John Garamendi

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. The fundamental nature of insurance is you gather a large population of healthy, not-so-healthy, and perhaps some very sick people into a large population, and the cost is spread across the entire population. What we may be ceding here in this particular proposal is the unravelling of that fundamental insurance concept with young people, healthy, not bothering to buy insurance, staying out of the market; and then, eventually, when they become ill, they will get back into the market, leaving everybody else to pay for it. There is another piece of this shifting of cost that did occur prior to the Affordable Care Act--significantly reduced, as a result of it-- and that is the uninsured still get sick. The gentleman mentioned the emergency room a while ago, and for the most part, in America, a person can get to an emergency room with or without insurance; but if they don't have insurance, there is still a cost associated with the visit to the emergency room and any other thing they may need. They may need to have their leg repaired, a broken leg, or maybe they need an appendectomy or whatever. That is still a cost. The question is: Who picks up that cost? That is called uncompensated care, and it was a huge problem prior to the Affordable Care Act. I had hospitals throughout my district and throughout California coming to me and saying: We can't afford this because we are not able to cover that uncompensated care for people that didn't have insurance that showed up at the emergency room. Now, we know that from the early analysis done of the proposed legislation by our Republican friends that the number of uninsured is likely to increase, perhaps as much as 11 million people--maybe more, maybe somewhat less. Those people will still get sick. They may have money of their own to cover their costs, but the chances are they don't. That uncompensated cost will then be borne by the people who do buy insurance. It is a cost shift to those who have insurance.

Mr. GARAMENDI. There are so many pieces to this healthcare system. One thing that I want to put on the table here from my experience as insurance commissioner in California is that there are two fundamental parts to the healthcare system in the United States, and really around the world. One of those two parts is how we collect the money and then pay for the services. We call that insurance. It is also Medicare, Medicaid, veterans' programs, and the like. These are the way in which we collect money and pay for the services. The other part of the healthcare system is the delivery of services; these are the doctors, the clinics, the hospitals, and other providers, mental health providers, and the like. We often get confused by putting these two things together. There has been a lot of talk about what we are doing with the Affordable Care Act. It is essentially a mechanism to pay for services. It is an insurance mechanism. Using the private insurance system, these various exchanges are set up to pool the population of people who do not have insurance from their employer, the individual people, individual coverage. It pools them so that you have that large population so that the cost is spread out across that large pool and the insurance becomes affordable. That is an insurance mechanism. That is a pooling. It has nothing to do directly with the provision of medical services. The medical services are then provided out of that pooling arrangement by the individual doctors, maybe clinics, maybe hospitals, maybe group practices. Some of that will be capitated pay, and others will be a fee-for-service. We haven't changed directly the way in which services are provided, that is, the delivery of services. And this is found in hospitals. In the Affordable Care Act, there was a penalty for hospitals that had readmissions for infections. What we have seen, as a result of that provision dealing directly with the way in which services are delivered in hospitals, is a dramatic decline in readmissions for hospital- acquired infections. What that means is some 60,000 people are still alive today because they didn't get a hospital-acquired infection. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I see a couple of my colleagues have arrived and would like to speak, so I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin). Commitment to Civility

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I welcome Mr. Raskin and others who spoke before me as they consumed their Special Order hour in a very unique way, which is not often seen here on the floor, and that is a colloquy between our Republican freshmen and Democratic freshmen. I want to take up issues that I know were covered by many of the freshmen as they discussed their hopes and dreams about what we might actually be able to accomplish in Congress. Let me start with a photo. This is the largest waterfall in California, and I dare say the largest waterfall in the entire United States. It is not a natural waterfall. It is actually a manmade waterfall. With all of this turbulence and enormous churning of water below, it is a failure of a manmade spillway in California. This is the Oroville Dam that has been much in the news over the last several days. As many probably know, California suffered through a 5-year drought. As a Representative of the great Sacramento Valley of California, my Sacramento Valley and my State of California suffered mightily. That drought tore apart communities, seriously injured the economy of California, and the health of many businesses. So we went from famine to feast, and we are suffering serious indigestion as a result of the feast of water that we presently have. Oroville Dam was built in the 1960s and completed in 1968. This is the spillway presumably capable of carrying well over 150,000 cubic feet of water. What you see here is the result of a failure right here in the concrete in that spillway, resulting in a massive hole in the spillway and this extraordinary churning and erosion over here on this side. This went on for some time. The operators of the dam, the Department of Water Resources in California, said: Well, we are going to have to shut this down and take a look at the problem. They did. And the problem was, while they were expelling 100,000- acre-feet of water, there was 200,000-acre-feet of water coming into Lake Oroville. I am going to take a few moments to explain this and then explain how California has successfully dealt with what could have been a serious tragedy. Oroville Dam is the highest dam in California, some 770 feet high. The concrete spillway that I just showed you the picture of the largest waterfall in the Nation--not as high as Yosemite Falls, which is over 1,200 feet--is 700 feet down here to the river. It is 770 feet, actually. Right here is where the damage occurred. This is the emergency spillway, which was never to be used. When this dam was built in the 1960s, they said: Well, we will build the regular spillway, but we will put this emergency spillway in here. This is a 30-foot-high concrete wall. Below it is the natural Earth and dirt of the Sierra Nevada mountains and foothills. They shut down the spillway and 200,000 cubic feet of water comes into the reservoir. The reservoir rapidly rose to the point of where it was going over the top of the emergency spillway. Lo and behold, when you run 12,000, 15,000 cubic feet of water per second over the top of that spillway, you hit the dirt on this side and it drives down the river with incredible erosion. This entire area was eroded. But most importantly, the erosion moved back towards the base of that 30-foot-high concrete wall, jeopardizing the integrity of that 30-foot-high barrier against millions upon millions of gallons of water stored in the reservoir. All of this occurred on Sunday, 3 days ago. The call went out from the Department of Water Resources, Oh, my, we have a potential problem, as they observed the potential erosion against the foundation of that 30-foot-high wall. They said it is possible that that erosion could cause a catastrophic failure of the 30-foot-high wall, sending down into the river channel a 30-foot tsunami, the result of which would be a catastrophe downstream. This might be a little hard to observe, but I am going to give it a try. Here is the dam right here. Adjacent to the dam is the town of Oroville, just downstream from the dam. Then, the Feather River continues down through my district, Marysville and Yuba City. This is all farm county up here with some significant towns like Gridley in this area, and Live Oak further down, which I represent. This area is represented by my colleague, Doug LaMalfa, who represents the northern San Joaquin Valley. The reservoir is here. The spillway is here. There is a 30-foot wall of water cascading down the emergency spillway, hitting the river and spreading out 30 miles across the Sacramento Valley, all the way to the west side of the valley where the Sacramento River is. This red area is 100 feet deep in 1 hour. The city of Oroville faces a catastrophic event: 100 feet of water above the community within 1 hour of the breaking of that 30-foot wall on the emergency spillway. It spreads out. Over here it is still 10 feet deep, 30 miles away. Of course, the water is going to flow down the river also. Two communities down here of 150,000 people, within 7 hours, would be facing water that would be 10 feet deep. That is why they called for an emergency evacuation Sunday afternoon around 6 o'clock. Nearly 200,000 people left this area, all the way over to the west and all the way down some 30 miles down river, moving out to high ground up north to Chico, up into the Sierra foothills, and down towards Sacramento. The water continued to spill over the emergency spillway. The Department of Water Resources, seeing the erosion, reopened the gates on the main spillway and sent 100,000 cubic feet of water down the spillway, creating an incredible but not lovely waterfall. Fortunately, the water flowing into the reservoir very quickly diminished, from a couple hundred thousand acre-feet on Saturday and early Sunday to around 40,000 acre-feet toward Sunday evening and on into Monday. So the mathematics began to work in favor of the communities and in favor of the entire region. Slowly, the level of the lake began to recede and eventually the water no longer flowed over the top of that emergency spillway. Nonetheless, you still had 30 feet of water behind that spillway and you had the integrity of the spillway in question. They continued to reduce the water level in the lake and, marshalling resources up here, began to find a solution to the problem. When the sun came up Monday morning, the engineers went out and said: Oh, my. There were four specific areas of serious erosion against the base and the foundation of that 30-foot wall with 30 feet of water still behind it. They decided to take emergency action to bring in by helicopter 100,000-pound bags of rock to stack in those four eroded areas. Downstream, the communities of Marysville, Yuba City, Gridley, Live Oak, and other small communities were literally ghost towns. People were sheltering in various churches, fairgrounds to the north, fairgrounds to the west, east, and south. Nearly 200,000 people had moved out. As this water receded and the emergency response began to take hold, people looked at this situation and said: Maybe this was the great would have, could have, and should have--would have, could have, should have. Maybe when the dam was built, a concrete apron should have been built on the downside of that emergency spillway. Maybe in 2005, when this entire project went back for re-licensing by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the call by the environmental community to concrete the down slope should have been taken into account and should have been done in 2006, 2007, but they decided it wasn't necessary or it was too expensive or whatever reasons, and so it was not done. It will be done now. The cost of repair to the main spillway and to the emergency spillway will probably be over $200 million. So the question arises for all of us: Do we want to wait until there is a disaster to take cautionary steps to put it back together, or do we want to get ahead of these potential disasters? It is a question for all of us here. It is a question for the Congress and the Senate and the President. It is called infrastructure. You heard some of our colleagues earlier on from the freshman class talk about their desire for infrastructure improvements. Here is a prime example. Unfortunately, not the only example, but I want to share with you what actually is happening down river by the communities of Marysville and Sutter County. There are 70 miles of river downstream from this point that has been in the process of significant levee improvement. Some $700 million has been spent over the last 5 to 6 years by the community, by the State of California, and by the Federal Government to bring the levee on the west side of the Feather River to a 200-year status. It is nearly completed, but not completely completed. There is another piece to be done even as this flood event takes place. But a community stepped forward. It is called SBFCA. The Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency has undertaken that work--good for them--in the city of Marysville, which is a community surrounded on all sides by 20- , 30-foot-high levees. The Feather River and the Yuba River come together at that point at Marysville, a community that has seen catastrophic flooding in the past. That community, too, together with the State of California and the Federal Government, Army Corps of Engineers, and the Yuba County Water Agency have been in the process of rebuilding and enhancing the levees around that community. These are positive examples. Further down, the State of California has put together a flood control program for the entire Central Valley, from Mt. Shasta on the north all the way to the Tehachapi Mountains on the south, an extraordinary 600-, almost 700-mile stretch of the most fertile land in the world and major communities like Sacramento, with millions of people at risk of flooding. Different communities putting together their own flood control programs, reaching out to the Federal Government over the years, providing Federal assistance together with the State assistance to control the flooding that has been historic in California. We need to continue this. We are not nearly finished yet in California. We are going to spend the $200 million here, and this will be concrete in the years ahead, and this main flood control system will be rebuilt. But this problem is not just floods. We have seen the flood of Katrina in Mississippi where we discovered that, oh, my, the levees really could not handle a major hurricane. I will share a story of my own. When I was deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior, we were studying major storms, what would happen in a period of climate change, would we see stronger hurricanes. This was in the mid-1990s when I was there as number two in the Department of the Interior. We anticipated a major hurricane coming across from Cuba into the Gulf area and hitting New Orleans. We were so concerned about this that Secretary Babbitt said: John, I want you to go down to New Orleans. I want you to talk to the local officials down there. I remember sitting in the editorial office of the newspaper, The Times-Picayune, sitting there telling them, showing them the map and saying: Here is what we believe could happen, and we, the Federal Government, together with the community, need to enhance your levees. A decade or so later, I was sitting in California. I looked at the television set, and I said: Oh, my God, it is precisely what we predicted in the mid-1990s, and it came to pass. These are the lessons of history. Here is another lesson of history. This is the Interstate 5 Bridge, the last bridge before you get from the United States to Canada. Interstate 5 goes from the Mexican border all the way through California, through Oregon, Washington, and then into Vancouver, British Columbia. This is a bridge that collapsed. How many other bridges have we seen collapse? We have seen the bridge collapse in Minnesota, and people died. We have seen rail bridges collapse. In California this last week, the main Union Pacific Railroad going north and south between Sacramento--well, all of northern California--way down to southern California over the Tehachapis, the Union Pacific Railroad Bridge just south of Sacramento collapsed. The rail cars, at least a day ago, were still sitting there in the water as they were busily trying to repair that rail bridge. A good third of all the bridges in the United States do not meet safety standards and are subject to collapse, and in some cases deadly collapse. As we go through all of this, we need to be aware of the extraordinary need that our Nation has for infrastructure improvements. I think some of us remember the comments of our former Vice President Biden when he landed in LaGuardia, New York, and made a comment about that facility. I won't repeat it here because I am sure my New York friends might find that to be somewhat degrading. But it was a comment that was well deserved about the quality of that airport. The unfortunate part is that that is repeated in airport after airport around the United States: inadequate, old, not up to standards, and very poor in providing the efficient transportation that we require. We can go on and on. We can talk about the highway system. The Department of Transportation estimates that we need over $836 billion just to maintain and bring up to standards the American highway system, both highways and bridges. The public transportation system has a $90 billion backlog for public transit for the state of good repair. This isn't expansion. This is just to have good repair for what we need in our transit systems. We can go on and on. Bridges, $20 billion. As I said, one in three of the bridges in the Nation--it is actually one in four--are structurally deficient and functionally obsolete. Sixty-five percent of our Nation's roads are in less than good condition. Our rail and bus transit systems face a $90 billion backlog, as I just said. The 59 busiest ports in the United States only operate at 35 percent of capacity because the channels are filled with silt, and modern ships are unable to enter those ports. The FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, has identified a need for $32 billion for improvement of our airports. It goes on and on and on. America does not want to face this kind of devastation, with the failure of dams. I don't have the exact number of dams in the United States--I think there are some 83,000--but a good percentage of those dams are structurally deficient from many different ways. Obviously, Oroville Dam was one of them. It didn't have a sufficient spillway to handle the extraordinary flows of the river. Another one central to California's water system is the San Luis Reservoir, a 2-million-acre-foot reservoir south of Sacramento, east of San Jose, that is central to the water supply of California, both for southern California, for the San Joaquin Valley, the farmers there, as well as for Los Angeles. The Oroville Dam is the key dam for the California water system, which supplies water to Silicon Valley, to the San Joaquin Valley, as well as to Los Angeles. We have work to do all across this Nation, and we can do it. There is a lot of talk going on about the infrastructure program. Our new President has suggested a trillion dollar infrastructure program, somehow financed with private investment. Now, I don't know how that would work in repairing a dam such as Oroville or San Luis. I am not sure how a private investor would fit into that, but undoubtedly there are models in which there can be public-private partnerships. But that will not suffice. There are programs that have been suggested by my colleague here in the House, by Mr. DeFazio. Mr. DeFazio has what he calls ``a penny for progress.'' It is a program that would provide nearly a trillion dollars of infrastructure investment for highways over a 10-year period. We would borrow the money, and then pay it off with a one-penny increase in the excise tax for gasoline and fuel as it would keep pace with inflation. A novel idea, one that probably would work if we could find the votes for it. Over on the Senate side, the Senate minority leader, Mr. Schumer, has introduced a $1 trillion package of all types of investment in infrastructure, and it is a project that deserves our attention. It is a project that would provide significant money for highways. In his proposal, he would create 15 million jobs over the next 10 years for investment in many different kinds of infrastructure. He has something that I have talked about here on the floor now for 7 years. We call it Make It In America, Buy America, use our tax money to buy American-made products, bring our manufacturing back. If you are going to use rebar to rebuild that spillway, then use American steel. If you are going to put a pump in this dam to drain some facility, buy an American pump. After all, it is our taxpayers' money. It is my money. It is your money. Use the Buy America principle. He has a couple of other principles that I think are very important. He wants protections for American workers, and this is both life and health and safety protections but also wage protection, the Davis-Bacon and the prevailing wage programs, all of which I think pull up the bottom with good working wages for men and women in the construction industry. Also, make sure that there is an opportunity for minority- and women-owned businesses, and of course the environmental protection. These are kind of the principles of his program, which I happen to think are appropriate. So what would he spend the money on? He would suggest that we spend $210 billion repairing the roads and bridges. Now, remember, that is about one-quarter of what the Department of Transportation said is needed for the backlog, but, nonetheless, that is a good start. For roads and bridges, $210 billion over the 10-year period. That is 1.3 million new jobs. He would also want to spend $110 billion for new water and sewer systems. Not bad when you talk about places like Flint, Michigan, and the contaminated water in their water supply. In our own Central Valley of California, we have numerous communities that have inadequate water and, in many cases, water that is contaminated with various chemicals, both natural and from the business environment. Senator Schumer suggests that we spend $180 billion to expand and replace our rail and bus systems. That is more than just the transit programs. I suppose that is to make sure that the Union Pacific bridges don't collapse. He would also have $200 billion for vital infrastructure projects. These would be the most critical, the high-priority projects across the Nation. I would suggest to the Senator, Mr. Speaker, that the Senator might consider rebuilding the spillways on the Oroville Dam. He would also invest $75 billion on American schools so that our schools are new and modern and meet the needs of our students, another $70 billion on the ports. Remember, I was talking about this earlier, about the ports that are inadequate. This feeds back to what Mr. DeFazio has suggested, that we have the harbor maintenance fund. These are fees that are collected on every good that arrives or every container that arrives at our ports, and that money be spent on the ports, both in the water as well as on the dock. That money, unfortunately, is not spent just there. It winds up in the Treasury for who knows what purpose. So we would bring that money back to spend on our ports, modernizing them. Keep in mind that Panama, the new Panama Canal, has been expanded, bigger ships, deeper draft, so we need to dredge these ports, we need to build the wharves, the docks that can handle them. Senator Schumer would also recommend that $100 billion be spent in energy infrastructure to meet the needs of a modern energy system that is not dependent upon coal and oil but, rather, renewable sources of all kinds. And broadband, which is exceedingly important. In my district, which stretches 200 miles up the Sacramento Valley, broadband is not available. So these are infrastructure investments that I would think all of us should agree on, that we need to build a modern infrastructure for a modern economy and a growing economy, and along the way create as many as 13 million jobs to do that, a project that would go forward over the 10-year period ahead of us. So we have got the President suggesting a trillion dollar program, public-private partnerships, of which I suspect there are some right there, we have got Mr. DeFazio with a financing program for highways and transit systems and ports, and we have Senator Schumer on the other side with a trillion dollar program that would deal with virtually every part of the infrastructure, from broadband communications to ports, highways, bridges, and the like. So we have, I think, an opportunity here in this Congress to address a critical need for America's future, not only for the safety of Americans so that all Americans can avoid the kind of catastrophe that California came very, very close to having on Sunday, with the collapse of a 30-foot dam on Lake Oroville, creating not this, but something that would be several times bigger than this cascading down the river and inundating communities to the depth of 100 feet or more. It doesn't have to happen. We should never be penny-wise and pound- foolish. We should never delay these infrastructure investments because we know that bridges will collapse, and along with it the transportation system. We know that dams are in jeopardy. We know that our highways are filled with potholes. We know that many of our airports are ancient and, in many cases, decrepit and certainly not up to modern safety standards and certainly passenger convenience. We know that our ports need to be dredged and new wharfs and docks built. We know that we need to have intermodal systems so that we can efficiently move cargo from the ports to the trucks, to the trains, and across the country. We know the needs. The question for all of us is: Are we ready to meet those needs? I would suggest to you that we can. We can do creative financing, as Mr. DeFazio has suggested. There is a role for public-private partnerships in all of this, as the President has suggested. There is also a place in all of this for us to make choices about how we spend the taxpayers' money. This is one that I want to bring to the attention of Americans. We are in the process of making a choice to spend $1 trillion over the next 20 years or so to rebuild our entire nuclear arsenal. All of it. All of our nuclear bombs, all of the ICBMs in the silos in the upper Midwest, new submarines with new intercontinental missiles with new bombs on top of those missiles, new stealth bombers such as the new B- 21, new cruise missiles with new bombs. All of these things. New, fast, stealthy, unobservable, extraordinarily dangerous because the rules of the old Cold War or the old nuclear standoff don't apply. One trillion dollars for what purpose? We need to ask that question and we need to make choices. There are many other choices that we will be making here. Choices about building a $30 billion wall rather than repairing the bridges, in this case to Canada. Choices about nuclear weapons. Our job--your representatives here in Congress--is to make choices that are wise, choices that protect you, choices that give all of us an opportunity to have good, well-paying jobs, a modern infrastructure on which the private sector can then grow and prosper, and men and women can earn a good middle class living. Or we can make choices on things that really do not provide any of those benefits. It is about choices. It is about being prepared for tomorrow. It is about avoiding collapsed bridges and reservoirs that might fail and send a cascade of water down upon the communities. So I ask my colleagues to consider, to ponder the needs of your communities, and to make choices that are wise, that look to the future, and build a solid foundation that won't fail when that 30 feet of water presses up against that foundation. Choices. I hope and I pray we make wise choices. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Those are wonderful comments, and I am sure they are going to last through the entire 115th Congress because our colleague from Kentucky would like to echo many of those. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from the State of Kentucky (Mr. Comer).

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. That is so very true. Let me just go through some of the regulations that are being repealed here in the House over the last couple of weeks. First of all, let's remember that the Congressional Review Act being used to repeal these regulations has two parts to it. One, it has the ability of Congress to repeal regulations, which I think is a good idea. The second part of it, I think, has some real shortcomings. And that is, once that regulation has been repealed, both Houses vote before the President signs it, then the issue cannot be revisited by that administrative agency. I gave the example of the BLM, but it applies across the board. Regulations that deal with smoking on airplanes is a regulation. If we repeal that regulation, suddenly there is smoking on airplanes. You can never go back and do a regulation again in that area. I thank Mr. Khanna for joining us and for bringing his expertise to us. I am going to run down a quick list here. Oil and gas companies operate around the world. Our new Secretary of State was the CEO of ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company. Did ExxonMobil pay a fee or a gratuity or corruption to a foreign country? We will never know now because the Congress has passed a regulation that required oil and gas companies to disclose any fees, any money that they have paid to a foreign government for the opportunity to extract oil or gas from their country. We happen to know that many of the countries in which these American oil and gas companies operate are rife with corruption. So this is a way for us to do an anticorruption program around the world that involves our national oil companies. That is on the way to being repealed. How about mentally ill people being able to get a firearm? I suspect 80 percent of Americans--maybe 100 percent--think that somebody who is seriously mentally ill ought not to be able to get a firearm. Well, there is a mechanism. It is a national database. We call it the NICS database. It is a database that gun shops have to inquire if an individual is on that database for domestic violence, criminal activity, or for mental illness. We have had a problem with the mental illness part of this because many mentally ill people do not get on the database for a variety of reasons. The counties, cities, States don't provide that information. In some cases, it is deemed to be proprietary or confidential. But there is a way. It exists in the regulations today that would require the Social Security Administration--when it makes a payment for disability for severe mental illness to an individual, that individual's name goes on this database. When that individual may want to go down to the gun shop and buy a weapon, the gun shop would query the database and, lo and behold, the individual comes up and he won't able to get a gun. It makes sense. It enhances the database. It adds to the database individuals that are so severely mentally ill that they are able to get Social Security disability payments. Who is to object to that? Well, apparently a majority of the House of Representatives and the Senate does object to that. Probably the National Rifle Association also. So now we have a situation in which we have a protection for Americans being protected from the mentally ill individual that could not buy a gun now suddenly being able to not be on the national database for those people that are mentally ill. One more protection is gone. There are others, and I am going to run through them as quickly as I can here. I don't know whether you believe in climate change, global warming. I certainly do. I have worked on this for more than 30 years now, and it is a real issue. We know--there is no debate about this--that methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. In fact, it is far more powerful than carbon dioxide. So the emissions of methane are one of the things that we would want to reduce going into the atmosphere to add to those elements in the atmosphere that creates global warming, climate change. Well, the House of Representatives has passed a resolution through the law that allows it to do so--to roll back a requirement that the Bureau of Land Management put in place that requires oil and gas companies that are drilling for oil, drilling for natural gas, to control the leakage of methane from the gas well. Wow, that is a terrible thing to do. Really? To require that an oil company, a drilling company that is going after natural gas on government--excuse me, your land, the American public's land--that they, in the process of drilling for that natural gas or oil, control, capture the methane that would otherwise leak from that well? Well, that regulation is gone. The protections of Americans are gone. Greenhouse gas emissions are emitted without regulatory control. Many of these gas wells are in communities and in neighborhoods that will also enjoy more methane emissions. One more--or maybe more. Oh, yes, labor violations. Labor laws have been on the books for well over 80 years. The labor laws are health and safety, worker safety, requirements on hours, working conditions, hazardous circumstances. There are many different regulations that affect employers. They have to provide a safe working environment for their workers. Some do. Well, I would say most work at making sure that their workplace is safe. Some do not. Some of those who do not provide a safe workplace have been fined by the Federal Government for those labor violations. It is a good thing. It causes those companies to provide a safe working environment for their employees. A regulation was put forward by the Obama administration that said that if a company wants to contract with the Federal Government, they must disclose their labor violations, where they have violated the various labor laws. It may be hours of work, overtime pay, working conditions, hazardous circumstances, safety. They would have to disclose it. It didn't say they couldn't get a contract, but it did say that they would have to disclose to the public that they have not provided sufficient awareness of the various labor safety and workplace laws. That is on the way to being repealed. What I want to do tonight is to simply say to the American public: Pay attention. There are many things going on here in Congress and in the administration that are harmful to you, the American public. The kind of protections that you have counted on--worker safety, environmental protections if you live downstream from a coal mining operation, any of those things--are in the process of being repealed, and your protections along with them. So be aware of what the new administration and the Congress is doing to you, not for you. I could talk about the wall and about the $15 billion to $30 billion that is going to be spent if Mr. Trump gets his way here and builds a 1,400-mile wall. I want to just end with this, and that is choices. Your representatives, myself, 434 of my colleagues here and 100 Senators and a President, we make choices about how your tax money is going to be spent. Should it be spent on a wall? Well, let's consider for a moment spending it on a wall. This is $15 billion, the minimum amount of money, and it is not going to build much of the wall. But for $15 billion, what could you do for it? I am from California. I was once a regent of the University of California and on the board for the California State University, so I am familiar with this system. $15 billion could fund the entire California State University system for 3 years, and that is nearly a half a million students. You could replace all of the water pipes in Flint, Michigan, 270 times over for $15 billion. Choices. Do you want safe drinking water in Flint and other communities around the United States or do you want a wall? Are you concerned about the American military, the Navy, five Virginia-class submarines, or one Ford-class aircraft carrier plus a submarine? Or how about scholarships for undergraduate programs at the University of California, which I had the privilege of graduating from a few years ago? 27,777 4-year, full-time scholarships. That is the undergraduate population at the University of California Davis, which I have the privilege of representing. There is one more place you could spend $15 billion or even one part of $15 billion, and it is on this. These are the deadly diseases in America. Let's see. Breast cancer, over the last decade we have seen breast cancer actually decline. Prostate cancer has declined by 11 percent, heart disease by 14 percent, stroke by 23 percent, HIV/AIDS by 52 percent. Alzheimer's has not declined. It has increased by 471 percent, and it is going to go even more. What could we do with $15 billion of research on a disease that affects every American family? We could almost assuredly find a cure for Alzheimer's. I thank my colleagues here in the House of Representatives for increasing the budget for Alzheimer's research from around $500 million to just under $1 billion. That was done last year. If we can increase that funding another $1 billion a year, the researchers indicate to us that we have a high probability of delaying the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years. With another $1 billion after that, we probably could find a cure for this disease that is going to bust the American bank. Medicare and Medicaid, that is where the big money is going to be spent. So my plea to our President and those who want to build a wall is: We have choices. You want to do something for the American public? Let's spend that $15 billion to $30 billion on education. You want to do something for every American family? Spend some portion of that $15 billion to $30 billion by doubling the amount of money that we are spending annually on Alzheimer's research. You want to do something for the security of our Nation? Meet those critical needs that our military has. Whether it is a new submarine or an aircraft carrier we can debate, but we do know that we have expenditures that are necessary in that area. So, Mr. President, don't waste our money. Don't waste our tax money on a wall. By the way, we know Mexico is not going to pay for it. Don't get in a fight with our trading partner and our neighbors to the south and Australia. Be aware, Americans. Watch closely to what is happening here in Washington. If you are concerned, so am I concerned about where we are headed and about what this government is doing to you, not for you, but rather to you. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Panetta, thank you so very much for joining us this evening. Thank you for your statement of your life and your family's work. We know your father. Leon has been a dear friend of mine and most of us here in the House. You're going to really be a tremendous addition to this House. Your experience as a prosecutor and in local government and county government positions you very well to bring the message. Certainly, the Salinas Valley is one in which immigrants are the history, and they are the reality of today. Thank you so very much for watching out for them, for your passion, and for your extraordinary background in making all of us aware of what happens when sanctuary cities, immigration laws, and others are just tossed around without much thought about what the impact is in the community and to families, as well as to the economy of the community. I appreciate that and hope you will come back and join us on another Special Order. From the other side of the country, we have Mr. Raskin, another new Member of the House of Representatives. Welcome. You have a fascinating background, and I look forward to your comments today. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, there are so many other things to talk about here, and I probably have another 20 minutes to do it. I doubt that I will take all that time, unless my colleague from Iowa wants to engage in a colloquy about some issues of the day which we might find a very exciting and interesting thing to do, Mr. King. I see you await your turn here. Over the last week, Congress--the last 2 weeks now, 3 almost--has enacted a series of repeals of regulations that had been passed in the Obama administration. On the floor today, not more than an hour and a half ago, three additional repeals of regulations took place. These were under the Congressional Review Act, a law that is some 25 years old now that allows the Congress to literally repeal regulations that are out there. I will give you a couple of examples. Today, one of them dealt with the planning process for the Bureau of Land Management. About a quarter of a million acres of land are under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management. This is public land. It belongs to all of us. This land is your land. Well, this is the land that belongs to the American people. The repeal today of a new public review process on land planning is--I don't understand it. I was once deputy secretary at the Department of the Interior, and I oversaw the Bureau of Land Management. I was operating under the law that was old in the 1990s. But here we are with this repeal of a new process, a process that actually invited into the land planning for the Bureau of Land Management where are the roads going to go, how are they going to manage the various uses of the land, whether it is agriculture, for cattle, or for recreation, or hunting, whatever, that they invite into that process all of the local agencies. The county, the State, environmental groups, hunting, fishing, cattlemen, agricultural groups, whoever would have a stake in that, they were invited into the process. It shortened the process from 8 years down to something probably in the 2-or 3-year range to go through this entire thing, and, for reasons that I will never understand, the repeal eliminated the use of good science and economics. So I don't understand what is going on here. This is a good process so that the public would be invited. Yet, the Congressional Review Act--should the Senate agree and the President sign this particular review--the Bureau of Land Management will never be able to go back and enter this process of land planning again. They cannot issue a new regulation. What is happening here is nonsense. There is mountaintop removal in coal country, where mountains are simply wiped off the face of the Earth and all of that dirt is piled into the nearby streams. We have that regulation. Providing clean water for the communities and the rivers for recreation or fishing or any other thing is gone and no longer available to protect the communities. It goes on and on. I know one thing that the President did the very first day was an executive order to eliminate the reduction in the mortgage guarantee fee. This is a fee paid by homeowners--usually low-income homeowners-- who, because of their income, because of their financial status, cannot get a regular mortgage unless there is a guarantee. He said this was for the benefit of the homeowner. Baloney. This was for the benefit of the bankers. We already know that he has appointed three people to his cabinet that are from Wall Street, particularly from Goldman Sachs, and another one from another agency on Wall Street. He was going to do away with Wall Street. No, he brought Wall Street into the cabinet. We are going backwards on this. I am going to take a deep breath--I need it after all of that--and I am just beginning to get wound up and haven't gone through the other 20 things that are on my list. I did notice that this is my day to welcome to the floor of the House of Representatives new Democratic members. Mr. Raskin is from the marvelous State of Maryland. I have two Californians here. Ro Khanna is from the Silicon Valley. I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna) to share with us his take on his first 33 days in Congress.

Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might ask a question of the gentlemen. He represents the Silicon Valley--at least a large portion of the Silicon Valley--and the issue of net neutrality has been bouncing around here for some time. Basically, the FCC, as I understand it, has decided that there would be net neutrality, which, as I understand it--and perhaps the gentleman can explain it better than I, so I will let him do so--may be the next thing that this new chairman intends to do away with. Has the gentleman followed that?

Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentleman for the explanation and the purpose of net neutrality. In a way, it is one of the things that, in a very real way, protects the individual--by having access. What is happening with these regulations and many of these executive orders that the President puts out is to remove from the individual protections that they have. I mentioned mountaintop removal in coal country and the protections that the indigent farmer down the stream has for clean water. That protection is gone. You look at the mortgage guarantee. It is a small amount, but it is an additional $500 a year that an individual would have to pay, assuming they had to have a mortgage guarantee. Most low-income people have to have that mortgage guarantee in order to buy a home. It is $500 out of their pockets. So it is the protections that have been in place. There may be others. I am sure that in the gentleman's area he may know of others, if he would like to share with us, but I really thank him for bringing to us his expertise in the area of communications. I know that he has worked in this area before. He represents a part of America and California where this is a very big issue.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Oh, the tweets.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I will use another analogy of flying below the radar. A lot of this is flying below the radar because we are looking at all of the tweets that come out in the morning, the various news programs focusing on the President, and missing some really important things that protect Americans.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, well, let's see, I got a phone call from my district--one of several dozen today--and they all are kind of about the same thing: What is going on in Washington? What are they doing in Washington? What is happening? What is happening with ObamaCare, the Affordable Care Act? What are they going to do about this wall? People are concerned. People want to know what is happening in Washington. I suspect a good many of us are trying to figure out what the next steps are. It seems like every other moment something new is erupting from the White House, another tweet or another executive order, and we have had a lot of them. And so what I want to do today is to kind of go back and take a look at what has transpired over these last 2\1/2\ weeks. What has happened in Washington these last 2\1/2\ weeks? Besides a lot of confusion, angst, and concern, some very, very important things are happening, and here is my take on it. I am going to kind of put a title on today, and I am going to say: What has Washington done to you, not for you. What has Washington done to you? Let's start with the very first day that President Trump was inaugurated. Well, it was all about the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare. So he set out to begin the repeal of ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act. Oh, by the way, they are one and the same. It depends which way you are looking at this thing, but the repeal of the Affordable Care Act has dire consequences on Americans. Some 30 million Americans could be affected, according to the Congressional Budget Office, or in my State, we are looking at maybe 5 million people could lose their health coverage, their insurance, as a result of that. There is $16 billion that immediately flows to the State of California for the expansion of the Medicaid, Medi-Cal program in California. That would be gone. And those people that are on that program would simply not be able to get care. It goes beyond just those who are in the exchanges. The exchange in California is working quite well. Maybe a 1\1/2\ million people in California are covered through the exchange, and they have options in most every part of the State. In my part of the State, there are some shortcomings because services are not readily available, but there are 34 clinics managed by nine organizations that provide medical services in my district. Every one of those clinics rely upon ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, for the services that they render. If the Affordable Care Act disappears, we repeal ObamaCare, those clinics are out of business. And what does that mean? It means that thousands, literally hundreds of thousands of people in my district would no longer be receiving medical services through the clinics, through the Affordable Care Act's expansion, or through the Medi-Cal program. This is serious business. There is another piece to this, and I would like to put up some charts on that, but let's just go back and quickly review the benefits. The benefits are: 5.1 million seniors receive savings on prescription drugs. You know that famous drug doughnut hole; it has almost disappeared as the result of the ObamaCare Affordable Care Act. 32.5 million seniors receive free annual preventions, health checkups, every year. What does that mean? It means their blood pressure is checked out, their potential for diabetes, for other chronic illnesses, and they get the medicine for diabetes. They get better health care, and the cost of Medicare is reduced. Also, it strengthens consumer protections for seniors in Medicare part D, and at least 85 percent of Medicare Advantage Plans' revenues go back towards providing senior services. That is just for seniors. So there are many, many benefits in the Affordable Care Act beyond just those that are getting new insurance policies. It is a big deal for seniors. They are able to get an annual checkup. They are able to get their drugs much cheaper, able to provide them with the necessary pieces of it. One of the very first acts that has been taken up here by Congress is the budget resolution passed by both Houses. It is now in effect, the first budget resolution, and that budget resolution tells the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee: Repeal the taxes that are associated with the Affordable Care Act. It is a lot of money, somewhere between $700 million and $1 trillion of tax cuts directly associated with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare. Who gets the benefit of those tax reductions? Well, the top 1 percent would receive some 70 percent of the benefit. What does that amount to? Well, it amounts to--did I say 1 percent? The top one-tenth of 1 percent would receive the great majority of the benefit, or $200,000 tax reduction for the super-superwealthy. The rest of them, the top 1 percent, get 57 percent of that $700 billion, and that is over a 10-year period. And everyone else, that would be the other 99 percent, will share in a much smaller portion, the remaining 43 percent. For an average family, it probably amounts to maybe a tax reduction of $160. However, those are the people that are able to get their insurance through the exchanges, and so they are getting a really bad deal because the average exchange, for example, in California, is somewhere over $2,500. So this is the tax repeal. It is a massive tax cut for the super- superwealthy. It turns out that to pay for the Affordable Care Act, a very progressive tax was put in place, and it does provide benefits for those who are uninsured, the Medicaid population across the Nation, as well as providing the buy-down of the insurance policies that are available through the various exchanges. Keep in mind, when people talk about repealing the Affordable Care Act taxes, what they are talking about is a massive redistribution of wealth in this Nation and a furtherance of this income inequality that has been such a problem in our society and in our economy. So the repeal of the Affordable Care Act does many, many things, most of which would be quite a problem for working men and women, for the seniors, for the elderly. I didn't mention here that a good portion of that Medicaid population goes to provide long-term care in nursing homes for seniors who are not wealthy. I don't have the exact percentage, but some people say it is 50, 60 percent of Medicaid benefits across the Nation wind up providing services in the long-term care facilities. Is that important to seniors? Oh, yeah. Is it important for children of seniors, you know, those people that are in their forties and fifties whose parents are in their seventies and eighties? They are deeply concerned about this particular issue of the Medicaid expansion being eliminated by a repeal of the Affordable Care Act, and then they wind up in a situation of having to take care of Mom and Dad, trying to figure out how to do it on their insufficient income. So we need to understand that the very first act undertaken by the President was to set in motion a very serious rejiggering, a reoperation of the entire healthcare system in this Nation, so much so that the standard insurance companies that provide policies to the great majority of Americans are going: Whoa, wait a minute. You eliminate the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, and we don't know how to price in the marketplace for the coming year. Right now, those insurance companies are in the process of figuring out what their policies are going to be, how they would price them. One of the things the Affordable Care Act does is to provide an opportunity for those that have preexisting conditions, serious healthcare problems, for those people to be able to get insurance; therefore, the risk is spread. Now, if the Affordable Care Act disappears, would this be part of the replacement? We don't know. Our colleagues on the Republican side keep talking about repeal and replace. We don't have a replacement plan yet, but what we do have is a probability of a massive tax cut for the very wealthy. We are also looking at chaos in the insurance system. So let's be aware of what is going on in Washington when we talk about repeal and replace and when you talk about ObamaCare--which, by the way, is also known as the Affordable Care Act. I have, today, some of my colleagues joining us. I notice that two of them are here. We could go alphabetically, in which case--well, let me see, P-Q-R. That means Panetta comes first. My new colleague from the Monterey Bay area of California will join us here. He wants to talk about some of these issues that confront Americans and explain to all of us what this Congress and what the President is doing to Americans. I welcome Mr. Panetta to his very first Special Order hour that I have been able to work with him. I know you have spoken on the floor before, and we look forward to your comments tonight. I thank the gentleman very much for joining us. I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta).

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Raskin, thank you so very much. Indeed, your experience as a professor teaching constitutional law will be a very valuable asset to this House, and particularly in the context of what is transpiring on the floor with the repeal of so many of the regulations that are protecting Americans in so many different ways, and certainly with the incredible array of outlandish executive orders emanating from the White House, not the least of which is the immigration issue. So as we journey through this period of disruption and chaos, I am certain that we will count upon you to provide us with insight into the way in which all of this fits into the very clear framework of the Constitution.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the investments in flood control infrastructure made by local flood control agencies in California, as well as by the State itself. Water in California is feast or famine. For the last five years we have had a famine, and now we have a feast. During the massive California floods of 1997, 9 lives were lost, 120,000 people were evacuated and roughly 23,000 homes and businesses were damaged across the state. The greater Sacramento area, part of which I represent, is the 2nd most flood prone region in the United States, behind only New Orleans. Mr. Speaker, my constituents take flood protection very seriously. Because of this, there are many local agencies spearheading critical projects throughout my district that I'd like to recognize, including the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency, the Yuba County Water Agency, the Marysville Levee District, the City of Woodland, the City of West Sacramento, Reclamation District 2140, the State of California, and the Central Valley Flood Protection Board. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has also played a pivotal role in all of these projects and should be commended. Mr. Speaker, floods do not recognize the boundaries of congressional districts. Therefore, Congressman LaMalfa and Congresswoman Matsui should also be praised for their work on flood control as many of the projects undertaken by the agencies I mentioned have a footprint in all of our districts. There is no question that investment in flood control pays dividends. In 2006, California voters passed Proposition 1E which provided $4.09 billion in flood control infrastructure. To date, almost all of that funding has been allocated. These bonds, in tandem with investment from local flood control agencies and the federal government, have funded significant improvements in many, but not all of, the levees that protect my constituents. Those improvements were highlighted this winter, when almost all of the state's rivers and reservoirs were filled to capacity. Statewide rainfall between October and December of 2016 was 143 percent of the historical average while combined inflows to California's reservoirs were the 2nd highest in recorded history. Yet the levees held and we were able to avoid any major flooding. Given all of this, Mr. Speaker, I stand here today to urge my colleagues and the new Administration to continue to prioritize federal investment in flood control infrastructure.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, feast or famine. California, for 5 years, had a water famine, and now we have a feast. I want to shout out to the Army Corps of Engineers, to the local flood control districts in my district, in Sacramento, the Sutter Butte District I share with Mr. LaMalfa, and also other flood control districts. Despite the heavy water flows, the levees have held. I ask all of my colleagues here in the House and over in the Senate to keep in mind that we need more flood protection all across this Nation; otherwise, there will be great suffering.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I will just finish this up very quickly. I think we need to look to where this problem emanates. It emanates from the President's adviser, Mr. Bannon. He has been at this for some time talking about the nature of America being a White nationalist nation. So if we look beyond the horror that this ban places, we need to look to where it emanates, Mr. Bannon, clearly this comes from him, and we need to focus our attention on what he has done to this Nation's values. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, I rise here to protest the deaths that are occurring, protest the horrible situation that our President has put upon us. I include in the Record a letter that I have received from the University of California at Davis, and the Mayor of the City of Davis, California, who have so clearly laid out the impact that the immigration ban and the ban on refugees has put upon the university and the community. [From Ralph J. Hexter, Interim Chancellor, University of California Davis, and Robb Davis, Mayor, city of Davis] We have over 5000 international students and scholars at UC Davis, many of whom are actively questioning what future actions by this administration might mean for them. This is an incredibly disorienting time for all our international guests. Here are some specific cases that illustrate challenges that students and scholars all over the country are facing at this time. These are specific to our community. (Note: as you know, F-1 status is for students at any degree level authorized to study in the US at accredited universities. J-1 can refer either to students or scholars in the US Visitor Exchange Program) 1. A former J-1 scholar from Iran is in the US arranging the move of his wife and son, while awaiting green card processing. He was to have left the US for final interviews and processing but is now uncertain. He has an appointment in UC Davis' Plant Sciences Department. 2. An Iranian PhD student who was to have started at UC Davis this spring (he was accepted), recently obtained his visa, was to arrive in March, 2017, to start classes April 4. His ability to start then is now in doubt. In addition, his proposed roommate, who is already here from Iran, was counting on him to share expenses. This person now finds himself in a difficult situation. 3. An Iranian F-2 (spouse of F-1) is concerned about her ability to change to F-1 status to become a student. She has been accepted at UC Davis. 4. An Iranian student applying for a Master's program in Engineering at UC Davis is asking about whether she should continue her application process. 5. The spouse of an F-1 student (F-2 status) is currently stuck outside the US and unable to be reunited with her family. 6. An Iranian F-1 PhD student, who started in Fall 2016 quarter had invited his father to visit. This student has a sister with two children in the US and she and they are American citizens. The father/grandfather had a visa interview scheduled in Yerevan, Armenia for February 8th so he could come on a tourist visa to visit the student son and daughter and grandchildren. His visa interview has now been canceled. Attached are the pictures of the two grandchildren he will not be able to see. He has not been able to see his daughter for five years. 7. Scholar advisors at UC Davis are being asked by scholars of these countries if it is safe to travel within the USA. The fact that scholars must ask this shows the fear that exists. 8. Departmental staff is questioning whether to admit students or invite scholars from these countries for summer and fall arrivals. There is much confusion. 9. A high profile scholar from one of the countries (his profile might put him at risk) was set to come to UC Davis to do research on responses to humanitarian abuses in his country. Because of the order, UC Davis was not permitted to provide him with documentation necessary to obtain a visa. These stories were gathered in the past 5 hours WITHIN the City of Davis and the University. We are a small city of 65,000. The fact that Iranians are the main nationality represented comes as no surprise. UC Davis and the City of Davis are home to many Iranians and have been for a generation at least. The fact that the Trump Administration can point to NO attacks by Iranians on US soil or against US interests makes their exclusion seem particularly arbitrary and cruel to us.

Mr. GARAMENDI. It is a terrible situation, but I do want to----

Mr. GARAMENDI

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

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. Madam Speaker, today is Tuesday, January 31. It has been 11 days since the inauguration of our new President; and, oh my goodness, has it been an extraordinary 11 days. I just hardly know where to begin. Normally I come up here, and we talk about how we can grow the American economy, how we can provide jobs, how we can see a return of our manufacturing industries, but I am compelled today to pick up comments on the last 11 days. I was at a dinner out in California on Friday evening, and a wide variety of people from multiple interest groups were there: some labor unions, some farmers, senior citizens, healthcare folks, teachers. There was an overwhelming sense of concern--deep concern--about the direction this country is going. Some of these friends of mine were Republicans and others were Democrats; some liberal, some conservative. But to a person, they came up to me and said: Oh, my God, what is happening in Washington? Where is this going? What is he doing? What does it mean to us? And some of them said: Will they really actually terminate the Affordable Care Act? Is ObamaCare really going to end? What about my insurance policy; will I lose it? I am on Medi-Cal. What will happen to me? And teachers saying: How does this fit with the effort to improve our schools? And some that had been in the military looked at some of what was going on and said: But veterans' care, this hiring freeze affects the Department of Veterans Affairs. What does it mean to me? What is happening in Washington? Some others were concerned about, well, there is going to be this transportation bill, infrastructure bill. How are they going to fund it? Is it really going to happen? I have been to many events in my years in public office, but I have never been to an event in which there was this overwhelming concern about what's going to happen in Washington. I have seen changes occur. Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan, there was concern, but not the kind of angst, deep emotional concern about where this country is going. I have seen George H.W. Bush to Bill Clinton, and I am sure there were many Republicans concerned about where Bill Clinton would go, and then Clinton to George W. Bush, and then to Obama, but nothing like this. It is not just last Friday night. Today, in front of my office in Davis, California, 200 people showed up to say: You have got to do something. You have got to make it clear that we can't have these shutting down our borders. You can't let them do that. Davis, California, the University of California, there are 5,000 foreign students and teachers on that campus. There are more than 200 from the countries that are affected by the immigration and by the ban on people coming in from those seven countries. What does it mean, they asked me? And what about the Affordable Care Act? All across this Nation people are demonstrating. It is now 20 minutes to 7 here in Washington, D.C., and I suppose at 8 tonight the President is supposed to give a nationwide address on his next Supreme Court nominee. I am quite certain that tomorrow morning there will be another eruption of concern by Americans as to what does it mean if the Supreme Court throws out the role of the Federal Government in protecting voter rights? What does it mean if the Federal Government isn't there to assure that a woman's body is her own? All across this Nation people are going: Oh, what is happening? Executive order after executive order, starting with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and instructions to every agency of the Federal Government to stop it, see that it doesn't work. And here in Congress, a budget resolution that calls for the elimination of the financial support for the Affordable Care Act which, if you remove the money, what happens to the subsidies, the tax subsidies that people are able to use to be able to afford healthcare insurance, the additional money that goes to the States for their Medicaid programs? And, oh, what about the seniors? If that budget resolution actually goes through, the money that is in the Affordable Care Act to provide the seniors the opportunity to have their drug benefit costs reduced, affecting millions of American seniors, the money is gone. Will the drug benefit be gone also? Most assuredly it would unless, of course, you want to just increase the deficit. And about that free annual visit that is available to seniors that has clearly extended the life of thousands or tens of thousands of seniors because they find out they have high blood pressure. They can take a cheap pill, get that blood pressure down and not have a stroke. Or maybe diabetes, the onset of diabetes. That free annual benefit checkup, will it still be available if the budget resolution and if Mr. Trump's attack on the Affordable Care Act actually happens? People are worried. People are frightened. And they should be. They should be. Because this goes to the very ability of Americans to carry on their tasks, protections that are necessary to protect Americans from fraud. The House of Representatives today voted to pass a rule that would lead to the elimination of protections that Americans have in their financial services. I don't know how we repeal the Affordable Care Act. And how are we going to protect America by building a wall? What is it going to cost? 15, 20, 30 billion dollars? Most people who look at the immigration issue rationally would say it is not going to solve the problem. And besides that, the problem is dramatically reduced as a result of the Mexican economy growing and jobs being available there as a result of the enormous build-up that has already occurred with the Border Patrol and the immigration service. We have seen a dramatic reduction. I was told today by some people that work in this field in California that the people who are coming into the United States illegally are mothers and children from Central America who are seeking refuge from the horrible gangs and violence in Central America. They are not sneaking over the border. They are presenting themselves at the border as refugees. We will come back to the refugee issue in a few moments. How proud he looks, signing yet another executive order, this one on a wall. We are going to build a wall, 1,400 miles of wall between the United States and Mexico. So with a look of pride, he wants to spend anywhere from $15 billion to $30 billion. So tell me what you could do with $15 billion. That is the minimum cost of the wall. Most people say it is probably closer to $30 billion. What could you do with $15 billion? Well, I suppose you can build part of a wall, or you could start to build a wall. You are certainly not going to finish it. But let's just say you have got $15 billion and that is your down payment on a wall that most everybody says wouldn't work. That is not a joke. If you build a 50-foot-high wall, someone will get a 51-foot-tall ladder. I am familiar with the universities in California. California State University has 460,000 students. So for $15 billion, you could fund the entire California State University system, provide tuition-free education for 3 years for 460,000 students, and pay all the faculty and the janitors and all the others. That is for $15 billion. Now, if it is a $30 billion wall, then it is 6 years. So a junior in high school, for $30 billion, could go free, tuition free, all expenses paid. Every professor, every janitor, fully paid for 6 years--460,000 students and thousands upon thousands of professors, teachers, janitors, et cetera. Or you could replace every pipe in Flint, Michigan, 270 times over. Do you want to solve the problem in Flint, Michigan, the lead pipe problem? 270 times for $15 billion, or that is more than 500 times, 540 times. Or maybe you are concerned about Alzheimer's. And what American family is not concerned about Alzheimer's? If we were to spend that $15 billion on research, we would undoubtedly be able to develop a treatment--and this is what the scientists and doctors and researchers say. And we did increase the funding from around $500 million to just under $1 billion last year. But if you were able to ramp it up and develop that treatment for Alzheimer's, you could delay the onset of Alzheimer's in your family, or mine, by 5 years. And what does that mean? It means about a $220 billion in savings to the American taxpayers because that is money that will be spent for Medicare and Medicaid. Or maybe you are just interested in national defense. Do you like submarines, the new Virginia class submarine? Well, let's see. We could build five of them. Or maybe you like aircraft carriers. For $15 billion, you could build one of the new aircraft carriers and an additional submarine. So President Trump, what is our choice? You don't like these choices, and you want to build a wall that nobody believes will do much good dealing with illegal immigration? Oh, I like this next one; 27,777 4-year, full-ride scholarships for an undergraduate program at the University of California. That is about the total undergraduate population at the University of California, Davis, which I have the honor of representing. But we are going to build a wall. We are going to build a wall. For what purpose? 435 of us here and 100 Senators and one President have a task of making choices about what America is all about, choices about how we spend your tax money. You want your tax money spent on a wall? Oh, excuse me. Mexico is going to pay for it. Do you think so? The President has started a trade war with Mexico, has created a serious diplomatic crisis with our neighbor and our third largest trading partner, over trying to force Mexico to pay for his wall. Oh, that was really smart. But, hey, he's the President and he thinks he can do what he wants to do. Well, the Mexican President said, no, no, it is not going to be paid for by Mexico. So who is going to pay for it? I say we have choices. I would much rather us spend our money on education, national defense, Alzheimer's, and on things that actually help Americans in so many different ways. That is just one of the issues that is in play. Immigration? Oh, we put out a new executive order on immigration, and seven countries around the world cannot have their citizens any longer come to America for some period of time, and refugees from those countries can't come to America. What are those countries? Well, let me see. Among the seven, I believe there is this country called Iraq. Excuse me, Mr. Trump. Isn't Iraq our ally in fighting ISIS? I think so. It is their troops plus 6,000 of our troops that are now engaged in a bitter fight to reclaim Mosul, to wipe ISIS out of Mosul. And so you are going to put a limitation on Iraqi citizens and refugees coming to the United States? I am sorry. I don't understand what sense that makes, Mr. President. Do you? Do you understand what you just did? There is a four-star general in Iraq who is responsible for their Special Forces that are leading the fight in Mosul right now. This man's family came to the United States for safety because of the problems that existed there in Iraq. He cannot visit his family. Unless there is some sort of a waiver that has suddenly been developed for four-star Iraqi generals, he cannot go to Central Command in Tampa, Florida, to work on a strategy for the rest of the fight. Oh, my God. What is going on here? What is happening? What sense does any of this make? Foreign policy experts, national security experts, experts on ISIS, on radical Islam all say the same thing. The ban on people traveling from those seven majority Muslim states will have a negative effect on our ability to deal with ISIS. That is what they say. Not my view, that is the view of security experts all across the spectrum, from the most conservative to the most progressive and liberal and everybody in between. This makes no sense whatsoever, Mr. President. We sometimes use the word ``half-baked.'' This is not even beginning the process of being baked. This was put together by somebody that didn't know what they were doing. If they had consulted with policy experts outside of that little cabal in the White House, somebody might have said: Time out, time out, time out. Let's think this through. Why Iraq? What is going to be the second step here? Easy enough, we are going to set the ban. But what does it mean? What does it mean to Muslim countries around the world that suddenly America is seen as shutting the door--or, shall we say, slamming the door--on Muslims? What does it mean here in the United States? It means that we are not safer. It means that our country is not protected, and, in fact, the action taken is counterproductive. That is what it means. Who did this? Who is the architect of this policy? Was it the State Department? Apparently not. Was it the Justice Department? We know from the midnight firing--well, I guess it was actually 6 o'clock firing-- yesterday of the acting Attorney General that it wasn't the Justice Department. They had an opportunity to review and look at the legality of the ban. They didn't involve themselves, and apparently the military didn't involve themselves. So who was it that dreamed up this ban on men, women, children, refugees coming from seven countries? None of the residents and refugees from those countries in the last 40 years has been responsible for one terrorist death in the United States. But those countries from which we know the terrorists came, from 9/11, were not included. Saudi Arabia, not included in the ban. How is that, if we are worried about this problem of refugees who are citizens from those countries coming into the United States to carry out terrorist acts? Why didn't you look at Saudi Arabia? That is where most of the 9/11 folks came from. Or maybe Chechnya or Congo or Nigeria. So who wrote it? Who is responsible? Well, two names have emerged. One, a Mr. Miller, and another, a Mr. Bannon, a Mr. Bannon who is the architect of the emergence of the alt-right. We are not talking about the conservative right. We are talking about the far right White nationalist movement in this Nation. Mr. Bannon, who became Mr. Trump's campaign chairman, who is now the key person in the White House, not just on political policy, but on national security policy. He is said to have said, in 2013, that he is a Leninist and his goal is to blow up the system. He says he doesn't remember having said that. Well, I will take him at his word. But I do know that what he did with this ban for these seven countries is to make our Nation less safe. That, we know. And just to double down on this issue of this superconservative fellow Mr. Bannon and his cohort Mr. Miller, just to make clear where we are headed, there has been a reorganization of the National Security Council. These are the men and women that, over the years, have been responsible for making certain that our American policy maximizes our security that deals with international issues of great concern: what to do about China in the South China Sea, what to do about North Korea. How do we handle missile defense? How do we deal with Russia in the Ukraine? The National Security Council. So what happened yesterday? Well, the President, which he has a right to do, reorganized the National Security Council. And two gentlemen, or two people, that have traditionally been on the National Security Council, who seem to know a little bit about national security, were previously in what is called the principles. These are the handful of people that meet with the President, the key national security leaders. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is one of them and the Director of the National Intelligence organization--the two of them. The President says: I don't need you in my little inner circle. Go away. You can be part of the larger thing, and when I want you, I will call you. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the person responsible for the collection of our national intelligence--push him aside. Who came in to take the place of the two people--the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence? Guess who? Mr. Bannon. Is he a national security expert? He spent a few years in the military decades ago, but now he is sitting as one of the principals on our National Security Council. What is his mindset? Read his history. I wouldn't recommend you go to Breitbart--I wouldn't spend a whole lot of time on that--but there is a history here. There is a history, and it is a dangerous history. This man is now sitting as the principal voice, because he has the President's ear, on the National Security Council--the fellow, together with Mr. Miller, who is responsible for the ban on immigrants, travelers, and refugees from seven countries, which has become a major international, diplomatic crisis. ISIS is already using that ban--it is right here in the newspaper--to recruit in the Middle East, to recruit in Africa, and to encourage homegrown violence and terrorism here in the United States. Well done, Mr. Miller. Well done, Mr. Bannon. And very bad for our country. We are in the midst of executive orders, one after another--often two a day. My final concern is one that comes up 25 days from now. Five days ago, Trump went over to the Pentagon and signed yet another executive order. He came out of the meeting and said: We are going to have a new war plan. We are going to wipe ISIS from the face of the Earth, and the Pentagon will deliver to me in 30 days a war plan to wipe ISIS off the face of the Earth. Action. Action. Action. Go with care. Be slow to war. We will see what that plan is. My guess is it will cost millions upon millions--if not billions--of dollars. It will put our troops--boots-- back on the ground in Iraq and Syria, and we will start the cycle one more time. We will see. We will see what the Pentagon comes up with in a war plan. We have not been told the specific instructions that the Commander in Chief has given to the Pentagon; but I will tell you that this member of the House Armed Services Committee is very concerned. Keep in mind that our effort against ISIS and al Qaeda is based on a 2001 authorization to use military force in Afghanistan against al Qaeda and related entities. It has been stretched. One of the things that I am quite concerned about coming out of the Obama administration is that that administration stretched the 2001--a 16-year-old--authorization to use force--a declaration of war against al Qaeda--to justify the American military actions in Iraq, Syria, Liberia, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. We will see what the war plan is--we will learn soon enough--and I suspect that this Congress will be asked to finance it. We will be asked to pay for the men and women who will be sent into harm's way and for the munitions and the airplanes and the other equipment necessary. I would hope that all of us take a long, long look at this and that we ask this question: If we do that, then what happens next? We didn't ask that question when we went to war in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. We didn't ask that question when we invaded Iraq a couple of years later. I am not sure we have asked that question as we reengage ourselves in the current Iraqi war and Syria; but we should always ask: What is the result of our action? What is likely to happen? We have choices. We have choices to build a wall or to educate our children or to care for our seniors. We have choices about war or not. We have choices about how we deal with people around this world, choices about what we do with refugees--people who are fleeing persecution, fleeing death--who are doing the very, very best they can to care for their families and children in the most desperate of situations. We have a choice. We can slam the door on them and say ``tough luck,'' or we can do what ought to be the American tradition, and that is to provide comfort, to provide assistance, and to show the good part of America. Mr. President, you have given us 10 days of the most disruptive chaos I have ever seen in my many years in public life. You have a choice, too, Mr. President. You have a choice to take a deep breath, to not try to carry out every one of your campaign promises, most of which I think were ill-founded. You don't have to do it on day 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. You can take a deep breath, and you can think, together with Mr. Bannon or with Mr. Miller or with, perhaps, somebody outside of your little inner circle. Mr. President, you might ask other people what is the effect of what you are doing. Think about the second level of effect, and slow it down, and be aware that there are consequences. For every action, there is going to be another reaction. We are already seeing that. I am sure you have seen the millions of Americans in the streets protesting about which you have thus far done. Continue on, and you will see more because Americans are concerned. They are frightened. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I know the courtesy of this House, Mr. Speaker, and we are not supposed to direct our remarks everywhere; so let me amend my remarks. Mr. Speaker, there are within the White House two individuals who I believe are responsible. So, Mr. Speaker----

Mr. GARAMENDI

Mr. GARAMENDI. I am sorry your father endured that.

Mr. GARAMENDI. Your grandfather.

Mr. GARAMENDI. I was just thinking that I have got more stories to tell, but I really want to turn to our colleague from New York. Mr. Tonko and I are often on the floor--with you also--to discuss jobs in America, how to enhance our American economy with research, economic development of all kinds, transportation infrastructure, Make It In America. Mr. Tonko, tonight we are on a somewhat different subject, but I know it is one that you are very familiar with, one that you have spent your entire career addressing in trying to help seniors and others who have been on the short end of the stick. Thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Tonko.