Lloyd Doggett

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

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

Mr. DOGGETT. I understand the distinction, but I think of my history with the Texas Open Meetings Act, and just the discussing of these matters is part of public business.

Mr. DOGGETT. You ease some of my concerns. But when you talk about the seventies and the eighties and the like, it is three times since 1825. Let me just be sure that I'm clear, because maybe we are in agreement on this. The only purpose of your requesting this secret session is to present to the House, or have others present, matters that you feel you cannot present in public concerning matters that are classified. It may be necessary to discuss other interrelated matters, and you can anticipate what questions you may be asked, but the only reason for convening the House tonight in secret is because there are classified matters that you feel would jeopardize the security of our country if we discussed them in public.

Mr. DOGGETT. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I will at this point withdraw my reservation, but would want noted by the reservation my concern as a former member of the Judiciary about the precedent-setting nature of this. This is the fourth time since 1825, and I just ask that we stick to the purpose for which the gentleman has said we are gathering, and we give the most careful consideration before embarking on any such secret sessions in the future.

Mr. DOGGETT. You are saying you were here in 1979, 1980 and 1983 for those three sessions?

Mr. DOGGETT. I would just suggest that we could be better off having this done in the unanimous consent agreement itself, since that is what's setting out the terms of this discussion. It is a very, very serious matter when we do the public's business in secret. That is why it has only been done three times since 1825. And it is a very bad precedent for this House to get into the business of conducting any of its business in secret, except, and Mr. Blunt appears to provide the exception, except under a circumstance where there's classified material on something as important as the security of our families. And so long as we have set out all the parameters of the meeting in the agreement, then I have no problem with it. But I don't want it to wander off in debate, which now my friend tells me I can't talk about afterwards, because I came to this secret session about something that maybe didn't need to be secret.

Mr. DOGGETT. So since 1825, three times in the history of this country, and at no time since 1983 we have done what you are proposing in this unanimous consent agreement to do. Now, in this session, so that I understand the parameters and assure that we are not really doing the public's business in secret that ought to be done out here in public, will the session and the debate be limited to the presentation of classified material or the discussion of the significance of that classified material?

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, some folks think that President Bush's term ends on January 20, 2009. Many Americans have a big red circle or a happy face on their calendar already on that date, or perhaps on their key chains, and their watches that tick down ever so slowly, backwards toward that happy time. But while President Bush may be gone from the White House in 314 days, this administration and its congressional enablers have done so much damage that generations of American families will be footing the bill for their fiscal recklessness, with compounded interest, long, long after President Bush retires to Texas. This administration has consistently chosen to sacrifice long-term fiscal stability on the altar of political expediency. They have offered the ``free lunch'' plan, the ``pain-free'' solution to almost every challenge that our country has encountered. And the greatest sacrifice that they have demanded at a time of national peril for most Americans is to tell them to ``go shopping''. Well, this administration has now created a record $3 trillion of additional national debt on its own during the Bush years. What would even just one of those trillions of dollars of debt have accomplished had it been expended in a more appropriate manner? One trillion, that's millions of public school teachers; that's health care for hundreds of million children; that's university scholarships for millions of students. And in Iraq, this administration this week, every week, week after week, month after month, year after year, $3 billion. With the cost of the war in Iraq in 2 weeks, we could pay for the entire cancer budget of the National Institutes of Health for a year. Showering tax breaks on the richest, the most privileged few, while hemorrhaging $12 billion every month in Iraq, this administration has created more than a Federal deficit; it has created deficits, opportunity deficits, for millions of American families. The administration's failure to address our educational needs means that there's an opportunity deficit, that millions of young people are not able to achieve their full God-given potential because of the lack of support at both the public education level and for student financial assistance. The failure of the Bush administration to address our health care problems means a health care deficit for millions of American families, the largest single cause of personal bankruptcy in America today, the health care crisis. And the failure of the Bush administration to address our energy deficit, that is a deficit that every American feels at the pump when they get all their money taken out of their pocket and shifted over to some tyrant in an oil-producing area. The cost of the Bush administration's budget approach, their fiscal failure, is felt the most by those, who are least able to bear it: our students, our uninsured, our minimum wage workers, the elderly, and small business owners. This Democratic budget attempts to bail out, to bail us all out. But it's mighty hard to keep this country afloat and keep our families afloat when the administration is still so busy drilling holes in the bottom of the boat. I urge support for the rule and support for the Democratic budget as the best hope we have to do that in this difficult time.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, with this veto, President Bush has once again failed to safeguard our families. And what is this ``waterboarding'' that the President so readily embraces? It sounds a little like a cousin of skateboarding or snowboarding. But, in fact, it is a new name for an old water torture in which a human being is drowned. The drowning is controlled to force a response, but waterboarding is simply a euphemism for torture by drowning. Now, President Bush is not the first Texan to think of this and to believe that horrific wrongs can justify drowning of the culprit. An earlier Texas waterboarder is not in the White House; he was sent to the Big House. A Texas judge said that this waterboarding Texas sheriff put law enforcement ``in the hands of a bunch of thugs'' that would ``embarrass a dictator.'' The sheriff was sentenced to 10 years. That judge was right, and this administration is so very wrong. America seems to have been sentenced to 8 years of Dick Cheney, who claims that such water torture is a ``no brainer.'' ``No brainer''-- that sounds like a good way to describe how so many of this Administration's policies have been made. Torture is no proper tool in the arsenal of democracy. Torture is foreign to our values, foreign to our history, foreign to our religions, foreign to our laws, and it is foreign to our international commitments. There can be no compromise, no middle ground. We must have zero tolerance for torture. If we abandon our American values, we lose who we are. We lose our identity. We lose our pride as the greatest Nation in the world. And if the Administration and its apologists continue forcing America to abandon the rule of law and our long commitment to human dignity, we will lose the war. The use of torture, which President Bush's veto endorses, is not only un-American; it is ineffective. That is one reason why the Army Field Manual prohibits its use even when our military is in harm's way. As General David Petraeus, our commander in Iraq, wrote to his troops last year: ``Beyond the basic fact that such actions are illegal, history shows that they also are frequently neither useful nor necessary.'' I say follow our generals, not the Cheney ideologues, not the apologists. Override this veto.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, this debate is not nearly so much about fossil fuels as fossilized thinking. Conceivably there was a time in this country when federal tax policy that was ``of, by and for Big Oil'' meant dependable energy for our families. But now that approach of overreliance is as outdated and ill-conceived as eight-track tapes and President Bush's ``Mission Accomplished'' banner. Today's legislation would mean more renewable energy production, more solar energy, more wind energy, and provisions that I authored to encourage plug-in hybrid vehicles and geothermal heat pumps. And we don't borrow the money to pay for this renewable energy policy as the spend-and-borrow Republicans always insist. We pay for the measure by asking Big Oil to share just a tiny part of the tax subsidies that they have received for decades with these emerging renewable energy sources. One of the new tax loopholes that we close in this bill would otherwise have allowed Big Oil to claim a dollar for every gallon that it produced by simply dropping a little dab of grease in petroleum, ironically a provision intended to assist biofuels companies to help us achieve energy independence. And the cost of this modest increase in addressing these unjustifiable tax breaks for Big Oil is so small that I doubt it will even warrant a footnote in the astronomical earnings report of ExxonMobil. The charge made here today that the price of gas will go up if this bill passes is ludicrous. Does anyone here remember the price of gas going down when the oil companies got this unjustifiable tax break? It didn't go down a dime. And this charge comes from the same crowd that stood idly by while the cost of gas at the pump skyrocketed and did absolutely nothing. Of course the biggest subsidy of all for our fossilized foreign energy police is the military presence that we must maintain in foreign lands, places as volatile as the petroleum underneath them. We need real change in our energy policy that will bring us closer to a solution for both global warming and global war. I am proud that the City of Austin, Austin Energy, and people throughout Central Texas have taken a leadership role to move us in that direction. The bill we have today is green. It is a green light to green jobs and a green environment. And the only folks that are seeing red today are those whose padded profits compel them to block the door to progress that this legislation would open.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman for his comments and for the support and encouragement that he and his staff have provided us on this amendment. I also want to thank the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce for bringing this to my attention. Austin is an area that has a very dynamic economy, and so much of our success results from the fact that our business leaders are enlightened and recognize that one of the best investments we can make is in our people. We have been concerned with a workforce shortage, with needing more highly skilled, highly educated people, and this is a measure that the Chamber identified as part of its ``20,010 by 2010'' initiative of trying to get college graduates from our area that can staff our many high-tech and other companies. I salute Sandy Hentges and Drew Scheberle and the many other members of the Chamber staff and leadership for their work that led to this amendment. Let me just say in conclusion, thanks for the bipartisan support for this measure. I hope only that with our measure, for which we have considered a variety of different versions during recent months while working with the committee, I just hope that both of the bureaucracies involved here will really heed this amendment and will move expeditiously because it will ensure more young people have an opportunity to obtain a college education and have the support they need, and it will also reduce the cost from those who are receiving assistance improperly. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time and urge adoption of the amendment.

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Chairman, I yield myself two minutes. This is the time of year when millions of families all over the country are working with their high school seniors. The college applications are in, but now it is time to try to figure out how to pay for college and higher education. The task of completing these complex forms for student financial assistance can be very daunting. The Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, as it is known, is 11 pages long. It includes more than 100 questions and it has three worksheets. The Secretary of Education has called it ``longer and more complicated than a Federal tax form.'' In trying to complete the current application, students would actually probably benefit from having gone to college to do the accounting necessary to be able to set foot in a college classroom. As David Cay Johnston, a Pulitzer Prize winning author and New York Times reporter comments in his new book, ``Free Lunch,'' each year an estimated 1.5 million students decline to seek federal student financial assistance for which they are eligible because the form is too complicated. A report produced by the Institute for College Access and Success supports the approach that is taken in this amendment, and it identifies about a third of the questions that it highlights in its report as being questions that could be deleted if we could simply get two bureaucracies to communicate with one another. That is really all that this amendment is about, trying to make the forms less complicated by getting the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Education to communicate with each other and eliminate the confusion, to share data that is already available. This amendment would authorize the Secretary of Education to provide for the use of tax data that the IRS has available when the student aid form is due in February. Under this proposal, students would not lose their ability to correct any information that the Department of Education gets that might not be accurate. The access would be improved; the accuracy would be improved. And it works both ways: just as we want to be sure that no student eligible for aid is denied that aid, or as is currently happening, because of the complex form, we also want to be sure that no student ineligible gets that aid. That's one of the reasons that the Bush Administration proposed something similar to what I am advancing, because they were concerned that about $350 million every year in assistance is provided and lost as a result of inaccurate information. So it will be a two-way street: get the information that is needed, minimize the confusion and the bureaucracy, and help more students obtain the opportunity to get a college education. Madam Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. DOGGETT. Thank you very much, and I thank Mr. Keller and Mr. Hayes for their important comments and yield 1 minute to Chairman Miller for his observations.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, while the Bush Administration's reaction to the economic downturn was to continue whistling ``Don't Worry, Be Happy,'' we were at work on a prompt response. But today's stimulus is far less effective than it could have been and should have been because those who doubted that we needed to do anything insisted on supporting only action that would give one of every $3 to corporate America and would delay until this summer giving any assistance to ordinary working families. And now there is even an effort to add tax cut rebates to this bill for multi-millionaires. That is hardly ``stimulus'' unless they decide to increase their tips to the butler or the limousine driver. Although the risk of recession is very real and it requires a bipartisan response, let's be very clear: this danger did not result from any bipartisan cause. Like the Republican mythology that tax cuts pay for themselves, this downturn had its genesis in the wrongheaded notion that markets can do no evil, whether the subject is environmental protection or economic stability. They think the only desirable action is for the government to get out of the way. Well, the Bush Administration got way out of the way, and as a result we had overzealous lending and sometimes fraud in the subprime market while the Bush Administration stood by. We wouldn't need a $150 billion stimulus today if they had done their job. Whatever we do here, it can still be a stimulus without letting go of the pay-as-you-go rule and adding to our soaring national debt. Borrowing too much is what helped create this Bush economic mess. Borrowing even more can make it even worse. Political expedience should not trump sound fiscal policy.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, this pathetic excuse for a Medicare bill is made necessary by a Republican refusal to tackle waste, fraud and abuse. To fulfill an ideological dream, taxpayers are compelled to continue wasting billions of dollars to fund abusive private Medicare Advantage plans run by Bush administration buddies, rather than less expensive, more effective traditional Medicare. And while doctors are rightly protected from a scheduled payment cut, how about the millions of poor seniors who are cut off from access to extra help for prescription drug coverage? As with so many battles in this Congress, where it is a contest between the poor and a well- financed special interest, guess who gets knocked out? This shell of a bill actually means that millions of our youngest Americans will still be barred from access to the Children's Health Insurance Program, and, of course, it will enable my State, Texas, to maintain its dubious distinction of being number one, the number one State in the country with children who have no health insurance, due largely to the indifference of then Governor George Bush, now the ``vetoer in chief'' when it comes to children's health insurance. This House had approved the CHAMP Act. Today, about all that remains of it, thanks to continued Republican obstructionism and one veto after another, is what could be called the CHUMP Act because it reeks of fiscal irresponsibility and social inequity. Something may be better than nothing, but this is barely something. In 18 months we'll correct it.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Yesterday's Senate vote for another blank check to President Bush for the Iraq war was as wrongheaded as the Senate's original 2002 blessing for that invasion, despite the strong opposition of most House Democrats. Of course the Iraq surge has worked. Not the surge in Iraq. That surge has failed miserably, failed to achieve any of the political objectives, the benchmarks that the President set himself. No. The only surge that has worked is the propaganda surge here in Washington. Hemorrhaging more dollars and more blood into the sands of Iraq is not a formula for achieving success. The taxpayers' price for Iraq is $3 billion every week of every month of the year. Take all the money that is used to research and seek a cure for cancer at the National Institute for Cancer, that is how much money we spend in Iraq in 2 weeks. But whether deaths are up or deaths are down, ``the Administration's consistent response is the troops cannot come home.'' We need to learn from the courage displayed by our troops. My colleagues in this House need to learn from that courage and vote to limit any more funding in this war to a fully funded, safe, redeployment from Iraq that begins today.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, two-thirds of the benefit of this tax cut will go to families who earn $100,000 a year or more. Now, I support giving them the tax break, but I don't support borrowing $50 billion to do it. Our Republican colleagues say today that, well, you don't have to borrow the money. Why don't you just cut spending? Well, that's the very question that we asked President Bush's representative when he came in front of our committee, and he stood there and he kind of scratched his head and said, I can't think of any spending cuts, nor have these Republicans offered a single spending cut to finance this $50 billion tax cut. No, their approach is their old borrow-and-spend approach that they've used for the last 7 years. The debt goes up; the dollar goes down. We have the specter on the horizon of both inflation and recession, and they follow the same old broken policy. I believe that they are holding taxpayers across this country hostage to force the Congress to borrow more money for yet another tax break. It does not make good economic sense, nor is it equitable.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, you would think there would be no disagreement that support for our troops which begins on the battlefield shouldn't end there, yet some Senate Republicans deleted from this very legislation an important provision authorizing eligibility for below-market affordable home loans of up to $325,000 through our Texas Veterans Land Board for our Texas veterans. These are the servicemen and women who served in Iraq and in Afghanistan and over the last 30 years who are excluded from the current program. Today we say once more to these Senate obstructionists, stop and remember that those who fight to keep our homes safe deserve a fighting chance at homeownership. This bill is truly a way to honor our vets, not only with our words, but with our deeds; in this case, deeds to a home. When our vets are willing to pay the ultimate price for our freedom, we can afford the price of correcting this disparity. This bill also prevents the expiration of existing group health insurance guarantees for mental health coverage. While maintaining this protection is very important, what we really need is prompt approval of full equity in all health insurance coverage so that mental health services are not treated differently from physical health services. Whether it is a broken leg or a broken spirit, folks need affordable access to professional care that includes treatment for addiction and depression. I salute our colleagues Congressman Kennedy and Congressman Ramstad in their bipartisan effort for mental health parity, including addiction and depression. Let's get it done in 2008. Approval of today's bill encourages equity, equity in covering veterans whenever they have served, and at least a little equity in mental health coverage.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Let's be very clear about what is being postponed and who is doing the postponing. When this President exercised his second veto, he postponed our desire to see that children get the health care that they need. And tonight, when Republicans in this House and their nicotine-peddler allies stand in the way of the door at the doctor's office, millions of children are denied the care that they deserve. This President's holiday season veto of our efforts to aid these ailing children is neither sound fiscal policy nor good medicine. And for the President to make the incredible statement that the children of the working poor should ``just go to the emergency room,'' that is neither compassionate nor conservative. With his ideological blinders, he just doesn't seem to see the children of the working poor who are up all night with an aching ear, an abscessed tooth, or can't get antibiotics for strep throat. Those are the challenges working families face who do not have access to health care. A healthy body, like an educated mind, is an opportunity that all of our children should be permitted to share. For as long as the President and a minority of this House stand between children and the lifesaving, pain-reducing care that they need, we will work to overcome their intransigence, whether it takes one time in January or another time thereafter. We cannot yield to those who would block our children from the care they need.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman. Responsible, pay-as-you-go government is a significant part of the new direction to which this Congress committed our country last January. Now is hardly the time to abandon that important commitment. For 7 years, spend-and-borrow Republicans have seldom met a problem in this country that they didn't address by borrowing more money and incurring more public debt. Now, when America faces a credit crunch, they say ``get more credit.'' They insist on borrowing even more money to finance another tax cut. Admittedly, under Republican rule, the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax, turned into the ``Aggressive Middle-income Tax.'' Republicans were so busy treating the Federal Treasury like an ATM to finance tax cuts for the wealthy few that they largely forgot about the need to permanently fix the AMT affecting the middle class. We need that permanent fix that President Bush continues to refuse to support, but correcting and reducing the AMT can be accomplished in a fiscally responsible manner. We Democrats understand that discipline is required for fiscal responsibility. You simply cannot make a mountain of debt disappear, say, the way they erased the CIA torture video. This bill pays for the AMT fix in part by adopting most of the Abusive Tax Shelter Shutdown Act that I first authored in June of 1999, but which year after year House Republicans have blocked. Indeed, they blocked it even after Senate Republicans approved the measure. Today, we can stop corporate tax dodgers from shifting the tax burden to middle-class families, ensuring both tax fairness and fiscal responsibility.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. After having run the national debt up sky high, these Republicans clamor for another loan. ``Just give us another $50 billion for one more tax cut.'' And we Democrats are saying ``No, your debt addiction must stop today. You're way over your credit limit.'' The Republican borrow-and-spend approach that we've had for the last 7 years may be easy politics, but it's mighty hard on an economy where the dollar keeps falling so that it's worth even less today than a Canadian looney. In this bill, one way that we stop this Republican credit card borrowing spree is by adopting much of the Abusive Tax Shelter Shutdown Act, which I first introduced in June 1999. It combats tax shelters by denying a deduction for transactions that lack what is called ``economic substance.'' What that means is no more tax evasion by corporations that rely on what one professor described as ``deals done by very smart people that, absent tax considerations, would be very stupid.'' And it is very stupid to allow them to continue doing that. When the corporate tax dodgers are made to pay their fair share, as this bill does today, everybody else who plays by the rules can pay less. And that's what this bill does. We stop corporate tax evasion; we stop corporate tax dodgers from shifting the tax burden to middle-class families, ensuring today both tax fairness and fiscal responsibility.

Mr. DOGGETT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, most folks think of ``CAFE'' as a place to eat. Well, our cars and our trucks have been eating too much energy and emitting too much pollution for far too long, while our planet and our pocketbooks take a beating. Fuel efficiency standards have not been increased since 1975 when Paul Simon began singing ``Still Crazy After All These Years.'' Well, it is still crazy that 32 years later fuel economy standards have not been increased and we cannot get more miles per gallon despite both our dangerous overdependence on foreign oil and the growing threat of global warming. We need 21st-century fuel economy standards for 21st-century vehicles. And thanks to this bill, many of those vehicles will be fuel-efficient, plug-in hybrids, following the lead that we have taken with the Plug-in Partners campaign in Austin, Texas. Texans alone will save $2 billion at the pump when these standards become fully effective. And consumers across America will save billions more from the requirement in this bill that utilities generate at least 15 percent of their energy from renewable energy. Keep in mind that even Governor Bush signed a renewable energy portfolio in Texas, and Texas is currently ahead of the country on this issue. A green light for green energy encourages a new generation of job- creating innovation that we can export to the world--reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and, maybe even more importantly, fossilized thinking that we have heard so much of here this morning. This bill will reduce the threat of both global war and global warming.