John Hall

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, yesterday the price of oil broke another record yet again, closing at over $120. Families feel the impact of these costs every time they shell out close to $4 a gallon at the pump. In districts like mine, where commuting is a way of life, it's forcing some painful sacrifices. Our oil dependence has become the energy albatross around America's economic neck, and I'm proud that the majority in Congress has advanced ideas for short-term relief and long-term solutions. We've pushed for higher tax incentives for hybrid cars, expanded the use of renewables and efficiency, consumer protection to keep the oil companies honest, and a timeout from taking 70 million barrels a day of oil off the market and putting it into the strategic petroleum reserve, the SPR. What is the response from the President and his allies here in Congress? Let's go drill for some more oil that won't hit the markets for another 10 years, and let's keep sending more taxpayer dollars to the oil companies that are already making record profits. Most Americans would agree that we cannot wait a decade for relief and we shouldn't send anymore of their money to Big Oil. Let's stop filling the SPR to provide immediate relief and ask the President to move with us into a green, domestic, job-producing energy future.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 211, I was unavoidably detained and was unable to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I would like to agree with and concur with the comments of my colleague, the gentlelady from Michigan, regarding the merits of the bill. I'm pleased to serve on Transportation and Infrastructure, and I'm happy to say that Chairman Oberstar always goes the extra mile to incorporate everybody's opinions from both sides. And I believe this is a good bill that deserves all of our support. Regarding the allegations or the comments that are being made about this Congress not being interested in or producing bills that will produce energy, I beg to differ. H.R. 2264, holding OPEC accountable for oil price fixing, we call it the NOPEC Act, which was passed on May 27 of last year, with 220 Democrats voting for it, and 125 Republicans voting against it. Cracking down on gas price gouging, H.R. 1252, passed May 23 of last year, opposed by 140 Republicans, including all of the Republican leadership, 228 Democrats voting in favor of it. Repealing those subsidies that were given to profit-rich big oil companies. We're talking about ExxonMobil and the other big oil companies that have made the biggest profits of the history of any industry in the world. And, by the way, the five CEOs of the five biggest oil companies testified a couple of weeks ago before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. I sat there while all five of them talked about how they couldn't help it they were making so much money. One of my colleagues from the Republican side during his 5 minutes of questioning, Representative Walden, said, ``I'm a small businessman''--and if I can paraphrase because I don't know if this is an exact quote--``I'm a capitalist,'' said Representative Walden. ``And when I had a very good year where my profit is so high that it's better than I even could have imagined, I start to ask whether I can lower the prices to my consumers.''

Mr. HALL of New York. ``I start to think,'' said Representative Walden to the oil company executives, ``about whether I might be able to lower the price at the pump and lower the price to my consumers. Have you ever thought about doing that, now that you're making such a big profit?'' And one by one, all five of them said, ``Oh, we don't control the price at the pump.'' I think that's as good a case as one needs to hear for government regulation and possible legislation to make sure that there are not excess profits or gouging going on in this current state of the economy, and especially the oil economy.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, we are in a housing crisis in the United States, yet the Bush administration seems determined to ignore it. Losing your home has a deep economic and emotional impact that can last for years. When the mortgage crisis broadens as wide as it has, entire communities, not just individuals, face dire consequences for the future. In the Hudson Valley of New York, we have been especially hard hit. Over the last 3 months, foreclosures in Westchester County were up almost 40 percent from last year, and they've more than tripled since 2005. Putnam County, also in my district, has the single highest foreclosure rate of any county in New York State. This crisis demands bold action. This Congress has already expanded the Federal loan limits to make Federal protections available to more home buyers, now we need to extend these Federal guarantees to more homeowners in need. This Congress will not only protect institutions like Bear Stearns, but will also protect American families who remain at great risk.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 199, I was already on my way to question witnesses at the Transportation and Infrastructure hearing. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, it is good to be here with Mr. Klein and Congressman Braley. Before I talk about Iraq, I have to respond to a couple of things that were said a few minutes ago by our friends from the other side of the aisle who used the word ``truth'' frequently and talked about their children and grandchildren. And I am sure they are sincere, but to those of you Americans out there listening, I am sure you can remember that when President Bush took over with Republicans controlling both Houses of Congress in the year 2001, he had a surplus delivered to him by the Clinton administration. In the years since then, these folks you just heard talking, who profess to know what is best for our economy, have delivered to the United States, from a surplus when we were paying down the national debt, now the biggest deficit in the history of our country, the biggest balance of trade deficit, the biggest individual debt by Americans that is held, whether it is credit card debt or home second mortgage debt, and now we have the housing crisis, the subprime crisis, and various big box stores I was reading today are getting ready to file for or have already filed for bankruptcy, including some that we have seen proliferating around the country and have assumed that they were on solid ground. So I would take all the proclamations you just heard and the fancy charts that you just saw from the Republican hour before us with a grain of salt. The tax increase that they claim we are voting for is actually something that they, when they installed their tax cuts early in the Bush years, they installed it by putting in a sunset provision that is their creation, not ours. So I stand here and say that we have not in fact voted for anything like this biggest tax increase in history. It is a theatrical and dramatic presentation, well acted, and possibly even believed by them, but it is not the truth. As far as Iraq goes, we are spending $12 billion a week in Iraq, and I have started to look at the needs of our country and my district in particular in terms of how that money could be used here because we are basically running on fumes financially. I just visited 13 bridges that are on the dangerous faulty bridge list that came out after the I-35 bridge collapse in Minnesota, and the estimate of the New York State Department of Transportation is that it will cost about $60 billion to fix all of the deficient bridges in the State of New York. That is 5 months in Iraq. I just came back 2 weeks ago from visiting a Nogales, Arizona, checkpoint on the Mexican border. Congressman Braley was on that trip, along with Congressman Arcuri. And we asked at every step of the way the Customs and Border protection officials what they need from Congress and what would their wish list be. They said basically if it was Christmas and they could have everything that they wanted in terms of infrastructure, primarily what they need is more loading docks to unload the bales of marijuana that are stacked in front of an 18-wheeler behind a load of watermelons, or more bandwidth for more computers so they can get 10 fingerprints processed faster to establish somebody's identity. All of it, northern border, southern border, all ports on both coasts, $500 million a year for 10 years. That is $5 billion. That's a little bit less than 2 weeks in Iraq to secure both of our borders and all of our ports. That sounds to me like it would actually make our country more secure; not that we want to shut the borders down, but we'd like to know who's coming and who's going, what's coming in and what's going out in terms of drugs, in terms of agricultural products that might be infested, in terms of currency smuggling. So anyway, there's a real cost to all these things. And I would just say, after hearing General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker for the second time, it's clear that the goals in Iraq that we're spending this $12 billion a month on have been changing, that the goal posts have been moving, that 5 years after the initiation of this war and the death of 4,017 of our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, I have a figure of 29,676 wounded, the estimate before the VA, Veterans Affairs Committee, last summer was that if the war stopped at that point we'd be looking at $1 trillion for the lifetime care of grievously wounded soldiers returning from Iraq. That's four injuries primarily, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, spinal cord injuries that cause paralysis, and amputations. And these are, fortunately, men and women who we're able to save today in the battlefield because our battlefield medicine is so much better than it was in Vietnam, for instance. The ratio is about 16:1 wounded to killed where in Vietnam it was about 2\1/2\:1. That's the good news is that we're saving more of these mostly young lives of brave Americans who've gone over there and fought and carried out their mission. But the bad news is that the American public has not been told yet that, on top of the figures you mentioned, there's at least $1 trillion lifetime care for the wounded from this war that we're already looking at being responsible for. And we have to take care of these wounded warriors. You can't pay for the war and forget about the warriors. So I would just say that we need to look at this in terms of a broad view of national security and a realistic, clear-eyed view of where we are financially and whether we can afford it. And with that, I yield back to Mr. Klein.

Mr. HALL of New York. Well, in fact I do. And I thank the gentleman. You know, I saw 60 Minutes, I think this last Sunday, and they had an interview about the topic you just mentioned, the Iraqi windfall due to the price of oil, and how those tens of billions dollars are sitting in accounts. And the Iraqi officials interviewed on the TV show said they can't get at them to pay for their own reconstruction; and the American taxpayer has to keep paying the way we are because they don't yet have the systems in place or the infrastructure or the banking technology to be able to transfer the money. Now, either that's a really lame excuse, or we've been missing the boat by not helping them set that up. Or both. But you know, I have to just, not to be, not to carp on an old topic, but to hearken back to the previous hour and the other side of the aisle, our friends' presentation about budgetary truth. I would point out that the President's budget that he sent down to us this year shows no money for Iraq after the first of the year. So that's obviously not an honest document. It also assumes the AMT, the Alternative Minimum Tax which was supposed to be a tax on the richest of the rich and has become instead a tax that's been digging deeper and deeper into the middle class, and we've been working to change that. Our budget does change that and pushes it back up to the wealthiest 4 percent or so of Americans. But the President's budget assumes all the money that will be scooped out of the middle class, if nothing is done, will be available. So I just had to say those couple of things about that.

Mr. HALL of New York. Yes, please.

Mr. HALL of New York. Not only do they know, but the President, as we speak, is negotiating, or his representatives are negotiating a status of forces agreement to keep our troops in Iraq for some unknown time. So they obviously are planning on it. They're just not putting it in the budget. And I agree with you that the first year you could call it an emergency, but after that, this should be on budget. We're building up enough debt that we're passing on to our children and grandchildren with interest anyway, and in order for the public to know what is really being done in their name, this should not be a supplemental; this should be in the budget. I would also like to comment about my trip to Iraq last October. When I slept in the Green Zone in one of Saddam's pool houses next to one of his mansions, which, by the way, I think we should give back to the Iraqi people at this point. He was a tyrant, but he was their tyrant, and he built the mansion with their money and it might help us lose that image that some of them have of us as occupiers if we gave them back their property. But at any rate, when I slept in the Green Zone, we were told, use the bottled water, don't drink the water out of the tap; if you hear a siren, there's a concrete bunker over there; go jump in it because we've had a few mortar rounds coming in. But that was basically all the warning we got. Last week when the fighting was going at a higher level of intensity when the battle of Basra was on and the Green Zone took so many mortar and rocket rounds that we lost two soldiers dead and 17 wounded in the Green Zone, they were telling people then and since then to sleep in your body armor and your helmet. So October, we were not told that. Last week and the week before, they were telling our diplomats and our traveling Members of Congress that. That's not progress; that's back- sliding. And Albert Einstein, I think, was the guy who once defined insanity as trying the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. That's where we're at now. There's a friend of mine who's a sheriff in one of the Upstate counties of New York who is a West Point graduate and a classmate of my brother-in-law, 1969 West Point grad, who told me a couple years back that one of the first things they learned at West Point in officer training class is never send a military force to do a job that is not militarily achievable. And this is to say nothing critical or to overshadow the accomplishments of our forces. Our men and women in uniform have done an extraordinary job and we should all be extremely proud of them. They have been creative. They have been extremely loyal not just to our country but loyal to each other. They have been energetic and committed. They will do anything we ask of them and anything their commanders ask of them. But our responsibility as a civilian government, the kind of government that our Constitution sets up where the civilian government and the President, ultimately, is Commander in Chief, but Congress as well has the right to not only declare war but also to fund Armies. And we need to be careful that we use them responsibly. These are not chattel. Our men and women in uniform are human beings that are stressed out with record rates right now of suicide, divorce, and bankruptcy among veterans that have returned from this war, as well as among veterans of previous conflicts. And I think that it's time for us to reevaluate whether this is really making our Nation more secure and whether it is worth the $12 billion for nation building that we might better use for rebuilding the Nation of the United States.

Mr. HALL of New York. Well, yes. I would just tell you that we are way behind on our infrastructure in this country in terms of keeping it maintained to a level of safety or efficiency just to keep traffic moving. I had a construction worker tell me yesterday that he was working with some of his compatriots on the Tappan Zee Bridge which, as you know, crosses the Hudson River just north of New York and carries the New York State thruway and millions of cars a day commuting to and from the New York metro area. Twelve years ago they were replacing and welding plates to repair potholes and damage that has been done by the salt and acid rain, and pigeon droppings, if you can believe it, are a major cause of corrosion on bridges. And at that time 12 years ago, he and his men that were working on the bridge said if they did not have to drive across it to go to work to feed their families, they would not drive across it because they felt it wasn't safe then. And they told their kids if they could help it, please don't drive across that bridge. 12 years ago. Now we're finally getting down to the point where the thruway authority and the State of New York are looking at building a new Tappan Zee Bridge because the support pilings of the bridge are either being undercut by the tide or eaten by aquatic worms, if you can believe that, or both. There are so many kinds of damage that has happened in a bridge that only had a 30-year life span, and it was built more than 30 years ago, and nothing's been done to get ready to build its successor. As I'm sure you both do, I'm approached in the district every week by town supervisors or mayors or what have you asking for help with a sewage treatment plant, for instance, in the town of New Windsor, New York, that's 60 years old. It's well beyond its design life, and when it breaks down, if there's a heavy storm rain event and it becomes overtaxed with capacity from the storm run-off, you get raw sewage running into the Hudson River, which we've been trying and pretty much succeeding in trying to clean up in terms of sewage. The river is much better. It's actually swimmable, and to some extent, some people eat fish out of it, but I think that disregards the PCBs, which is another issue. But every one of these water treatments for drinking water, sewage treatment for disposing of wastewater, bridges, tunnels, roads, rail, which we are so far behind the rest of the world in, Japan, the European Nations in the EU have a so much more advanced rail system that it actually substitutes for a short hop air travel in this country, what we would consider to be flying from New York to Washington or New York to Boston. They do that by train on a high-speed train that takes virtually the same time or less because it delivers them from inner city to inner city. It eliminates the taxi ride out to the airport and back in from the airport at the other end. It eliminates the taxi ride out to the airport and back in from the airport at the other end. These are all things that cost money. And you know what else? They hire people. They hire construction workers, they hire sheet metal workers, they hire engineers, they hire electrical workers, they hire plumbers. And just as FDR did back when we had the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and the incredible unemployment and deprivation when schools were closed across the country for lack of money to pay teachers, we saw really desperate times in this country which I hope we don't see again. And I hope we move fast enough to try to take the steps, not just to build assets here at home, but at the same time, to put money back into the economy by hiring people to build this infrastructure. That's the first place that I would start. And I think that there's a lot of agreement, when I talk to Members on both sides of the aisle, and certainly when I talk to my constituents, that that's a good use of the money that we're--whether we're borrowing the money or not, and hopefully we will be able to pay as we go, as in this Congress, this House of Representatives, under PAYGO, we've been trying to do it, but wherever we come up with the money, putting it into our own infrastructure here at home is a really good place to jump-start the economy.

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman from Florida. And I am happy to tell you that there is a solution to the problem of what to do with that power while the battery is being developed, it's called ``net metering.'' And most States, New York being one of them, I believe have net metering which enables you to, if you're a homeowner or a business and you put solar panels on your property or on your roof and you don't use all that power, it winds the meter backwards and puts the power back into the grid and uses the grid as a battery. So that's what most people are doing today who have solar panels. In fact, I helped the Action Club at the Arlington High School in Dutchess County, New York recently acquire a grant from the Dyson Foundation of New York, who were very generous and came up with funding for them to put solar panels on the roof of the high school. This is leadership by high school students who went first. And NYSERDA, the New York State Energy and Research Development Authority, I got part of the funding from them, developed a design to produce a certain number of kilowatts from, I think it's 123 kilowatts or so, anyway, it's a substantial amount of power toward what their school uses. And then they came to us. And knowing how the appropriation process here in Congress can take so long and it's not a sure thing--last year our appropriations were finally signed into law by the President in December--I didn't want them to have to wait that long, so I was able to find a private source of funding for them. But the point is that, it not only works, but the school kids know about it and they want their school to be solar. And I told them after they get that installed, they should go get the school bus fleet to use 20 percent biodiesel. I'm burning heating oil in my home in the northeast, where heating oil is a major expense, especially this last winter, the cost rising the way it has has been very harmful to many people, especially those on fixed incomes. And I just called up the local dealer for heating oil and said, do you have a biodiesel blend? And the guy on the other end of the phone said, sure, it's a 20 percent soy/biodiesel blend, and I own the company, I burn it at home myself. It burns cleaner than regular oil. And so I said, send it on over. And for the last two winters now my wife and I have been heating our home with a biodiesel blend. And that's 20 percent less that has to come from Saudi Arabia or some other unstable part of the world where we're funding governments that don't like us, that use that money to buy weapons or to fund madrassas that teach young people who don't have much opportunity in their country, by the way, to advance economically or educationally, they teach them to hate Americans or hate Israelis and to do harm to us. And then, as Tom Friedman likes to write in the New York Times, we have to pay for the other side of the war on terror by sending our troops over there to stabilize these unstable parts of the world. So that's a lose-lose policy, the old policy that we've been stuck on of oil dependency. The win-win-win policy is the one that we're talking about, where we use wind, we use biofuels. I mean, Brazil did this 20 years ago. They decided that they were going to use sugar cane ethanol. And they converted their vehicle fleet in the entire country over so that now when they drill offshore for oil in Brazil, they sell it on the world market and make money off of it, but they don't use it in their own vehicles. I think they're a few steps ahead of us. But we can get there. We're the nation that put a man on the moon. We're the nation that has been able to lead the way in many areas of medicine and technology, and certainly computer and software and Internet technology. This is something we can do. And we, in government, can incentivize it and try to encourage private industry and encourage individuals to do it. And make it patriotic, make people know that it's patriotic to drive the most efficient vehicle you can in the most efficient way that you can. It's patriotic to carpool, it's patriotic to use mass transit when you can, and it's certainly patriotic to let your elected officials know at every level of government, whether it's snowplows in the winter, school buses or UPS fleets or the thruway trucks that drive up and down all the time from Albany to New York, governmental fleets of vehicles, if we can buy hybrids, as West Chester County has done with their bus fleet, they're running not just hybrids, but biodiesel hybrids, they're already pyramiding in West Chester County on the B line, as they call it, the county bus route, they're pyramiding one new technology on top of another. And the next step would be plug-in biodiesel hybrids. But we can do this. The technologies are here and available. And the sooner we start getting on the program and using them, the sooner we will be able to tell some of the countries that we've, unfortunately, been beholden to, whether it's the Saudis to get the oil or whether it's the Chinese to borrow the money to pay for the oil, we will soon be able to tell them, we don't need you quite so badly, and by the way, we'd like to talk to you about human rights and some other things that right now we can't be honest about because, in effect, we've lost our sovereignty because of this dependency. But at any rate, it's a lose-lose-lose policy on one hand and a win- win-win policy on the other, and I want to see us go for the win-win.

Mr. HALL of New York. Quickly I would just add about Iraq two quotes, one from Ambassador Ryan Crocker. When I was over there with our Republican colleagues Tom Cole, Ric Keller, Dave Loebsack of Iowa, the four Members of Congress sat with the Ambassador, and he was asked by one of us, ``What's the state of reconciliation and peace and resolving the conflicts between the tribes and the different religious sects?'' And I was sitting right next to him; so I wrote down his response to be sure I had it right. His response was, ``The Maliki Government is somewhere between challenged and dysfunctional.'' Now, that was October. In March General Petraeus stated on March 13, ``No one feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.'' So it's my contention that not only do the Iraqis need to start paying for their own reconstruction, I think they need to take responsibility for their own security as well because as long as we are putting our men and women in a police role to try to police their civil war and their ethnic and tribal and religious differences, it's just going to let them continue to be dysfunctional. And when we phase out or pull out or whatever you want to call it and get back to the real business that this country faces, the real dangers that we face, which, as you said before, I believe, are Afghanistan and Pakistan certainly more in terms of terrorism, that they will be forced to come to terms with whether they want to be a country or whether they want to be three separate groups of Kurds and Sunnis and Shia or whatever it is. But that's one thing. And the other thing is I am a firm believer that after 5 years and a least $600 billion spent and over $1 trillion in veterans' benefits that we have incurred that we will have to pay out of responsibility and the debt that we owe to the men and women who fought in this conflict that it's time for us to start looking at what those dollars could do at home for the things that we really need to take care of, not just for national security but for economic security, education security, health security, and all the other meanings of the word. So I thank my friends both, and I thank the gentleman from Florida for chairing this session.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, my friend, the colleague who spoke just before me, was mentioning a fictitious tax increase. I want people to know that such a thing does not in fact exist, and I would be curious to see which law it is. In the meanwhile, there is no better day than today, April 15, to talk about the commitment this Congress has made to the American people to ensure that the Tax Code becomes fairer and simpler for middle class families. We must be consistent and make the Tax Code more helpful to families by prioritizing middle class tax relief, including the child tax credit, relief from the marriage penalty, and preserving our lowest tax brackets. We must also commit to making sure our tax dollars are spent wisely. The average family pays over $13,000 in Federal taxes; they deserve to get their money's worth. For that to happen, we must preserve fiscal discipline, as this Congress has done by reinstating the pay-as-you-go rules, PAYGO, meaning we only spend as much money as we have and we do not increase the deficit for our children and grandchildren. And we must prioritize important spending such as health care, education, and our national infrastructure.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Chairman, I am a strong supporter of the rights of landowners. H.R. 2016, the National Landscape Conservation System Act, would not affect any private property. The bill deals only with land that is already owned by the Federal Government. No new lands are taken away from any person or added to Federal lands and there is no impact on how landowners can use their property. Under the guise of protecting landowners, the minority attempted to use the vote on ordering the previous question, roll call number 164, to kill a good, bipartisan bill. I voted to order the previous question because I believe that the House of Representatives should consider and approve H.R. 2016.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Chairman, during rollcall vote No. 168 on H.R. 2016, I mistakenly recorded my vote as ``aye'' when I should have voted ``no.'' Amendment No. 4 Offered by Mr. Bishop of Utah

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank my colleague. Madam Speaker, the last few months has certainly seen severe damage done to our economy and have left many Americans battered. As a parent, I wonder how many other people have had the experience that I have had of watching my daughter when she was in high school getting credit card offers from banks, or when she was in college, with me and my wife paying for her expenses, getting credit card offers from banks, and wondering how many college students or young adults are taking those offers and not realizing the interest rates that come with them? Signs of economic turmoil are multiplying, and I don't think anyone doubts that we are either in or headed for a recession. Some academic economists may quibble over the technical terms, but the bottom line is that our economy is headed in the wrong direction, and for many Americans, tough times are either here or lie ahead. Stock markets around the world have behaved as if they are a roller coaster, alternating huge increases and dramatic declines. Wall Street traders don't seem to know what to make of each contradictory economic indicator. As a musician and songwriter, and now a Member of Congress, I have had hedge fund traders and stock market advisers and financial experts come to me and say, what do you think is going to happen, and that is a sign I think of the confusion and the general uncertainty that we see in the market. While the cost of everyday expenses like food and fuel continue to rise, most people have seen their wages stagnate. People in my district make little more than they did a decade ago, yet their costs continue to rise dramatically. People I represent in the Hudson Valley have been particularly hard hit. Oil has long passed the $100 a barrel mark, making it more expensive than ever for people to heat their homes and drive their cars. In suburban communities in the Northeast, like the area I represent, home heating bills increased more than 30 percent just between last winter and this winter. While personal debt has skyrocketed to a record level, investment for the future has become all but nonexistent. As a result, families struggle to pay their everyday costs, more people have made incalculable personal sacrifices, lost their homes, and went hungry. As necessities become outrageously expensive and more and more employers are moving overseas to take advantage of the cheap labor and complacent regulations in places like India and China, as always, it is the American families who pay the price. Ultimately I believe these troubles are a direct result of President Bush's disastrous economic policies. After years of the President and his enablers in the previous Republican Congress mismanaging the economy, more Americans are looking for work than ever before, the housing crisis has caused millions of Americans to risk losing their homes, and the price of gas has hit an all-time high. Clearly it is up to this Congress to act soon and act decisively. If we do not, it may well take years for the country to recover from the last 7 years. I am proud that this Congress has already begun to take steps to do what we need to do. First we enacted the 2008 Economic Stimulus Package, which provided tax rebates for most Americans to go out and spend, and raised the loan limits for mortgages backed by FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, to make it easier to get a mortgage with better terms. Both of these measures have already begun to help. But I hope none of us are naive enough to think that that alone will be enough. We still have a lot more work to be done, specifically targeting working and middle-class families, the true lifeblood of our Nation's success. Relief for these people will only come from a clear commitment to increasing assistance for unemployment insurance, food stamps, Federal Medical Assistance Percentage payments and Federal housing programs. I am proud of the steps we have taken here in the House, but I know we have much farther to go. As you say, my friend, Congressman Hodes, we need to not only pass these progressive and family oriented middle- class steps in the House, we need to persuade our friends in the Senate to approve them as well and then persuade the President to sign them. I hope together we can do that.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Chairman, I reluctantly voted yesterday against the substitute budget offered by Ms. Lee of California. I express that reluctance because this substitute included a number of individual provisions that I am very proud to support. I strongly applaud the fact that the substitute budget included full funding for vital education programs, including No Child Left Behind. I believe Congress must continue working toward the goal of eliminating unfunded mandates. For too long, President Bush and his Republicans supporters have forced local communities to bear the brunt of the cost of No Child Left Behind's mandates. This has caused undue stress on local government's budgets, and led to an unacceptable increase in local property taxes in the nineteenth district of New York and across the country. I'm also proud to support the commitment this bill has for full, guaranteed funding for veterans' healthcare. The ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a new generation of veterans with new healthcare needs. We must make sure that the VA healthcare system will accommodate this new influx of patients, while continuing to provide high quality care for veterans from previous generations. As a member of the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, I am committed to the fact that the VA must honor the pact we make with our soldiers; if they fight to defend our Nation, our Nation will always make sure they have the care they need. I was also pleased that the substitute budget included additional steps to provide more immediate help to those people struggling to deal with our troubled economy. I was proud to support the bipartisan economic stimulus package when it passed the House earlier this year, and while it was a good start, I believe we need more relief specifically targeted to working and middle class families who are feeling the worst right now. Relief for these people will only come from our commitment to increasing assistance for unemployment insurance, food stamps, Federal Medical Assistance Percentage payments to states, and housing assistance as is contained in the substitute budget. Although I've highlighted these specific provisions, there are a number of other highly commendable parts of this amendment I would have been proud to support. The proposal includes much-needed provisions to crack down on corporate welfare and a commitment to expand health coverage to all Americans, which I wholeheartedly support. It also includes the repeal of the Bush tax cuts, which have helped to put us on the path to fiscal ruin while providing no relief for working families. I strongly support these provisions, and would embrace the opportunity to vote for them. Unfortunately, after years of Republican rule, our Nation finds itself in the midst of a fiscal nightmare, and I believe the only way to restore some semblance of financial discipline is through the admirable budget that chairman Spratt has put together. It is a difficult decision, but one I do not make lightly. I am also concerned that the substitute amendment failed to include much needed reform of the AMT. The AMT unnecessarily burdens over 30,000 families in my district and threatens to dip further into the middle class. Any budget that fails to deal with the AMT fails to deal with one of our most pressing national concerns. The underlying budget resolution, which I did vote for, contains significant funding increases for many of the programs I have discussed. The resolution also balances the budget and provides vital AMT relief for taxpayers. In light of our difficult fiscal situation, I believe that the underlying budget represents a strong step forward, and I believe it was deserving of my support.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, just moments ago, this body voted to pay an appropriate tribute to a dedicated public servant in New York's 19th Congressional District. On April 10, 2007, the Hudson Valley lost one of its most involved leaders when E. Arthur Gray, a former five-term mayor of Port Jervis and New York State Senator, passed away at the age of 82 years old. He left behind a legacy of friendship, involvement and service that earned him a permanent place in the heart of Port Jervis and serves as an example of what it means to work for the betterment of your community. By voting to pass legislation that would redesignate the post office in Port Jervis, New York, as the E. Arthur Gray Post Office Building, the House has acknowledged the contributions of an individual who loved his hometown and who, as a businessman, government official and family man, dedicated a significant portion of his time and energy to its civic life. Simply put, Arthur Gray was a Port Jervis resident to the core: born February 28, 1925, in Port Jervis, a graduate of Port Jervis High School before leaving briefly for college, only to return as president and co-owner of the Gray-Parker Funeral Home in his native Port Jervis. Art Gray's participation in public life extended to government service. He was mayor of Port Jervis from 1978 to 1988. A lifetime resident of Port Jervis, Gray gave his undivided attention to issues, both large and small, and was widely known for his open-door policy. Art Gray remains the longest-serving mayor in the history of Port Jervis. During his tenure he was able to reinvigorate the downtown area and greatly improve the city's economic development plan. Citizens of the local area remember Art as a man who was generous in nature and willing to help those in need. After finishing his service as mayor, Art Gray maintained his commitment to public service by successfully running for a seat in the New York State senate in 1988. He represented the 39th Senatorial District in that capacity until 1990. But E. Arthur Gray's contributions to his city and his country were not limited to business and politics. He served as a lieutenant in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War II. He was also deeply involved in community life, and the list of organizations that count him as a member is astounding. At one time or another, Art Gray was a member of the Port Jervis Community Development Agency, the Orange County Economic Development Agency, the National League of Small Cities Advisory Council, St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church, Bon Secours Community Hospital Advisory Board, Knights of Columbus Council No. 471, Ancient Order of Hibernians in America, Elks Lodge No. 645, BPOE, Port Jervis Lions Club, Tri- States Chamber of Commerce, Port Jervis Country Club, Metaque Falls Hunting Club, Tri-States Rod and Gun Club, the Port Jervis Board of Education, and Port Jervis Planning Board. When you look at that list, you gain a true appreciation for how much time, energy, and dedication Art Gray devoted to betterment of his hometown. However, he devoted just as much, if not more, to his family and friends. He was extremely devoted to his wife, Helen; son, Gerald; daughter, Brigid; and numerous other family members and close friends. He is remembered by those closest to him as enthusiastic, optimistic, supporting, loving, and inspirational. Through it all, E. Arthur Gray's life was deeply interwoven with the fabric of Port Jervis, his home, and it is fitting that the adoption of this bill will help memorialize his service.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, in the last few months, the economy has been battered. Wages have stagnated, and expenses continue to rise. Personal debt is skyrocketing, and investment for the future has become nonexistent. American families are once again paying the price for this difficulty. More and more employers are moving overseas to take advantage of cheap labor and complacent regulations in places like India. Last month, this pernicious trend made its mark on my district when Watson Pharmaceuticals, the second largest employer in Putnam County, New York, announced that they were closing their facility and moving all their jobs to India. The company has praised its workers. The CEO said there was nothing the workers could have done differently or better to save their jobs. But that does them no good. The pull of profits from outsourcing was just too much to ignore for another American manufacturer. There is something very wrong when U.S. companies are only too happy to pick up and move overseas, abandoning their employees and the county and the country that has supported them for years. I hope this Congress acts swiftly to remove incentives for this kind of behavior and that CEOs of these corporations will show some patriotism and loyalty to our communities.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, my colleagues. This is an important step we took today. Simply put, our success in ending our addiction to foreign oil and fossil fuels is going to determine whether or not America will continue to grow and prosper in the 21st century. There is perhaps no other issue that could have as much of a profound effect on our economy as our ability to meet this goal of producing our own energy and new breakthroughs in ways of developing that energy. We have seen the terrible toll that the economic downturn has taken on working families over the past few months. Skyrocketing energy costs have made the burden harder to bear, and, at the same time, wages have stagnated, growth is far from certain, oil is over $100 a barrel, translating into homes in my district that are literally burning up their savings every time they burn oil to heat their home. I would remind those of you who don't know that you can call up your local distributor of heating oil if you, as my wife and I do, burn heating oil to heat your homes, and ask for biodiesel. Ask for a biodiesel blend. You will be surprised at how many distributors have it. We are currently burning in New York State, in my home in Dover Plains, a 20 percent soy-biodiesel blend, and that is that many barrels of oil less that have to come into the country from unstable parts of the world. Failure to take swift aggressive action would simply result in more of the same. I think that the House has taken leadership, which I am proud of, and all of the government can join us in this leadership, toward clean energy technology. The Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Tax Act which we passed today will provide the kind of market incentives and financial support needed to usher in a new era of clean energy technology and innovation that will create jobs here, enhance our security, retrieve our balance of payments deficit, protect our environment and create thousands of green jobs. I just want to point out too that some people might see this, might read this, especially with the connotations that have been attached to the word ``tax ,'' and think that this is something that it is not. Actually what this bill did was to take back a tax giveaway that was given by a previous Congress to the oil companies who are reporting, even week-to-week now we seem to hear about new record profits being set by companies which are breaking their own record from only a couple of years ago. And it is hard to juxtapose that and to balance that in my mind with the increased poverty rate, with the increased amount of personal indebtedness and national indebtedness and the balance of trade deficit that is being fed and exaggerated by our addiction to oil. I would prefer that we go in the direction of the bill we passed today, which will support new technologies to power our homes, business economies and vehicles, and the vital tax incentives to spur renewable energy generation, the production of biofuels of all kinds, innovative technologies like plug-in hybrid cars. I am driving an American made, union-made, Detroit hybrid four-by- four, which I hope soon I will be able to convert into a plug-in hybrid. In fact, there is a company in Massachusetts that is already making a plug-in conversion kit to double the gas mileage of a car like mine, or a Prius or any hybrid. So we can help push these things forward. In my district, the 19th District of New York, we have had meetings all around the five counties I represent about renewable energy. We have a solar forum and wind forum and a geothermal forum. And one of the most popular things, the thing that got adults on their feet, was the students' presentation from Newburgh Free Academy, Newburgh, New York, of the solar racing team. They had a beta vehicle that ran on solar energy. It was a little bit larger than this oval table sitting here. It looked sort of like a flying saucer. It had a seat that a student could crouch in and just barely get behind the steering wheel. It is covered entirely with solar panels and has batteries to store the energy in it. And it won, or tied for first place, in a race from Houston, Texas, to Newburgh, New York, 2,000 miles on the highway in a car powered by solar power and electricity generated therefrom, and built by the BOCES vocational track high school students who know how to put together machinery and weld and so on, and working with the advanced placement math and science kids, who know how to calculate how many square inches of solar panels you need to produce the sufficient amount of electricity. It was the kids who got the adults excited. I ran into constituents of mine who were leaving there saying, why don't the big auto companies do this with the resources they have? Why can't government incentivize this sort of thing with the resources that government has? I am happy to say that we are taking a big step in that direction today, and I encourage our colleagues in the Senate to follow suit and to join us. Just this weekend on the front page of the New York Times, a major story about a wind boom in Texas, which is now the leading State for installed wind technology. None other than T. Boone Pickens, the oil tycoon, was quoted, if I could paraphrase him saying he is as excited now about wind power as he ever was about any oil field he ever discovered. That warms my heart to hear a guy like Mr. Pickens recognizing the financial value, which also translates into the jobs value and the boost to our economy that can come from wind and solar and geothermal and low-head hydroelectric power and all the other biofuels and all the other things that we are trying to incentivize and give tax credits for in this legislation. I am just thrilled to be here to talk with my colleagues about it and to be here today to vote on it, because I see it as moving from the lose-lose-lose energy policy of the past or, unfortunately, still the present, where we send billions of dollars a day to the oil potentates in the Middle East which, either by weaponry, some of that money goes to fund radical schools which result in young, mostly men but some women in those parts of the world being taught, among other things, to attack U.S. interests or Israeli interests or to be seen as, you know, as fighting against America. Then for the privilege of doing that, and also funding, as Tom Friedman likes to write in his columns, we pay for our troops to try to go and defend our interest, and at the same time we get to borrow the money from the Chinese for the whole endeavor, because we don't have it. So for all of this trouble and all of this expense of this lose- lose-lose policy, we also have asthma and emphysema epidemics in our inner cities, acid rain, oil spills, et cetera. The win-win-win policy would put us back in control of our own foreign policy, put us back in control of our own economic policy, would make us, once again, leaders in the technologies that we should have been leading in all along, like hybrid technology or wind and thin film flexible solar technology and so on. I am glad to see us moving toward the win-win-win.

Mr. HALL of New York. I am always ready to talk, my friend. I was thinking, as you were speaking, about how institutions starting with the United States Government and State and county and local governments can all do their part, and we have done our part by voting today for this legislation, by voting, actually, earlier in this session, last year, in the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, we voted out legislation to put solar panels on the south-facing wall on the Department of Energy building, which would be a symbolic step forward, as well as a practical one, because the south-facing wall was designed in the 1970s when the Department of Energy was first created to be at the proper angle for photovoltaic cells to generate the best and most power from the sun. It is that kind of investment that government can make. It is that kind of investment that States can make. I met today for probably the third time with representatives of New York State's Energy Research and Development Authority about ideas like putting infrastructure on the New York State thruway service stations, the whole route that goes from Buffalo across to Albany and down to New York City of interstate highways, which would include biofuels and which would include at least a blend of biodiesel, and hopefully some E85. We have hundreds of thousands of vehicles, at least, of vehicles that have been sold as flex-fuel vehicles to American citizens by TV commercials saying you are doing something green when you buy them. But in New York State, the 19th Congressional District of New York State that I represent, we got a call in our district office from a lady saying, ``I just bought a flex-fuel vehicle. Where can I get some fuel?'' And our staffer had to say there is one pump in Albany and another one in Westchester somewhere. Congressman Markey told me that in Massachusetts, he said there is one pump for the whole State for E85 and 140,000 flex-fuel vehicles on the roads. So we have to start pulling the string through the tube, the string of demand through the tube, and make sure there is more supply created by creating the demand. I would hope that the Arlington High School Action Club which I just met with last week, which is in the middle of a project right now of putting solar panels on the roof of their school, a new wing of their school, and I suggested to them that their next project, after they do their solar panels, they should switch their school bus fleet for that school district to biodiesel or to a biodiesel blend. It is made to order for school bus fleets, for post office trucks, for town and county highway trucks, any entity of government or private enterprise like FedEx or UPS, or trucking companies that use a lot of diesel fuel, can just as well burn. If I can burn 20 percent biodiesel at home, they can burn it in their diesel trucks. Some of my musician friends, Willie Nelson and Bonnie Raitt, have been driving for years tour buses and trucks all over this country on biodiesel. It definitely can be done, and I think each of us as Americans should look at this as an opportunity to lead and to do our part to push this revolution forward and to push this new policy into being. Government can't do everything. It certainly can't do everything all at the same time. But together, businesses, government, and individuals can make the decisions on a day-to-day basis to vote with our dollars for those new forms of energy, where available, whether it is by flipping our electric bill over and voting for wind. In New York State, we are allowed to do that. We are allowed to choose whether it is wind or hydro or whatever form of electrical generation we choose, whether it is by asking for biofuels whenever we can get them, by driving the most fuel-efficient car, in the most fuel-efficient way, I might add. At any rate, there is nowhere to go but up. And in the process, we will regain our sovereignty and somewhere down the road we will not have to worry about speaking honestly to Saudis or other nondemocratic governments about human rights, just as we won't have to worry about speaking honestly to the Chinese about lead-tainted toys because we are afraid we won't get the oil from one or get the debt floated by the other. So it is getting ourselves back on our feet economically and diplomatically and energywise.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I am honored to be able to stand here today and thank the Reverend Dr. Adolphus C. Lacey for leading the House of Representatives in prayer today. I am hopeful that his presence and prayer here today will help us in the House to display the same leadership and sense of community that he exhibits every day in the Hudson Valley. Rev. Lacey came to Mount Olivet Baptist Church in Peekskill, New York, in 2005 to serve as its 14th pastor and has been a leader in the community ever since. He is also president of the Peekskill/Cortlandt area Pastors Association and has been a strong voice in the public sphere for the values that are guided by his faith. In addition to serving as a religious and community leader, Rev. Lacey is also a family man. He is the husband of Cheryl Mathews Lacey and the father of Cameryn Alexandra and Adolphus Matthew. I have had the honor of addressing his congregation and been able to see his leadership where his counsel is often sought. I thank him again for leading us in prayer today.