Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, 140 days after the Republican leaders promised a health care plan, it was leaked. It is a bold proposal. I think it was actually drafted downtown by the health insurance industry association, just like their prescription drug bill was drafted by the pharmaceutical industry. Now the Democrats' bill outlaws the most abusive practices of the insurance industry: preexisting condition exclusion policy cancellation when you get sick, called rescission. Not the Republicans, they can still cancel your policy when you get sick. Even if you have been paying your premiums, they can still discriminate against your preexisting conditions. The Republicans wouldn't touch that one. Now the Republicans actually are going to facilitate further abuses. The Democrats rescind the antitrust exemption of the insurance industry. Not the Republicans. In fact, they are creating a new safe haven for this industry. The industry can sell a national policy which will solve all of the problems, but they can go to any State they choose to sell that policy from. They will choose the most abusive, least regulated State in the Union. And if you live in Oregon and you have a complaint about your insurance provider, you will have to file it in Delaware with the corporation commissioner. No, give it to the Republicans, new safe havens for the abusive insurance industry. Good work, guys.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it's hard to reform health care. You have got to take on some of those powerful special interests in America. Perhaps that's why it's been 139 days since the Republican leadership announced they would have an alternative, but they don't have one yet. Perhaps it's because at the heart of this is the insurance industry. Most people don't know, but the Republicans do know very well. The health insurance industry is exempt from antitrust law. They do not have to play by the same rules as any other American business. They can and do collude to jack up rates. They can and do collude to divide markets and exclude competition. They can do anything they want, and it's legal. They are outside the antitrust law of the United States of America. The Democratic bill will repeal this unfair antitrust exemption, bring real competition to this industry for the first time since the 1940s. The Republicans don't want to touch that with a 100-foot pole or maybe a $10,000 contribution.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, the following essay was presented to me at a health care townhall. I believe this historical analogy is very sound. Preventing Extortion (By Jack Churchill) The debate about a public health insurance option mirrors the debate about public power in the 1920's and 30's. The arguments then were very similar to the arguments we hear today. The principal issue then was whether the federal government should enter the public power business by investing taxpayers' money to build the Tennessee Valley Authority and to harness the Columbia and other rivers for electrical energy or the sites should be transferred to the private sector. A second issue was who should build transmission lines and set wholesale prices when the Federal government built dams. The answer to the second question was first enunciated on the Senate floor In the fight over the Wilson Dam in 1920 by Senator John Sharp Williams of Tennessee. He said ``The government should have somewhere a producer of these things that should furnish a productive element to stop and check private profiteering.'' Thus was born the yardstick federal policy which later found its way into TVA legislation through the efforts of Nebraska's Senator George Norris. In a 1932 campaign speech in Portland, Oregon, Franklin Roosevelt referred to his TVA and other regional proposals as ``yardsticks to prevent extortion against the public.'' Roosevelt's statement enunciated America's public power agenda, which through the years has saved the federal government and electrical consumers hundreds of billions of today's dollars. This public investment provided the electrical energy to build the bombers and the atomic bomb and was a critical factor in winning World War II. At the time of the Yardstick Public Power legislation of the 1930's, most of the farms and homes in rural America were without electrical power. Only in the cities could private power companies make a profit selling electrical energy. With the launching of the New Deal yardstick pricing, together with publicly owned electrical cooperatives and public utility districts, rural America was electrified and private utilities ended up serving a large majority of rural consumers. Because we adopted yardstick pricing back in the 30's, today America possesses a healthy and balanced mix of private, public, and cooperative electrical systems. The public power analogy might be a useful device in combating the brutal campaign against a federal public health insurance option. History is repeating itself. We see the same epithets of socialism, unfair competition, and government interference with private enterprise. Both America's constitutional system of government and our free enterprise economic system are built upon the fundamental notion of balancing power between institutions. It is only when there is an imbalance of power within one of the two systems or the share of power between them that we fail. Recent disasters created by imbalance, including Enron and California energy manipulation and the collapse of the American banking system, wiping out our citizens' retirement accounts, are painful examples. Most importantly and perhaps most painful for great numbers of our citizens today, America trails all developed countries by many years in fashioning an effective national health services delivery system. There is no industry that has a more shared and complex mix of nonprofit, government, and private for-profit delivery systems. Yet we have a system that is neither cost-effective nor meets the needs of our citizens whether insured or not. It is a system that is out of balance. It desperately needs an effective yardstick The imbalance in our system began in 1975 when the Supreme Court gave the green light to commercialization of medicine by removing medicine from protection of the antitrust laws. The imbalance was greatly exacerbated in 1980 when the American Medical Association changed its ethical guidelines to declare that medicine was no longer a professional service but both a business and a profession. The other factor of great influence that has led to imbalance is the dominance of investor-owned private insurance companies born from the establishment of employer-based health insurance systems. Thus began the corporatizing and domination of Wall Street in organizing and pricing for-profit medical services. Rather than a system organized to deliver cost-effective medical services to patients, today we have a system designed for profit. Despite the roles of federal Medicare, state Medicaid, members of Congress health care programs, federal delivery systems such as the Veterans Administration, and nonprofit group health cooperative associations, the balance of power in our national health care delivery system is now largely in the hands of Wall Street-driven for-profit enterprises. Every medical procedure from putting on surgical gloves to sending bills to the insurance company has become a profit center. And the pricing for all the services are set largely in an oligarchical framework of administered pricing. There is absolutely no competitive pricing. Have you or anyone you know ever negotiated the price of medical service? So history repeats itself. The Democratic party is charged with formulating another national yardstick policy that will have enormous consequences for the health and welfare of our citizens in generations to come. Like Franklin Roosevelt, President Obama is simply leading the nation to create sufficient power in the public sector to balance against the private sector and the Wall Street pricing effect. Or in President Roosevelt's words, ``a yardstick to prevent extortion against the public.''And as President Obama stated the issue ``to keep insurance companies honest.'' The failure of Congress to build in an effective market yardstick for pricing medical services would cost future generations trillions and fail to deliver cost-effective medical care to all our citizens. No amount of regulation will suffice. Only the market mechanism will provide effective cost reduction to pay for universal coverage.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, today the House of Representatives is voting on a motion to instruct conferees to insist on language that would prevent any funding in this bill from being used to implement an EPA rule requiring the largest manure management systems to report annual greenhouse emissions. The EPA rule was finalized in September 2009. It would require entities emitting only more than 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year--the equivalent of emissions from 58,000 barrels of oil--to report on annual emissions. According to the EPA, the rule will impact approximately 100 manure management systems across the country, five of which operate in the state of Oregon. Small farmers--those emitting less than 25,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases per year--would be completely exempt from the rule. I applaud the EPA's rule and President Obama's leadership in taking serious action on climate change. After losing eight years under the Bush administration in addressing the most serious environmental challenge of our time, it's time for bold U.S. leadership. Compiling accurate and complete data on greenhouse gas emissions is a critical piece to crafting a smart and effective climate policy. For these reasons, I intend to oppose the motion to instruct conferees before the House today. Congress should not place funding restraints on the EPA that would prevent the agency from executing its Supreme Court-confirmed authorities to regulate greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I hope the gentleman who spoke before me in the well would be willing to accept one minor thing. I hear a lot from the Republicans about they want competition, they want the free market, but the problem is that insurance is exempt from antitrust law. Unlike any other industry or business, small or large, in America, except for professional baseball, they are exempt. They can and do get together and collude--collude to drive up the price of premiums, collude to stay out of one another's markets and not compete, collude not to exclude people with preexisting conditions, collude to do a whole host of anticompetitive things to stick it to the American people. So before I hear any more from that side of the aisle about supporting the private insurance industry, let's hear about having them play by the same rules as every other industry in America. But that's not why I came to the floor this afternoon. I came to the floor because there seems to be a little disconnect downtown at the White House with the President's economic team, yet, once again. Big surprise. The GDP, gross domestic product, is growing, so the economy is recovering. We're out of the recession. Whoops. Well, it's a so-called jobless recovery, and we're still going to lose about 250,000 jobs a month. But they're down there celebrating. We need to take concrete steps--not to make a bad pun--here in the House of Representatives, in Congress, to put people back to work. And one of the things that we could do best would be to ignore the President and his advisers who want to delay a new transportation policy for America, one that will deliver projects more quickly and with less expense, getting people out of congestion, giving people more transit options, fixing some of our 160,000 bridges that are either structurally deficient--there was a little problem yesterday with the San Francisco Bay Bridge--or functionally obsolete, building made-in- America streetcars, made-in-America modern buses, like the fuel cell bus I saw yesterday. But guess what? It's going to take some investment and some money. This White House, after cutting a deal with Republican Senators for $340 billion in tax cuts in the so-called stimulus, which isn't putting anybody back to work--ask your neighbor, ask your friend, ask anybody, What did you spend your $12 on last week, your tax cut? How did you invest it for the future of America? We need something that is not consumer-driven. We need a recovery that is investment and jobs-driven in this country, and a 6-year highway authorization could get that job done. The difference between the Obama plan--do nothing, extend current law and current levels of expenditure for a crumbling Third World-like infrastructure in this country--and what we're proposing here in the House of Representatives Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is 1 million jobs next year. Now, apparently, the President's economic team thinks that they can tell those 1 million people who won't get jobs, Well, don't worry. The GDP's up, and we are losing less jobs than we were losing before. Or maybe they could get on board with us, help us write that 6-year bill, wake the Senate up from its nap, and put 1 million more Americans back to work next year rebuilding America's transportation infrastructure. And, by the way, it meets another one of his goals. It will help him with his goals of reducing pollution, reducing carbon emissions because we'll get people out of sitting in traffic as we expand the system, deal with congestion and giving them more transit options. I recommend that the President look for a new economic team and help us to do things that will benefit the real American people, not pointy-head economists and not Wall Street.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, the Republicans are invoking Freddy Krueger and saying that he wrote the Democrats' health plan, and it's going to be dangerous for Americans. Really scary. I'll tell you what's scary. Scary is losing your job and being confronted with a bill for continued health insurance that eats up two- thirds of your benefits. Even more scary--and this has happened to people in my district--is having your company go bankrupt and being told that your health insurance will cost more than your unemployment benefits. That is, if you can get it; if you've never been sick, if your kids have never been sick. You can go into the private market and buy a policy that exceeds your unemployment insurance. Of course if you have ever been sick, a preexisting condition, forget about it. The Republicans promised 132 days ago that they would have their own health care plan. Where is it? Now 132 days later, you know why we don't have it, why there is a resounding silence on that side? Because if you are going to take care of people with health care, you have to take on their two biggest benefactors, the pharmaceutical industry and the insurance industry. And that's the last thing the Republicans want to do, take on their biggest campaign benefactors. We have to take on pharmaceuticals, take on the insurance industry and have meaningful reform for all Americans.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, all across America unemployed Americans, struggling small businesses heaved a sigh of relief today because we know the recession is over. Goldman Sachs reported profits of $3.19 billion. They are on track to pay bonuses of over $20 billion, $700,000 average per employee. The recession is over for Goldman Sachs. Of course, there is a little problem with this whole equation. Over the last year, they have received over $60 billion in taxpayer subsidies. Hmm, that happens to be about five times their projected profits and three times what they are going to pay out in bonuses. They got $13 billion from AIG after we gave AIG $80 billion to pay off bad debts. They changed into a bank-holding company magically, but are exempt from bank-holding company rules, and got another 50-or-so billion dollars of subsidies out of the Federal Treasury. What a wonderful system this is. They are creating tremendous wealth. They are an engine of growth. They have recovered from the recession. All hail Goldman Sachs.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Next month, the government is going to go to the expense of sending out a letter to well over 40 million Social Security recipients telling them they are not going to get a cost-of-living adjustment, but they didn't experience inflation this year. Now, the only problem with that is the way we measure inflation is heavily oriented toward nonessential consumer goods of which seniors do not buy a lot. Seniors have to buy certain essentials; pharmaceuticals, up double digits in the last year. Seniors buy health insurance, Medigap policies up high single digits in the last year. Seniors have rent, utilities, probably also up depending upon where they live. But they are not entitled to a COLA because of a defect in the way we calculate COLAs. I have tried to fix this for years by having a special calculation for seniors and not one for younger consumers, which is essentially what the CPI is oriented towards. It isn't even very reflective of the cost of average American families. It is very skewed. It was skewed beginning in the Reagan years, and it has never been fixed to try and understate real inflation to real Americans. In this case, we have an opportunity. We could fix this injustice to our seniors and help those most in need, many of whom are either principally or totally dependent upon a Social Security income. We could give them a one-time $250 payment, which would equate to almost a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment. That would cover the increase in their Medicare part B premium, maybe some of their Medigap insurance, maybe a little bit of what they're having to pay in higher pharmaceutical costs. For many seniors it could avert a disaster in terms of their personal budgets. So I have introduced legislation, along with 14 of my colleagues-- today, I reintroduced it--which would give a one-time $250 payment to 48.9 million people who are on OASDI, that is Social Security and disability, 5.1 on SSI, 1.4 million veterans, and 200,000 railroad retirees. Now, I want to be fiscally responsible; I don't want to take it out of the Social Security trust fund which is looking toward problems some 37 years down the road or so, or starting in 2037. So I would pay for this, and it's quite simple: in order to give this benefit to over 50 million people, something for them to make ends meet and scratch by, all we have to do is ask that that select group of Americans--many of whom work on Wall Street--who will earn over $1.4 million this year, that for their earnings over $1.4 million they pay the same Social Security tax as every working American who earns less than $106,000. The tax now is only applied to income up to $106,000. After that, you don't pay it. That means if you earn $1.4 million, your tax rate is about 7 percent of someone who earns $40,000 a year. Let's make it fair. I hear a lot about flat taxes and fairness. Let's make it fair; let's make it flat. Let's ask those people who are earning over $1.4 million to pay the same percentage of that income in Social Security tax as people who earn less than $106,000. And if they did that just for 1 year, we could give those 50 million seniors and disabled and veterans and railroad retirees a small, $250 one-time cost-of-living adjustment. I think it's only fair in this tough economy that those at the absolute tiptop just do a little bit more to help those most in need. I recommend this legislation to my colleagues.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, earlier today the House passed a bill that will give relief to about a quarter of the Nation's seniors on Social Security by not having them experience a Medicare premium increase this year. That's all well and good and meritorious. Times are tough. But it doesn't go to the other three-quarters of the Nation's Social Security recipients, and it doesn't get to the bottom line that there is, for the first time since we had a regularly adjusted Social Security COLA-- it used to be into the fifties and early sixties before we put in place a regular COLA, a cost of living adjustment for seniors on Social Security. They would get one in election years, strangely enough. The Congress would wake up, notice that seniors were out there and give them some sort of an increase. We fixed that problem many years ago by saying, Well, Social Security benefits would be automatically adjusted. But the measure that is used is incredibly flawed, and it was not only flawed to begin with. The cost of living index is calculated on a lot of things that seniors don't buy, things that have gotten cheaper in this bad economy, actually, like giant flat screen televisions, computers and cell phones and other things that are not consumed to any great extent by our Nation's seniors. But if anybody has checked the price of pharmaceuticals or medical care or basic utilities or many other must-have expenses, they haven't gone down. In fact, they've gone up. But seniors, some of whom are living only on a Social Security check, many who are principally dependent upon a Social Security check, are not going to get a cost of living adjustment this year because the formula that is used is faulty. It's not only faulty; it was actually tampered with by the Republicans and Alan Greenspan, that great guru, the guy who helped almost destroy the world's economy recently through his deregulationist philosophy which became so embedded that Wall Street ran wild. Alan Greenspan has always hated Social Security since he was on a commission many years ago and tried to find ways to go after it. A number of years ago he convinced a Republican Congress that the cost of living index actually overestimated inflation and that you should take away one point before you give a COLA to seniors on Social Security. The Republican Congress did that. Now here we are today. We have a Democratic Congress. We're being told that there is no inflation; seniors won't get a COLA. The Obama administration says probably for 2 years they won't get a cost of living adjustment. That's not right. The things they are buying are going up in price, dramatically, and they're having tremendous difficulties making ends meet, living on that fixed income. I have had a bill for many years that would put in place a new cost of living index for seniors called a CPIE--elderly--to look at the things they really buy and have to buy to live and get by. That hasn't gone anywhere, but I'm still pushing that idea. But while we're working on developing a true index that would really look at the costs for seniors, we should pass a 1-year cost of living adjustment. And we can do that without borrowing the money, with no impact to the Social Security trust fund, very simply. We would just say that those who earn between $250,000 a year and $359,000, they would pay the same rate of Social Security tax as every normal wage- earning American who earns less than $106,000 a year. If you earn less than $106,000 a year, you pay Social Security tax on every penny of your income. If you earn $250,000, well, no, you just pay on the first $106,000. You don't pay after that. Your tax rate is lower. Let's have a little bit of equity here. So we would simply have people earning between $250,000 and $359,000 pay the same rate of Social Security tax as every other American that would pay for a one- time COLA for seniors to help them make ends meet. We must act and act soon to get this done before this injustice happens next year.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Just to correct the gentleman, what I said is, we could continue the current levels in this bill over the next 3 months without borrowing any additional money. The funding is there. Yes, some money was transferred this summer to make up for past expenditures for emergencies and other things from the trust fund, but we would not be borrowing any money to extend this program for the next 3 months. It will be paid for, and it would put a heck of a lot of people to work. The bottom line is, do you vote ``yes'', extend this critical $4.5 billion investment next month in our transportation infrastructure, keeping our transit systems running? Or do you vote ``no'' and bring it to a screeching halt?

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the chairman. The gentleman from Virginia can try and change the subject about some future possible increase in gas tax or user fees. That is not what is before us today. Plain and simple, what is before us today is on October 1st, a very short time from now, will the States see a loss of $4.5 billion in funding for highway, bridge and transit projects across this country? Our economy is teetering, and they want to play politics with a simple extension of existing policy under the existing gas tax, which has been the same since 1993. That is not too much to ask. But they want to play politics with that. They want to jeopardize it. They want to delay it. Now, let's just go to the delay. If they are totally successful, $4.5 billion in spending goes away October 1. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are lost. Transportation projects across the country come to a halt; transit systems grind to a halt, because the Federal funds aren't there, even though we can finance all those things, without borrowing a penny, out of the existing gas tax. That would go away too. Maybe that is the world they want to live in. I don't. Bridges falling down, transit systems that are unsafe to ride on, road surfaces that are unacceptable, growing congestion. That is not a vision for the future. But that apparently is their vision--the status quo or worse, because now they are talking about an 18-month extension. If we do an 18-month extension, that will be 24 months or 30 months of the status quo, which is failing us. We aren't rebuilding the system; 160,000 bridges are weight limited, are functionally obsolete. People are sitting in congestion. Transit systems have $60 billion backlogs in outdated equipment. But that is okay with the Republicans, apparently. They want the status quo, because they are so afraid of talking about any sort of remedy of any type and any sort of investment. Then, if they aren't successful in killing the whole program, if they just delay this temporary extension, on October 1 the States will lose $1 billion under the continuing resolution, $1 billion, all across America. There is 20 percent unemployment in the construction trades, and they are going to increase that number because they want to walk away from the $1 billion that would be there with the simple extension of this program for 3 months. They can have the fight and the debate later when they want to play politics about the levels of investment in the bill and how we might get there. But that is 3 months from now or longer, depending upon what we can work out with the Senate. But the point is, you are playing politics here. You want to have a vote on a gas tax that isn't before this body, that is not likely to be before this body at any time in the near future, at least for 3 months if this bill is passed. Don't play politics with investment in our infrastructure. Don't play politics with the economy. Don't play politics with people's jobs. Don't bring America to a screeching halt on October 1 and walk away from your obligation to extend this program.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, there was a lot of bloviating on the Republican side yesterday about the government takeover of the student loan business. What nonsense. I mean, what we are going to do is stop subsidizing the banks. That's what the Republicans are really upset about here. Today, for every dollar in student loans, the taxpayers are dinged 15 cents--subsidies to the banks. If we convert to a National Direct Student Loan Program--the minority of the loans today go through that-- for every dollar we lend to a student we will get back $1.03. Now, they want to run government like a business, but their idea of a business is shoveling subsidies to the private sector. I want to run government like a business. I want to give more loans to students, more effectively, at lower cost to the taxpayers. That's the National Direct Student Loan Program. This is a reform that's long overdue. Stop crying about the subsidies to the banks.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman and my friend for the time. Five years ago, an obstinate penny-wise, pound-foolish Bush administration stonewalled a bipartisan proposal in Congress to increase trust fund revenues. They sent us on this path to insolvency. At the same time, they condemned us to a transportation system in America that is headed toward third-world status. On the National Highway System, 150,000 bridges are either functionally obsolete or structurally deficient. That means they could fall down. Then we have 40 percent of the pavement on the National Highway System in fair or poor condition. Billions of gallons of fuel wasted in congestion and traffic, Americans wasting their lives sitting, frustrated. Businesses losing tens of billions of dollars because of delayed deliveries in a just-in-time competitive world economy. We need a 6-year investment in our transportation system with new policies and a new vision to move us toward a competitive 21st century transportation system, not living off the dregs of one that we built in the fifties. But on the way to that new future, we need this infusion of cash. The States are out there in good faith, putting millions of people to work, rebuilding as much as they can with inadequate resources. They're bringing in bills for over $1 billion a week. That's a lot of jobs, folks, out there in America going on today, rebuilding our infrastructure. We need to make good on those obligations with this infusion of money. I'm willing to pay for the enhanced investment in the coming legislation, and I'd urge my Republican colleagues to keep an open mind. They're either going to deny us the investment we need and condemn us to a transportation system that can't meet America's needs, or they're going to join us in a 6-year bill with adequate investment and funding, fully paid for, investing in the future of America.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, while the Republicans are mounting a fabulous defense of the health insurance industry, the party of do nothing is saying reform and health care is not needed. They talk about competition, except they ignore the fact that the health insurance industry is exempt from antitrust law, so they can and they do collude to jack up the rates--two times the rate of inflation. Profits are up 250 percent in the last 10 years, while wages and earnings are down for most Americans and small businesses. But they ignore that little fact when they talk about we can't have a public plan. That would hurt competition. No, it will bring competition for once to the health insurance industry. Then they forget about a few other things. They collude also to exclude individuals from coverage because you have been sick or you might get sick. Preexisting conditions or anything an insurance company doesn't like, they can deny you coverage, even if you are willing to pay their full premium. They can and do, insurance companies, their friends, deny people renewals because they had the temerity to get sick after paying their premiums.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, unlike his predecessor, President Obama recognizes that greenhouse gasses and climate change are a real problem and must be dealt with, and in the tradition of the hugely successful Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act, he has ordered his Environmental Protection Agency to develop rules to cap and reduce greenhouse gasses. This bill today actually prohibits the EPA from continuing to develop rules to regulate greenhouse gasses in the tradition of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. Instead, it turns to a market-based approach. Instead of a firm cap, regulating and reducing, this bill turns us to carbon offset derivative futures that will be insured by credit default swaps. How quickly they forget Wall Street and AIG and the damage they wrought in the financial sector. This, Wall Street predicts, is the new $1 trillion market. The market manipulators of Enron Corporation may have bankrupted their company, Ken Lay may be gone, but their spirit is fully embodied in this legislation.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, Europeans have had a market-based cap- and-trade system on greenhouse gas emissions for 4 years, and it has failed. The last recorded year, $60 billion in trades, that is added costs, and higher greenhouse gas emissions. Now the House of Representatives wants to bring that European system here to the United States of America, despite its failures. Why? Well, the market-based approach is only a failure if your objective is meaningful and predictable real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps something else is afoot. Europe already has a carbon offset futures derivatives market, complete with credit default swap insurance. Is it AIG and mortgages all over again but now with carbon? We are going to bring that here to the United States. Wall Street is tingling with excitement. A trillion dollars speculative market. Listen to this: Carbon will be the world's biggest commodity market, and it could become the biggest market overall, Louis Redshaw at Barclays. Oh, Wall Street loves this so much. A brand new Wall Street bubble on something as essential as energy. Deja vu all over again.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the fiscal year 2009 Iraq/Afghanistan Defense Supplemental Appropriations bill provides $105.9 billion, 77 percent of which would be to cover costs relating to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for the rest of this fiscal year. I voted for these funds because I chose to give President Obama time to implement his Afghanistan strategy and withdraw troops from Iraq. But it was not an easy decision. The war in Afghanistan has entered its eighth year without clearly defined objectives and an exit strategy. With a deteriorating security situation and no comprehensive political outcome yet in sight, some experts view the war in Afghanistan as open-ended. Had the Bush Administration not shifted its focus to the unnecessary war in Iraq, we may have already brought Al Qaeda and the Taliban to justice. I believe President Obama made an error by ordering an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan before first completing a detailed review of U.S. Afghanistan policies. Continuing the vaguely defined strategies of the Bush Administration is not acceptable. The President did finally lay out a strategy for Afghanistan in late March of this year. It made some significant improvements to the Afghanistan strategy, but fell short in other areas. For example, I was pleased to see a regional approach, ``treating Afghanistan and Pakistan as two countries but one challenge,'' and a commitment to ``devote significantly more resources to the civilian efforts in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.'' These are significant improvements over the Bush Administration's approach. Unfortunately, the President's new Afghan strategy fails to set clear benchmarks for the Afghanistan and Pakistan governments and fails to lay out the consequences of not meeting the benchmarks. It is not surprising that the President has also failed to set benchmarks for the Pentagon and State Department too. Thankfully, the supplemental bill lays out detailed benchmarks for Afghanistan and Pakistan and the President must report back to Congress on the: (1) Level of political consensus and unity of purpose across ethnic, tribal, religious and party affiliations to confront the political and security challenges facing the region. (2) Level of government corruption and actions taken to eliminate it. (3) Performance of the respective security forces in developing a counterinsurgency capability, conducting counterinsurgency operations and establishing population security. (4) Performance of the respective intelligence agencies in cooperating with the United States on counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations and in purging themselves of policies, programs and personnel that provide material support to extremist networks that target U.S. troops or undermine U.S. objectives in the region. (5) Ability of the Afghan and Pakistani governments to effectively control the territory within their respective borders. In addition, I am an original cosponsor of the McGovern bill that simply states, ``Not later than December 31, 2009, the Secretary of Defense shall submit to Congress a report outlining the United States exit strategy for United States military forces in Afghanistan participating in Operation Enduring Freedom.'' I firmly believe that the United States is best served by outlining a clear exit strategy that the American public can support and that the Afghani public can be reassured that we have no long-term desire to occupy their nation. Unfortunately, President Bush's disregard for the complexities of Afghanistan and the damage that came from his disregard may make this war unwinnable. We also must not forget that the Soviet military, with over a hundred thousand troops on the ground, lost decisively in Afghanistan. Today, our troops are fighting some of the very same warlords who defeated the Soviets with our covert support. As you may know, Secretary of Defense Bill Gates, removed the commanding general of Afghanistan in a bid to change the-on-the ground strategy in Afghanistan. With a new White House strategy, a new commanding general, and 21,000 additional troops, I believe this is now President Obama's war. The bill also funds the continued presence of our troops in Iraq. Despite the continued bursts of violence in Iraq, I am thankful the President has committed to a responsible redeployment of troops out of Iraq. This bill recognizes and supports President Obama's plan to withdraw all U.S. combat brigades from Iraq by August 31, 2010 and all U.S. military forces by December 31, 2011. The bill continues to prohibit the construction of any base for the permanent stationing of U.S. forces in Iraq and U.S. control over any oil resource of Iraq. To ensure accountability, the bill directs the Secretary of Defense to submit a report to Congress every 90 days that includes: 1. How the Government of Iraq is assuming responsibility for reconciliation initiatives; 2. How the drawdown of military forces complies with the President's timeline; and 3. The roles and responsibilities of remaining contractors in Iraq as the U.S. mission evolves. The bill does some very good things besides funding wars for Afghanistan and Iraq. I am very supportive of the $534 million for additional pay for more than 170,000 troops who have had their enlistments involuntarily extended since Sept. 11, 2001. These funds allow for payments of $500 per month for every month a soldier was held on active duty under ``stop-loss'' orders. The average payment should be above $4,000. Stop loss orders were used by the Bush Administration to avoid tough decisions on deployment and troop increases, creating a de facto draft for current soldiers. These payments are a good step to honor the sacrifice unfairly asked of these brave men and women. I also support some of the foreign aid in the bill. The $660 million for bilateral economic, humanitarian, and security assistance for the West Bank and Gaza represents an important commitment to the Middle East peace process. In addition, the bill includes $889 million for United Nations peacekeeping operations, including an expanded mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and a new mission in Chad and the Central African Republic. Finally, the bill includes $700 million for international food assistance to alleviate suffering during the global economic crisis. Finally, I was pleased that the conference agreement provides $7.7 billion for efforts to address a potential pandemic flu. The total includes $1.5 billion for the Health and Human Services Department and the Center for Disease Control to supplement federal stockpiles, develop and purchase vaccines, and to expand detection efforts, and $5.8 billion in contingent emergency funds. Of the $1.5 billion, $350 million was set aside to assist state and local governments in preparing for and responding to a pandemic. Unfortunately, the conference agreement included a $108 billion loan to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). I objected to this loan because Congress should not be in the business of bailing out Central and Eastern European nations that lost money speculating in highly deregulated financial markets and now are indebted to European banks. The $108 billion loan to the IMF is an unreasonable and irresponsible burden to place on the backs of American taxpayers. They're already paying through the nose for the $700 billion blank check passed by Congress for ``too big to fail'' banks. For the record, I voted against the bank bailout. And, now, Congress is returning to the American taxpayers hat in hand for a rescue package to bailout European banks. The fact that we continue to run annual deficits means the Federal Reserve will print the $108 billion or borrow it from China. In other words, the U.S. will borrow funds from China to, lend to the International Monetary Fund, which will lend to a Central or Eastern European country to help rescue a foreign bank caught in the credit bubble. We should be focusing on economic recovery at home rather than loaning billions of dollars to the IMF to rescue troubled European banks. I vehemently oppose the inclusion of the $108 billion for the IMF in the War Supplemental bill. Had this provision been voted on separately--as it should have--I would have voted against this provision. Reluctantly, I voted in favor of this bill because it reversed the Bush Administration's irresponsible approach to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I will continue to watchdog the IMF and look for opportunities to rein in their misguided attempt at restructuring poorer nation's economies.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Republicans gave us a Medicare prescription drug benefit complete with a donut hole based on subsidizing the health insurance industry and the prescription drug industry. Now they are at it again. They are absolutely opposed to a public plan option for health insurance, because that would make the health insurance industry compete. Their solution to the 50 million Americans without health insurance and those who are one pink slip away from losing it is tax breaks, so they can go out and buy private insurance. Well, here is a little secret. Private insurance is exempt from antitrust laws, thanks to the Republicans, so they can and do collude. They won't let you have a preexisting condition. They can discriminate in any way they want. They can price gouge. They can price fix. And the Republicans say that driving people to that system, not giving them a low-cost, public plan option, and making the health insurance industry more cost effective and truly competitive is a better solution. Now, come on, guys. Do you really care about those 50 million people, or not?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding. First off, last week, I was subjected to the absolutely stupid 30- minute rule. United Airlines can't get it into their manual that it was repealed 4 years ago. I did ask to have my card sent up to the pilot, but I have complained several times. Some pilots still think that since it is apparently still in the United manual, that it was not created by the TSA. And our former Chairman Mica knows that. That was a Secret Service directive which preempted all of the agencies of the government and the newly created TSA. The TSA agreed with us that it was an absolutely asinine rule, but we were told it was a higher authority. So that would never have gone through a rulemaking process. That was imposed. Now, those sorts of things could be imposed for 6 months still under the gentleman's rule. And I don't know that the Secret Service would claim that they could preempt even the 6- month limit. So we can't prevent all stupidity, but we push back against it. Again, back to the gel rule. Under the gentleman's proposed amendment, they would still be amending the gel rule to get down to the 4 ounces or get to 4 ounces or whatever the current limit is. Maybe it is 3.4. I can't remember. That seems to change, too. But you don't need a 2-year process and shouldn't impose a 2-year process and an extraordinary expense to the taxpayers in that sort of a case. Yes, there are problems. There is stupidity when it comes to the GA rule. The committee is dealing with it through oversight and pressure.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Where the gentleman concluded is where the debate should end, the normal rule-making process. On any ordinary day, the Republicans would not stand up and say that we need more bureaucracy; we need more 2-year rule-making on things that are important to the American people. We are creating transparency here. We're creating a stakeholder committee. Yes, they have done some stupid things in GA. But does that mean you're going to go to all of the things that relate to passengers and airports and baggage screening and explosives and everything else and put those out into a public rule-making process with all the sensitive security information that's involved? That's impossible. It's impractical, and it would jeopardize the safety of the American public. Yes, let's fix the problems with GA. Somebody down there needs to be picked up and shaken upside down to understand what GA's all about. The chairman's doing that. We'll continue to do that. We'll work with you. We're creating a stakeholder group so that GA will have a voice. But don't throw out all of the other critical security directives and the flexibility to put them in place and change them without a bureaucratic process.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the chairman. ``Inclusion of Detainees on No Fly List: The Assistant Secretary, in coordination with the Terrorist Screening Center, shall include on the No Fly List any individual who was a detainee housed at the Naval Station, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, on or after January 1, 2009, after a final disposition has been issued by the President.'' The quibbling seems to be over the final disposition. The only point at which any of these people might have some opportunity to try and get on an airplane will be after they get out of Guantanamo. The President determines the final disposition, and if they are sent to a third country or transferred elsewhere at that point, they go on the No Fly List. We have terrorists in our super maximum security prisons in the United States who aren't on the No Fly List because they're in a super maximum security prison. If they ever get parole or otherwise get released, they'll go on the No Fly List. But we don't junk up the No Fly List, which already has problems, with a whole bunch of people who are in shackles in ultra-secure locations and are in security already. It doesn't make a lot of sense. I know you're trying to get political advantage here to say somehow we're soft on terrorism. These people will go on the list if they ever get out.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. I share with the gentleman--he and I helped create the Transportation Security Administration--tremendous frustration with bureaucracy that gets over the edge for no real purpose, and I will not say that the current process is perfect. Particularly as relates to general aviation, we have had a couple of problems, one in which the chairman has been very involved, having to do with standards for what constitutes a potential threat aircraft and also the issue of background checks for those who work in the general aviation field. But beyond that, many of these directives are based on sensitive security information or even classified information. So they could not very well, if you were dealing, say, with the gel and liquids rule, subject that to the bureaucratic rulemaking process. I don't think the way to solve inadequacies and problems with the current directive process is to create an even more lengthy, expensive bureaucratic process. I don't think on a normal day the gentleman from Florida would ever present the idea to this Congress that we should expand rulemaking and go back and revisit rules that have already been made and put them through a very lengthy and expensive process. What he wants is more transparency. He wants common sense, and he wants stakeholder groups to have an opportunity to intervene. The legislation does bring stakeholder groups into the process, particularly as relates to general aviation. The chairman is using his oversight authority to go after nonsensical rules and problems that have occurred. One happened recently with a group of aged veterans on a charter aircraft where the chairman has called the agency to account and asked for a review of the procedures they are using. So I would say there is a new era here. We are going to make them responsive and responsible and make their work make more sense and meet our true security needs. But if you impose this on the entire structure, you're going to divert a lot of resources in the Transportation Security Administration over into a bureaucratic, lengthy rulemaking process. They are not going to have the flexibility to change, say, the liquids rule as they did from ``all liquids are banned'' to ``well, prescriptions can go'' to ``so many ounces can go.'' Each of those would have required a 6-month to 2-year change in the process during which we would be locked into whatever the first emergency rule was for only 6 months under the gentleman's proposal. It is not a practical way to address this.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to who has the right to close?

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. You can either be very intrusively frisked at Heathrow-- and I have had the experience; it's not great, and it's much more intrusive than here--or you can walk through that screening device. More than 85 percent of the people choose to walk through the screening device. And as we've proposed it here, it has extraordinary privacy protections. The person monitoring the dumbed-down image of the person's body will be remote from the actual screening area, won't be able to see that person. It's dumbed down. It's not very revealing. And this is a step forward that will enhance our security. There are ways now to smuggle devices onboard, and we've got to deal with them. And this is one of them. We also have to deal better with liquids and explosives, a major threat. We need to get more equipment deployed--and this committee has pushed hard and there was money in the stimulus bill--and there will be more authorization here to get better equipment to our screeners so they can detect threats before they get on our planes.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I introduced my first bill to enhance screening of aviation in 1987. I saw the extraordinary deficiencies of the system back then, fought for two decades with the airline industry, and it took a horrible tragedy to transform the system. Even 2 years before that bill, Mr. Lipinski and I looked at the workforce--minimum wage, high turnover, some of them were illegal aliens--and said we ought to Federalize the screening workforce. We need a better system. Again, the airlines fought. Again, it took a tragedy. Well, now, out of that we have developed the potential for a better system. This bill will move it along tremendously, both in aviation and surface security that we need to protect our Nation. This bill represents tremendous progress, tripling the funding for surface transportation and the oversight program that will require that airlines give meaningful training to flight crews--something that some of the airlines still aren't doing. They say it costs too much. We will have new standards for foreign repair stations. We have a huge loophole. Most of our planes--or many of them--are getting maintenance overseas where there is no security. Just imagine what a terrorist operative could do to sabotage one of our planes over there. It helps with the last line of defense. Our Federal Flight Deck Officer program. And it makes other tremendous improvements. I am a bit bemused by the gentleman from Indiana alleging that this bill somehow might allow some terrorist to somehow--who is known--not be on the No Fly List. We've got a whole bunch of really bad people in prison, not just down in Guantanamo but in our super-maximum security prisons here; some who attacked the Twin Towers before 9/11. The guy called the Unibomber. Guess what? They're not on the No Fly List because they aren't going anywhere. And if they did escape, they certainly wouldn't be flying under their own name. So we don't routinely put people who are in super maximum security prisons on a No Fly List. But what the bill says if and when any one of those people who was detained at Guantanamo is in any way capable of getting out and getting on an airplane: If they're sent to a foreign nation for disposition and we don't know what that disposition would be, their name must go on the No Fly List. So his arguments about somehow we're undermining security or threatening the public are particularly puzzling to me. As one who has advocated long and hard for enhanced security, I'm a bit insulted by that. Now, we need better technology for the Federal workforce to use at the point where they screen passengers. And one of those things is a walk-through device where you'll be able to see any concealed contraband on the person. That is a tremendous step forward. They've been using it in Heathrow for years now. It's an option at Heathrow.