Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Brown).

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Nolan), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Nevada (Ms. Titus), a member of the committee.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Johnson).

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Well, here we are again, yet another short-term pass. It is a heck of a way to run a great nation. Our system is falling apart: 140,000 bridges on the National Highway System need repair or replacement; 40 percent of the surface National Highway System is in such bad shape we have to dig up the roadbed and resurface; and we have an $86 billion backlog in transit just to bring the existing transit up to a state of good repair. It is so bad that we are killing people in the Nation's Capital unnecessarily because of the state of disrepair of the Metro system. It is embarrassing. The United States of America has gone from number one in the world, unparalleled in terms of its infrastructure in the Eisenhower era and through a good deal of the latter part of the last century, to 26th and falling fast. We are investing less of a percentage of our GDP in infrastructure repairs and maintenance--let alone, building out a new system--than virtually every nation in the world. We are down to around 1 percent. There are many developing nations who are investing much, much more because they know they have to move their people and their goods more efficiently in a world economy. We cannot continue to kick this can down the road. The road is at a dead end. Today, we will reluctantly go along with a 2-month patch because, if we do not act today, at the end of this month, June 1, 4,000 people will be laid off at DOT and all Federal funding for surface transportation and transit would stop. That would be the end of it. It wouldn't be authorized. States that had bills pending couldn't be paid, and States that want to get new commitments for new projects wouldn't be able to do it, a tragedy at the height of the construction season. Sixty days should be enough time to negotiate a long-term bill. Today, we introduce the GROW AMERICA Act written by the administration. It has many, many good points to it, especially the spending levels. We need to enhance spending. We can't pretend, Oh, we are going to do more with less. We are past that point. Look at what has happened to the purchasing power of the gas tax, which hasn't been changed since 1993, two and a half times faster road traffic volume is going up than we are dealing with the funding issues. We are in a huge deficit situation, and there are many, many ways--many of them proposed on a bipartisan basis--to deal with this. We should be able to work that out. More importantly, this committee writes the policy. We introduced a bill today that sets the levels for $87 billion. It is an increase in transit to deal with the backlog, an increase in highways to deal with the insufficiencies there, a new dedicated program for freight; and it puts some more money into rail--commuter rail, in particular--to deal with positive train control and other issues. We believe that this is the last wake-up call to give Congress time. Sixty days is more than enough time to write a long-term authorization and for the Ways and Means Committee to figure out a way to fund it. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

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. I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer).

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First off, I want to join in what many others have said: transportation infrastructure has not been historically nor should it become a partisan issue. I appreciate the chairman's willingness to work together on many aspects. We will at times disagree over elements of bills, but in general we agree that what makes this country great, what makes us competitive in the world is a world-class system of transportation infrastructure and other critical infrastructure, and today we are deficient. I talked during my introductory remarks about some of the needs. Let me just talk about the revenues. Back in 1993, when the gas tax was raised by a bipartisan coalition in the House--actually, on the Republican side, led by the chairman's father, Bud Shuster--we paid about 14 percent. Every time you went to the pump, with the increase in the gas tax in 1993, 14 percent of your bill went to invest in the Nation's infrastructure. Yet today, some 22 years later, 7 percent goes to the infrastructure. Population has grown, road miles have increased, and the Eisenhower infrastructure has aged. Infrastructure doesn't just age a little bit each year. It reaches a point where it accelerates dramatically, so a bridge that you could fix for $15 million or $20 million today, 2 years from now you might have to totally replace for $100 million. So not delaying these needed investments, unless we want to see people detouring around all the rivers in America because of bridge outages, is really, really critical for a just-in-time economy, for our world competitiveness, to save on fuel efficiency. Now, a number of States have stepped in to fill the void; 14 States have voted to raise their own gas taxes since 2013. As the gentleman from Oregon pointed out, six deep red Republican States have voted to raise their gas tax this year. Just to assure my colleagues, for those who raised it before the last election, nobody lost their election because they raised the gas tax in those States. People recognize it as a user fee. They are tired of blowing out tires and car repairs because of potholes. They are tired of detours. The trucking industry is tired of detours, and they don't want a proliferation of tolls across America. The solution is a Federal partnership. The chairman held a hearing recently where we had the Department of Transportation director from Wyoming, a deep red State, talking about the fact that they had increased their gas tax, but they still need the Federal partnership; it is critical. We had the Governor of North Carolina--has one of the highest gas taxes in the country, deep red State these days--saying the Federal partnership was more critical than ever. The same with the mayor of Salt Lake City, the Federal partnership is critical. No State can do it on its own. I propose that we index the gas tax to construction costs, inflation, fleet fuel economy. That would mean next year the gas tax would go up by 1.7 cents. I would like to see the Member of Congress who thinks they are going to lose their election over a 1.7 cent investment in America's infrastructure to avoid those potholes, the congestion, the detours, the delays, or the additional tolling to maintain what we have. It won't happen. It hasn't happened recently in red States that have raised it much more than 1.7 cents. But if we index to inflation, fleet fuel economy, and construction costs inflation, we could borrow upfront for the trust fund, let's say, $150 billion, a nice increase over the current levels of spending, and we could pay it back in about 15 years with that increment, just the indexed increment that would grow a tiny bit each year. And again, you drive by the gas station on your way to work, and when you drive home at night, ExxonMobil has raised it a nickel because there were rumors of war in the Middle East or a refinery had an outage or something or this. Where did that nickel go? It went into the pockets of ExxonMobil or speculators on Wall Street. It didn't go into our Nation's infrastructure. The American people would sure as heck rather pay 1.7 cents to rebuild our system and make America more competitive and put hundreds of thousands of people to work than another nickel in the coffers of OPEC or ExxonMobil or Wall Street speculators. It is time to suck it up around here, act like men and women who were sent here to make tough decisions, to regain our legacy, to begin to bring America back toward a world-class infrastructure. It would take many years and many tens or hundreds of billions of dollars to reclaim the legacy of the Eisenhower era, but it is only a lack of will--will-- that prevents us from doing that. There is no major impediment. Nobody is going to lose their election over 1.7 cents a gallon. In fact, people will thank you at home. The trucking industry is begging--begging--for an increase in the diesel tax. The United States Chamber of Commerce, when is the last time they asked for an increase in a tax? Look, all across the spectrum, the retailers, the business community, all across this country people are saying: Help us; get us out of congestion; fix the system; bring it up to a state of good repair. There is another whole contingent of American people who are saying: We need jobs. There is no more certain way to create jobs in this country than investing in America's infrastructure. And they are not just construction jobs. They are engineering jobs. They are manufacturing jobs. In the case of mass transit, they are high-tech jobs. They are small business jobs. They are disadvantaged business enterprise jobs. It goes through the entire economy. No American will be left behind. We could create hundreds of thousands of jobs and make America number one again. All we lack is the will here in this House. Let's say this is the last 60-day delay. Let's work together, and let's get a real 6- year bill by the end of July. Mr. Speaker, I just want to announce we introduced the GROW AMERICA Act comprehensive bill with which we could begin policy discussions, H.R. 2410, today, with 19 cosponsors. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. How much time do I have remaining?

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.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, today I, along with many of my colleagues on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, are introducing H.R. 2410, the ``Generating Renewal, Opportunity, and Work with Accelerated Mobility, Efficiency, and Rebuilding of Infrastructure and Communities throughout America Act'' (GROW AMERICA Act). This legislation represents the Administration's six-year surface reauthorization proposal. We introduce this legislation by request, as it is the policy work of the Administration. By introducing it, we are putting our stamp of approval on the vision that this proposal offers-- robust funding levels in a long-term bill to provide sustainable solutions to our Nation's infrastructure crisis. Today, the House voted on a two-month short-term extension of highway, transit, and highway safety programs. Congress has had 10 months since the enactment of the last extension in July 2014 to produce a long-term bill, or at least to make significant progress in identifying sustainable revenues to shore up the Highway Trust Fund. The Republican Leadership has produced neither. The Committee on Ways and Means could not so much as hold a hearing on this topic in the past 10 months. It is no surprise, therefore, that this House cannot come to agreement on $11 billion in offsets to keep surface transportation programs afloat through the end of this year, which would provide certainty to the construction industry and its workers during their busiest season. Here we are, in the middle of another construction season, and Congress is unable--or unwilling--to consider more than a short-term patch. We can't kick the can down the road anymore. There is no road left. The revenues we collect are insufficient to meet our needs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund is $172 billion over the next 10 years just to maintain current funding levels. If Congress passes a six-year bill, the gap is $92 billion. This gap only accounts for status quo funding. Finding an additional $92 billion will not provide enough funds to make substantial improvements to our infrastructure or address the ballooning backlog in highway, bridge, and transit state of good repair. It does not provide new investments in freight. H.R. 2410 goes beyond the status quo and will move our Nation into the 21st century. The bill provides a total of $478 billion over six years, a 45 percent increase for highways, bridges, public transportation, highway safety, and rail programs. Over six years, the GROW AMERICA Act makes significant investments in: Highways--provides $317 billion for programs under the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), an increase of 29 percent over current levels. Freight--dedicates $18 billion for a new dedicated multi-modal freight program. Transit--provides $115 billion for programs under the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), an increase of 76 percent over current levels, and significantly boosts New Starts funding. Rail--provides $28.6 billion for programs under the Federal Rail Administration (FRA). Safety--provides $6 billion for vehicle safety programs under the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), $4.7 billion for truck and bus safety programs under the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA), and $16 billion for the Highway Safety Improvement Program (HSIP). Competitive Grants--provides $7.5 billion for TIGER grants and $6 billion for TIFIA that could support $60 billion in loans. Research and Innovation--provides $3.4 billion to leverage research and innovation to move people and goods more safely and efficiently, while minimizing impacts on the environment. Federal lands--provides $150 million for a Nationally Significant Federal Lands and Tribal Projects program, to address project needs on Federal lands. In addition to these critical investments in the Nation's intermodal surface transportation network, H.R. 2410 also includes a number of important policy provisions that ensure that surface transportation investments create good paying American jobs. These include tightening Buy America loopholes, funding workforce development, allowing local hire, and strengthening wage and hour laws for truck and bus drivers. There are provisions in this proposal that I do not support, and may give some of my colleagues pause. Specifically, I strongly oppose eliminating the prohibition on tolling of existing free Interstate highways for reconstruction of an existing facility. The proposal also extends the deadline for Positive Train Control implementation. Given last week's tragic Amtrak crash, Congress should be coming together to find ways to fund expedited PTC implementation, not pushing the compliance date farther into the future. Other provisions, such as Buy America waivers for rail rolling stock, and elimination of statutory hours of service provisions for rail workers, also cause concern. Nevertheless, the Administration's bill provides a great starting point--an opportunity for this Congress to come together to significantly increase infrastructure investment over the long term. I look forward to working in a bipartisan manner with Chairman Shuster and our colleagues on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure as we develop new surface transportation legislation.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I have always been a staunch defender of privacy and civil liberties. I voted against the Patriot Act and its extension in 2008 and 2011 because I feared it gave the federal government too much unchecked power over the rights of law abiding citizens and lacked effective oversight tools for Congress. Clearly I was proven right. Thankfully, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled that the NSA's program to collect telephone records in bulk under Section 215 of the Patriot Act is illegal. This was a big win for privacy and civil liberties advocates, but it is not the end of the fight. Given this decision, it is clear that Congress must do more to rein in unconstitutional intrusion into our personal lives. Unfortunately, today's bill fell short of those reforms. H.R. 2048 is an improvement from the weakened bill that passed the House last year. However, it falls short of shutting the door on unrestrained government surveillance. The bill does nothing to address ``backdoor'' searches of U.S. citizens under Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act. This statute is possibly of more concern than the telephone records collected under Section 215. While Section 702 expressly prohibits the government from intentionally targeting the communications of U.S. persons, the NSA has applied an incredibly loose interpretation of this statute and used it to justify collecting not only communications records of U.S. citizens, but also the contents of communications, including email, social media messages, or web browsing history. While this bill attempts to address bulk data collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the NSA has an unscrupulous tendency to find loopholes in statute and twist the intent of Congress to fulfill their own wishes. I fear that given our past experience, this bill will undermine the Second Circuit's decision and create new legal loopholes for the NSA and law enforcement agencies to collect even more data on millions of Americans. It is possible to gain information on potential terrorist threats while still protecting the privacy and freedom of American citizens, complying with the Constitution, and preserving adequate congressional and judicial oversight. The original version of the USA Freedom Act, introduced in 2013, balanced these priorities. The bill we considered today did not. I urge the Senate to make the needed reforms to this bill so that it bolsters the Second Circuit's decision and accomplishes the goal of once and for all ending mass government surveillance of law-abiding Americans.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, I have serious concerns with the amendment offered by the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Stivers). This amendment authorizes the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to create a new grant program, the Asset Military Partnership Pilot Program, to fund air traffic control towers and airport infrastructure at airports that support DOD missions. Although I recognize that both the FAA and DOD have a shared interest in keeping our national airspace safe and secure, it is unclear how this new program achieves these goals. To my knowledge, neither the FAA nor DOD has requested that Congress authorize this new program. Moreover, the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is in the midst of developing a bill to reauthorize the FAA and its programs. Neither the gentleman from Ohio nor anyone else has put forward the need for this program. Instead, it is added on the Floor as an amendment with a possible 10 minutes of debate. In fact, the amendment is likely to be adopted without any debate. That is not how we should be legislating in this body. Why are we doing this? All indications are that this amendment is simply an attempt to fund specific airport projects at Rickenbacker International Airport, a civil-military public airport near Columbus, Ohio. I do not object to the FAA offering grants to assist an airport in improving infrastructure or repairing or replacing an air traffic control tower. In fact, a process for this already exists. The Airport Improvement Program (AIP) has a grant set-aside of approximately $15 million a year under the Military Airport Program (MAP) for the conversion of military airfields to civil or joint-use airports. Over the past 30 years, Rickenbacker Airport has received more than $62 million of AIP and MAP funds for airport-related projects. Although Rickenbacker has long participated in the AIP and MAP programs, this amendment creates a new program with the same objectives as existing programs but its own pot of money. It authorizes grants of up to $2.5 million for three airports, which must meet very specific criteria. It requires the FAA and DOD to each contribute one-half of the funds. The purpose appears simply to create an additional source of funding for a particular airport. As this bill moves to Conference with the other body, I am hopeful that the Committees on Armed Services will take a hard look at whether creating this new program is in the Nation's best interests and how it relates to the existing AIP and MAP programs. Mr. Chair, without a better explanation, I do not see why Congress would create another airport program.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the President came to Oregon last week, and he has taken to insults and misstatements of fact in order to get his trade promotion authority bill done, the Trans-Pacific Partnership. He said, ``Number four, critics warn that parts of this deal would undermine American regulation, food safety, worker safety, even financial regulations. They are making this stuff up''--great applause from his audience. ``This is not true. No trade agreement is going to force us to change our laws.'' Well, the President has sort of a technical point there. He is a lawyer. They can't force us to change our laws. They can just make us pay to have them, and it has happened. Mexican fishermen were paid by the U.S. Government to not kill dolphins because we had adopted a dolphin-safe label for tuna. We had to pay damages to Mexico because of their foregone profit because we wouldn't let them kill the dolphins. Mexican trucks wanted to come into the U.S. Well, they don't meet our standards--kind of a problem, Mexican trucks rumbling around the U.S. with drivers that don't meet our standards, but they won a judgment under these same provisions. Nope, he is right. They couldn't make us change the laws. They just imposed a whole range of punitive tariffs, politically targeted against people like me who had imposed the Mexican trucks, then-Speaker Pelosi, and others; and the U.S. relented. Now, they didn't make us change our laws. We volunteered to do it after they imposed massive and unfair tariffs on Mexican goods. But it works both ways. It has been great for America. There is a U.S. mining company that just won a judgment against Nova Scotia. They wanted to put a huge pit mine on the Bay of Fundy, destroy the fisheries' resource for their pit mine. They were denied. They won a judgment against the government of Nova Scotia and Canada. Now, Nova Scotia and Canada don't have to change their laws. They can pay this country $300 million of damages because they can't destroy the fishery with their pit mine. Now, the President is a smart guy, went to Harvard, but I consulted a little bit higher and smarter authority. Last night, I was at a dinner with Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Prize winning economist. He was on the Obama economic team when NAFTA was adopted. He said we made a huge mistake. We did not understand that this ISDS was creating a regulatory taking in a special court available only to corporations. We didn't know that, and it opened the door on chapter 11 in NAFTA. He says Obama is opening the door all the way and putting full force behind those provisions in this legislation. Bottom line, what he said? People will die. People will die because of this provision in the TPP. It is a huge win for the pharmaceutical industry. They get to wipe out the formularies in those countries, both developing and developed countries who are part of the TPP, which lowers drug prices. They will not be allowed under this agreement, and they can go to a secret tribunal to get damages if those countries won't revoke them. It will wipe out access to generics in developing countries who are part of this agreement. That means AIDS drugs and other things that they can't afford, no longer generic--people will die. Now, these are people overseas. Maybe we shouldn't care so much. I do. But others might not; it is all about profits. But ultimately, it is going to come home because a U.S.-based pharmaceutical company can open a subsidiary in any one of those countries, and it can go to a secret trade tribunal and it can challenge our reduced drug prices for veterans, which the pharmaceutical industry would really love to undo. That is billions of dollars of profits foregone every year because our veterans get the lowest price for drugs. Under this trade agreement, ultimately, that will be challenged, and in all probability, we will lose. Now, the President is right: we won't have to repeal the law that gets the lowest-priced drugs for our veterans. We will just have to pay the pharmaceutical industry billions of dollars a year to continue to give our vets the drugs at a lower price so we can provide more care for more veterans. This trade agreement, unfortunately, is what those of us who are critics say it is. It is built upon the faulty foundation of past trade agreements, including Korea. The special trade representative to the President--also dissembling a little bit--comes to caucuses: ``It is unbelievable. We have got 20,000 more cars into Korea last year. This thing is a success.'' I said, ``Oh, Mr. Ambassador, how many more Korean cars came in last year as a result of the agreement?'' ``Oh, I don't have that number.'' Well, of course he didn't have the number. Well, he knows the number. It is 461,000. So we got 20,000 cars into Korea; they got 461,000 more into the U.S. That means a net loss of 441,000 cars. That is a heck of a lot of jobs lost in the auto industry. This was a great day yesterday when the Senate slowed them down a little bit, and as the American people learn more, we will stop them.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. New York may be confused, and everybody is confused because they have not seen what it is that they are objecting to and would, again, suggest that the best course of action would be to actually see it. The gentleman from Ohio brought up something very weird, saying that, somehow, if we used a simple resolution of disapproval, they couldn't write a new rule. He is confusing it with the bill you passed last year, which said that the rule is rejected and you can't use anything you use to write that rule to write a new rule. A number of us raised questions about that at the time. You did pass that last year. That is probably what he is thinking of. This is a simple resolution of disapproval. It would not have any impact on future actions of the Agency. I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from Maryland (Ms. Edwards).

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield myself such time as I may consume. First, again, Mr. Chairman, I would remind the gentleman on the other side that we are not voting on the proposed rule. We are voting on a revised rule, and no Member of Congress nor any member of the potentially regulated community nor any member of any environmental group has seen or has knowledge of that rule. The gentleman reports that this simply tells them to go back again because they didn't do enough. They had 700 days of public comments, and they accepted 1,429 public comments that went into this. I would also remind the gentleman that I don't know how he voted on the amendment, but on the Republican Energy and Water bill 2 weeks ago, we precluded developing any new rule, none, zero. So kill the one we haven't seen, and you are stuck with the Bush guidance which everybody agrees is a disaster. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler), a member of the committee.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. First, I would correct the Record--and far be it for me to correct the chairman--but, actually, the attorney general of New York, on behalf of the State of New York, as one of our witnesses, testified in favor of going forward with the rule, so there were others who objected.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise in opposition to this bill, H.R. 1732, very aptly name the RIP Act, rest in peace--oh, no, the Regulatory Integrity Protection Act. It will rest in peace. It would be inevitably vetoed if the Senate chose to take it up, which I don't believe they will. We are being asked to vote on things here that no one has seen or read, and that is why we are here today. Now, the President wants us to vote on trade policy for the United States of America. I have read parts of it. Many Members haven't read any of it, but nobody--probably very few have read all of it. The public hasn't seen any of it. Here we are again today. We are being asked to vote on killing something that nobody has read. No one in this Chamber knows what is in this rule. Now, I would not rise to support the rule as initially proposed. It was garbled, poorly presented, and I believe there were many problems that it would have created, and that was especially distressing because it was a rule that was trying to fix something done in the Bush era. We are still dealing with the Bush era. Because of a 4-1-4 Supreme Court decision, with two different tests for jurisdictional waters and total confusion, the Bush administration decided to write a rule to interpret the Clean Water Act. When it was unveiled, it was opposed by all the groups that are supporting this bill today. They said: This is ridiculous. It is confusing. It just leaves way too much to interpretation. It can be applied in different ways in different parts of the country. There is no certainty here. It is a mess. Get rid of it. Well, that didn't happen, and the Obama administration, in response to the requests of all those groups, said: Okay. We will take a cut at it. Now, as I say, the first version was not very well done, and it raised more questions than it answered, but we now have at least some idea of some of the things this bill is going to do. It is not going to regulate your birdbaths and ditches and all these other things that are out there on the Internet. In fact, it may solve real problems. We don't know that, but we are going to repeal it before it happens. Now, here is a problem. This farmer in the South was made to go through the environmental review process and get a permit; yet farming and agricultural practices are supposed to be exempt. I showed this to the Republicans who were using this in a joint hearing with the Senate. I asked the EPA Administrator and secretary of the Corps: Would this land, knowing it is agricultural land, be jurisdictional--they can't tell us what is in their rule--under your rule? They said: No, that land would be exempt. This person who had to go through a lengthy permitting process because of the confusion of the Bush guidance would not, under the proposed rule, have to go through any of that and could just go on farming. Thank you very much. Now, we are going to prevent him or her from getting that relief. Now, that is just one of the aspects of this rule that we know a little bit about--or at least we know the Administrator's interpretation of that part of the rule, that it would fix a problem for farmers. I would suggest that there is a better way to proceed in the House, which would be let them publish the rule. If it solves a bunch of problems, great. If it solves a bunch of problems but still needs some tweaks, great. Let's intervene. Let's give them direction. If it is something that you and everybody else feels we just can't live with, that it is poorly done--instead of this confusing process we are going through here, which I am about to explain contradicts legislation just passed 2 weeks ago--we can do this: I have already had it drafted for you. You don't need to take the time. It is less than a page. It is called a joint congressional resolution of disapproval. Any major rule--this is a major rule--Congress has the right, under legislation that is 20 years old now, to reject it within 60 days. If the rule is not well written, once we see it and read it, you could reject it. What is the rush to repeal it before we have read it and we know what is in it? Well, there is a lot of political stuff going on around here. I would say it is just politics playing to the crowd and the fears of people who haven't seen it or read it yet either, but they are worried about what it might be. Well, it doesn't go into effect immediately, I will say to them. If it is bad, you can ask the same people that introduced this resolution, pass it forthwith, send it to the Senate, pass it forthwith, and that is the end of it, and we would start over. Now, there is one other confusing aspect here, and that is that, just 2 weeks ago, the House voted on this language, which says that the bill before us purports to start the process over again, the fourth attempt at writing the rule with a whole lot more public hearings and everything, despite everything that has gone on to this point in time. Two weeks ago, an amendment to the Energy and Water appropriations said there can be no new rule development, so that is already in the bill. Unless that were taken out of the bill, what we are doing here today can't happen. You can't develop a new rule when it is precluded in the appropriations process, as passed by many of the people who are going to vote for this today. You have sort of contradicted yourself a little bit. It makes it a little problematic. Do a new rule, but you can't do a new rule, so forget about it. What does that mean? We are stuck with the Bush guidance, which everybody hates and doesn't work and subjects farmers to unnecessary permitting processes. I don't call that exactly progress or acting in the best interest of the American people and agriculture and a whole host of other people who might be impacted. I would just suggest that we forgo this little political demonstration today, just wait patiently for another 2 weeks when the trolls at OMB finally release the rule. It has been down there for months. We need to reform OMB, and I hope some on the other side of the aisle would like to help me there. We need a more transparent rulemaking process in this country. We should not rush ahead and not allow a rule to be published that might help people; and, if it doesn't help people, then you can kill it. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I yield the gentlewoman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, as I said earlier, that gentleman hasn't read the rule, I haven't read the rule, and I don't know how one can assert very specifically what it might or might not do if you haven't read it when we have heard there have been major changes. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Napolitano), the ranking member of the subcommittee of jurisdiction.