Peter DeFazio

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I was pleased to hear one of my Republican colleagues precede me and talk about the impact of the debt, the growing deficit and the debt. I wish that the folks downtown were listening. Dick Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney, has declared that deficits do not matter. In fact, he now wants to send the result of this growing mountain of debt to an undisclosed location by hiding the fact that the United States of America is about to exceed its $7.3 trillion debt limit. For the second time in Bush's brief 3\1/2\ years in office, Congress is going to have to increase the debt limit of the country, a burden that will be passed on for the next 30 to 50 years for future generations of Americans. Now they want to do it in a stealth manner, by attaching some vague language to a defense bill in the hope that they will not have to take a vote on the product of what they have created here, which is another couple of trillion dollars of debt for the American people. They should at least have the courage and the honesty of their convictions and bring up the debt limit on the floor of the House and vote on it so people can see the product of their economic and tax policies, which is a mountain of debt for future generations.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, last week the independent 9/11 Commission said it found ``no credible evidence to substantiate the charge that there was a relationship between Saddam Hussein and Iraq and 9/11. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'' Yet, 2 days later, Vice President Cheney said that, in fact, that was not true, that there were long established ties with al Qaeda. Now, of course, Vice President Cheney has quite a distinguished record as Vice President. He was the gentleman of 3 years ago said during the energy crisis in the western United States that those of us who thought there was market manipulation were really pretty stupid, and this was just market forces at work and there was no manipulation of the market. And Enron was a wonderful and upstanding company. Of course, now Enron officials, one after another, are going to jail, and hopefully Ken Lay will be criminally indicted this week. But the Vice President waxed eloquent there as he did here. He also has said that deficits do not matter despite the fact we will borrow $700 billion against our future and obligate Americans for generations to pay that money back. He says that does not matter perhaps because his tax policy that he and the President envision says that only wage earners and salary earners will repay that and the wealthy and those that you normally associate with and corporations will not pay. But, nonetheless, he said again trying to raise the old saw about this relationship perhaps because although he told us that he knew exactly where the weapons of mass destruction were, he failed to point any of the U.S. troops, the inspectors or anybody who has been in Iraq for the last year and a half to that exact spot where he knew those weapons were located. So it is a continuing attempt at obfuscation. The one thing they point to does have a kernel of truth, and they point to terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi. He is a really bad guy. He has been behind more than 700 terrorist killings in Iraq it is estimated, a mastermind. In June 2002, the United States intelligence service located Mr. Zarqawi and they said he had set up a weapons lab in Kirma, in northern Iraq. He was producing ricin and cyanide. The Pentagon drafted plans and asked the Bush administration to take out Mr. Zarqawi. The Bush administration said no. Then we went 4 months later, and this is all from a report by Jim Miklaszewski, a correspondent for NBC news. Four months later, Intelligence showed that Zarqawi was planning to use the ricin in attacks in Europe. The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan. The White House again killed it. This is a quote from a former national security member, ``People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the President's policy of preemption against terrorists.'' Then finally the threat turned real in January. Mr. Zarqawi's group, a number of them were arrested in London and they had a ricin lab which was directly connected to the lab in northern Iraq. This was a part of the country Saddam Hussein did not control. The Kurds controlled that area undercover of U.S. air power. So Saddam Hussein did not control this area. And, again, the United States flew over it every day. In fact, we might remember that Colin Powell famously pointed to it when he made his presentation to the National Security Council and said there are terrorists in this camp training in an area where we control the air space and we fly over it every day. But we did not take it out. And because the Bush administration was more obsessed with building its coalition of the willing, worried that countries some of those the new Europe might fall off from our coalition, those who sent five, ten, or 15 troops to the coalition, if we took out this terrorist camp, they did not do it. And U.S. troops and many others have died because this administration failed to take out that terrorist camp on the three occasions when the Pentagon asked them to do it because they were so obsessed with pursuing a war against Saddam Hussein and his non existent weapons of mass destruction. Now, he was a bad guy in the world and we are well quit of him, hopefully permanently quit of him soon. But the point is when this administration turned its eyes away from al Qaeda, and turned its eyes away from the terrorists, and refused to take out Zarqawi, they were making a grave error and people have died because of that error.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I think there is substantial agreement that the world, Iraq, the Middle East are better off without Saddam Hussein in power. But the question remains particularly as raised most recently and poignantly by General Zinni about the timing, necessity and the conduct of the Iraq war. No weapons of mass destruction, the push for model democracy and a vibrant capitalist free economy is not going so well, so the Bush administration has fallen back upon the idea that somehow there were substantial links between al Qaeda, 9-11 and Saddam Hussein. Unfortunately, last week the 9-11 Commission, a truly bipartisan commission, came out with a statement in their most recent report, ``We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.'' Yet, the administration insists on trying to put 9-11, al Qaeda, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein in the same sentence or run-on sentence and paragraph all the time. Vice President Cheney has been even more outspoken on this issue. Of course, Vice President Cheney is the same gentleman who in a closed- door meeting 3 years ago told the Northwest Energy Caucus that there was no collusion, Enron was not manipulating energy markets in the western United States. These were purely market forces. We were just really stupid and we did not understand, but he did. Well, of course, he was kind of wrong and maybe even this week Ken Lay will be in a criminal indictment as others from Enron have gone to jail, and the appalling tapes that have come out. Then, of course, Vice President Cheney also is fond of saying that deficits do not matter. We are just indebting future generations of Americans. Working and wage earning people will pay the bill, while the wealthy and the big corporations skate in the future world that the Bush administration proposes. So he is not exactly infallible and, unfortunately, I believe the 9- 11 Commission is more right than he is, with one exception. There is one really bad guy, Abu Musab Zarqawi. He has now been blamed for more than 700 terrorist killings including U.S. troops in Iraq. Now, the interesting thing is that the United States of America before the war with Iraq knew exactly where Zarqawi was and they could have taken him out. In fact, the Pentagon asked 3 times. Now, this is the President who was going to go anywhere and everywhere to take out known terrorist threats. This guy was a known terrorist threat. We knew exactly where he was. In fact, when Colin Powell made his famous presentation full of inaccuracies to the United Nations Security Council, the one accurate thing he did point to with a pointer was a terrorist training camp way up in Northern Iraq, inside the U.S. no-fly zone and protected by the Kurdish area, an area, in fact, that Saddam Hussein could not get to, and that is where Zarqawi was. And 3 times, 3 times the Pentagon asked to take him out. The first time because they had good intelligence. The second time because they had intelligence that he was developing ricin and other chemical weapons. And then the third time they asked was after some of his cohorts were found with ricin in England. They asked 3 times and 3 times the Bush National Security Council and the Bush administration turned down the Pentagon. This could have saved U.S. troops and lives and prevented a lot of the mayhem going on in Iraq today. But this administration was so distracted from the war on terror to the war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein that they let this guy go. They let him go. That is absolutely outrageous. We have got to question whether the distraction from the war on terror, from Osama bin Laden, who is still out there plotting and planning and his second-in-command, who is still out there plotting and planning and this guy Zarqawi, who is out there plotting and planning, if we could have gotten them, if we had been focussed on the war on terror and following the principles that the President set out, instead of this obsession and this distraction and diversion into a war in Iraq where we pulled all of the intelligence out of that area and focussed it all on Iraq, they would not take out Zarqawi because they were afraid it might hurt their coalition building. Iceland might not have joined the Coalition of the Willing to take on Iraq, and some of those other major military powers that have been involved with the United States if we had taken out Zarqawi. They were worried that that would disturb that. We would take out a real threat to our troops, to the region, to terrorism, to go after Saddam Hussein whose own people would have taken care of him some day. He was surrounded. His military was a shadow of its former self. The sanctions were depleting his energies and the energies of his military day by day; and sooner or later, with encouragement, the Iraqi people would have taken care of that guy. They tried to kill him 13 times. They just were not successful. They might have got him on the 14th try. But this administration was obsessed with the war and dropped the war on terrorism.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote, and pending that, I make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, the other point is the chairman talked about the fact that we need to replace the screeners with technology. I agree 100 percent as does the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica). Unfortunately, this budget does not contain this money. It is $231 million less than we authorized for that kind of technology.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I do not rise to defend the Transportation Security Administration as a paragon of efficiency, although I have been impressed in recent meetings, hearings, closed and open door, with the acting head, Admiral Stone. And in particular, he seems to be willing to address the enduring problems with the centralized bureaucracy, the fact that hiring, firing, management decisions, scheduling decisions are all being made out of Washington, D.C. instead of at the local level by the local Federal Security Director. But I want to give him a chance to succeed. I want to make the system work as well as possible. And the cap that has been imposed, I think out of frustration by members of this committee, which is shared by members of the Subcommittee on Aviation and the Select Committee on Homeland Security, about the past problems with management of this agency is not the right solution. We talk about right sizing the TSA. Well, the way to do that would be to do a bottom-up assessment of what is necessary to meet the mandates of the Transportation Security Act, to screen the baggage, to properly screen the passengers. It is my understanding that in the near future we may hear that the Transportation Security Administration is going to fill the huge gap where individuals who work in the airport, vendors and others, caterers, would have to go through screening on a daily basis, which will increase the load. Passenger loads are coming back as people return to the air. But because of this arbitrary cap of 45,000, we find out that according to the GAO we are not meeting the mandate on 100 percent electronic baggage screening because of staffing shortages. The Secretary of Transportation, Secretary Mineta, has abandoned the promise and the contract with the American traveling public that they will wait no more than 15 minutes in line. There have been lines reported at some airports up to 4 and 5 hours; 1 and 2 hours are regularly at other airports. That means the airlines are losing more and more of their business travelers, which is causing the industry tremendous problems. We need predictability when business travelers and others go to the airport. We need some assurances that they will be able to get through expeditiously and quickly. And even more than that, we need assurances that they will be properly screened and that their baggage will be properly screened. I believe because of this cap we are not meeting any of those charges. A number of the largest airports in the United States, 22 of the 25 focus airports that the Transportation Security Administration deems to be at high risk of delays this summer; these are 22 of the 25 airports at high risk of travel delays this summer, the Transportation Security Administration, because of the cap, has reduced screener staffing resources by the equivalent of 3,100 full-time screeners over the last year, about 20 percent of those airports. That means that many Americans are going to be waiting in line for half an hour or an hour or more because of these arbitrary caps. I do not think this is the way to get at the management problems of the TSA. It would be better for the committee to mandate that the agency, prior to the start of the next fiscal year, go through an assessment, and they claim they are doing this, but mandate it perhaps, that they would decide from the ground up, from every position in the agency how many people they need at each airport and set a performance standard, a standard both in terms of security that has to be met and a standard in terms of how long it is going to take people to get through those airports. It is not fair to the public to say, well, you are paying this additional tax for security and you are paying all of these other taxes, a very large part of the ticket, but we cannot afford enough people to get you through here in less than 3 hours. That is not right. I know many of my colleagues have experienced this firsthand, and they certainly have received complaints from their constituents, particularly in a number of these 25 focus airports around the country. I do not do this out of some sort of very parochial need, because my own local airport is doing quite well. But I do it out of a general concern for the industry, the traveling public, safety, security, and convenience, and the proper management of the TSA, and wanting to give the new acting director a chance to make it work right by removing this cap, admitting that there were mistakes made in the past, and we expect that they will not be repeated in the future.

Mr. DeFAZIO. I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Chairman, in response to the earlier debate, there is a relationship between everything we do here and everybody knows that. We have to make tough choices every day. We have to choose between budgets and priorities. Plain and simple, this administration and the Republicans on that side of the aisle have said that tax cuts for the wealthy are a higher priority than adequate funding for first responders. My first responders are crying out for interoperable communications. What was the response of the Bush administration? Zero. They zeroed it out of the budget this year. I cannot even try and add money back into it because it does not exist anymore in the Federal budget. That is the number one priority of the police and fire in my State. Who are we going to call? Who are going to be the first people there? Not the Army, not the military, not any Federal agencies. It is going to be our local responders. And they are not even going to be able to communicate among one another, let alone with State or Federal authorities. This bill does not have enough money to meet the homeland security needs of this country. In addition, there is another choice. We are going to spend twice as much money on the Star Wars fantasy, a weapons system that does not work, as we are going to spend on all the border and port security for the United States of America. There are tough choices, and you are making the wrong decisions.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, could the Strategic Petroleum Reserve be an insurance policy? Yes. And in this case, it can ensure a lower price of gasoline for American consumers and American businesses, or the lack of change in this policy and in the administration's current actions will ensure higher prices and higher profits for the industry. This vote will tell us which side of that question people come down on.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, we heard this was a back-door attempt to change our energy policy. Well, we have a failing energy policy in the United States with the oil men in the White House, and it would be good to change it; but I would say actually this is a front-door attempt to lower the price of gasoline for American consumers and American business. Every penny costs American consumers a billion dollars at the pump. Every penny costs the aviation industry a billion dollars in profits. So if it only came down 2 cents, like the gentleman says, well, that is 2 billion bucks for the aviation industry, a couple billion bucks in the pockets of American consumers, but maybe that is chump change around here. I do not think so. That is real money to the American people. But beyond that, it is kind of interesting to say if George Bush took action and released some oil, it would only drop a penny or two, I guess maybe because he would work with the industry to keep the price up, because when President Clinton ordered the release of 30 million barrels of crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 2000, the price of gas fell by 14 cents. Well, maybe that is just because he is a Democrat. That took 2 weeks. Well, then, let us go back to President George H.W. Bush. He released 13, only 13 million barrels of crude oil, about what we are talking about here, from the SPRO in 1991, and crude oil prices dropped by $10 per barrel. So there are precedents. This is not insignificant. We are not talking about pennies, but even pennies would bring relief to Americans. The last time I drove to the bagel store near my house in east Springfield, I went by a gas station, and the price changed between the time I went in there to the BuyMart store and went back home. It went up. Let us bring it down. Let us change the direction. Now, a number of us have asked the President to file a World Trade Organization complaint. We passed legislation that costs $154 billion just before this because of a complaint filed against the United States at the World Trade Organization. Now, I do not support the WTO and I voted against it; but, hey, we are in it, this President loves it, and we are passing legislation to comply with it. Why will he not file a complaint against the eight member nations of OPEC? Eight of them are in the World Trade Organization. They are violating the World Trade Organization every day. They are colluding to restrict supply and drive up the price of oil, but this President will do nothing. He will not file that complaint. I have written to him twice. They will not file the complaint. I guess it is too much to ask this administration to take positive action to help bring down the price of oil. If they cannot take positive action, maybe a little bit of inaction. Stop filling the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. I hope I do not get anybody fired, because this administration does not like people to say reasonable things that go against their stubborn beliefs, but the staff at the Strategic Petroleum Reserve recommended 2 years ago that we stop filling the reserve because ``Commercial inventories are low, retail prices are high and economic growth is slow. The government should avoid acquiring oil for the reserve under these circumstances.'' We are not talking about doing away with the reserve and the insurance policy. We are talking about taking prudent steps at a time when we are paying sky-high prices for oil to show the world that we are going to protect our consumers and stop the price gouging, but I guess that is too much to ask of the oil men down at the White House.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, well, it promises to be yet another hot muggy day in Washington, D.C., so the Republican leadership are rushing to drag out a bloated tax give-away bill and rush it through before it begins to stink too badly in the heat and the light of day. It is rumored to be 4,400 pages long, but there are no printed copies available to Members of Congress, the general public, only lobbyists who wrote the bill. It is a $4 billion problem, and it will be solved with a $150 billion burden on the American taxpayer. Only in Washington, D.C. It has to do with U.S. corporations' taxes overseas, but this bill addresses Eskimo whalers, fishing tackle manufacturers, $9 billion for tobacco growers, and it is going to privatize tax collections in the United States, giving our most private information to the private sector bill collectors. Only in America do we solve a $4 billion problem with a $150 billion expenditure; only in a Republican America.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Reclaiming my time, the Pentagon cannot be audited. It in fact cannot account for a large majority of its expenditures, and the fact is that one party runs this government. They run it with an iron fist here in the House where substantive amendments are often not allowed. One party runs the United States Senate as much as the Senate can be run. And one party runs the White House that will never admit it was wrong. I wonder why it is that the Washington Waste Watchers here cannot make a little more mileage with their people downtown and why they have to give speeches on the floor as opposed to taking real action to root out waste and abuse. His amendment may have merit, and I will take a look at it, but the point is I have heard many of his other speeches about things that could be accomplished administratively. I believe the administration, the Bush administration, which runs the Interior Department, could take action internally to eliminate this apparent plethora of excess websites. Why should it take an act of Congress? If we have such a responsible administration downtown, why will they not take administrative action? Why do they not limit the number of websites out there? Why do they not limit the expenditure?

Mr. DeFAZIO. No, can the gentleman name it? There is only one that has never been audited.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, to the gentleman, since I have listened often to the Washington Waste Watchers it is interesting to me when one party controls the House and the Senate and has controlled the White House and the administrative branch for more than 3 years now, that he keeps rooting out this administrative waste. And I guess I have got to wonder at the dedication of the Bush administration or the Republican House or the Republican Senate in rooting out waste that he has to come and give speeches everyone night on the floor about it but seems to be able to do little about it. I guess if one party were in charge, the Republican Party, they would root these things out, but I guess they are not. I would ask the gentleman, I do have a question for the gentleman, since he referenced the Pentagon, if he could tell me, there is one agency and only one of the Federal Government which has been deemed to be inauditable. It cannot be audited. It cannot account for a large majority of expenditures. Is the gentleman familiar and can the gentleman name that one agency?

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, we need more money, not more rhetoric.

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

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, this is the second year in a row, particularly this year since I have hardly any voice due to a cold, that I have come to the floor to debate this issue, not intending to come to the floor. My concern is that we have an extraordinary problem in the west. We are confronted with potentially the most catastrophic fire year in history. The committee has recognized that by appropriating an additional $500 million to fight those fires. I appreciate that. Unfortunately, the Senate at this point does not feel that sense of urgency. But that is not the issue before us right now. The issue before us at the moment is whether the public will participate in the plans for our public lands in the western United States. I am pretty sensitive to this, as are the people in my district. We live next to or in the middle of those forests, and we want to participate in the plans for the future. Now, the administration has proposed that we would totally exempt future forest plans from NEPA and we would allow plans to be amended with no notice or public comment. I do not think that that really meets the concerns and the very diverse views in my congressional district about forests, forest planning and multiple use. Some people want to oppose the Udall amendment by saying that this is about fuel reduction. It is not about fuel reduction. Remember, we had a vigorous debate last year and in the Congress before that about healthy forests and fuel reduction. In fact, we passed a very ambitious piece of legislation, which I voted for, H.R. 1904, the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, which, if properly implemented, would go after the backlog, would go after the fuels accumulation, would reduce the risk of catastrophic fire and would manage our forests back toward a presettlement and healthy state. Unfortunately, the administration, having signed the bill with much fanfare, abandoned it when it came time to ask for the funds. Yes, the committee has increased the funding by $58 million, and I appreciate that. Unfortunately, we are still a couple of hundred million dollars shy. Nobody is talking about that. We are well short of the promise that the President made when he signed the bill with fanfare, that he was going to put people to work, protect our communities, he was going to protect the resources and we were going to put this debate behind us once and for all. And that bill contained significant changes and amendments to the processes that delay this work. Now, if we will only fund it, it will get done. But now you want to go off into another part of the forest plan which has nothing to do with fire, fire planning or fuel reduction, and say we should wipe out all protections and public participation. That is not right. Sure, some of this stuff could be streamlined. I get pretty upset with the bureaucracy. But I live in a forest, actually part of my land is forest, and the backyard is a forest. I am pretty concerned about these issues, and I am sensitive to other people who live in that situation. But we are not putting out the Federal investment, we are not putting our money where our mouth is, and we have a lot of mouths around here, but not enough money, that is for darn sure. That is where we are at tonight with this debate. As much as the committee has tried, they were not given an adequate amount of money to address these problems. Yes, they have done better by fire fighters, yes, a little better by fuel reduction, but nowhere near the promise of the legislation passed last year, because the administration did not ask for the money to deliver on that promise, pretty much the same as No Child Left Behind. Everybody here agrees with the concept of No Child Left Behind, but if you do not put the money behind the promise, it is a new unfunded mandate.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Washington for yielding me this time, and I thank the chairman. I particularly want to congratulate the committee on the additional money for firefighting. I know it is a tough budget year. I know their allocations were inadequate. But it was absolutely crucial that we get the up-front money we need for what is expected to be the worst fire year in Western history so we can be better prepared and also have the assurances of an additional funding for next year so that the Forest Service can begin to get into long-term contracts for larger aircraft, for fuel retardant crops. That said, I am concerned that after last year's vigorous debate and final resolution of the Healthy Forest Restoration Act, with the promise of $760 million a year from the White House committed to hazardous fuel reductions in Western forests, that there is only $266 million in this bill. That is not adequate. At that level, if there was no additional fuels buildup, it would take 100 years to deal with the already accumulated buildup. That is part of the reason why they have to so robustly fund firefighting. We simply have to get ahead of this problem. We can provide jobs in rural communities, we can do fuel reduction in a way that is labor intensive, but will protect resources, protect our communities, and enhance the forests. But at the $266 million level, that is simply not going to get done. In fact, we will probably see the backlog grow over the coming years. So again, I congratulate the committee for the additional money for firefighting and hope in the conference committee that they can find some additional funds to move ahead with fuel reduction.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, reasonably priced gasoline has become a distant memory for most Americans, yet gasoline can still be had for 5 cents a gallon. Where? Well, in Baghdad. How? Because the American taxpayers are subsidizing gasoline for the Iraqis at the cost of $167 million a month. Even at that we are being ripped off by Halliburton, we are told. We are paying too much for it. So while Americans are curtailing their summer vacations because they cannot afford to fill their tanks, they are backing up the trucks in Baghdad and filling up 20 to 30 gallon tanks for $1 to $1.50. That is a lot less than the price of a gallon here. Yet the Republicans would tell us that their lame energy bill would do something about this. Well, we passed their lame energy bill two or three times before on the floor of the House. We are voting on all the same provisions again. The $18 billion subsidy to the oil and gas industry, yes, that will really help. That is going to help Americans get more affordable gasoline and help make this country more energy independent and efficient. They actually do not want us to be more energy independent and efficient. They want us to be addicted to the high price oil, to continue to shovel money into these multinational oil companies.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, we need to spend more time on the past here because people need to understand what happened with this market manipulation, and in fact, of course, the head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Pat Wood from Texas, chosen by George Bush and Ken Lay, wants still to push forward with this deregulation model and impose it on the rest of the United States of America. After all, it was a great success. The only problem was that Enron got caught. A few people made a lot of money. A lot of people had to pay a lot more for their electricity, but that is kind of the way they run the tax system in this country. I would like to draw a parallel to something that is even more on people's minds. In the Northwest now it is not the heating system. The high rates are not quite as troublesome, although they certainly trouble our businesses every day, particularly those that are energy intensive and are contributing to our high unemployment rate, but I would compare it to what is happening with gasoline. We are hearing the same refrain from the administration about the prices of gasoline, that these are market forces. Yet, in the last 10 years, there have been 2,600 mergers in the oil industry. We find that every company in the oil industry, those few that are left, are enjoying record profits; and they are saying, oh, these are just simple market forces at work, and again, refusing to act, and of course, this time there is no prospects, since they control both Houses of Congress, that someone can convene hearings to get to the bottom of the market manipulation that is going on here. It starts with OPEC, and the President, of course, is a great believer in free trade. If he is such a believer in free trade, why is he letting the OPEC countries violate the World Trade Organization? Why not file a complaint? I have sent him two letters to that extent and have had no response. Beyond that, there are certainly other things he could do. A much braver Congress and more independent Congress years ago imposed a windfall profits tax on the industry and took other dramatic steps to help save American consumers, but they will not do that. It is the same thing that happened with electricity here. There are a favored few who I would call the contributor class. Most of the people who made the money here are Pioneers or Rangers for the President. Most of the companies that manipulated the market just happen to be based in Texas, and they are still profiting from these contracts because they will not allow your amendment. I mean, if anything is an illegitimate contract, if you read these obscene transcripts, which we could not read on the floor of the House, the FCC would be on top of us, of these so-called traders of Enron and what they were doing to manipulate and the language they were using and what they were doing to people, if these are not illegitimate contracts, extorting people illegally in the Northwest and elsewhere, I do not know what is; but they will not allow us to debate an amendment on that issue on the floor.

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this issue. Of course, the interesting thing is that we in the Pacific Northwest were the tail of the dog here. On manipulated markets for profit in California, they drove up wholesale markets West-wide. In fact, some 570 days they manipulated markets. It has now been found to be more than 460 days. The gentleman might remember the meeting we had with Vice President Cheney just about 3 years ago now. We got a bipartisan meeting together and Democrats and Republicans came together and said to the Vice President, as Northwesterners we are really concerned about what is happening with electricity prices, $2,000, $3,000 a megawatt. This cannot be market forces at work. Energy is usually selling at $30 a megawatt, $40 a megawatt. Out in the Pacific Northwest, it is 50, 100 times more. You probably remember the Vice President. He dismissed us with his usual, it is hard to say, I guess sneer would be the best way to say, and say we just simply did not understand, poor little babies. These were market forces at work. This had nothing to do with market manipulation, absolutely nothing; and if we did not build a 500 megawatt plant a week for 16 years, this would continue, $2,000, $3,000 megawatt energy. A funny thing happened on the way to the market forces here, and that is, the Senate changed hands. Diane Feinstein then managed to schedule a hearing to bring in the people from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and other people from the Bush administration to have them testify on the record under oath about these market forces; and you know what, they suddenly decided there was market manipulation. They quickly imposed price caps, and then the whole thing began to unravel. They protected their contributing class of Mr. Lay and others as long as they could. As these gentlemen said here in these transcripts, Enron was the single largest contributor to George Bush, and Ken Lay was the single largest individual contributor to George Bush over his lifetime until this campaign. He may still well be contributing and the President may still be taking his money. Ken Lay has not gone to jail yet so I guess he can still contribute.

Mr. DeFAZIO

Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes to discuss H.R. 4323. This legislation has the best of intentions. It would provide authority for the Secretary of Defense to expedite procurement of equipment that is necessary to protect against combat deaths. While I agree with the premise, I am concerned about the details of the bill. Obviously, we all, regardless of political party, want our men and women in uniform to have the equipment they need to protect themselves and successfully carry out their mission. Just last month, I voted in favor of H.R. 4200, the fiscal year 2005 Department of Defense Authorization Act. This legislation boosted funding above and beyond the levels requested by President Bush for a variety of critical equipment like armored Humvees, advanced body armor, and roadside bomb suppression devices. H.R. 4200 also included a provision to speed up the procurement of equipment necessary to prevent combat casualties that is identical to the text included in H.R. 4323. While I had some reservations about the provision, I supported its inclusion in H.R. 4200 and voted for final passage of the bill because it contained a variety of important pay and benefit improvements for our men and women in uniform. And, as I mentioned, it increased funding for critical equipment. I was hoping that the procurement provision could be fine-tuned in the conference with the Senate. However, the House Republican leadership decided to bring the procurement provision to the floor as a stand-alone measure, H.R. 4323, in order to fast-track the bill through Congress and get it to the President without getting bogged down in the various debates surrounding H.R. 4200. The bill is on the floor this week under a procedure that prohibits amendments to perfect it. I voted against H.R. 4323 because I am concerned about rushing through a bill that, while well intentioned, may not provide the benefit to our men and women in uniform that its proponents claim. The bill would require that the Secretary of Defense establish an expedited procurement process for equipment that can prevent combat casualties occurring in the field. In order to speed up the process and allow a contract to be awarded within 15 days of an identified need, H.R. 4323 would waive the statutory requirement that the equipment be tested and evaluated for effectiveness. Some of my colleagues may remember during the Vietnam War when modified M-I6s were rushed into soldiers' hands. Tragically, the weapons were not adequately tested prior to distribution in Vietnam. It turns out they jammed frequently, causing untold number of deaths when soldiers' were left without an automatic weapon when facing enemy fire. Rather than waiving the requirement that emergency equipment be tested and evaluated for effectiveness, as H.R. 4323 currently does, and risk the repeat of another debacle like the M-16 during Vietnam, I believe this bill should accelerate the testing and evaluation of critical equipment so that it can be procured more quickly, but still safely. It does our soldiers no good to have equipment procured and distributed quickly if it doesn't work as its supposed to. Amending H.R. 4323 to keep the requirement that equipment to be procured under this new streamlined authority still be tested would ensure that the equipment our troops need would provide the expected level of protection.