, they are technical, they are small business, and they are minority business enterprises. They are a whole host of things that would lift the whole economy--make us more energy efficient, make Americans save money getting out of congestion, not driving their cars through giant potholes and incurring costs--but the Republicans can't figure out how to get there. Well, we are offering an alternative--a good, solid, 6-year bill. Yes, we haven't figure out the 6-year funding yet because you guys are totally opposed to user fees, despite Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower and the history of the Republican Party on user fees, and also former chairman of the committee, Bud Shuster, who joined with the Democrats in 1993, the last time when we raised the Federal gas tax to 18.3 cents a gallon. We would fund 2 years of this bill by prohibiting corporate inversions; i.e., Benedict Arnold corporations that continue to have all of their operations in America but go overseas and buy some minor entity and claim that is their international headquarters, like a corner drug store somewhere in London for a pharmaceutical company. It is an outrageous practice. While they enjoy all the benefits of America and all the protections of our law and our military and all those costs, they don't want to pay, and they don't want to pay for transportation either. So we are offering an alternative today. If we defeat the previous question, we would go into an open rule, something that never happens much around here, where both sides of the aisle, any Member of Congress, could offer an amendment to increase spending, decrease spending, target one or another part of the infrastructure that they feel needs more investment. So I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule, move to an open rule, something we were promised when the Republicans took over, and fund a 6-year bill. We will give you 2 years of funding, and we can figure out the rest over the next 2 years.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, federal funding for biomedical research has been stagnant over the past several years, another victim of unwise and shortsighted sequestration and budget cuts that put deficit reduction before investments that can save lives. With no increase to counter the effects of inflation and increased cost of research, NIH has lost 22 percent of its purchasing power over the last decade. NIH has been forced to cut or deny funding for thousands of promising studies that could hold the key to incredible breakthroughs. We should do everything we can to bring cures to patients as quickly as possible. Far too many people suffer from rare, serious and deadly diseases, and its outrageous cures could be found except for the lack of funding. It's also important we make sure drugs are safe and actually do what they are intended to do. I have concerns with some of the proposed changes to FDA's approval process designed to speed drugs and devices to market. We need to be certain that the proposed changes will not subject patients to a high level of risk. I expect the Senate will review and fix those provisions when they take up the bill. HR. 6 does what Congress has been unable to do because the Republican majority refuses to understand a simple fact: Funding biomedical research, just like investing in our roads and bridges, is an investment, not wasteful spending.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentlewoman for yielding. Mr. Chair, I have been working on forest policy for my entire tenure in Congress. I have some of the most productive and fabulous forest lands in the entire Federal system, both Forest Service and BLM lands, under a unique O&C management. But here we are again headed into a very, very potentially bad fire season, June record heat, no precipitation. We had very little snowpack last winter, and the heavy fuels are already as dry as they get. We have seen this before. The fires will break out. BLM and Forest Service can't stop fighting the fires. So they will borrow from other accounts, including fuel reduction to protect forest values and communities, forest health, and a myriad of other programs. This happens year after year after year. It is time to end that, and this bill takes that first step in ending that practice of fire borrowing. And that is of tremendous benefit to the resource agencies, the resources themselves, and our preparedness and capability of fighting fires. That alone gives this bill tremendous merit. It deals with some other longstanding issues in Oregon. We adopted something called temporary eastside screens back in 1993, I believe, saying you couldn't cut any tree over 21 inches in diameter. It makes no biological sense, and it makes no sense to the premier forest scientists in the world, Jerry Franklin and Norm Johnson. You have nonnative fir trees that are growing there, because of repression of fire for the last 100 years, that are 100 years old. They are over 21 inches. But they are growing in stands of ponderosas that are 200 years old, and they are going to kill the ponderosa stands, the native trees. But the Forest Service can't go in and deal with that issue. With this legislation they finally can. On our unique O&C lands, there is a provision of the Northwest Forest Plan called Survey and Manage, literally crawling around on the forest floor, looking for slugs, snails, calling for owls, and doing all these things 3 years in a row. This, again, is not necessary, according to the premier scientists, and is incredibly expensive and time-consuming on the part of the Bureau of Land Management. In fact, the Bureau of Land Management's new plans--each plan, no matter what the output level, would do away with that practice. So this bill does away with that practice, saving the BLM resources and moving ahead with better management. There are a number of other issues that relate to these O&C lands. I want to thank Chairman Bishop and Chairman McClintock for working with myself, Mr. Schrader, and Mr. Walden in order to address these issues, extending the comment period, developing new management options. BLM is refusing, despite the Oregon Delegation's bipartisan request to extend the comment period on these critical management plans. So that itself is also great merit. There are provisions in the bill that I don't like and don't support. We will be given an opportunity with the Polis amendment to deal with the bonding issue and the cost recovery issue, which I don't think belongs in this bill. I have concerns about the magnitude of the CEs for fire recovery and salvage. But, on balance, the other parts of this bill are important to the point where the bill should receive support from people that care about the future of our forests. Mr. Chair, I have been working on forestry issues for a long time-- nearly 30 years. I represent a district with some of the most productive public timberlands in the entire world. I also represent a district that cares deeply--passionately--about the environment and our incredible national forests. For 30 years I have been trying to find a middle ground on national forest policy--a balanced approach. I believe that having a healthy timber industry, good paying jobs in rural communities, and permanent protection for our nation's most iconic resources--like old growth trees and pristine rivers--are not and should not be mutually exclusive. Do I think the bill before the House today is a perfect bill? Absolutely not. But when you are working on a contentious, complex, and often emotional issue like national forest policy--there is no such thing as a ``perfect bill.'' The truth is our national forests are burning up at an alarming rate. They are dying from disease and bugs. Our land management agencies don't have the financial resources or tools to deal with existing threats let alone emerging threats, like climate change. The Federal Government spends billions of dollars every year to fight fires on public lands, rather than investing those dollars in forest health and resiliency to reduce wildfire risks. Our rural and forested communities continue to suffer from double digit unemployment. Even the mills that have retrofitted to process small diameter logs are struggling to make it. And rural counties dependent on timber receipts are failing to keep violent criminals in jail, sheriff deputies on our roads, and kids and teachers in the classroom. So, again, no. I don't think this is a perfect bill. But, Congress needs to do something to change the status quo for our forests and rural communities. We need to have this conversation and work together to find middle ground. wildfire funding And there are some good provisions in this bill. One of the most important provisions attempts to end ``fire borrowing''--a top priority of mine when I was Ranking Member of the Natural Resources Committee and a remaining priority of mine as Ranking Member of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that has jurisdiction over FEMA. Right now, when federal land managers exhaust congressionally appropriated dollars to fight fires, the agencies have to borrow money from other accounts. Often times those accounts fund the very activities--like thinning overstocked plantations, reducing hazardous fuels, or completing work in the Wildland Urban Interface--that can actually help reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires! That's a terrible way to do business. Catastrophic wildfires should be treated like other natural disasters and we should stop robbing Peter to pay Paul. The wildfire funding language in this bill--while not perfect--moves us in the right direction. eastside screens This bill also includes provisions that will improve forest management in the Pacific Northwest. The bill would remove the unscientific and arbitrary ``Eastside Screens'' that prohibit the Forest Service from cutting any tree in Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington that is larger than 21 inches in diameter. Supporters of the Eastside Screens forget that the 21 inch rule was intended to provide interim protection for larger, older trees until scientifically based standards for old growth were established. Well, guess what? After more than two decades those standards have still not been established, handcuffing the Forest Service from carrying out common sense forest projects. Today, even if there is a non-native, 22-inch diameter Douglas fir tree that is outcompeting and putting at risk a native, 200 year-old stand of ponderosa pine, you can't cut that fir. That would violate the Eastside Screens. That doesn't make any sense. Yes, we need protection for old growth forests and I was the first to pass permanent, legislative protection for old growth in Western Oregon out of the House last year. But, those protections should be scientific and implementable. O&C lands The same goes for standards established more than 20 years ago, known as Survey and Manage, that literally has land management personnel on their hands and knees on the forest floor looking for liverworts, fungi, slugs, snails, mosses, and 300 other types of flora and fauna before any forest activity can take place. I am all for robust analysis and considering the impacts of human activity on rare and special species. But we also need to be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars and aware of the consequences of over-analysis, lengthy delays, and not taking action. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agrees with me. That's why all of the Resource Management Plan alternatives for Western Oregon would eliminate Survey and Manage. Unfortunately, the BLM still has some work to do on the Resource Management Plans for the statutorily unique O&C Lands. Despite requests from most of the Oregon Congressional Delegation to extend the public comment period to analyze thousands of pages of documentation for the alternatives, the BLM decided not to award an extension. I want to thank Chairman Bishop and Chairman McClintock for working with me, Rep. Walden, and Rep. Schrader to include language that would direct the BLM to consider additional alternatives for the O&C Lands-- ranging from a sustained yield alternative to a carbon storage alternative--and to extend the public comment period by 180 days. These Resource Management Plans will govern management on the O&C Lands for years to come--perhaps decades--and we must get them right. Taking time to analyze new alternatives and giving the public more time to review and comment is absolutely crucial. I also want to thank the respective Chairmen for incorporating the Public Domain lands within the O&C land base. These lands in Western Oregon are already managed in the same manner. Reclassifying the Public Domain lands as O&C Lands will improve management efficiency, provide clarity to the BLM, and create additional revenues for the O&C Counties. But, as I mentioned, this bill isn't perfect. In fact, it includes a number of troubling provisions that should be completely eliminated or substantially modified before being signed into law. Provisions of Concern For example, the bill would allow categorical exclusions (CEs) for salvage logging projects up to 5,000 acres in size. That's 20 times larger than the current 250-acre size limitation for salvage logging CEs adopted by the Bush Administration. Unfortunately, the Committee adopted an amendment during markup that eliminated key restrictions on the construction of temporary roads within the salvage project area. These provisions are a non-starter. The bill allows CEs for projects intended to create early successional habitat. I worked with the pre-eminent scientists in the world on pilot projects in Oregon with similar management goals. But for these projects to work and for there to be social buy-in, there need to be strong sideboards for such projects, like green tree retention requirements and old growth protection. Language has been added that could exempt the application of herbicides from a full environmental impact statement when used to ``improve, remove, or reduce the risk of wildfire.'' I understand the Forest Service uses herbicides in limited circumstances to address noxious weeds and other threats through manual application. But such application should remain extremely limited, publicly transparent, and restricted to manual application instead of aerial application. There should be no ambiguity in this language and its intent, nor should it expand herbicide application on public lands. This bill would make it harder for a person with a legitimate grievance against a federal land management agency to sue by requiring that person to post a bond covering the anticipated costs, expenses, and attorneys' fees of the government to defend the lawsuit. I understand you want to limit frivolous lawsuits or lawsuits from parties that don't meaningfully engage in the public process. But this isn't the way to do it. I will be voting for an amendment later today to strike the entire section. Mr. Chair, this bill has some important, balanced provisions. It also has some controversial, unnecessary provisions. We know that this bill, in its current form, will not be signed by the president. But I want to keep this conversation moving forward and I want to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, House and Senate, to do something meaningful for our rural communities and national forests. I will support this bill today with the understanding that this legislation still needs work, significant improvement, and further compromise.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, 44 days--44 days--that is when the highway trust fund runs dry. Now, this isn't a surprise. We have been kicking the can down the road for awhile. The Republicans have been in charge for 4\1/2\ years. And today, the Ways and Means Committee is, rather begrudgingly, holding its first hearing on the issue of the highway trust fund. However, they have already foreclosed the options. The chairman and the Republican leadership have said: We can't do user fees the way Dwight David Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan did. That is off the table. We are going to come up with some other creative or phony way to pay for these investments. And they pretty much have said they are going to try to kick the can down the road until the end of December. Well, those sorts of patches won't deal with the massive pothole that we have with our infrastructure in this country: 140,000 bridges need repair or replacement; 40 percent of the service of the National Highway System is degraded to the point where you have to dig it up and put in a new roadbed, not just pave it over a little bit; $86 billion backlog to bring our transit system just up to a state of good repair-- not to build out more options to get people out of congestion and traffic, just to bring the existing system up to a state of repair. It is so bad that in the Nation's Capital they are unnecessarily killing people because of a system that is outmoded, obsolete, and defective. But we are the United States of America. We can't afford to invest, according to Republicans. They don't distinguish between investment and spending, unless it is the Pentagon, where spending is good. But rebuilding American infrastructure, they can't find the money for that. Luckily, there is furious, furious activity going on now. The President went to the baseball game last week for the first time in 7 years. He showed up at the House baseball game. He came to the Democratic Caucus last week. He sent three secretaries here. He is inviting groups down to the White House, bringing them down by motorcade. He is on the phone with John Boehner, his former archenemy. They are furiously, furiously at work. Unfortunately, what they are scheming over is how to undo what we did last week, blocking the last worst trade agreement that America will ever have, saying: We want a new paradigm on trade. No more failed trade policies for this country. It is not working, to just rebuild or build upon the massive profits of multinational corporations, hoping some of it might trickle down. Actually, it has just led to job exports because they can get 30- cent-an-hour labor in Vietnam. They desperately want this agreement. And Malaysia, hey, the House stripped out the minor restrictions on human trafficking so that U.S. companies could feel free to go to Malaysia. So they are furiously plotting what way they can trick us or somehow overcome 85 percent of the Democrats in the House caucus here and a number of Republicans who have concerns about these failed trade deals. Now, just think--just think--if Speaker Boehner, President Obama, and corporate America assembled, were just working to help us find a solution to our crumbling infrastructure, because it is certainly important to everybody in this country. If we found that solution, if we moved forward with a long-term bill, we could, instead of having to argue over assistance for workers who are going to lose their jobs because of this trade agreement, we could be hiring hundreds of thousands of Americans, and not just construction workers. This would involve manufacturing. For transit, it involves high tech. It involves small business. It involves minority business enterprises. It involves family-wage jobs where people can make a living, not getting retrained to go to McDonald's because their job was sent to Asia or Mexico or someplace else. We have a tremendous opportunity. Stop messing around with these failed trade agreements, and let's put our heads together and figure out how to pay for a long-term transportation bill and get this country moving again.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, how many times will Congress pretend to be fooled by yet another job-killing trade agreement. First, there was NAFTA. They told us it would create hundreds of thousands of jobs. Unfortunately, they neglected to say they would be south of the border, and they would be at the expense of American workers. Then there was the WTO. We are going to level the playing field-- yeah, it is at bargain-basement prices--and compete with Chinese workers at 25 cents an hour and unfair trade practices. Now, the Obama administration has a new paradigm--Korea. ``This is the model for the future. It is going to be great.'' We are already running larger trade deficits with Korea. We have already lost 50,000 jobs. Now, the last, biggest, worst trade agreement--the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Ironically, a key vote will be over something called trade adjustment assistance. That is right; it is critical. We have to have that because hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans are going to lose their jobs, so we need to retrain them for McDonald's or other high-level jobs. Secondly, of course, the trade adjustment assistance is funded by cutting Medicare. So this is the critical vote. Ironically, this is it. They have got the votes from corporate America and the Obama administration to jam this thing through unless we kill trade adjustment assistance. We can stop it here today and save America's economy.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow, the House of Representatives will be asked to grease the skids for the last and worst trade agreement in a 20-year history of job-killing trade agreements. I say ``last'' because this is a new concept. It is a living trade agreement. Anybody can access to it in the future. All they have to do is say: We pretend--or will pretend--to follow the very weak rules of this trade agreement. When the President began the negotiations, China was concerned because he talked about the pivot to Asia, confronting China. Now China is saying: Hey, we want in. This is great. We know how to game it. We can take away the last of your manufacturing, and we are not going to let it just go to Japan who is already in the agreement. The worst, for many reasons, but among them is something called the investor-state dispute resolution process. What is that? It means there will be a special private court set up for corporations to challenge our domestic laws, any and all domestic laws, that they find to be trade restrictive. Now, the President came to Oregon and said those of us who are critical of this are making things up because we said they can repeal otherwise. Now, the President danced on the head of a rhetorical pin there, a bit duplicitously. He is right. They can't make us repeal our laws. We can pay to keep them. Yes, you heard that right. We can pay to keep our laws that protect consumers, and we can pay to protect our laws that protect the environment or labor or Buy America or anything else. We can keep them if we want to pay. Here are four examples: Yesterday, the House of Representatives repealed requirements that meat, poultry be labeled as to country of origin. American consumers would kind of like to know. We have got enough problems in our own industry here. We would like to know if this stuff is coming overseas from someplace where maybe the sanitary conditions aren't quite so good. Well, we lost a trade dispute on that issue. Now, we could keep the law if we wanted to pay billions of dollars or, no, a Republican rush to repeal the law. It makes a few giant agribusiness companies happy. Of course, it kind of sticks it to the domestic producers who know they are producing a good product. That is one loss. Brazilian cotton, now, this is a funny one. We provide these bizarre subsidies through our foreign program, and one of them goes to cotton. We were found to be subsidizing, therefore, putting Brazil at a disadvantage. For years, we paid Brazil $147 million a year so we could keep subsidizing our cotton producers. Isn't that great? Yeah, we kept our law; we just cost us $147 million to subsidize the cotton producers. Last year, we got a settlement out of them. They are going to give us a 3-year grace. We gave them a one-time $300 million penalty, and they won't challenge it again until 2018. Now, Mexican trucks--personally involved in this one--they don't have meaningful driver's licenses; they don't have hours of service standards; they don't have drug testing; they don't have alcohol testing, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, so we didn't want them ranging around the United States of America. We passed a bill almost unanimously in the House to prevent that. Mexico went to one of these secret tribunals; they won. The Obama administration caved under threats of billions of dollars of punitive tariffs against the U.S. to allow those Mexican trucks free and permanent access to the highways of the United States of America. You are right, we can't. You are right, Mr. President--no, you are not right, Mr. President; actually, you are wrong on that one. One last one, dolphin-safe tuna--now, we just wanted to say the Mexicans go out and slaughter dolphins to catch tuna. They cast the nets over the dolphins who swim on top of the tuna. There are some people who thought: well, hey, it would be good marketing for StarKist and others if we had dolphin-safe tuna, where people don't slaughter dolphins to get the tuna. Well, Mexico won a trade dispute saying: no, you can't do that, that is trade restricted; you can pay us not to slaughter dolphins, or we can slaughter dolphins, and you can't label those cans as dolphin-safe tuna. Yeah, the President is sort of, kind of technically right. They can't force us to repeal our laws. They can just blackmail us to repeal our laws in secret tribunals. Now, the ones I mentioned are under a state-to-state resolution. The TPP that this trade promotion authority facilitates allows corporations special standing to go to a special private secret tribunal, only available to corporations, to challenge our laws. Just think of the mischief in the future. One will certainly be pharmaceuticals. Most certainly, they will challenge the requirement that we negotiate lower drug prices for our veterans and people on Medicaid, and they will win. The President is right; we won't have to repeal the subsidies for those drugs or the reduced price. We can just pay the pharmaceutical industry tens of billions of dollars to keep providing affordable drugs to veterans and seniors. This is a great day for America.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday, June 9, 2015, I missed several roll call votes due to undergoing a medical procedure in Oregon. Had I been present, I would have cast the following votes: Roll Call vote 309, On Passage of H.R. 2289, the Commodity End-User Relief Act, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call vote 310, On Agreeing to the Blackburn Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call vote 311, On Agreeing to the Gosar #1 Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 312, On Agreeing to Gosar #2 Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 313, On Agreeing to Posey #1 Amendment, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 314, On Agreeing to Sessions #1 Amendment, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 315, On Agreeing to Sessions #2 Amendment, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 317, On Agreeing to Posey #2 Amendment, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 318, On Agreeing to Posey #3 Amendment, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 319, On Agreeing to Yoho Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Yes. Roll Call 320, On Agreeing to Brooks Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Yes. Roll Call 321, On Agreeing to Hultgren Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 322, On Agreeing to Meehan Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 323, On Agreeing to Garrett Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 324, On Agreeing to Ellison Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Aye. Roll Call 325, On Agreeing to Emmer Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call Vote 326, On Agreeing to Peters Amendment, I would have voted Aye. Roll Call Vote 327, On Agreeing to Issa Amendment to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Nay. Roll Call 328, On Motion to Recommit with Instructions to H.R. 2577, I would have voted Aye. Roll Call 329, On Passage of H.R. 2577 would have voted Nay.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Then Amtrak, they cut Amtrak by $251 million in its capital accounts. On the day that we had the Amtrak crash, they cut the capital acquisition account for Amtrak by $251 million, despite the fact that Amtrak has a $20 billion backlog. There are 140-year-old tunnels that are near collapse, which will paralyze the East Coast. There are bridges that are 100, 110, 120 years old--and, yes, we do not yet have the positive train control system on all of Amtrak's routes. That has been something that has only been recommended for 25 years by the National Transportation Safety Board. This is pretty pathetic.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Chairman, we have all heard about America and American exceptionalism, and tonight, we see here a great new example for the 21st century the Republican majority version of American exceptionalism. A country that used to be the envy of the world with its infrastructure has now become a laughingstock of the industrial world because it is falling apart. There are 150,000 bridges on the National Highway System that need repair or replacement, and with this bill, next year, it will be 160,000 that will need repair or replacement. There is 40 percent of the road surface on the National Highway System that needs not just resurfacing; it is so bad that it has to be dug up. Next year, there will be more miles that are deficient. And our transit? There is an $80 billion backlog just to bring our existing transit systems up to a state of good repair. It is so bad that we are killing people unnecessarily here in the Nation's Capital on the mass transit system; and what does the Republican budget do? It cuts the allocation to the Metro system here in D.C. In the greatest country on Earth, it will be dangerous to ride on the Metro system because we can't afford to fix it. They failed to distinguish between investment--investment in moving our people and our goods more efficiently--and spending. They rail about spending, but they cut indiscriminately, and they add money in places we don't need it. Let's go down the list. In aviation, we want to build a 21st century air traffic control system, but they cut that budget $100 million. The Coast Guard is spread so thin it can't meet its own criteria for search and rescue, but they are $17 million below what the President proposed, and there is no money in here for a new Coast Guard icebreaker. We are a great maritime nation. We are down to one 50-year- old, decrepit icebreaker. That is not going to serve our country too well.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), the ranking member of the Highways and Transit Subcommittee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, again, may I inquire as to the amount of time remaining on my side.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell), a strong advocate for all things transportation, a member of the powerful Committee on Ways and Means.