John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. At the moment, Mr. Meadows, perhaps I would yield and you can give me a 30-second explanation of why the shutdown makes sense, but let's talk about the shutdown. Let's talk about the reality that the President proposed in his budget for 2019 that we should spend somewhere around $1.6 billion for border security, not specifying walls or all of it, but just border security. We, of course, do what we always do. We took that, and we put it through the ringer. We came out with $1.6 billion for border security, including some wall in there. But we didn't finish the task, so we did a continuing resolution last September and kicked the ball down the road, which is what we really do best, boom, boom, boom, bounce down the road until right after Thanksgiving. Then we hadn't quite completed it, so in a day when none of us were here, by unanimous consent, again, we kicked the ball down the road until December 11. Then the Senate sent over a piece of legislation that was unanimously passed in the Senate by voice vote, and it wound up over here the next day. Sometime between that evening when it passed the Senate and it wound up over here, the President decided that he needed $5 billion for a border wall. Now, perhaps there was a discussion of appropriations sometime during that process. I don't know. But in any case, it was in none of the bills. Suddenly, we had a $5 billion addition to border security. All of that happened overnight. At the same time, the President calls into his Oval Office the leadership, and he says that he will shut down the government, and he will take the mantle of the shutdown. So, my good friends from the Republican side of this aisle, here we are on day 25. A lot of things are going on out there. There is not much going on around here, unfortunately. But what is going on out there? I got a phone call from a mayor of one of the small cities that I represent down in the agricultural part north of Sacramento. He said: Can you help us? One of the veterans in my district, a World War II veteran, is in hospice, and, over the years, he lost his Purple Heart for injuries that he suffered in World War II. We would like to get that back for him before he dies, but we can't. We can't help him. We can't get that Purple Heart back before this veteran dies because the National Archives is shut down. Normally, we could. We would make our request, and we would go to the National Archives. Somehow we would find the record, and we would get a replacement Purple Heart. We can't do that now. The National Archives is shut down. Another one of my constituents wants to start a new business in one of the towns that I represent west of Sacramento. It is a little restaurant coffee shop. He needs an SBA loan. He worked it all through the bank. The bank is ready to make the loan. The papers can't be signed. SBA is shut down. How long can he hang on? How long will that escrow remain open before this deal tanks? Well, it is 25 days thus far. Apparently, the deal is still in place. But businesses all across this Nation are not moving forward. Recent estimates show that two-tenths of a percent of the economic growth of this Nation in this 25-day shutdown has been removed from this economy. We are looking somewhere just north of 2\1/2\, 3 percent, in that range, but two-tenths of that is now gone as a result of this shutdown. Let us remind ourselves: This is entirely the making of the President who parachuted--no, bombed into our negotiation process here, $5 billion in the 12 hours between the passage of a compromised, unanimous vote by the Senate to keep government going and the arrival and the vote on that bill here on this floor. Madam Speaker, I will also state that our Republican colleagues accommodated the President and put the $5 billion into the legislation and sent it back to the Senate, and there it sat, sine die. That legislation is gone. However, we want to open government. We think it is really important that those veterans across this Nation who want to get their records are able to do so, and those men and women who want to start a small business are able to get their Small Business Administration loans approved. How about Foreign Service officers? Oh, yes, the State Department isn't funded. Foreign Service officers are not able to get the training that they need. They go through a whole course before they are sent off to some part of the world--language, culture courses. None of that is happening, to say nothing of the fact that about a third of the appointments in the State Department have never been filled to begin with. Department of the Interior? Some of us stuck around here over the weekend. Normally, we would go down to the Smithsonian and take a look, or the National Museum of African American History and Culture, or maybe the National Museum of American History. Maybe we would go watch one of the presentations that are made at the national parks. No, that doesn't happen either. Woe on us here in Washington, but all across this Nation, the national parks are shut down. Fish and wildlife, now, we have a real problem here. The fish and wildlife refuges in California are shu down, and we are approaching the end of duck season. Oh, my goodness. You mean we can't go duck hunting, as we might want to do, at the fish and wildlife refuges? That is right. You are not going to go duck hunting at the fish and wildlife refuges, as you have normally done, even though you put your bid in and you had January 15 for your date to hunt ducks at the refuge. Nope, can't do that. Transportation, the Department of Transportation is shut down. You tell me it is a small portion of the Federal Government. Well, it is a small portion of the budget, but it is 85 percent of the activities of the Federal Government that are shut down: Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Department of Transportation, and the Internal Revenue Service. Don't worry, we can't collect taxes. That is a good thing, right? My conservative friend says you can't collect taxes, and that is all right. No, I want my tax refund, and I can't get that either. EPA, there are those who would argue that that is all good. Well, I don't think so, not if you are concerned about air and water, the ability to swim in the rivers or to drink the water. Let's just say you are going out for your first tranche of funding. You need SEC approval. Well, you are not going to get it. The Securities and Exchange Commission is shut down also. Eighty percent or more of the activities of the Federal Government are shut down. There was a big headline in The New York Times, the failing New York Times, about the President and whether he is compromised. Well, I don't know. That will prove itself out one way or the other with the Mueller investigation and all that is going on. But I do know this, that if Putin wanted to harm America, he would shut down the American Government. That is precisely what the President did. He shut down the American Government for 25 days. What greater gift would Putin want than an American Government that is not functioning? Oh, the military is still there, but the fifth branch of the military is the Coast Guard with 40,000-plus Coast Guard members who are out there on the water protecting the borders of America. By the way, the Coast Guard has confiscated 10 times the amount of drugs that are confiscated on the Mexican border. They are working without pay. Essential services, yes, they are. But the back-office services are not working. They are laid off. Contractors who have contracts to get a paycheck from the Department of Transportation on the road that they are supposed to be building or have built, it is not going to happen. It is time for us to open this government. It is time for us to open the government and put America back to work. Put the essential services back to work. The Food and Drug Administration is shut down. Who is checking? Many of my colleagues here have young grandchildren, infants. Who is checking the quality, the safety, of infant formula? The answer: No one. Here we are. We are for border security. We Democrats are for border security. We have been for more than 20 years now. We voted for walls in the past. We voted for improving the security of the border in every way possible, and we will continue to do so. But to hold America hostage, to hold our government hostage, to hold 800,000 government employees and 40,000-plus coastguardsmen and -women without pay? No way. To simply come in at the very last moment in a negotiation that had been settled and drop a $5 billion--excuse me, it is $5.7 billion now; there seems to have been an escalation--a $5.7 billion border wall on our process, it is unconscionable. We can open the government. Bills have been passed here, not with the help of our Republican friends, but with the new majority. We have passed legislation day after day after day to fund the government. Some of it is short term, as we did just an hour ago here on the floor, a short-term CR to open government until February 1 to get people back to work and negotiate, negotiate border security. The President wants a wall. Where does he want the wall? What kind of a wall does he want: cyclone fence, steel spikes, concrete? Where? For what purpose? What is its effectiveness? What is he trying to stop? Where is he trying to stop that incursion into America? None of that is available today. I have been on the Armed Services Committee for 8 years, 9 years now. We would not build a hangar for the Air Force unless we knew what its purpose was, unless we knew where it was, what it would cost, why it was necessary. But the President wants a $5.7 billion slush fund to build a wall somewhere along the 1,900 miles of the border. Now, a couple of my colleagues were here a few moments ago talking about the President's desire to have a national emergency. Well, he sure as hell created one. But I think he is talking about those young children who are climbing over the fences in diapers. I suppose those are the terrorists he is talking about. Madam Speaker, let's talk about what he proposes to do about it. He would call for a national emergency which gives him--he believes, we don't--but he believes the power to appropriate funds. The Constitution is very, very clear. There is only one part of our government that has the power to appropriate funds. It is us. It is the Congress. But apparently the President thinks he can declare a national emergency and acquire the appropriation power of Congress. What does he intend to appropriate for his purposes of the border wall? America has had some flooding in some of the districts of some of my colleagues that I see here on the floor. We passed the emergency legislation to deal with that. California has its droughts, but it also has its rain. This is the Oroville Dam. It is not subject to the emergency appropriations for disaster recovery. But the levees downstream from the Oroville Dam are subject to one of the appropriations in the disaster recovery bill. If Oroville Dam had broken, within 1 hour a city of 40,000, Oroville, would be under 30 feet of water. The levees downstream from Oroville on the Feather River are in the process of being repaired. Further downstream as you get to Sacramento, Madam Speaker, the American River and the Sacramento River, major levee projects, is the most flood-prone part of America. I know there are some friends from the Southeast here who would debate that point. But let's just say there is a lot of America that is subject to flooding. This is a dangerous one. Money in these supplemental appropriation bills for disaster relief is designed to shore up the levees of America. Now, some folks would argue, yeah, but it is not going to rain this year. Maybe. Maybe it makes no difference. But if it does rain, the repair of that levee makes all the difference. Here is a place that a lot of our friends don't care much about: Puerto Rico. In the emergency disaster relief legislation that the President wants to raid is the repair of dams just upstream from San Juan, Puerto Rico. This is what happened during the hurricanes, and that dam spillway needs to be repaired. The communities in Texas, California, the Carolinas, Florida, and the Gulf Coast don't want this to happen again. How do we save them from this ever happening again? It is to use the money that we have appropriated for disaster relief to repair the levees so that flooding is less likely to happen. But the President decides that he is going to create an emergency declaration, and he is going to go into the Army Corps of Civil Works programs that were allocated as a result of the appropriations from last spring's disaster relief legislation and rip $2\1/2\ billion out of those appropriations. Some of us have reason to suspect with some evidence that he intends to go after Puerto Rico and California. It turns out that the projects in California may be of interest to some of my Republican friends, particularly the minority leader, because one of the projects is Lake Isabella just upstream from Bakersfield, California. So, Madam Speaker, we say to the President: A, there is no emergency; B, the shutdown of government is one of your own making; and C, you don't have the power to appropriate money yourself. Particularly, it is shameful to take money that we have allocated to protect Americans in Florida, Texas, California, Puerto Rico, the Carolinas, and even Missouri so that their levees and so that their flood control projects can be updated and improved and so the safety of those communities can be enhanced. Here is what we want: we want government opened. It is inexplicable that after 25 days this government is shut down because the President is demanding $5.7 billion for a border wall without even telling us where that is going to be built. Oh, excuse me. That is a misstatement. It is going to be built on the Mexican-American border. Where? Is it going to be built where there is a real need? What kind of a wall will it be? That seems to change every 12 hours because there are no plans worthy of our--we are presumably responsible for the taxpayer dollars-- consideration as to where, what the effectiveness would be, what the usefulness would be, what the cost would be, or even what the color will be. Open our government. Pass the legislation in the Senate. The President said he will veto it. Okay. Put it on his desk. Let him veto it. He already says he is wearing the mantle of the shutdown. Let him put on another coat, another mantle of a veto, so that the American public knows precisely who is responsible for this shutdown. We have done our job here. We have passed the legislation to fund this government--all but one department--for the remainder of this fiscal year until September 30, 2019. We have done that multiple times now, and we have left the issue of the Department of Homeland Security in which the issue of the border fence resides on a short-term leash so that all of us would be forced to come back to negotiate border security. Democrats would undoubtedly go for improvements in the ports of entry. One out of five cars is not checked at the border. Maybe we ought to deal with that. Only a few of the containers arriving at our ports are checked. Most are not. Maybe we ought to deal with that. Maybe we ought to look at our airports where we know most presumed terrorists arrive. So what are we doing here? We are shutting down--we. Excuse me. We are not shutting down. The President is shutting down this government for 25 days. I can only imagine the joy in the Kremlin. Consider for a moment Mr. Putin, saying: Oh, my God. The American Government is shut down. He couldn't do it by himself. Only our President would do it to us. We have got things to do here. I notice one of my colleagues, Mr. Levin, has arrived, and I know he wants to join us on this issue in a few moments. In the meantime, I have got a few more things to say. To my Republican colleagues who will soon follow me on this floor when this hour is done, I can get pretty heated about some things, and maybe I have been, but I want them to think about what is actually happening here in America and why we are in this situation. My Republican colleagues had the power over the last 2 years to build any wall they wanted to build anywhere they wanted to build it-- Canadian border, Mexican border. They had the power. They didn't do it. Excuse me. That is not right. I think 22 miles of new wall have been built in the last 3 years. That is okay. I think the appropriation was somewhere less than $50 million for that. Now here we are. I would love to hear my Republican colleagues explain to the American public how it came about that we are in this situation when they had 2 years to build whatever wall they thought the President might want to build. It didn't happen. I heard a wonderful and foolish--a wonderful argument, because it was so foolish--that gee whiz, $5.7 billion is just a very small part of the total American budget for expenditures. That is true. It is a small part. That is $5.7 billion. Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion would provide a year and a half of funding for all of the tuition for every student at the University of California and the 23 State universities in California--more than 1 million students. Madam Speaker, $5.7 billion is no small amount of money. How many kids could you educate? How much relief could we supply to people who are hungry here in America or some part of the world? By the way, my Republican friends did create a massive deficit when they passed the tax bill last December--a massive deficit. It will approach over $900 billion this year. It just about doubled the annual deficit with that piece of legislation. I used to say the deficit hawks migrate in December. My guess is they are going to come back as we deal with the new appropriation bill, and as we do that, I would hope they would keep in mind the $5.7 billion for an unspecified wall in an unspecified location of an unspecified height to carry on an unspecified purpose--5.7 billion. So let us continue for a moment. I want to deal with one other thing. This is the kind of thing that probably, Madam Speaker, you have to see this picture. This picture is worth maybe 500 words, but nevertheless I am going to use 250 of them. This is a picture of the President of the United States and the Governor of California at the Paradise fire. Somewhere around 16, 17,000 homes were destroyed. Eighty-seven American citizens were killed in that fire. An entire community of some 25, 30,000 people is gone. It just doesn't exist anymore. It is gone. It is ash. It is rubble. Fortunately, Madam Speaker, the American Government, you and I and others and those who preceded us, developed a program called the Stafford Act which provides the generosity of Americans to help rebuild families and communities such as Paradise, California; or Redding, California which also suffered a few thousand homes burned and destroyed, not nearly as many deaths fortunately. So the Stafford Act is what we know as FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the declaration at the county level and at the State level of a disaster, then at the Federal level of a disaster, and then a presidential declaration of a disaster. The Federal Government then steps in and begins to provide funding to rebuild, to help the individuals who have lost everything, through the Small Business Administration and some direct grants, and to help communities put back in place their infrastructure. It is a wonderful expression of America's empathy and generosity. Two weeks ago my colleague Mr. LaMalfa's constituents, who has the district just north of me, many of whom now live and have found housing in my area just south of Paradise, were greeted with a tweet from the President. I am going to paraphrase what the tweet said; I don't have it with me right now. It basically said: I will stop all FEMA funding until the State of California properly manages its forests. Madam Speaker, I must tell you, we have seen tweet after tweet, and they range from disgusting to awful and occasionally one that you go: ``Okay.'' But with this one we said: What in the world are you talking about, Mr. President? What are you tweeting about? You are going to deny these people--you were there, Mr. President. You were there. You saw the devastation. We counted the 87 people who died, and they are still sifting through the remains of these houses and may find even more. You were there. And you say you are going to cut off support until California manages its forests properly. You know not what you talk about or tweet about, Mr. President. The fact of the matter is that the Federal forests which you oversee, Mr. President, are the ones that are mismanaged, for a whole variety of historic reasons, many of which we have actually made steps to improve here in legislation. So what is with this man that he would wake up one morning and say: No more help from the Federal Government. Does he think everything is about leverage? Is that what he thinks, that he could use his power, awesome as it is, to leverage something? That is precisely what he is doing with the wall. That is precisely what he is doing with 25 days of this Nation's government shutdown. He is using the citizens of America as leverage. He is using the 800,000 employees, the Department of Interior, the Department of the Treasury, the IRS, the EPA, the Department of Transportation, the Coast Guard, as leverage for his border wall promise. It is despicable. It has got to end. I need time to cool off. Madam Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Levin), my colleague, who comes from an extraordinary family. And another generation has joined us.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, today I reintroduced the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act. I want to thank my colleagues, Representatives Jerry McNerney, Mark DeSaulnier, Mike Thompson, and Doris Matsui from California, for their support as original cosponsors. The Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta is central to California life and perhaps the most productive and ecologically important watershed in the United States. Designating the Delta as a new Natural Heritage Area would unlock needed federal funding to conserve the cultural heritage and natural character of this iconic working landscape. Specifically, our bill would authorize $10 million to provide federal matching grants to local governments, historical societies, and nonprofit organizations throughout the Delta. This grant funding, administered by the National Park Service, would be available for 15 years to support community-based cultural and historical preservation and environmental conservation projects. California's Delta Protection Commission would be responsible for coordinating the locally developed management plan for the Sacramento- San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area, once established. Importantly, National Heritage Area designations do not impact water rights, landownership, or hunting and fishing within the designated Heritage Area. As confirmed by the National Park Service, which administers the program, National Heritage Area designations do not affect individual property rights nor do they restrict local land use decisions. Last year, for the first time in 5 years, the Natural Resources Committee reported out bipartisan bills to establish new National Heritage Areas. Now under the new Democratic majority and the leadership of Chairman Raul M. Grijalva (D-AZ), I hope that the Committee will take up our Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act. Again, I thank my original cosponsors from the California delegation for their support. Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join us in cosponsoring the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta National Heritage Area Act.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, northern California lost a great leader, visionary, family man and true patriot in Ron Bartoli. Ron's success as a businessman included building a thriving international company. His passion for the U.S. Air Force and its critical missions, and the men and women serving at BEALE AFB was relentless and sincere. Much of the success and growth of missions at BEALE AFB since 1986 can be attributed to Ron's efforts. Ron loved people and he spent quality time with everyone he came to know. He was an accomplished pilot, sport fisherman and he loved to play golf. He was a longtime Board Member and past Board Chair at Sierra Central Credit Union.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, Larry ``Pete'' Peterson of Yuba City, CA, was born on April 23, 1936, and passed away on October 11, 2018 at Rideout Hospital in Marysville. Pete retired from the United States Air Force as a Tech Sergeant after serving 43 years and served in the Korean Conflict and the Vietnam War. Pete continued to serve his community as an officer with the Yuba City Police Department and after retiring, served 25 years as a Reserve Officer. Pete was a member of the Episcopal Church and participated in the activities of the VFW Post 2563, Yuba City American Legion post 705, Disabled American Veteran Chapter 6 Sacramento, CA, and the Thomas T Smith Masonic Lodge No. 78 in Marysville, CA. Pete was an active participant in the Kiwanis Club. He served as past president and past Lt. Governor. Pete was the founder of The Hope Of America Scholarship Program. He was also a George F. Hixson Fellow. He received numerous awards and recognition from retired Police Chief Richard Doscher and retired Deputy Chief George Carey. Pete is preceded in death by Debra Peterson and Sandra Pankey- Peterson, wives; his daughter, Nicole Peterson; his son, Lawrence F. Peterson, Jr.; and his brother, Paul Peterson. He leaves to grieve a stepson, Aaron Pankey; his stepmother, Vivian Peterson; his sisters, Florence Dent-Hunter and Loretta Johnson; his brother, Vincent Peterson; daughters-in-law, Alfreda Peterson and Connie Peterson; five grandchildren; three great-granddaughters; one great-grandson; and numerous sisters and brothers-in-law, cousins and friends.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, well known farmer, beloved family patriarch and loyal friend, Charles C. Messick, born in Yuba City, CA, on April 28, 1935, passed away November 25, 2018. Chuck was active in many farm and community organizations. He was instrumental in organizing the California Prune Bargaining Association, as well as the Walnut Bargaining Association and was a Director on the California Peach Association Board. He was elected to the Farm Credit Board of Directors, and served as Chairman of the Board for a term. Governor Ronald Reagan appointed him to the Yuba Sutter Fair Board in 1972. He was a charter member of Sutter Buttes Sunrise Rotary, a Paul Harris Fellow and served as President in 2004 through 2006. He looked forward each year to acting as marshal of the Fairway to Health golf tournament benefiting the Rideout Hospital Foundation. As his five children were growing up, Chuck was an active volunteer and leader in the Hallwood 4-H Club, Marysville Little League and Marysville High School Boosters' Club. He is survived by his wife Shiela; sisters, Marilyn Kirby (Sparky) of Yuba City and Carol Howell of Sparks, Nevada; daughters Sharyl Messick-Menconi (Jim) and Beth Aldridge (Chuck) of Yuba City; sons, Charles Messick of LaPorte, Michael Messick (Lore) and Jon Messick (Amy) of Marysville; grandchildren, Andrea Brown, David Brown, Shayla West, Kelly Messick, Mattea Spradling, Jim Messick, Matthew Messick, Ben Neighbors, Rachel Dawson, Kayla Legaspi, Charlie Messick, Hailey Messick, Thomas Messick, Jackson Messick, Owen Messick, Noah Messick, Sydnia Aldridge, Kate Aldridge and Sarah Aldridge. He had twelve great- grandchildren.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the opportunity. There are so many things that we need to consider. Today, the President announced that he is going to do his best to shut down the Government of the United States, and he wants to call it the Trump shutdown. I wonder if he really understands what that means to Americans. The Department of Homeland Security--about which there is so much discussion as to the security of the border, the Coast Guard, all of the ICE agents and so forth--presumably would stand down. I guess that is what a shutdown means, that we would have no border security. So I am curious exactly what the President has in mind when he says it will be the Trump shutdown. We don't really want to do that. I have been there before in the mid- 1990s, when Speaker Gingrich decided to shut down the government. I was over at the Department of the Interior as the Deputy Secretary, and I think that the Department of National Parks and the Bureau of Land Management and on and on simply shut down. The National Parks shut down, the Washington Monument. So the Department of the Interior would apparently shut down--not apparently, would definitely shut down--under a Trump shutdown. I suppose the Washington Monument, the memorial to World War I, World War II memorials, Yosemite--that would be a problem actually. We usually go to Yosemite on the 18th of December. That is my anniversary. So, Mr. President, do you have any idea what you are going to cause here in America? The Department of Agriculture would shut down. Food safety, presumably, would shut down. It goes on and on, and all of that over a border wall that nobody other than the President thinks would be useful. We do need border security, no doubt about it. We just heard our colleague from Texas talk about this a little bit. Yes, we do need border security. But nobody thinks a big, massive, beautiful wall from here to there, from the Caribbean to the Pacific Coast, would solve the issue of border security. By the way, if you shut down the government, it is the Coast Guard that shuts down, and the Coast Guard has confiscated 10 times more drugs than the Border Patrol. So I guess we will have the President shut down that part of border security also. Nobody says a wall is the answer. They said use technology. Use observation devices of various kinds that sense and watch remotely, drones and unmanned aerial vehicles and things of that sort. By the way, why don't we beef up and provide the kind of security and the kind of access that our ports of entry really need, whether those ports of entry are along the Mexican border or the ports? We really are justifiably concerned about port security. I mean ocean port security. So, come on, Mr. President. Realistically, you don't have the votes here in the House of Representatives for your $5 billion border wall, which now you would say Mexico is going to pay for. Show me the money. We can negotiate this out. And Democrats--the leader of the House and of the minority in the Senate, Ms. Pelosi and Senator Schumer, went over and said: We put more than $1 billion--I think it was about $1.3, $1.4 billion from last year's appropriations-- and you have only spent 6 percent of that for border security. So you have got that billion or so available now. And now you want $5 billion. How do you want to spend it? No plans on how to spend the money. It is just fulfilling a campaign promise, which now, apparently, Mexico is going to pay for. We will see. I wasn't really going to talk about that. What I wanted to talk about is what Americans are really concerned about, which is healthcare. That was an issue in the campaign. I know from the Democratic Party side, we made healthcare a major central issue of our campaign for the people: affordable healthcare for the people. That is what we campaigned on. That is what we promised. On January 3, when the Democrats take control of this House of Representatives, we will put forth solutions to the healthcare crisis. The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, and it brought more than 22 million Americans into the insurance market and gave them a quality insurance product. They had to pay for it. It wasn't all free. The price varied. It created exchanges, a marketplace in which individuals and families can go and select policies from various insurance companies. Unfortunately, the public option was not adopted, but nonetheless, there was an opportunity for 22 million Americans. No sooner did that bill pass than the Republicans used that Affordable Care Act, with what they then called ``ObamaCare,'' to beat up the Democrats. They did a very, very good job at it. They took control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election, and in 2011, they began a process of eviscerating the Affordable Care Act. More than 60 times on this floor our Republican colleagues voted to eviscerate, gut, kill, terminate, but never to replace, just to eliminate that, with 22 million Americans losing their insurance. The expansion of the Medicaid program across this Nation is gone, reduced, gutted. So we go into the 2018 campaign, and we said: No. No. Healthcare is a fundamental issue, a fundamental right. The wealthiest country in the world ought to be able to provide healthcare to all its citizens. That was our campaign. So we are going to move forward on this. One of the things we want to take up right away is why we want to do it. Those of you who follow my occasional 1-hour Special Orders here on the floor have seen this. This is kind of to center me, to center what it is we want to accomplish, why we want to do these things. Franklin Delano Roosevelt said it very, very well back in the late 1930s. He said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.'' That is where I am coming from, and I think that is where my Democratic colleagues are coming from. The wealthy are doing quite well. They certainly are. The tax bill that was passed by the Republicans without one Democratic vote last year in December 2017 ripped nearly $2 trillion out of the Federal Treasury and gave 85 percent of that $2 trillion to the wealthy American corporations and to the top 10 percent of the wealthy Americans. So we come back to values. We are not here to make the rich richer-- although they certainly would like that, and they certainly did get that in the tax bill, or scam, I think is what we would call it--but, rather, for people who really need help, the men and women and families of America who go to their kitchen table, are unable to figure out how they are going to get healthcare, how they are going to get a job. There is talk there is a tax break, but that tax break was eaten up by inflation for the working men and women of America. So let's go to the healthcare issue. One of the things we spent a lot of time talking about and intend to deal with is the cost of prescription drugs. Let's spend some time on that. This little chart is a comparison of prescription drugs versus generic drugs. Ninety percent of the prescriptions are filled with generic drugs and 23 percent of the prescriptions are filled with other, nongeneric drugs. Seventy-seven percent of the total cost of drugs is on the nongeneric side; and on the generic side down here, it is about 10 percent. So one solution here is to advance the availability of generic drugs. Clearly, a generic drug is significantly cheaper than a prescription drug. You may ask: Why is that? The pharmaceutical industry will say: The reason is, we have got to do all this research, and we have got to do all this marketing. They certainly do a lot of marketing. You turn the television on; they are marketing like crazy one drug or another. That is a prescription drug. They are not marketing the generic drugs. So there you have it: Generics, 90 percent of the prescriptions are generic, and 70 percent of the cost is on 23 percent, the prescription drugs. What has happened to the cost of prescription drugs? Well, if you take the average price of the specialty drugs, these are prescriptions, they have tripled over the last--2006 to 2015, that is what?--10 years. So the prescription drugs, the specialty prescription drugs, same drugs, over a 10-year period, the cost has tripled. You might ask: Well, why? Is it suddenly more expensive to make the same drug that you made before? Well, possibly. But maybe it has to do with market power. If your prescription drug has a patent or many, many patents, then the generic drug cannot be made. So you control the market for that particular drug. That particular drug might be rather important. Now, for those of you who watch television, you may actually have heard of a couple of these drugs. Let's just take a look here at key metrics for the three major brand drugs: Humira, Revlimid, and Lantus. I don't take them, so I really don't know how to pronounce them that well. But let's take a look here at Humira: the number of patents, 247; the price change since 2006, 144 percent--using patents to protect the drug from competition, allowing a 144 percent price increase--years blocking competition, 39 years before there will be any competition for the most expensive and most used drug, Humira. This one for multiple myeloma; I think that is a cancer: number of patent applications, 106; number of patents pending, 96; price increase since 2012, 79 percent price increase; years blocking competition, if you happen to have this particular cancer, there is one drug that seems to work really, really well, but it will be 40 years before there is competition, in other words, a generic that could be used, similarly with the other drug. So what is happening here is the pharmaceutical industry is using multiple patents and not a brand-new drug, but just a little minor tweaking of the existing drug, giving an opportunity to extend way beyond whatever the patent law originally intended, in some cases 30, 40 years before a generic drug can come onto the market and replace what is going on. How can we deal with that? Well, let's take another example. Here is one. You have heard of insulin. I bet you have. Insulin prices have tripled over the last 15 years. One of the most expensive insulin products in Medicare part D, only one out of the six most expensive insulin products faces competition. So, in the absence of competition, now the cost per year is $2,300. Another example is using patents on a drug to deal with diabetes. Let's take a look at this one. As if the patent policies and the ability of the drug companies to tweak their product to use multiple patents over time, one after another, to gain market domination and to eliminate competitors for these very essential drugs, as if it is not bad enough now, our good President recently, I think about 10 days ago, sat down with the President of Mexico and the Prime Minister of Canada and signed a new really big, wonderful trade deal to somehow replace NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Act. Well, way down in the guts of that agreement was a little clause, subsection C, measures relating to pharmaceutical products, biologicals, et cetera, extended by 10 years the existing patent law for biologicals. This is the hot new area of pharmaceutical drugs: biologicals. So, in the patent law, as if the patent law wasn't already being abused sufficiently to drive up the price of medical costs in the United States, the President goes out with his team of negotiators and adds an additional 10 years to the existing patents for this particular type of pharmaceutical product. Together with the ability to tweak small, little changes in the processing or in the drug itself, using that to gain control of that particular solution to a very serious health problem that Americans face, the President decides to add 10 years to the foundation patent. So, what does it mean to Americans? Well, it means you are going to pay a whole, whole lot of money for your drug prices. There are solutions. I assure you that we are already, on the Democratic side of this coin, looking at solutions, first and foremost, to allow the Federal Government, which is the single biggest purchaser, payer for these drugs, to negotiate the price, that is, to use the purchasing power of government to overcome the patent lock that the drug companies have been able to secure using patents and other technologies and techniques. That is the first thing, to allow the Federal Government to negotiate. So, you remember when Medicare part D was installed back in 2003? The pharmaceutical industry weaseled into that law--that is, the prescription drug benefit in Medicare--a provision that said the Federal Government could not negotiate for the prices of drugs. So taxpayers and those who have a deductible or a copay, you are being harmed. Now, generics, yes; generics are an answer. But just to complete this system of harming Americans by charging more than necessary for drugs using the patents, as we just discussed, the savior to the problem, which many would say is the generics, well, there is a little problem there too. And the problem was laid out in a recent article in The Washington Post. You have heard of antitrust laws, which basically say that competitors in an economic sector cannot conspire to control the price. Antitrust. It turns out that the generic, according to The Washington Post and to 47 State attorneys general around the Nation and a whole lot of--CVS, I believe, and a few others who buy drugs and sell them-- retailers have launched an antitrust complaint against a cabal of generic drug companies who are alleged to have conspired to control the cost of the generic drugs--that is, to maintain a higher cost--and to divide up the market. A generic drugmaker decides: I am going to make drug A, starts making it, controls 100 percent of the generic market for that drug. Good. Generic drugmaker B comes along, says: I can make that drug, and I can probably make it a little bit cheaper, so I am going to compete with company A. Company A said: Whoa, wait a minute. We can make this good for both of us. It can be a win-win. You take 25, 30 percent of the market; I'll take 75, 60 percent of the market; and we will both be doing very well. That is the allegation. So this is something we need to deal with also. We need to encourage the Department of Justice, the State departments, to use the antitrust laws to make sure that these kinds of conspiracies are not happening. Clearly, if the generic drugmakers are engaged in a conspiracy to control the cost or to divide up the market for their drugs, it is illegal. There are serious penalties associated with that. These cases, as reported by The Washington Post, are proceeding. Wonderful. What we need to do is to make sure that the Department of Justice, the Federal Department of Justice as well as the State departments of justice and the Commerce Department and others who are responsible for enforcing the antitrust laws are doing so. So, with regard to pharmaceuticals, with regard to drugs, I want you to know that the Democratic Congress is going to attack this problem, first by making certain that the United States Government can use its market power to break the monopoly that the drug companies presently have as a result of their ability to hold their specific drug forever, at least 30 to 40 years, under the patent schemes that they are now doing. There are other things that I would like to take up, and I will do so quickly. We said that we would also want to deal with the issues of preexisting conditions. Now, in the Affordable Care Act there was a requirement that insurance companies do not discriminate in the sale of insurance and the pricing of insurance based upon preexisting conditions. Now, what is a preexisting condition? Well, we just had one example up here: diabetes, childhood diabetes, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, other childhood illnesses. I was the insurance commissioner in California twice, in the early `90s, `91 to `95, and again from 2003 to 2007. This issue of insurance companies discriminating based upon preexisting conditions was rampant in California, despite our efforts to try to pass a law in California to prohibit the insurance companies from discriminating based upon preexisting conditions. We were unsuccessful. What we did find is that in the application process for insurance there was a form, and it listed every conceivable thing that a human being could be afflicted with--headaches, colds, sinus problems, sore throats, on and on and on--a list of maybe 20 or 30, and you had to check off each and every one of those. If you checked them off, they would go: Ah, you have got a preexisting condition. We will insure you, but we are going to charge you 10 times more than a person that didn't have that condition. And they would then provide the insurance. If you went through and you said: No, I don't have a sinus problem; no, I don't have a sore throat; blah, blah; and then you come down with a sore throat, they say: Ah, you didn't honestly fill out the form, and therefore we are not going to cover you for that illness. This was a common problem. So when the Affordable Care Act passed, in that law was a provision that said the insurance companies could not do that, they could not discriminate either in the cost of it or not providing insurance at all. Couldn't do it. However, in legislation that passed the House of Representatives, passed the Senate, and was signed into law--not a healthcare bill, but an addition to a must-pass piece of legislation--the Republicans, without Democratic support here, passed legislation that wiped out that portion of the Affordable Care Act, basically putting Americans at risk once again to insurance discrimination, health insurance discrimination. And suddenly America woke up and goes: Whoa, wait a minute. You mean to tell me that if I have diabetes I can't get insurance or I am going to have to pay 10, 20, 30 times more than somebody else? Even to the point of a woman being discriminated against because she is a woman and she might have a baby. Anyway, America woke up and goes: Whoa, wait. We don't like that. So, yes, we made that an issue. We made it a really big issue in the campaign: No discrimination based upon preexisting conditions. Can't do it. We are going to eliminate that problem for America. It wasn't too long before my Republican colleagues go: Oops, we had better get on board that ship. And I want my Republican colleagues and the President to know they are going to have an opportunity to be on that ship. We are going to put that bill before the House of Representatives in the early days of the 116th Congress in 2019. We are going to do that. We will see if they are willing to stay with the promises that they made--most of them unsuccessful, but nonetheless the promises they made--to deal with the problem of insurance discrimination. So those are two things that are on the agenda right up front. There are many other things that we intend to do with healthcare because we believe that healthcare is a right. In the richest country in the world, you ought to be able to have quality healthcare available to you. That is our pledge. That is what we intend to do. A final point. A week ago I was here talking about climate change with my colleagues, and we were talking about the Federal Government's report on climate changes that are occurring. It was an eye-opener. It basically said we are--by ``we,'' not my generation, but the next generation out, 10, 20 years out--going to face a monumental problem of sea level rise, massive storms, massive fires, the epidemic of tropical diseases moving into the Northern Hemisphere in through the countries that have not experienced tropical illnesses. All of those things were in that report, and we spoke about it here. We called upon our government, our President, and our colleagues here-- Democrat and Republican--to aggressively attack this problem by reducing carbon emissions, by moving away from a carbon-based energy system. We can do that. As I said during that debate here on the floor, in 1978 I authored a law in California, the first in the Nation, to provide a tax credit for wind, solar, and conservation. And those kind of laws have been in place forever, and we have proved that we can do it. Over the years, significant efforts have succeeded in bringing on board clean green power. So, a week goes by, and in the newspapers yesterday and today are two articles that deserve our attention, and actually a third that just came up this afternoon. The first article was that the carbon emissions over the last year have grown substantially. For the United States it is around, I think, a 2\1/2\ percent increase in carbon emissions; and in China and India, the other two large emitters of carbon, significant growth. In other words, the world is falling backwards in addressing the carbon pollution that is creating climate change. Oh, my goodness, a wake-up call. We have the report that these bad things are going to happen unless we change the direction we are going. And then a week later we find out the direction we are going is not downward but, rather, upward. Article one: Today in the newspapers, even in the fake newspapers, is an article that the President's emissaries to a conference in Europe on climate change are advocating--advocating--for the burning of more coal and oil. This wasn't a coal conference. This was a conference on how does the world go to green, non-carbon energy sources. And so the United States, leading away from solving the problem. Yes, that is what our President sent those folks over to Europe to do, not to solve the problem but to make the problem worse. It was an O-M-G moment. You have got to be kidding. The least you could have done is keep your mouth shut. But oh, no, advocating for more coal, advocating for more oil, and pushing aside all of those technologies-- solar, wind, biomass, biofuel, all of those things--pushing them aside. No, no, no, we have got to have more coal. It is reprehensible and an absolute dereliction of duty and responsibility to this generation here and now and to future generations to come. What would you expect from the man who wants to shut down government? I would expect better. We just want A Better Deal. We want A Better Deal for the American people. The rich and wealthy, they got one big beautiful deal in the tax cut. Working men and women and families, we have got our work cut out for us. A Better Deal for the people--that is what we want to do. Many different ways to do it. We are going to work at it. We ask you to work with us.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I will make this very brief. I know we are up against the clock here. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Shuster so very much for chairing the committee during my tenure on it and Mr. DeFazio, also, for his leadership. I want to also express my appreciation to the new chair, as well as the previous chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Hunter, with whom I was able to work over the last 3 years. Essentially, this is a good bill. It covers the things that the Coast Guard needs. It increases their funding to a level that is necessary. The title of the bill is proper. We all thank Mr. LoBiondo for his many years of service. There are a couple of things about the bill that I do want to speak to, and that is we have in the bill a backup system for the GPS that we so much rely upon now. It is finally going to get into the legislation. We also move forward with Blue Technologies and the autonomous, both air and underwater, vehicles that are going to be necessary for the Coast Guard to fully carry out its responsibilities. Beyond that there are some things in the bill that are a compromise. I want to point one out that is very important, and that is section 834 to which I continue to object. This is a bill that actually allows for an aged wooden ship to ply the waters of the Mississippi. The Coast Guard correctly states that this vessel, constructed primarily of wood, and operating the overnight passenger trade, presents an unacceptable fire risk to its passengers and crew, and, accordingly, the Coast Guard is opposed to this particular section. It is unfortunate that is in the bill. Mr. Speaker, I include in the Record two letters, one from the Department of Homeland Security and another one from the National Volunteer Fire Council. Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC, June 28, 2017. Hon. Bill Shuster, Chairman, Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Representative Shuster: This letter sets forth Department of Homeland Security (DHS) views with regard to S. 89, a bill ``[t]o amend title 46, United States Code, to exempt old vessels that only operate within inland waterways from the fire-retardant materials requirement if the owners of such vessels make annual structural alterations to at least 10 percent of the areas of the vessels that are not constructed of fire-retardant materials and for other purposes.'' Notwithstanding the form in which S. 89 is drafted, only one vessel, the Steamer DELTA QUEEN, would be eligible for the exemption. Because of the advanced age, construction, and configuration of the Steamer DELTA QUEEN, the vessel represents an unacceptable degree of fire safety risk to its passengers and crew. Given the risk that a marine casualty aboard the Steamer DELTA QUEEN poses to life, property, and infrastructure, the DHS must oppose S. 89. Background: The Steamer DELTA QUEEN is a 20th century vessel, the superstructure of which is constructed of wood. The vessel's boilers are original and open directly to the wood superstructure. Uniquely, the vessel's configuration has been altered such that the sole means of egress is the stage (gangway) on the bow. In 1966, Congress stipulated that, ``no passenger vessel of the United States . . . shall be granted a certificate of inspection . . . unless the vessel is constructed of fire- retardant materials (emphasis added).'' During the ensuing decades, Congress temporarily delayed the effect of the mandate as it would apply to the Steamer DELTA QUEEN five separate times. Finally, in 2008, the temporary delay expired, and the mandate was made applicable to the Steamer

Mr. GARAMENDI. With that, I think I have consumed all the time allowed. I will simply close in this way: All in all this is our third effort to successfully pass legislation. I see the majority counsel over there. I thank John so very much for working with us. And on the minority side David is an extraordinary individual. It has been a pleasure working with him on this, the third successful passage of the Coast Guard reauthorization. Mr. Speaker, I rise to join my Chairman on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, Congressman Bill Shuster, and my Ranking Democrat Member on the Transportation Committee, Congressman Peter DeFazio, to endorse and support S. 140, the Frank LoBiondo Coast Guard Authorization Act of 2018. The Coast Guard is a special Federal agency, one that is selfless in service and highly proficient in its work. Ironically, the Coast Guard also is an agency that is over-worked, under-resourced, and rarely given the thanks that the men and women of the Coast Guard so rightly deserve. Today, with the passage of this legislation, we can say that we are at last stepping up and authorizing funding levels commensurate with the many demands we ask our Coast Guard to undertake. The 2.6 percent increases for both fiscal years 2018 and 2019 will go far to address the deferred needs of the Coast Guard. This stands in sharp contrast to the folly of the Trump administration's skinny budget for Fiscal Year 2017 that actually sought to cut Coast Guard funding by $1.3 billion--a gross mistake if there ever was one. In general, I applaud Chairman Shuster and his staff, and Ranking Member DeFazio and his staff, for their cooperative and collegial, yet determined, negotiations with the other body to arrive at a final bill that advances or clarifies several maritime policy initiatives, improves Coast Guard administration and management, and enhances Coast Guard mission readiness and capabilities. I am particularly pleased that this legislation advances the Coast Guard's future use of new technologies to improve maritime safety and security and maritime domain awareness. Chief among these is my provision to direct the Department of Transportation to establish a reliable back-up timing system to function should the positioning, navigation and timing signals transmitted by GPS satellites be disrupted or degraded. The loss of GPS signals has been characterized as a ``single point of failure'' for national security and for critical infrastructure systems. Simply stated, we no longer can afford to ignore this threat, and I urge members to join me and support this legislation today. The bill also institutes a new acquisition policy for the Coast Guard to acquire unmanned aerial systems, or UAS. The inability of the Coast Guard to acquire UAS systems for its National Security Cutters is a chronic problem. Restricting the Coast Guard to acquire only systems already acquired and proven effective by other military or non-military agencies, should enable the Service to acquire a UAS system that meets its mission needs without, as they say, ``re-creating the wheel.'' In addition, the bill directs the Coast Guard to sponsor a National Academy of Science study on the status of unmanned, underwater vessels and their potential as mission platforms for the Coast Guard, especially for surveillance activities. This study should help inform the work of the Coast Guard's Blue Technology Center of Expertise that Congress authorized earlier this year with the enactment of Public Law 115-265. I also want to express my support for Title VII of the bill that reauthorize the activities of the Federal Maritime Commission and enact some important amendments to the Shipping Act made necessary by the disruption and consolidation in the global container shipping market. Overall, I am pleased that this legislation would authorize increased funding levels for fiscal years 2018 and 2019 for the Federal Maritime Commission. Increased funding should enable the Commission to improve its capabilities to monitor shipping trades that remain turbulent. The bankruptcy of Hanjin Lines in 2016 and the subsequent consolidation of the few remaining ocean carriers into three large alliances produced shock waves in global shipping markets. These new alliances also sent shock waves to U.S. marine terminal operators, tug operators, bunkering operators, and other marine service providers. Title VII of this bill amends the Shipping Act to make some targeted and strategic amendments to improve the legal standing of U.S. port service providers. Additionally, this title strengthens the authority of the Federal Maritime Commission to oversee and intervene, if necessary, in future interactions between these alliances and U.S. port service providers to ensure fair competition. I support these amendments to the Shipping Act as a good first step. I expect that these ideas will require additional refinement as the process moves forward, especially on how best to protect confidential and proprietary information gathered by the Federal Maritime Commission to understand market dynamics. I am open to those discussions and look forward to improving the bill. I also want to express my support for Title IX of the bill that establishes new authorities for the regulation of ballast water and incidental discharges from commercial vessels. While perhaps not perfect, the measure does provide for uniform regulation of vessel discharges within the scope of the Clean Water Act. In addition, the legislation addresses several important issues raised by coastal states, none the least granting states the ability to establish ``no discharge zones'' if necessary to protect sensitive state waters. In closing, this bill is non-controversial legislation that addresses the interests of the Coast Guard and U.S. maritime industry. It also addresses the needs of the members on both sides of the aisle, and both sides of the Capitol. I support the legislation and urge its adoption. Although I spoke earlier to express my full support for the underlying bill, I rise now to express my strong opposition to a provision that the Senate inserted into the legislation over my objection. The specific provision is section 834, Fire Retardant Materials. Nothing could be further from the truth. What this provision actually does is reinstate an exemption from a longstanding fire safety requirement for passenger vessels carrying 50 or more people on overnight voyages to be constructed using fire retardant materials. And although the provision does not clearly state the vessel or vessels that would benefit from this exemption, the reality is that there is only one vessel, the Delta Queen, an aged paddlewheel steamship whose superstructure is almost entirely built out of wood, for which the exemption will apply. In 2008, the 110th Congress decided--wisely in my view--not to renew this ill-advised exemption for the Delta Queen in favor of upholding maritime safety. It was the correct decision then, and it remains the correct decision today. I have little choice but to raise my objections to this provision based on the manner by which the other body tacked it onto the Coast Guard bill despite the fact that companion legislation introduced in the House, H.R. 619, went nowhere. This legislation would waive a critical maritime fire safety standard and consequently expose the American public to overnight travel on a vessel that the Coast Guard maintains is ``an unacceptable fire hazard to passengers and crew.'' The Coast Guard's position remains clear and unequivocal. As stated in its 2008 Special Inspection report, the Coast Guard found that ``The combustible construction of the vessel presents an unacceptable fire risk that cannot be mitigated by the addition of fire suppression measures.'' The Coast Guard also concluded that, ``The vessel, constructed primarily of wood and operating in the overnight passenger trade, presents an unacceptable fire risk to its passengers and crew.'' Accordingly, the Coast Guard has been, and remains, opposed to legislation to renew the exemption from fire safety standards for the Delta Queen. Mr. Speaker, I have included in the Record the administration's views letter stating its opposition to S. 89, which is the underlying provision in section 834. This provision also has drawn opposition from the National Volunteer Fire Council. The Council concludes that the ``fire safety exemption in S. 140 will endanger the lives of passengers and crew members aboard historical vessels, but also for the dangerous precedent it sets.'' Mr. Speaker, I have included in the Record the Council's letter stating its opposition to section 834. I commend the Coast Guard for upholding its fire safety standards. I fail to see why it makes any sense for the other body to advance legislation that would sharply contradict the Coast Guard's recommendations and compromise maritime safety. The American public trusts Congress to ensure that our nation's transportation system remains the safest in the world. Section 834 violates that trust.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Tonko very much for joining us. This issue is about those of us who are here today, but it is, far more importantly, about those who will be in the future. I want to dedicate this hour to a very special person, our new grandson, Grady Christopher Bardet, who was born yesterday afternoon.

Mr. GARAMENDI. He will live in the future, either a very good future that we and our colleagues here build for him, or one that is not. To Faith and Eric Bardet, we love you. Thank you for this beautiful gift. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, we will turn to another topic, I think, of interest, if my colleagues would just excuse me for a moment. I always try to start these sessions with purpose. What are we all about here? And I often use this from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he said: ``The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.'' While I always use this, I am trying to figure now, how does this figure into climate change? What would the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt have to do with climate change in the era of greenhouse gas emissions? I thought about it for a while and I said, it may be difficult to make the connection, but there really is one. And I really want to start with this: What is our purpose here? If we think about climate change, we are going to have to understand and read and pay attention to this. This is the cover of an extraordinarily important document that the Federal Government, the Government of the United States of America, issued last Friday when most of America was out shopping, Black Friday. Now, maybe there is some reason that the administration chose to issue this critical report on that day. If it was to bury the report, they are not going to be successful, because this document, required by Congress over the last 20-plus years, gives a clarion call to every human being on this planet today. That clarion call is so important that, on this first day following Thanksgiving and the issuance of this report, we brought it to the floor of the House of Representatives to alert this Nation that, despite trying to hide this report on Friday, it is now part of the public record. We need to understand what the impact of climate change is on all of us today, Americans, and to generations into the future. The impact is stark. It is heavy. It is ominous. And it is already happening. The front page says: Fires. I am from California. We know about fires. This is a month ago, fires in California, all of these at one time: the Mendocino Complex in my district, the largest single wildfire in California's history; the Sierras, down in the southern valley; and the smoke from the Camp fire, burning more than 1,000 homes on this day; smoke covering nearly the entire State of California. Are those fires the result of climate change? The answer is absolutely, yes--the extensiveness, the severity, and the number of acres burned. More familiar, perhaps, and more recent, just days after those fires that I just put up there, this one happened. Eighty-four people are known to have perished in the Paradise fire, the most mass casualties in recent history in the United States. Unfortunately, there are still a couple hundred people unaccounted for. Is this fire a result of climate change? Yes, it is--the intensity of the fire, the rapidity with which it tore through the forest and wiped out an entire town of 26,000 inhabitants. Fourteen thousand residences were burned out in this fire. There is more to be said. How about flooding? Port Arthur, Texas, a city that was flooded, and more along the Gulf Coast this fall. Another community was totally wiped out or near totally wiped out on the Florida panhandle. Massive storms ripped through the Caribbean and up into the United States. Is flooding a result of climate change? The severity and the intensity of the flooding, certainly--North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, and Texas. In California, we have our share of it also. All of these are words laid out in this climate assessment: Economic losses today and into the future, perhaps $141 billion over the next several decades from heat-related deaths alone; $118 billion cost from sea level rise. Do you live on the coast? The San Francisco Bay, Florida, a good portion of Florida, Miami, the Everglades, the East Coast, all of it is affected by climate change. We have a problem, folks. Are you interested in ecology? Are you interested in wildlife? Are you interested in forests? This was once a green forest in California. We predicted in the mid-1990s, when I was given a task as the Deputy Secretary at the Department of the Interior to investigate and to anticipate what climate change would bring to America, we said there would be more fires, more intense fires. They would be more devastating. They would be larger. They would be faster. We said there would be more flooding. We said the hurricanes would be even greater than in the past. We predicted that a city called New Orleans would flood. We predicted that a place called New York City would flood. And they both did a few short years after that report, as we prepared the United States for the Kyoto climate conference. Coming out of that conference, the House of Representatives and the Senate of this great body denied the opportunity for the United States to join in the treaty that came out of that conference, and it got worse. Forests of California, we predicted there would be a die-off. And, in fact, there is. This is just one small part of the massive die-off of trees that is occurring in the forests all across America, even into the Arctic regions. Pay attention, America. Pay attention, Congress. Pay attention, Senate. And for heaven's sake, President Trump, please pay attention to the reality of climate change. It is here. It is a massive problem. The U.S. military more than a decade ago predicted that wars would be breaking out because of climate migration, climate refugees. It is happening. It is happening around the world. Read this assessment of what it means to America. We have an obligation. We, the 435 Representatives of the American people, have an obligation to address this crisis. It is not a crisis of the future. It is a crisis of today and the future. Do we have the courage to do this? Do we have the courage to decarbonize our energy supplies? We have to find the courage. We have no choice. Joining me tonight are people, Members of this House who share the commitment to address climate change. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schneider), my friend from the city of Chicago, to join us and share with us his concerns.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so very much for his very forceful words and for the fact that he brought to the table not alternate facts, but real facts laid out by the scientists who put this together. We have a challenge, and I know, with the kind of leadership the gentleman is providing for all of us here in the House of Representatives and back in Illinois, we have no choice but to get this done--and we will. Mr. Speaker, I would like now to turn to my colleague, Mr. Payne from New Jersey. We often are here on the floor together. I invite Mr. Payne to please join us, and we will talk about this issue as it might affect him and his constituents. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, in the gentleman's discussion, Mr. Payne hit upon a really important issue, and it relates to this. I brought this up because this is where I am coming from on public policy. When FDR said that it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little, normally we think about this in terms of economics, we think about in terms of wages, living standards, and the like. But you hit this squarely, because it is those who have little who are going to be the first and most terribly impacted by climate change. You talked about the vulnerable. You talked about the elderly, the young, the working class, and communities of color. Those who have the least will be the least able to adapt. They won't be able to afford the additional electric bill for air-conditioning. They are the most likely to get sick from the various new illnesses that will work their way into the American healthcare system. As the climate warms, we can expect to have more tropical, hot weather illnesses coming. We see it already. West Nile virus is the example that you gave. So this is very, very relevant. I don't think FDR had in mind climate change when he talked about this. This is what he talked about during the Great Depression. This is relevant today in the era of climate change not just here in the United States, but you look at the poor around the world. For the population of Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, it is likely that 50 percent or more of that population will have to move because of sea level rise. Ethiopia, where Patti and I served as Peace Corps volunteers, has always been plagued by famine as a result of the climate moving back and forth. It will get worse. So do we provide enough for those who have too little? Across the world this is a key issue. Joining me now is my colleague from California. He and I get to share the great Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, the greatest estuary on the west coast of the Western Hemisphere. Before I come to Mr. McNerney, I am going to put up one of your favorite things here for him to look at, because I know this is what gets him really excited--clean energy systems. This has been his life's work, and he can talk about it. When he finishes, we will talk a little bit more about some of these. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, before the gentleman leaves, I brought this up because I know that these wind turbines, these windmills are part of the gentleman's life. You spent, as you say 25, 26 years building these systems. I believe he was doing it in Altamont Pass in California, which is now part of his district and adjacent to mine. It was 1978, 1979 that California passed the very first laws in the nation to provide a State tax credit for wind, solar, and conservation. I was the author of that law. The gentleman and I go back a long, long way here on this issue, Mr. Speaker, and we are not going to give up. As he said, it is about the next generation. I have got here on my phone, which I know I cannot use on the floor, so I am not going to turn it on, but I have a picture of my 13th grandchild, who was born yesterday. It is those children, that young boy and his generation, that will either curse us or thank us. Thank us because we had the courage, we had the wisdom to attack this problem; or curse us because we didn't. I believe that we have the wisdom. We have people like Mr. McNerney who has spent his life working on this, both in the private sector and now in Congress. I thank him so very much for that determination to address this critical issue. I thank him for joining us tonight. I have noticed the East-West show is back in town. Mr. Tonko and I started doing this 7 years ago. Climate change and energy issues were what we talked about back then. This was some of his work when he was working in the State government in New York City, as I recall. Not that he always talked about it on the floor, but he occasionally would point out that he was working, trying to create the new technologies that would address this problem. I thank him for joining us this evening.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Exactly. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Tonko mentioned asthma. We Democrats campaigned on a better deal for the people, which I just happened to put up here: A better deal for the people. We talked about healthcare. Asthma is a preexisting condition. We have a challenge to deal with the Affordable Care Act and the Republican attempt to reinstitute insurance companies being able to discriminate based upon preexisting conditions. All of these things will tie back: job creation, new technologies, research, healthcare. All of this, in one way or another, comes back to this question of climate change. So we need to address it.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Tonko said something a moment ago that I know will happen. He is presently the ranking member of the Environment Subcommittee of Energy and Commerce. In about 1 month I believe he is going to be the chairman of that committee. The hearings on this issue, the Fourth Annual Climate Assessment, will finally be heard and the issue will finally be before the Congress. It has been 8 long years of denial by the Republican-led Congress and 2 years by the current President. I know that in his role--and I believe he will be the chairperson of that committee--he will make sure that America and the Congress know and understand this critical issue. I look forward to those hearings. I look forward to his leadership on it, and once again to be on the floor with the gentleman with what we fondly call the East Coast West-Coast program. We are back.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Harper).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Mrs. Roby).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, indeed, we are paying for it in so many way. I showed earlier the fires, the floods, the sea level rise that is already occurring, the storm surge that recently affected the Panhandle of Florida. All of these things are the reality of today. And it is not going to go away. The gentleman cited several facts. This is one of our programs that we used 8 years ago. It is this slide. Eight years ago we used this in our Make It in America presentations and we talked about the wind turbines and solar. That is actually an electric bus made by a bus manufacturer in California, the Gillig company. They are using that. These electric buses are part of the future, as are electric cars. All of these are the new jobs. These are the new technologies. These are where people will be going to work. So that is where the jobs are. These are jobs that won't be exported. These are American jobs. The maintenance of this, all of these things are available today. The gentleman mentioned California. Yes, California is way out in front, really, competing with New York on who can be the best to decarbonize, to move away from it. Unfortunately, the administration is going exactly the wrong direction. The President wants to do away with the mileage standards, the fuel mileage standards for automobiles, wants to reintroduce coal back into the economy, which is the worst of all energy sources. We don't need to do that. We can do it. We have proven that it can be done, in California and other places, in other parts of the world. We cannot go backwards. We owe it to the future generations.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mrs. Roby, Mr. Harper, and Ms. Sewell for bringing to our attention one of the important organizations that develops leadership here in the United States, and, obviously, from the two of you, Mrs. Roby and Ms. Sewell, who are perfect examples of the success of the center. Climate Change Is Real

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to move to the subject of climate change, however, my colleague, Terri Sewell, has reminded me that a very important organization needs a few moments, so I yield to the gentlewoman from Alabama (Ms. Sewell), to speak about the Stennis Center. Recognizing Rex Buffington

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Cindi Unger as a woman of the year. She is passionately devoted to improving her community both through her career and volunteerism. Her inspiration and motivation to work and volunteer in the Senior Care industry comes from her grandparents and their spirit of hard work and sacrifice that they passed on to her. Since 1986, when she worked to help open one of the first care centers in California focused on individuals living with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, she has helped care providers, families, and the community understand and care for those suffering with the disease. Her work in my Senior Advisory Group, the Yolo Healthy Aging Alliance, and the Solano Senior Coalition has been essential to my awareness and understanding of the critical issues facing our senior communities. As the co-chair of the Solano Walk to End Alzheimer's Planning Committee and a member of the Congressional Advocacy Group, Ms. Unger is no stranger to my office and provides invaluable insight to me and my staff on a regular basis. The significant positive impact she has had on this community cannot be overstated, and she is extremely worthy of this recognition.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Gail Feinberg as a woman of the year. She is always finding ways to enrich the lives of those in Solano County. As a medical professional, Ms. Feinberg has a wealth of knowledge and skills to bring to bear on any issue. Having now served for two years as the Chair of Primary Care for Touro University, her continued excellence and tireless work to train medical students in providing care for our underserved populations has been indispensable to our community. Additionally, in spite of the demanding nature of her position, Ms. Feinberg is persistent in her willingness to go above and beyond, as demonstrated by her dedication to volunteering at a student-run free clinic. Here her valuable insight and tenacity became so integral to the mission of the clinic that she was quickly asked to take over as medical director. As a result, Ms. Feinberg provides much needed free medical services to those in need. She also manages to find the time to volunteer teaching nursing students and work with a diabetes research program. Ms. Feinberg is diligent in her work, generous with her time, and passionate about serving others. She is a dedicated community servant and truly worthy of this recognition.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor Emma Green as a woman of the year. She is passionately devoted to improving her community both through her career and volunteerism. While professionally Emma has had a stellar career at Charter Systems, Inc. the financial services company she owned which just celebrated its 30th Anniversary, she is more likely to be recognized by the underserved in our community for the countless hours of volunteer service providing and delivering meals. One of Emma's passions is feeding the needy by running the Community Meal Program at the Church of the Epiphany where she serves over 350 meals per week. Not only do they serve meals, but she coordinates with other service providers to bring medical, dental, and transportation services to those in need. Ms. Green's history of service also includes her time as President of Vaca Arts, serving on Boards of the Boys & Girls Club, performing vocational rehabilitation and job placement for the disabled, serving as a liaison to Travis Air Force Base Airmen, working with the Vacaville Community Outreach Program, and donating her time to many other service organizations where she is always the first to help. The significant positive impact Ms. Green has had on this community cannot be overstated, which makes her extremely worthy of this recognition.