Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters)

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, please clarify.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, that's what you just said.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Okay. With that, I would reclaim my time. I could ask to have the record read back, but I won't because it would delay things. But you said this is what Mexico wanted. You did say that just before as you spoke. Now you're saying that you believe that this is reflecting the spirit of the agreement. Now I will accept that. You believe that changing the agreement by waiving our financial services law is in the spirit of the agreement. I don't believe that. Maxine Waters, who serves on the Committee on Financial Services, doesn't agree with that. And, unfortunately, the President of the United States doesn't agree with that, so this bill is going nowhere. It's not going to get out of the Senate. They have a bipartisan bill over there that doesn't waive Dodd-Frank that they could pass by unanimous consent. We could be done with this. But no, we're not going to do that; we're going to play games. So here's what the President said. He's got something to say about this in the end, he really does: The administration cannot support H.R. 1613, as reported by the House Committee on Natural Resources because of the unnecessary, extraneous provisions that seriously detract from the bill. Most significantly, the administration strongly objects to exempting actions taken by public companies in accordance with the transboundary hydrocarbon agreements from requirements section 1504 of the Dodd-Frank Act and the Securities and Exchange Commission's natural resource extraction disclosure rule. As a practical matter, this provision would waive the requirement for the disclosure of any payments made by resource extraction companies to the United States or foreign governments in accordance with a transboundary hydrocarbon agreement. The provision directly and negatively impacts U.S. efforts to increase transparency and accountability, particularly in the oil, gas, and minerals sectors. So if we proceed with this bill in this form, the President will veto the bill, and we'll be back again. And how many months that'll take, I don't know. But to assert that somehow Mexico wanted this, or the administration wanted it, and they just kind of forgot to put it in the agreement, and now we're helping them out, even though the administration says they don't want it, and I don't know what the government of Mexico says--and then there was another issue raised about confidentiality provisions. In fact, the SEC has more than adequate capabilities to do general exemptions in sections 12(h) and 36 of the Securities and Exchange Act. They could issue exemptions from this disclosure requirement under this authority, should it be warranted. In fact, the SEC today confirmed with us that there is nothing that would prevent the SEC from issuing exemptions should they be warranted. Now, the objection here is to waiving any and all future agreements from any public disclosure of payments to foreign governments. That's what you're doing here today. It's not about this one agreement or problems that might crop up with Mexico. That could be accommodated by the Securities and Exchange Commission. It's about doing away with a critical section of Dodd- Frank. And if you want to do that, why not bring it up in the Financial Services Committee, have a hearing, have a debate, send us a bill and repeal it. But don't try and do it in the dark of night in the hope that if you attach it to this agreement, which we all agree should be entered into, Mexico wants, U.S. wants, that you're doing anybody a favor. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I will have a lot to say about the deficiencies to these two bills over the next 2 days. But today the Republicans are purporting two things: lower gas prices and reduce the deficit. They would have us believe this bill would do that. They're saying high gas prices are due to the fact there's not enough offshore oil drilling. Nothing could be further from the truth. There's actually a glut of oil in the Gulf region. It's all waiting in storage because, oh, the refineries are doing routine maintenance. Why are they doing that? Well, because it's the height of the driving season for the American people, therefore, they can gouge the consumers by pretending, oh, there's just no other time we could clean the refinery. It doesn't have anything to do with oil supplies. It has to do with a lack of refining capacity artificially manipulated and speculation on Wall Street. Secondly, they say they're addressing the deficit, that this is going to provide additional revenues in the future. In fact, they are so concerned about the deficit they would not allow an amendment I attempted to offer, supported by a number of west coast Members-- three Governors of the Western United States--that would have protected the west coast from the mandatory drilling in this bill. They said that might preclude future revenue from future leases that might be let by a future President, and they said we might not get $1 billion 30 years in the future because of your amendment. However, there is an amendment by the gentleman from Louisiana, Representative Cassidy, who will mandate a diversion of $500 million a year of revenues flowing to the Treasury to the Gulf States for the next 30 years. Yes, we are going to forego or give up $15 billion of revenues to the Treasury, creating $15 billion more debt and deficit for the American people, but they waived the rules. That doesn't count. This all kind of reminds me a little bit of George Orwell, the way the Republicans cynically manipulate the rules around here. As he said: ``All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.'' So Republican amendments that create debt and deficit are exempt from the rules, and Democratic amendments to protect the west coast, which does not want this mandatory oil drilling, because it might forego some potential possible future revenues, are not made in order. This is not for real. This is not an honest process.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Almost 17 years to the day--that's a long time--the House of Representatives passed the so-called Defense of Marriage Act. At that time, I went to the floor and voted with a small minority against this legislation. I said it was unnecessary, discriminatory, and unconstitutional. It took 17 years to work through the system and to finally get the Supreme Court to act and to decide that, indeed, the Defense of Marriage Act, so-called, is unconstitutional and is a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons it has protected in the Fifth Amendment: ``The Federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,'' as written by Justice Kennedy, ``by seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.'' Today, the Supreme Court restored justice and equity in America.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Last Thursday, Speaker Boehner called President Obama ``absolutely crazy'' for moving forward with rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that cause global warming. What I think is absolutely crazy is the Republicans' constant denial of the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real and human activity is largely responsible. I think it's absolutely crazy that the Republicans voted more than 50 times in the last Congress to block action on climate change. In March, I talked about a new peer-reviewed report from Oregon State and Harvard that looked at temperatures over the last 11,300 years; and they found that over the last 100 years, coinciding with the widespread use of fossil fuels and turbines, et cetera, that we have seen more temperature increase than over the previous 11,000 years; 100 years versus 11,000 years. Last month I came to the floor again to talk about a new NOAA report. Oceans are warming, fish stocks, many commercial fish stocks are moving north. Other things, which aren't capable of moving, are deteriorating in stocks. And then, on the west coast, we've had shellfish failures due to ocean acidification; and the shellfish, of course, are only an indication of what might happen to the rest of the food chain in the oceans. No one denies the acidification is due to the CO2 in the atmosphere. But the Do-Nothing Republican Congress just shrugs and says there's nothing to do. But, unlike the Republicans, President Obama accepts the science; and in about 2 hours, the President will release a plan to combat climate change here at home and lay out steps for working with some of the world's largest polluters, including India and China, to reduce emissions abroad. The details aren't all out yet, but the President's proposing to do something that I said we should do 5 years ago, that is, use the regulatory powers of the Clean Air Act to regulate new and existing power plants. That's responsible for almost 40 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions. We can make a huge dent in our emissions by moving forward on responsible, flexible efficiency standards for coal and natural gas plants. As the administration moves forward, it should take a close look at the climate plan outlined by the Natural Resources Defense Council. Their plan has two key elements: set State-specific emission rates to reflect the diversity of the Nation's electricity sector, and give power plant operators broad flexibility to meet those standards in the most cost-effective way through a range of existing technologies. The standard for every State would be an overall emission rate average of all the fossil fuel plants, and individual plants could emit at a higher or lower rate. Each covered plant with an emission rate above the State standard could meet the target by retrofitting a more efficient boiler, installing carbon capture, or it could burn a mixture of coal and cleaner fuels such as gas and/or biomass. The plan would allow for the owners of multiple power plants to average emissions rates of their plants and meet the required emission rate on average by running coal plants less often, increasing generation from cleaner sources, or integrating more renewable resources. Such an approach, that is both flexible and State-based, is exactly what makes the Clean Water Act one of our most successful environmental and public health statutes in history. Mr. Speaker, it's time to listen to scientists. Get serious about climate change. The evidence is in. The President has a plan. The Supreme Court has given him the authority to regulate. The only question now is whether the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives will listen and act.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Last week I went shopping. I wouldn't exactly call it a spree. What I did was I went to one of the lowest cost grocery stores in the Eugene-Springfield area where I live to try and purchase a week's worth of food for $31.50. That's the average SNAP benefit for a single individual. There are those on the other side of the aisle with regard to the FARRM Bill that will come up later today and say, This is the first place to cut: food assistance to hungry people, to kids, to seniors, to the unemployed, the disabled. That's where they want to cut first. I wonder how many of them have ever tried to budget for themselves or for their spouse and child at $31.50 per person for a week. It doesn't go too far. In fact, I ended up a little bit over because we miscalculated on weighing some apples. I had three apples, but I had to put one back and would have had to cut back a little bit more on the pasta to make the $31.50 budget limit. There are these incredible stereotypes out there about the SNAP program, the food assistance program formerly called food stamps, that all these people are on welfare. No. Actually, 92 percent of the people getting SNAP benefits are not on welfare. Half of them are children and 22 percent are on Social Security or Social Security Disability. So they're either seniors or disabled. The rest are unemployed or underemployed. And at $31.50 a week--a benefit that the other side of the aisle wants to cut--many of these people now can't make it through the month. This is pretty paltry stuff if you look at it and you think about doing this week in and week out. Most people in Oregon--and Oregon is a lower cost State than many for food--run out sometimes in the third week of their benefits and they have to get emergency food assistance. Our food banks provided 1 million boxes of emergency food assistance last year. Yet, those on that side of the aisle would begrudge these people, their children, these seniors, these disabled an adequate budget for a very minimal diet. It's extraordinary to me. My State--and most people don't think of us this way--we are the fourth highest per capita in terms of food stamp utilization. Fourth highest per capita, because outside of our major urban areas, the economy has not recovered from the collapse that Wall Street caused in housing and other areas. We had recreational vehicles; that industry is gone. We had some high tech; that's moved on. We had a lot of construction, home building, wood products--pretty well decimated. The rural areas I have in my rural counties--real unemployment of 20 percent. People are struggling to make ends meet, and we're going to cut their benefits? They want to work. Some of them are working, and we even have a higher minimum wage than most States, but it still won't get you through to the end of the month for your family. This is just outrageous. There are ways to cut this bill. We're going to stop paying--finally, at last, we're going to stop paying people not to grow things. But now we're going to have a new program of crop insurance. And some estimates are that this program--which goes to anybody with an unlimited income in this bill, that is, if you're a corporate farm and you earn $2 million a year, the government is going to pay for 80 percent of your crop insurance cost. Eighty percent subsidy from the taxpayers. Why is that? We could cut back on the eligibility, and this would be a pretty big income for any farmer I know of. If you earn over a quarter-million dollars a year, go buy your own crop insurance. I think it even could be a little lower than that in my State and in most States. That would save as much money as they're going to save by eliminating food assistance to hungry kids, seniors, unemployed and underemployed, and disabled Americans. These are the cruelest cuts possible. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment later today which would restore these benefits.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. It's been nearly a decade since, on a bipartisan basis, against bipartisan opposition, we fought and were successful in creating the Federal Flight Deck Officer program. Since that time, over hundreds of thousands of flights have been protected by armed pilots. There was controversy at the beginning. Could we trust pilots with guns? Well, we trust them with our lives. We trust them with planes that were used as weapons of mass destruction by the terrorists in 2011. Of course, we can trust them with guns. But they need proper training because it's an unusual environment in which to possess and use a weapon--and use a weapon as the last line of defense--should a plane be taken over by terrorists. We've done other things to provide security like Federal air marshals, armored flight decks. But still, we know that this program is essential, it's inexpensive, and it is something that pilots want to do. There were openings last year for a few additional training spots. Over a thousand people volunteered for those slots. Many, obviously, were not chosen. If this program were eliminated, as was proposed in the President's budget, or even if it's cut in half--and I appreciate the fact that the committee has labored to find money to restore half the funding--many officers will not be recertified, new officers will not be allowed to join, and we will lose this last critical line of defense and one that is wonderfully random. A terrorist could never, ever know if the pilots on that plane were armed. It's pretty hard to spot the air marshals, but it's even impossible to know what the pilot has behind that locked flight deck door. So we're recommending an amendment to our colleagues that would take money out of other parts of the bureaucracy of the TSA at no increase in debt or deficit and fully fund this program so that thousands of pilots can continue to participate meaningfully as the last line of defense against a future terrorist attack. I think this amendment has tremendous common good sense about it. It's very cost effective. And I would hope that my colleagues will join us on a bipartisan basis in supporting it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding on this. I spoke earlier today. This is the seventh attempt by this House to expedite, or now in this case, we are not expediting permitting, we are mandating permitting. The gentleman just said that there's some disagreement here. The bill clearly states that it's the 2011 DEIS which is deemed to be sufficient which does not contain the current routing for the line. We could create somewhat of an extraordinary precedent here. We could just have one generic national pipeline EIS that was done somewhere for something and went through the process and was approved and then deemed that any other pipeline that wants to be built can use that generic pipeline permit. That would certainly expedite things.

Mr. DeFAZIO. No, I'm sorry, I don't have enough time. We would just deem that pipelines anywhere and everywhere met national interest, public safety, and that. I also raised the point earlier that this will transport tar sands oil through a pipeline which the IRS has deemed not to be oil, so it won't pay the normal excise tax to go to the trust fund which takes care of leaks, like the one we just recently had in Kansas. It will go to a tax-free export zone to a refinery half owned by Saudi Arabia and this will bring us energy independence. Independence from whom? Every time we pump another barrel, the Saudis and OPEC drop a barrel. They're keeping the price up. There is no free market in oil. You guys all know that. This is not going to save Americans one penny at the pump. If you want to save Americans money at the pump, let's go after the speculators on Wall Street who are adding 75 cents or $1 to the price of a gallon of gas. Let's go after the collusion by the oil companies that shut down all the refineries all at once every year at the beginning of the refining season for periodic maintenance, which they couldn't predict was going to happen, or sometimes there's a little accident. Except it turned out last year with an investigation they weren't really shut down--they just jacked up the price 50 cents a gallon like they always do. So to pretend that somehow by deeming this to be sufficient, mandating that it happen, allowing a foreign company to build this pipeline across the United States of America, transport tar sands oil to a refinery half owned by the Saudis to be exported out of the United States, perhaps to China--over there you are saying, oh, we don't want to go to China. Well, it may well go to China and go through the Panama Canal. You're not going to stop that, and it's going to save the American taxpayers money at the pump and put people to work. Yes, there will be temporary construction jobs. But we can do better, particularly as this committee. If we made the investments we need to make in our water infrastructure, our port infrastructure, our roads, bridges, highways, and transit systems, we can put millions of people to work permanently in this country and rebuild our infrastructure and once again claim world leadership there. We've got better things for this committee to be doing.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Repetition has become sort of the cause celebre here in the House of Representatives. Last week, we totally repealed ObamaCare for the fourth time, and 33 other times we partially repealed it. Of course, none of those things have come true or have happened. This will be the seventh attempt by the House of Representatives to expedite--in this case, they've gone one step further--or to mandate the building of the XL pipeline. That's right, mandate. We're going to deem that an Environmental Impact Statement done on a very different route is good for this pipeline. Now, if you follow that logic, we could just have one generic Environmental Impact Statement for any project anywhere in the United States of America, and Congress could just deem it to have met the law and the environmental requirements. That's incredible to go that much further in this political dealing here. Now, what's going to happen? The Canadians, sadly, apparently, are going to destroy their boreal forests, which are irreplaceable, to extract one of the dirtiest fossil fuels. They're then going to ship this tar sands oil through a pipeline crossing the United States of America, which, as the gentleman said, will be exempt from the excise tax that all other oil companies and pipeline companies pay--American companies and some foreign companies, but everybody else pays it. They will be exempt. They will not contribute to the oil spill liability trust fund. It's going to go to a refinery located in a foreign trade zone that is not paying export taxes, and that refinery is half owned by the Saudis. And this is going to give us energy independence and lower prices. I mean, is it April Fool's Day? Really? Come on. This is not going to give any American a single penny off per gallon at the pump. Right now, we are in the annual traditional Memorial Day price gouging by the oil industry. It just happens magically every May that they're up to do a little periodic maintenance or unexpected maintenance on their plants. Gasoline has gone up 50 cents a gallon on the west coast in the last 3 weeks. This is not a free market. It is a manipulated market. We pay the so-called ``world price.'' So even if this refinery does produce--and it will export--this product, it's not going to lower the world price because the Saudis over the last couple of years have tracked our increased oil production with decreases in their oil production to keep the prices high. There are things we could do to bring real relief to American consumers--get the speculators out of the market and a number of other things--that would provide more immediate relief. This will not provide relief. It will not be a boost for our economy. Yes, there are temporary construction jobs, but guess what? We could create a heck of a lot more construction jobs in this country if we met our obligations to better fund the Surface Transportation Trust Fund and began to deal with the crumbling infrastructure in America. Those would be real jobs that would really benefit this country.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, last month, two scientists from Oregon State University, Shawn Marcott and Alan Mix, published a peer-reviewed study in collaboration with scientists at Harvard reviewing 11,300 years of global temperatures. They found that the range of temperature change in the last 100 years is equivalent to the temperature change over the previous 100 centuries. Climate change is real, it is devastating, and it is accelerating. Most focus is on the terrestrial effects. Other research points to rapid and devastating changes in our oceans--again, a study done by Oregon State University. Burke Hales, an OSU chemical oceanographer, coauthor with Alan Barton, who works at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery, looked into the fact that oysters were failing at an incredible rate to spawn and reproduce. Their study linked the production failures to the CO2 levels in the water. That has incredible implications for the future of not only the shellfish industry, an important industry in the Northwest and other parts of the country, but also for the whole ocean food chain. The ocean chemistry is also threatening something called pteropods, who are tiny sea snails, and they're very much at risk. They happen to be a food source for zooplankton, whales, and of course our salmon, who already have a host of problems in terms of their future. Then from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme, the Arctic seas are becoming rapidly more acidified. It turns out that cold water is especially susceptible, and as the sea ice in the summer recedes, more and more of the Arctic Ocean is exposed to the increased levels of carbon dioxide, and it is rapidly acidifying, in addition to which the melting of the ice in Greenland and elsewhere is adding fresh water, which further degrades the capabilities of the oceans to deal with the carbon dioxide. Finally, research in the Northeast shows that the surface temperatures in the northeast Continental Shelf in 2012 were the highest recorded in 150 years of record-keeping. They found that over the last four decades many species of fish stocks have been moving north to escape the warming waters, but there are many species that cannot move or evolve that rapidly, which portends for more disasters. Back in 1973, there was a science fiction movie called ``Soylent Green,'' sort of a mystery movie, but it was about an overpopulated and polluted world, and the final devastating blow was that the oceans were dying. Now we have evidence that our oceans are very, very much at risk from CO2 and climate change. The House Republicans are using their leadership here to stymie efforts to even research and document climate change, let alone just totally denying that it's a problem. Time and time again, they voted to know nothing and do nothing about climate change. They voted to block action on climate change no fewer than 50 times in the last Congress. Mr. Speaker, it's time to listen to the scientists and get serious about climate change. The evidence is in. The only question now is whether Congress will listen and act.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Okay, 38th time repealing all or part of the Affordable Care Act. Now, the Republican mantra was ``Repeal and Replace,'' but somewhere along the way they forgot about the ``replace'' part. So tomorrow, total repeal. Well, what does that mean? I've got a few concerns. It means insurance companies can go back to rescinding, that is, taking away your policy when you get sick even if you've been paying premiums. They could do that until this law passed. And 3.1 million young adults, 18 to 26, oops, you're off your parents' policy. Sorry. No insurance. 5.3 million seniors who got their doughnut hole reduced last year, sorry, you're back in the bill doughnut hole. 3.54 million people in private plans who got free preventative procedures last year, sorry, those aren't free anywhere. Up to 17 million children with preexisting health conditions would again be denied coverage. 105 million people in health care plans that previously had lifetime limits, well, your lifetime limit is back. So total repeal, no replace, doing incredible damage to seniors, children, and many other insured Americans.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. The Republicans, under the guise of being family friendly, are going to strip American workers of overtime pay. That's right, work more than 40 hours a week, you don't get paid overtime anymore under their bill. Instead, you get comp time. They say, Oh, this is family friendly, it's flexible. Well, there's certainly flexibility now that employers can grant people leave for family problems and other things. This would be essentially an interest-free loan to employers. They tell you you're working 50 hours, and I'll give you comp time, but it's up to them to give you the comp time. So they could wait until the end of the year, then pay you the overtime without having granted you comp time and having had an interest-free loan. This is outrageous. Many Americans are having trouble making ends meet. They're dependent upon overtime pay to make ends meet. Wages are stagnant, and they need the overtime pay to make ends meet. Women still only earn 77 cents on the dollar compared to male workers. They need the overtime pay to help feed their kids. But, no, the Republicans want to take that away from them under the guise of being female friendly. Happy Mother's Day from the Republicans.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, later today, the House will vote to restore funding to the Nation's air traffic control system to better protect the traveling public and to restore order to a vital sector of our economy by shifting unused funds. Two lessons are hopefully now learned: Across-the-board budget cuts are abysmally stupid. Cut a program that's vital to the health, safety and the economy, and what about this unused money over here? Oh, we can't move that, so we took care of that. Second, there are some here who believe the Federal Government doesn't need to and should not invest in facilitating the movement of goods and freight and people in this country. It should devolve to the States. Well, this is an object lesson in how vital these Federal programs are to the Nation's airspace. And next year, when the Highway Trust Fund goes below zero and we cut spending by $50 billion on highways and transit, we will have another crisis. Let's hope we don't have to see a million layoffs and total disruption across the country before we fix that one. Fix that one before it happens.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, there's a lot of talk in Washington, D.C., about something called chained CPI. A lot of people don't know what that means. We have assurances from the White House and the Republicans who originated this idea. It's an innocuous sort of little change to Social Security, veterans benefits, and other programs, because we overstate inflation in the CPI. Actually, particularly for seniors, the reverse is true. The consumer price index, as measured, significantly understates inflation that impacts seniors because seniors have a different buying pattern than 20-year-olds. They're not out buying the latest iPhone. They're buying a lot of medical care, going up much faster than measured inflation, pharmaceuticals going up at phenomenal, obscene rates. Housing, energy, and all those things make up a bigger percentage of their budget in retirement. For years, I have proposed legislation to accurately measure the cost of living for seniors, which actually would increase their annual cost- of-living adjustments. But now come the White House and the Republicans to say we're overstating inflation. Let's just use chained CPI, it doesn't matter, it's all about substitution. If they can't afford beef, they'll do chicken; if they can't do chicken, they'll do pasta; if they can't do pasta, they'll buy dog food; if they can't afford that, they'll starve. That's kind of the bottom line of these pointy-headed economists out there on how these sort of weird theories work. Here's a graphic that demonstrates this a little better. This shows for a retired single woman, widowed or otherwise, how much food would be lost on an annual basis with chained CPI as it eats away at the annual adjustments and the things that she purchases go up faster and faster. Each shopping cart represents a weekly food budget of $53. That's not exactly living high on the hog here. At 65, she loses 2 weeks of food. And a woman retiring at age 65 this year has a life expectancy of 20 years. That means at age 85, with this new device, the chained CPI, she would lose 16 weeks worth of her food budget. That's 16 weeks. Everybody, as they get older, works through their savings and other means of support. And if you live too long, you're going to have a really hard time making ends meet. If we chain the CPI, it will get even harder for the next generation of seniors. There's kind of a mixed message here. Republicans want to cut entitlements. They never supported Social Security and Medicare, but they just want to cut them to make sure they're there in the future. Well, If you chain the CPI, Social Security, which is supposed to have adequate benefits to pay full guaranteed benefits until 2033, would pick up 2 years. So we cut benefits for 100 percent of seniors retiring now and in the future, and Social Security would last 2 years longer. That doesn't exactly save Social Security, does it? On the converse, with my plan, where we lift the cap so that people who earn a $1 million or $2 million or one of those hedge fund guys earning a billion dollars a year would pay Social Security tax on all of his or her income, we add 50 years to the life of Social Security. That's about as far as you can measure it into the future. If they wanted to save Social Security, if that's what the White House is up to, if that's what the Republicans are up to, it's a much better way to do it without penalizing seniors. But that's not really what it's about. It's to take a program, Social Security, which is self-funding, doesn't draw on the general fund, doesn't create any deficit, it's to take money from Social Security and use it elsewhere to plug holes in our budget. That's not right. It's the highest tax paid by many American workers to the Federal Government. Almost half of workers pay more in Social Security taxes, particularly the self-employed, than they do income taxes to the Federal Government. And if you earn over $112,000 a year, your tax rate goes down. If you get $1,200,000, your tax rate is one- tenth that of someone who earns $50,000 a year; $12 million, one one- hundredth; and those billionaires are paying less than 1 second's wages in Social Security taxes. If you want to fix the program, lift the cap and make everybody pay the same percentage of their income into Social Security, but don't pretend by taking food out of the mouths of seniors in the future that you're fixing the problem for full funding of Social Security beyond 2033. You're not. That's a lie. Admit what you're doing. You want to cut benefits to seniors, to veterans and other working Americans with this chained CPI artifice.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Yesterday, I discussed the American Society of Civil Engineers' scorecard. Our infrastructure is failing--it got a D-plus-- costing us lost productivity and wasted fuel. Now, we need to deal with that problem, but there is an even bigger problem looming, which is the already inadequate levels of investment in our infrastructure are about to end. The Ryan budget takes us from a $40 billion investment in our crumbling roads, bridges, and highways to $100 million--$40 billion, $100 million. Transit: $10 billion to zero. That's right. The Ryan budget cuts our investment--that's already inadequate--in infrastructure from $50 billion a year to $100 million. That's about 1 million jobs lost in addition to the accelerated deterioration of the system. That can't be a serious proposal. This isn't a serious budget. It's balanced on phony premises. Anybody believe we're going to go to zero spending and abandon Federal investment in our roads, bridges, highways, and transit systems? And if they believe that, that's even crazier than the numbers in this budget. The Democratic budget continues those investments and makes certain we will invest in the future of America.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, as I speak here on the floor, the American Society of Civil Engineers is releasing a report card for America's infrastructure. The gentleman who spoke before me talked about the legacy that we leave to our country and about growth in the Nation. Well, this is an incredible legacy we're leaving and creating, which is an unbelievable deficit in our Nation's infrastructure. We've gone from No. 1 in the world post-World War II with the Eisenhower era, the national interstate program, to No. 26 in the world. We are spending less of our gross domestic product on infrastructure investment than many Third World countries. It's not only an embarrassment; it is hurting our economy and our growth. Now, if your kid came home and said, Hey, Dad, guess what? I got my report card. Here it is. Good news. Good news. Oh, it's good news. I went up to a D-plus. A D-plus--that's where America's infrastructure is. We have a projected deficit over the next 7 years of about $1.6 trillion. That's an unbelievable, unimaginable number, $1.6 trillion. That's as much money as the war in Iraq cost us, an unnecessary and wasteful war. We can't afford to invest in our infrastructure, but we're rebuilding the infrastructure in Afghanistan. There's something wrong with this picture. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers, if we don't address this investment gap in all of our infrastructure, by 2020 the economy will lose $1 trillion in business sales, 3.5 million jobs will be lost or foregone and there will be $3.1 trillion less in gross domestic product. If we invested $1.6 trillion, we would get 100 percent return on our investment and 3.5 million more jobs. Not bad, but the people on that side of the aisle don't believe in rebuilding America's infrastructure. They have some wacko theory here of what they call ``devolution.'' We shouldn't have a national transportation policy, no. It should be done by the 50 States. Well, we already tried that. It didn't work too well. That's when Dwight David Eisenhower said we needed an national interstate system, and we built it. Now it's falling apart. There are 140,000 bridges that need substantial repair or replacement and 40 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System is at the point where there are potholes big enough to put your car in. Maybe if the White House limousine falls in one of those holes we'll get a little more action down there in terms of funding our infrastructure. I've been trying to get them to take a position on this. We are looking at something even more extraordinary. In 2015--we've been paying for infrastructure out of a trust fund. It hasn't added to the deficit. But it raises taxes. Oh, my God. We can't have taxes for something like that, can we? Not on that side of aisle. Well, if we don't do something about it, the trust fund is going to drop below zero sometime in 2014, which means we are not going to invest any more in our National Transportation System. For one year we'll go from $50 billion, which is not sufficient to even deal with the deterioration, let alone build out a better, more efficient 21st century infrastructure, to $7 billion. That's hundreds of thousands of jobs gone. That's an acceleration in the deterioration of the system. We're going to have to talk about revenues. It's the only way to solve that problem, unless you want to devolve it to the 50 States and have the States build interstates that don't match up or maybe they won't build the interstates at all. We don't know what kind of plan is coming from that side of the aisle. But I do know that we need to make these investments. As I already pointed out, we can get a 100 percent rate of return. It's pretty simple. We would just index the existing gas tax, which hasn't changed since 1993. Yeah, we're paying nearly 4 bucks a gallon. It will be 5 bucks a gallon by Memorial Day. And the money is going into the coffers of ExxonMobil and the other big oil companies. It isn't going to repair infrastructure. We haven't raised that tax in 20 years. If we just indexed it to construction cost inflation and indexed it to fleet fuel economy, we could issue bonds paid off by that increment on the gas tax. It would be about a penny a year a gallon. When I was driving to work one day and they were changing the cards up there, they were raising it a nickel a gallon just as I drove by. At a penny a gallon, I think most Americans would be willing to pay for that if they knew it was going to save 3.5 or create 3.5 million jobs and put this country back on track and get rid of some of the delays and the congestion and the detours and all the other problems we have. So let's pay attention to this scorecard, to this report card. If your kid came home with a card like this, you'd do something about it. Congress better do something about it.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, on November 30, 2012 I sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack, requesting an investigation into Wildlife Services and the conduct of its employees. Mr. Vilsack responded to my letter on February 1, 2013 and my office received this letter on February 13, 2013. I intend to monitor this situation closely and look forward to seeing the results of the internal investigation that is currently taking place of WS employees and their compliance with state and federal anti-cruelty and animal protection laws. November 30, 2012. Thomas Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, DC. Dear Secretary Vilsack: We are writing to request a thorough audit of Wildlife Services, especially its lethal predator control program, by the USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG) regarding the culture within Wildlife Services. As you know, recent news reports indicate that Jamie P. Olson, a Wildlife Services employee working in Wyoming, may have apparently committed acts of animal cruelty that appear to violate Wildlife Services' Directives and Wyoming state law. If it is found that Mr. Olson committed these acts, it would bring disrepute to the Wildlife Services' program and the federal government at a time when Wildlife Services, and in particular its lethal control of predators to protect livestock, labors under heavy criticism for unnecessarily killing wild animals and lacking transparency and accountability. We urge you to be thorough in your investigation because these alleged acts clearly violate standards of human decency. However, we are gravely concerned that photographs, published on Mr. Olson's Facebook in an album labeled ``work'' and since removed, do not represent an isolated occurrence, but may reflect a deep-rooted problem within the Wildlife Services program that allows for, and encourages, inhumane lethal methods of predator control. According to a recent Sacramento Bee article, Gary Strader, a former Wildlife Services trapper in Nevada, ``was not surprised to learn about the controversial photos. 'That is very common,' Strader wrote in an email.'' (Toni Knudson, U.S. wildlife worker's online photos of animal abuse stir outrage. Sacramento Bee, Friday, November 2, 2012). We look forward to seeing the results of your investigation, and thank you for your attention in this important matter. Sincerely, John Campbell, Member of Congress. Peter DeFazio, Member of Congress.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, today, I rise as a member of the Safe Climate Caucus to talk about an important new report on climate change. Of late, the discussion over global warming has focused on temperatures in the last 118 years, when standardized record-keeping began. Primarily, the best and most comprehensive research on temperatures has gone back only as far as 2,000 years. Climate change deniers are complaining these studies have been shortsighted, that they haven't taken into account that warming going on today could have happened naturally thousands of years ago. Climate change impacts today are a result of natural fluctuations, they say. There is some scientific basis to that claim. Variations in how the Earth is tilted in its orbit around the Sun make for a pattern of planetary warming and cooling phases over thousands of years. During some phases the Earth heats up; in others it cools down. Last week, scientists from Oregon State University, including two constituents of mine, Shaun Marcott and Alan Mix, joined with our colleagues from Harvard University and published a study in the journal Science, peer reviewed, that provides new context on today's climate and rising temperatures. Instead of looking at temperatures from the last 118 years or even 2,000 years, Marcott, Mix, and their colleagues examined temperatures going back a little further, 11,300 years--the entire Holocene period. The findings are sobering and a wake-up call, and should be a wake-up call to the Members of this institution. We already knew the Earth is warmer than it was over much of the last 2,000 years. That has been confirmed by a mountain of scientific evidence. But thanks to the work of Marcott, Mix, and their colleagues, we know it is warmer on Earth presently than over much of the past 11,300 years. In fact, we have experienced almost the same range of temperature change over the last 100 years, coinciding with the invention and widespread use of engines and turbines powered by fossil fuels, as over the previous 11,000 years of Earth history. I want to repeat that for emphasis. Rising temperatures over the last century have been greater than the temperature increases over the previous hundred centuries combined. It shows that human activity reversed a cooling pattern of 5,000 years of 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit in 100 years. It is extraordinary. And their projections for the future are also very sobering. Climate deniers are running out of excuses. They said, 118 years not enough, 2,000 years not enough. Well, how about 11,300 years of certified research? They say it is biased by region. This was done in 73 sites around the entire planet. We have heard about solar insolation. Well, according to this claim, we should be now at the bottom of a long-term cooling trend. Whoops, that is not happening. That shows that this solar insolation theory doesn't hold up either. In short, this confirms what those of us who believe in science already know: manmade climate change is real, it is progressing quickly, and we must take action. But that is not happening in the House of Representatives. During the last Congress, House Republicans voted 53 times to block action on climate change. Time and time again, they voted to know nothing and do nothing. They argued that science isn't settled, but they vote to cut funding for climate science. Here are a few of my favorite quotes from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: Human-induced global climate change is one of the great hoaxes perpetuated out of the scientific community. Another colleague: Media conspiracy to promote climate change. Yet another one: Shady scientists. And then my favorite: Better known, however, is global warming movement's commitment to severely restrict the use of private automobiles. The rich will still have their limos, and, of course, their private jets. Carbon offsets will cede to that. The rest of us will not be able to travel by plane and will be stuck sitting at home or sitting next to a gang member on public transportation. Yes, that was actually said on the floor of the House of Representatives. Madam Speaker, it's time to stop the nonsense and the blather and get serious about climate change. The evidence is in. The only question is whether the United States House of Representatives will listen and act.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Sequester. Well, that's inside-the-Beltway jargon. It means stupid, indiscriminate, across-the-board budget cuts. Cut things that are valuable--Coast Guard Rescue--and cut things that are obsolete and unneeded--registration for a draft that doesn't exist--the same percent. Now, the Republicans are pointing fingers, but I think the finger's going to get pointed right back at them. They're calling it the ``Obamaquester''? Come on now, you've got to be kidding. Don't they remember their tax pledge to Grover Norquist that has ever forever bound them to starving the Federal Government of revenue? Now look where that got us, when they threatened to default on the debt. It got us the sequester. They refused to compromise and forced us into another self-made arbitrary crisis. No, it's not an ``Obamaquester''; it's a ``GroverNorquester.''

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, unfortunately I was unable to record my vote on H.R. 267, the Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act. I was detained by a very important meeting with Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber about issues critical to my rural communities and State. I am a strong supporter of renewable energy and agree there's enormous untapped potential for hydropower. Reducing red tape, process, and cost to approve small, non-controversial hydropower projects is a no-brainer. I am pleased the bill passed 422-0 and would have voted ``yea'' had I been available. I look forward to supporting H.R. 267 in the future if the bill is amended and comes back to the House from the Senate.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, sequestration. You know, it's inside-the- Beltway talk. What does it mean? It means stupid, across-the-board budget cuts. Take a program of tremendous public import--whether it's a defense program, public safety program, student financial aid--and cut it 10 percent. Take a turkey, something we don't need anymore, something stupid, obsolete--registering kids for a draft that doesn't exist and will never exist--cut it 10 percent. So instead of doing targeted cuts and getting rid of programs that we don't need anymore, that don't work anymore, and looking at reasonable revenues, we're going to cut everything 10 percent. It's going to have a real impact. I was told yesterday by the Office of Management and Budget the first measurable impact is in my district, a 10 percent sequestration of payments to counties in my State from the Interior Department, which means in Douglas County, Oregon, the last 10 road deputies are gone. In another county, which is down to one road deputy, the last road deputy is gone. We're talking about counties the size of States here with no rural law enforcement. That's because of the stupid sequestration.