John Hall

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. I have consistently supported modernizing the existing FISA law to give our Government the tools it needs to identify and defeat terrorists in today's high-tech world, while at the same time preserving the freedoms and rights that define America. I have voted three times to pass legislation that would strengthen and modernize FISA and reaffirm the rule of law. Despite some improvements over previous attempts to update FISA, the bill considered by the House today regrettably falls short of achieving that critical balance. The rule of law lies at the core of America's founding principles, and the language in this bill was too weak to ensue that any breach of our laws that may have occurred under the warrantless wiretapping program will be fully addressed. It is not appropriate to deny Americans the right to pursue these matters in court, or to short-circuit the judicial review that lies at the heart of our system of checks and balances, which is the bedrock of our Constitution. Accordingly, I voted against this bill.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, today, this body once again considered legislation to provide funding for the ongoing military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the final analysis, this was one funding bill for two very distinct conflicts. In Afghanistan, the men and women of our military continue to perform an important mission by taking action against our enemies in the country that served as host to the Al Qaeda organization that attacked the United States of America on September 11th, 2001. The importance of the work they are doing with complete skill, courage, and professionalism has only been underscored by the recent resurgence of Taliban activity, which must be quelled. I am fully supportive of them and their mission. I have voted to provide funding solely for our military activities in Afghanistan, and would do so again if such a bill were to come before the House. However the funding measure before us today also included funding for the war in Iraq without accompanying conditions on those funds or a timeline for withdrawal of American forces. I remain opposed to the President's mistaken war in Iraq, which has now claimed over 4,000 American lives, undermined our military and ability to respond to other threats abroad, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used to meet pressing needs at home. The men and women in uniform serving in Iraq have performed brilliantly and heroically. It is time for the Iraqi government to take responsibility for Iraq and for America to start bringing our troops home. I cannot support the appropriation of additional funds without timelines that would begin to wind down our military involvement in Iraq, and therefore could not vote for that portion of the funding legislation considered by the House tonight. However, I am pleased that I was able to vote for a separate piece of legislation tonight that addresses several important priorities here at home. Specifically, I am pleased that we were able to consider legislation to expand veterans educational benefits in order to honor the service of our men and women in uniform and give them every opportunity to succeed in life after they have served. Also included in this bill was a desperately needed extension of unemployment benefits that will help struggling middle class families weather the current economic storm. In addition, the piece of legislation that I was able to vote for this evening included a moratorium on six of the seven Medicaid regulations the Bush administration has unwisely decided to implement recently, I would have greatly preferred if the legislation prevented all seven regulations from coming into effect. Outpatient Graduate Medical Education is a vital component of medical education, and by disallowing Medicaid funding for it, this regulation will cost New York State as much as $300 million per year. On multiple occasions, both the House and Senate have passed a moratorium on all seven of these regulations overwhelmingly. I don't understand why we have decided to allow these unwise cuts to graduate medical education to continue now, when the votes exist to prevent it. However, I will continue to push for this final moratorium to be implemented and for this unwise rule to be overturned.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Well, I have a couple of comments. One is there is a bill that will be, I believe it's already been introduced, but we are going to be talking about more tomorrow called the Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008 introduced by Representatives Rahall, Markey, Hinchey, Emanuel and Yarmuth, among others, I am cosponsor as well, as are you, I believe.

Mr. HALL of New York. What this will do, it's called, the slang version is the ``Use It or Lose It Act,'' which would compel oil and gas companies to either produce on those 9,700 leases that they have and those 68 million acres of land that they have already leased, either produce or give up those leases that they are stockpiling, and it would do this by barring the companies from obtaining any more leases unless they can demonstrate that they are producing oil and gas or diligently developing the leases they already hold during the initial term of those leases. The bill directs the Secretary of the Interior to define what constitutes diligent development. By the way, the backdrop for this, the sort of origin for it, is that back a while in history, coal went through the same kind of speculation, where Federal coal resources were being abused, potential coal exploration areas were being leased by the coal companies, and speculation was driving the price up before that coal was actually developed. Some people think that, and this is people in the financial markets as well as the energy markets believe that a significant portion, maybe as much as 25 percent in the increase in the cost of gasoline is actually speculation, people saying, well, that's a good place to put my money. I guess the stock market is kind of uncertain, and real estate has taken a hit lately. Of course, I am not sure which commodities to invest in, but, oil, that looks like it's always going up. No matter what happens, I think I will put my money into oil. Of course, the more people that do buy oil futures, the more the price of oil goes up on the world market, and the more we wind up paying at the pump. Companies which lease Federal coal resources are, already by law, required to diligently develop those leases. That's the result of this speculation in the past. The requirement has discouraged the rampant speculation that once did exist in the Federal coal leasing program. This same type of speculation now appears to be plaguing the oil and gas leasing program. So under the Use It or Lose It bill, the Responsible Federal Oil and Gas Lease Act of 2008, oil and gas companies would have to either produce on those leases or give them up. I think that this is in the national interest, I think it's fair, because certainly the application for lease of a particular plot, whether it be onshore or offshore for production of oil or natural gas, implies that that company was intending to develop that resource. And the Department of the Interior has I believe the right and the duty to make sure that our country's natural resources are used for the best and higher good of the people of this country. Not the CEOs or the stockholders of those corporation, but every American citizen, every person in the United States whose future depends on this economy and on the energy choices we make. That's all I wanted to say, but I wanted to ask my friend from New Hampshire, since you have that lovely chart next to you, I wonder if you can comment on the Republican leadership's voting record on legislation that pertains to gas prices.

Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, Mr. Hodes. Good evening. It is a pleasure to be here again. I want to just agree with one thing that our previous speaker from the other side of the aisle, Mr. King, had to say regarding biofuels. I think that there are ways in which various biofuels, including corn, but especially cellulosic biofuels and nonfood crops can and should be used to extend the liquid fuels capacity of this country. But the main reason that I'm here tonight is because I've heard in the last several days a nonstop drum beat, a chorus singing from the same choir book and the same hymn book at every committee meeting I have been at, at every press conference I have heard, at every chance I see a Republican representative on television blaming the Democrats for the high price of gasoline and claiming, erroneously, that Democrats have been stopping drilling, that Democrats are opposed to drilling, and therefore we're responsible for the price of gas. This is not only false but ridiculous on the face of it. And I challenge it as a falsehood. Specifically, I would say that over the last 8 years, the number of drilling permits issued by the government has gone up by 361 percent. So the lands are open. The oil companies own 9,700 plus leases that they have bid on and received the leases for. And as you say, Mr. Hodes, they have got done the environmental permitting on, the permits have been issued, and the way is clear for drills to go into the ground or into the offshore adjacent waters of the lower 48. But for some reason, no drilling is occurring. Now I'm curious as to why exactly that is, if really the oil companies want to drill. And I would remind you, by the way, that our President George W. Bush said, when oil was going for $50 a barrel, that that was all the incentive the oil companies need. They don't need any more tax breaks or incentives. Fifty dollars a barrel is enough incentive to make them drill anywhere. As this chart will show you, the total Federal acres leased and in production in 2007 were 91.5 million acres leased but producing only 23.7 million acres. There is a huge discrepancy between land that has been leased by the oil companies and that which they are using to actually drill and produce oil. Why is this? Could it be perhaps that they expect that speculators and market forces may drive the prices up further, not to mention their restricting supply might drive them up further, and that if they hold off for a couple more years, that same land and that same oil might be more valuable? And actually when you're making profits such as the gentleman from New Hampshire just talked about, I mean, how much money can you deal with? How many profits can you possibly figure out what to do with and where to invest in? And maybe it's better leaving them in the ground. If I'm an oil company, I'm not necessarily thinking in the national interest. I'm thinking in the interests of my shareholders for the next quarter, for the next year, for the next shareholders' meeting, and for my next bonus if I'm the CEO. We had the CEOs of the top five oil companies testifying in this House before the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. And when they were asked, ``Now that you have made the record profits of any corporation in the history of the world, would you commit to investing in one biofuels pump at every station that you own?'' And they said ``no.'' And when they were asked, ``If you would commit to advertising now that you have made the biggest profits in the history of the world for 3 years in a row, would you invest in advertising to tell people to conserve more and that it's patriotic to conserve and to drive a more fuel-efficient car and so on?'' And they said, ``Oh, we're already doing that.'' Which I frankly haven't seen. I watch enough television. I think I would have noticed if they were doing that. And my friend, Mr. Walden, a minority member, a Republican member of the Select Committee from Oregon said, ``I'm a capitalist.'' I'm paraphrasing him now. I don't remember the exact quote. ``I'm a capitalist. I'm a small businessman myself. And if I made record profits for several years in a row, profits that I hadn't even dreamed of, I would start to think about whether I could lower my price to my customer. Have you at the oil companies thought about lowering the prices to the consumers?'' And one by one all five of them said, ``Well, we don't set the prices.'' And there was a chuckle through the room. But I think there are various factors setting the prices. And one of them is collusion between the oil companies, which is why I have called for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on exactly that fact, the fact that when crude oil goes up on the world market, the gas and diesel price spikes immediately with it. They go up simultaneously. But when crude prices go down, gasoline prices still go up. And if they come down at all, they come done slowly. It's kind of like rockets and feathers. The price goes up like a rocket, and it comes down like a feather very slowly. So I'm suspicious about a couple of things, one, the disconnect between crude and refined gasoline when they're coming down. They're connected when going up. They are not connected when coming down. Secondly, why so much leased acreage that is not being drilled on? And thirdly, why at this time when the prices are at a record, when America's families are being squeezed and hurt, and their budgets are being hurt, they're being forced to choose between food, medicine or gasoline, some people have given up their jobs because they can't afford to commute to those jobs, why at these times are these oil companies and our friends on the other side of the aisle choosing to put the pressure on and say drill in ANWR and drill in these environmentally sensitive areas? By the way, two of the individuals who have been stopping offshore drilling, I haven't personally stopped any myself, but two of the people who have are the President's brother, Jeb Bush, who is the Republican Governor of Florida who is opposed to drilling off the coast of Florida, and Governor Schwarzenegger of California, a Republican Governor who has been opposed to further drilling off the coast of California. So you can't just say this is a Democratic opposition even if we were opposing it. But the fact is that we have seen an increase, a radical increase in leases that are made available, in leases that the oil companies bid for apparently believing there is something of value underground, 9,700 separate leases and 68 million acres of land currently available and not being used. And I suggest that our friends in the minority might think of another reason, or perhaps another policy, that would help us get out of the box we're in. We have worked very hard in this Congress to try to develop new sources, to provide incentives and tax breaks and subsidies for renewable energies like solar, wind and geothermal and various kinds of biofuels. For the first time, we made a major investment of, I believe it was $6 billion or so in carbon sequestration so we can use the record amounts of coal that we have and still precipitate out the carbon so we don't release that carbon dioxide that causes the global warming. And, by the way, I would say in sympathy to the folks from Mr. King's State and to the parents of the five Boy Scouts who were killed by a tornado there, and in sympathy to the folks in Cedar Rapids who are just now starting to pump out their basements and put their city back together, it used to be called the city ``that would never flood,'' by the way, that was under 12 feet of water from its most recent flood, in sympathy to the poor citizens of Myanmar who were struck by the cyclone a couple of weeks ago that was as strong as Hurricane Katrina but came to shore with no warning and no FEMA, and not even Brownie to save them, and in sympathy to the people in Georgia and in Florida with record droughts, and in sympathy to people of the Rocky Mountain States and the Western States with record fire seasons, and in sympathy to folks in the 19th District of New York, which I represent which has had three 50-year floods in the last 5 years, I would say in sympathy to all those folks and to protect them, that global warming is here, it is starting to change the climate. These extreme weather patterns fit the computer models of global warming. And if we want to pump and drill more oil and burn more fossil fuels, fine. But that had better not be our only solution, or we will see more tornadoes, more floods, more extreme weather catastrophic events and more global warming. And I think that is not what the American people want. What we want are fair gas prices, fair energy prices and a green, renewable, sustainable energy future. I yield back to my friend from New Hampshire.

Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, Mr. Hodes. As you were speaking, I was thinking about some of the things that we can do. Westchester County, one of the counties that I have the honor to represent, has a loop of county bus service which has switched from diesel buses to biodiesel buses to hybrid biodiesel buses. We have John Jay High School, at which I just spoke a couple of days ago, where the environmental club has a grease mobile, a diesel car they've converted to run on biodiesel that they made from cooking oil from restaurants in the area. The Newburgh Free Academy, a public school in Orange County, New York, one of the counties I'm honored to represent, has a solar racing club that built a solar car which tied for first place in a race between Houston, Texas and Newburgh, New York. They were built without the faculty advisors' even touching the vehicle. The adults were not allowed to touch the vehicle. The kids had to build it by themselves. These students knew how to weld and fasten the car together and how to build it sturdily enough and how to make sure that the wheels rotated so that they didn't wobble and so on. The advanced placement math and science students knew how to calculate how many square inches of photovoltaic cells it took to power a certain number of batteries to drive the wheels. They drove that car from Houston for 2,000 miles to Newburgh, New York, and tied for first place in a race that was sponsored by a corporation that put the money up for the entire educational and research experiment. When we did a presentation in our district on this, the students came in, wearing their solar racing club hats and their solar racing club T- shirts, and they showed the video of their car rolling down the highway with nothing but solar power powering it. By the way, this was a standing-room-only crowd who came to see this at the Bedford Town Hall in New York. Afterwards, the adults came up to me as we were leaving, and they were saying, if these kids can do this on a shoestring, with no budget to speak of, where is Detroit? Why can't GM and Ford and Chrysler, our automakers, do this? I would say that they can and that they should have been, but they're only now starting to. In fact, as to the Chevy Volt, as advertised on their Web site--it will be out, I believe, next year--they're planning this car to be a plug-in hybrid which will have a small internal combustion engine, but it will not be connected to the drive chain. The gas engine will only be used to drive a generator to keep the Lithium- ion batteries fully powered. When you drive this car, they say, on a 100-mile commute or less, it will run as an electric vehicle and will not use any gasoline. When you run it on an intercity trip of hundreds of miles, it will average 150 miles per gallon. That's supposed to be available next year. I was at an event last week, and I talked to somebody from Toyota. They said, oh, that's nothing. In a couple of years, we're bringing out a car that's going to get 500 miles to the gallon. Now, my feeling is that, when I was growing up and when we were in the middle of the space race and when President John Kennedy had challenged us that we would get to the Moon in 10 years, in our country, we were used to the position of leadership, and we thought, certainly, the United States has the ingenuity and the creativity and the expertise and the intelligence to be able to devise solutions for all of these problems. I still think we can, and I think we need to, and I think that the solution here is not to drill, drill, drill, and to open up more environmentally sensitive areas to be destroyed. By the way, it was interesting to me that the polar bear was just put on the threatened list by the Secretary of the Interior. Then just this week, with a rulemaking process that doesn't have to go before us here in Congress, Secretary Kempthorne issued a rule indemnifying the top seven oil companies against any legal action should they kill polar bears in their exploration for oil. So it's kind of a curious environmental consciousness that this administration seems to have where they give lip service to it on one hand, but on the other hand, they want to protect their friends in the oil companies from any risk at all at the same time that they open them up to all profit imaginable. Just turning to this chart, natural gas is, of course, another one of the things we hear about, the oil and gas for which we bad Democrats are not allowing them to drill. Currently, how much natural gas is open to leasing? 82 percent. Closed to leasing is this small piece of the pie chart. This came from the Minerals Management Service in 2006. Technically, of the recoverable reserves of natural gas, 82 percent of them are open to leasing. This corresponds with the figures that we've been talking about in terms of oil that is open to leasing and that, in fact, has been leased and that is not currently being used. I would contrast that with the inventiveness of Listening Rock Farm in my district, which is in the town of Amenia, New York. It's, actually, just barely north of my district. It's a renewable tree farm that's making biodiesel from wood waste and is running all their farm vehicles--their tractors and other vehicles and their road vehicles--on biodiesel made from wood waste, which is wood chips, sawdust, leaves, anything that doesn't go into the furniture that they make. I would contrast it with Taylor Biomass, which is a company in Orange County that is a private corporation but that takes municipal solid waste currently from the Town of Montgomery on a pilot project. They separate out the batteries and the solvents and the Raid and the insecticides and other bad things that you don't want to go into the groundwater or up into the air, and those things get taken away and are dealt with in a responsible way. What is left is gasified and burned to spin a turbine and to put kilowatts out into the grid and, at the same time, to produce ethanol. These are creative solutions to our energy problems that, I think, must be explored. One thing I would share with our friend Mr. King is that we need to look at a wide variety of different kinds of energy around different parts of the country but, in particular, in the northeast where we have a hilly topography. There are many opportunities for small, low-head, hydroelectric power. In New York alone, the Department of Energy's Web site--the Idaho National Laboratory page--lists 4,000-some, low-head hydro sites, meaning small dams and small waterfalls, where, according to them, no lefty, environmental, tree-hugging organization--this is our DOE that we're talking about now--says that if we just put turbines where the water is already falling at these 4,000-some sites of low- head hydro potential that we could generate greater than 1,200 megawatts of power. That's about 60 percent of the output, the full output of the two Indian Point nuclear plants in my district. That's just for contrast. Lastly, I would say that I'm interested that Texas recently passed the State of California as the State with the largest installed wind- power capacity. They have now become the leading wind generation State in the country. The reason, in part, is that Governor George W. Bush, when he was Governor of Texas, signed a renewable energy standard requiring that 10 percent of all electricity in Texas be generated by renewable sources of power. Of course, once the industry knew that that was there, that was a requirement they had to meet, they more than met it, they exceeded it. They had passed California and became the top wind-power electric producer that T. Boone Pickens, one of the original oil tycoons in this country, was quoted recently as saying that he is more excited today about wind power than he ever was about any oil field he ever discovered. The odd part of this picture is that now that George W. Bush is President of the United States, he threatened to veto our energy bill last year if it included a renewable energy standard in it. What was good for Texas, for some reason when he was President, wasn't good for the whole country. Now, I wish that he would revisit that or explain it to us, but I believe that the same thing that was good for Texas would be good for the whole country. It doesn't have to be wind everywhere. It just has to be renewable. Some places will be wind, some places might be low- head hydro, some places might be biofuels, some places might be tidal power or wave power, but all of these things are available. There are test programs and pilot programs that show they are effective. The sooner we start using them, the sooner we can get off this dependence on foreign oil and start to put our economy back to work and create new jobs and the new businesses, new technologies, here at home. I yield back to my friend.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, over the weekend, gas reached the $4 national average for the first time in our Nation's history. The majority in Congress has worked to combat these prices by advancing new energy solutions and efforts to protect consumers. The standard refrain from the oil companies and their allies is, ``We need to drill for more oil here at home.'' I would ask them, ``Who is stopping you?'' The oil company myth is that we need to open up the Arctic refuge and give the oil company a free hand to go wherever and whenever they want to chase oil. The reality, however, is that about 75 percent of the oil in the United States is on land that is already open for production, but less than one-third of that land is actually being used by the oil companies. They are literally sitting on 10,000 permits and millions of acres of leased land that would let them start pulling more oil out of the ground here at home. So I say to the oil company advocates, start drilling for more domestic supply. Start drilling on the lands that are already open, and stop posturing while American drivers are in pain at the pump.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 391 and 392, I did not receive a page. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' and ``yea.''

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman from New York. In the Hudson Valley, in my district, gas prices have reached crisis levels where commuting is a daily part of life and small businesses need to move their products. The record-setting spikes in gas prices have been a drain on family budgets and our entire economy. There is, unfortunately, no silver bullet solution to our gas and oil challenge, but I am proud that Congress has taken aggressive action to provide desperately needed relief. We have passed a once in a generation increase in fuel economy standards, pushed for more development of cellulosic biofuels, and continue to advance legislation that would provide tax incentives for people to purchase fuel incentive vehicles and help us break the grip of OPEC on our economy. The need for relief is real and urgent, and we have also taken steps to provide near-term assistance. The House has passed a bill to beef up the Department of Justice's ability to pursue antitrust action in the oil sector, and we have also passed legislation that requires the President to stop taking oil off the market to put in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, so that more supply is available on the market to lower prices. That was 70,000 barrels of oil a day that was being taken off the market that we passed in a bipartisan way. I am sure my friends across the aisle remember voting with us on that bill. When market relief does arrive, however, we need to make sure that the individual American driver benefits, not just the oil companies. There is the old proverbial question about whether a tree falling in the woods with no one to hear it actually makes a sound. I don't know about that, but I do know a drop in oil prices that doesn't cut prices at the pump is the same as no price drop at all. Unfortunately, that is what we have been seeing. Over the past week, the price of crude oil has actually dropped by several dollars per barrel, offering the hope that the edge would be taken off the record high gas prices we have been facing. One look at the local price figures at your gas station is enough to know it has not happened. On April 1, the price of crude oil was just over $100 per barrel and kept soaring, reaching $135 per barrel during trading on May 22. Over the same period of time, the national average price of gasoline rose from just under $3.29 to just over $3.83 a gallon. In New York, prices increased by over 60 cents from just over $3.40 to almost $4.02 a gallon. Despite the fact that as of 2 days ago crude prices had dropped below $123 a barrel, retail gasoline prices are still at record levels. Nationwide, the average price of regular gasoline stayed at $3.98, and in New York the average price remained at the astronomical level of $4.17 per gallon. These represent increases of about 15 cents per gallon at the pump during the same period in which crude oil prices were declining.

Mr. HALL of New York. Apparently, the old adage that what goes up must come down does not apply for the oil companies. That is a cause of great concern, and I have asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to investigate this disconnection between the price of oil on the world market and the price of refined product at the pump. Drivers are expected to share, in fact are forced to share, in the pain of oil and gas increases immediately, and they should have the expectation that they will also share in the relief just as quickly when the world oil price comes down. In a market this complex, it is imperative for the government to be an active protector of consumer rights and take swift measures to ensure that conditions are not exploited to the detriment of working families. By doing so, I believe we can make sure that any drop in crude prices will also mean real relief at the pump.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman, Mr. Lampson, and Mr. Speaker, it's an honor again to be here on the floor of the House of Representatives, but it's kind of another sad moment to think that the price of oil went to an unthinkable level again today, cresting over $129 per barrel. Gas prices have more than doubled since 2001, and today, the average gas price in my State of New York is over $4. Oil dependence has become an untenable burden on our economy and a threat to our national security. Skyrocketing gas prices we see climbing each day threaten to break family budgets that are already being devoured by the price of food, health care, higher education and consumer goods. Breaking the grip of OPEC and Big Oil is something that our country must do to thrive and to survive in the 21st century. It's a big job that will take some time, and I'm proud to be here tonight to discuss one of the innovative solutions that the majority and this Congress is working on, the Invest in Energy Independence Act, which I'm proud to be a cosponsor of, and I thank my friend for cosponsoring and offering that bill. I was talking to another Member at the back of the body when we were taking votes I think a few days ago and talking about this very thing. And you came up and said I happen to have a bill that addresses this problem of the Strategic Reserve absorbing 70,000 barrels a day over and over, day after day, taking them off the market, and creating that much more demand which is helping to drive up the price of oil. This bill creates a win-win scenario for the American taxpayer. By redirecting through the release of oil from the SPR and restructuring its stockpile, the bill would help to put oil supply on the market to quell prices at the pump in the short-term, and this would also result in revenue to the Federal Government that does not come from increased taxes, which could be used to capitalize a fiscally responsible result and make sure that we take a more permanent action to end our oil addiction. We can't, as many of us have said, drill our way out of our problems. The bill would invest that revenue in innovative research to develop clean, domestic sources of energy to power our economy. Ending our dependence on foreign oil has to be a top national priority, and to do so, we have to use every tool at our disposal. Until recently, this administration has been violating the fundamental principle of buy low and sell high by taking oil off the market to fill the SPR at a time when prices were breaking new records and supplies were tight. Smart management of the SPR along the lines called for in Mr. Lampson's bill can make the reserve a powerful weapon in our battle against foreign oil dependence, and I strongly support you in this measure.

Mr. HALL of New York. If the gentleman would yield?

Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you for asking that question. If you read the comments by T. Boone Pickens on the front page of the New York Times and other newspapers and magazines recently, he, one of the original oil tycoons and more successful ones, has said that he's more excited now about wind power than he is about any oil field he ever discovered. Now, all people might not share his excitement. I talked to Ted Turner, who's been a media mogul and then head of record companies, broadcasting companies, Time Warner/AOL, I believe. I remember him back when he was sailing America's Cup yachts. He's certainly been around the world for a while. But today he said the thing he's most excited about as an investor and as a businessman is solar power. And I see these men and women who have experience and have been observing commodities and observing economies and observing the way the world works and the direction it's going looking not just at drilling. I mean, obviously we're not going to get out of our dependence or our use of oil or liquid fuels anytime soon, especially for aviation. As a member of the Aviation Subcommittee, I'm keenly aware of the fact that we might be able to move to electric vehicles, to hybrid, gas-electric or ethanol-electric or biodiesel hybrid, plug-in hybrid vehicles, et cetera, and combine these other technologies on the ground. But when we're talking about aircraft, especially I would say our Air Force, our military aircraft, we need to be able to develop and conserve liquid fuels and liquid petroleum fuels for those purposes and not burn them unnecessarily on the ground that we could use other technologies for. So I would say that I agree to a point and I disagree to another point. The other problem with petroleum-based, carbon-based, fossil fuel technologies is that they're also emitting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and accentuating the kind of climate change that we've seen. I would say climate change resonates more with people than global warming, especially on a day like today in Washington where it's cool for late May. But we've seen the cyclone in Myanmar. We've seen the almost biblical flooding in Arkansas and Missouri and parts of our Midwest. My district in upstate New York has seen three 50-year floods in the last 5 years. We've seen Hurricane Katrina. We have seen droughts in the South and wildfires in Florida right now. We've seen the last couple of summers devastating fire seasons in the Western States and the Rocky States. So, it's not just that the climate will be getting warmer and the glaciers or sea ice in the Arctic are disappearing but that the extremes of all kinds of weather, be they rain events or drought events, be they hot spells or cold spells, be they low pressure systems that turn into bigger tornados or bigger hurricanes or cyclones, that's what the computer models project. And the more we burn oil, the more we push ourselves down that road. So, it helps us in a number of ways to look at these alternatives. First of all, for domestic, they are not sending our money overseas by the billions, especially borrowed money that we are getting from countries like China or Japan or other countries we're already hugely in debt to. They don't cause asthma and emphysema and acid rain and oil spills. They don't cause us to possibly be drawn into wars in unstable countries in unstable parts of the world that just happen to have oil. So it's a win-win-win-win situation. Whether or not you believe that the climate is changing, the fact of the matter is if you can create jobs and create new technologies and new industries here in the United States, get us out of our balance of trade deficit and make the atmosphere cleaner at the same time, I'm happy. And I think a lot of Americans would be happy, too. I think it solves so many problems that it's clearly the direction our policy should be moving in. And I yield back.

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the gentleman for yielding. In New York, in my district, as you suggest, there are a number of very exciting developments going on. We have a private business in Orange County, New York, which is currently taking all the solid waste on a pilot program, municipal solid waste--garbage, trash--not burning it, as the old incineration model would have us do, but separating it, pulling out the recyclables, pulling out the batteries and the cans of insecticide and the toxic substances that might be considered to be household hazardous waste, which, if you were to burn them, they would cause dioxin and heavy metals to go up the stack, and basically pollutants that can harm us and our children. Those things get pulled out and recycled. And what's left after the magnetic field pulls up the ferrous metals and magnetic metals and the shaker grate drops out the dirt and the stones, and so on, you're left with a combination of paper waste, wood waste, food waste, agriculture waste, all of which is gasified with hot sand as a catalyst under a patented process. And then that gas is used to spin a turbine and send, I believe, a couple of megawatts it is that they're generating out into the grid. But the interesting thing about it is that the global warming gas emissions, the greenhouse gas emissions from this process are 75 percent less than if they put the same material in a landfill, which is what the town of Montgomery was doing before and what cities like New York City are doing. They're trucking municipal solid wastes, since the Fresh Kills landfill closed on Staten Island, to other States and buying space in landfills that are willing to accept it. And it's not cheap, especially with diesel and the price that it costs now, it's not cheap to send a roll-off truck with trash in it--or thousands of them a day--from a city like New York out to Ohio or Pennsylvania or wherever the latest landfill is, and then coming back empty, burning diesel fuel the whole way and sending those emissions into the air, too. And when that material in the landfill decomposes, when the plant and vegetable matter decomposes, it creates methane, which is released through those J-shaped vents. If you drive past a landfill in your travels and you see those vents like upside-down Js, what they're releasing into the atmosphere is methane. Methane is 20 times worse than carbon dioxide in terms of its greenhouse gas global warming impact. So here's one idea, one project that can produce electricity, that can produce ethanol by the thousands of gallons, that can strip hydrogen, which is 48 percent of the gas that they produce out to charge hydrogen fuel cells, and it gets rid of municipal solid waste at 75 percent reduction in the greenhouse gas emission. So, very inventive project. And I would say, at the other end of the spectrum, in terms of not just the size of the operation, but the funding that came to play, Newburgh High School in Newburgh, New York, Orange County, on the west bank of the Hudson, has a solar racing team which built a solar-powered car. They came to one of our workshops we did in the district on solar energy, it was packed--as all of our alternative energy forums are packed by people wanting to know what they can do. But the kids on the solar racing team included kids from the BOCES program, who are on the vocational track. And they knew how to weld and how to put together a car that would not fall apart on the road. And they included the advanced placement math students, who knew how to calculate how many square inches of photovoltaic cells they needed in order to generate the watts necessary so that they could power this vehicle, and the battery capacity. And it looked about the size of this table here. It's actually an oval shape, maybe a little bit bigger than this, like a soapbox derby racer. And the student who drove it crouched down inside and had a little windshield in front of him to keep the bugs out of his face. And they won, or actually tied for first place, in a race from Houston, Texas to Newburgh, New York. Two thousand miles of this country they traveled with a top speed of 55 miles per hour. And when they showed up at our forum wearing ``Solar Racing Team'' hats and ``Solar Racing Team'' t-shirts and showing a video and the slide show of their car rolling across the highways from Texas to New York, the adults in the audience were so excited I think it woke up the little kid in them. They could hear about all the well-funded, high-science, high- technology things, but to see that these kids, with virtually no resources--the teacher adviser from the school was not allowed to touch the vehicle, it was entirely built by the kids. And the fact that they were high school students and were able to do this, even on a test, a display pilot project kind of scale, to build a vehicle that would do 2,000 miles, that would reach speeds of 55 miles per hour powered entirely on solar power and storing that power in batteries, the adults, as they were leaving, were asking me, why can't Detroit do this? And I answered, well, I think they can, but they're not. And what we're trying to do through this bill, among other things, is to provide the incentives--and tomorrow, by the way, the House will pass sweeping tax incentives to provide not just corporations, but consumers, as well as businesses, with extended incentives for hybrid plug-ins for wind, solar, biofuels and marine energy. And I know that there has been great concern around the country, and I've heard it from people in my district, about these renewable energy tax credits being extended. And what we're trying to do by doing that is to make it possible, not just for students in a high school, but for those who run our automobile manufacturing companies to be able to build cars that use these new technologies. And with that, I yield back to the gentleman.

Mr. HALL of New York. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank you for your comments. And I would add to what you say, as I look at $100 million for ARPA-E, including $50 million for university research, $15 million for wind--and congratulations to you and the State of Texas on passing California in becoming the number one wind energy State in the country with more installed wind capacity than any of the other 49 States. By the way, I have to thank our President, George W. Bush, who signed a renewable energy standard when he was Governor of Texas, and that's partly why the wind is being exploited in Texas to the extent it is. I only wish that he would change his mind and sign the same renewable energy standard for the entire country now that he is President of the entire country. But I look at this and the $30 million for solar and the $100 million for weatherization, et cetera, et cetera, and you know what I think of? Jobs. I think of jobs because when you put $100 million into weatherization of low-income housing, and I'm speaking as one who used to live in New York City, although I now live in Dutchess County in the Hudson Valley, there are so many old buildings in every city in this country that are poorly insulated, that have no storm windows or storm doors, that are leaky, that are leaking cool air in the summer when they're being air conditioned and leaking heat during the winter when there's actually a heating unit running, and what are you hiring? You're hiring trade people. You're hiring sheet metal workers. You're hiring carpenters. You're hiring installers. And in the process, you're saving barrels of oil or kilowatts, and a barrel of oil saved or a kilowatt saved has less environmental impact than any way you can generate a new barrel or a new kilowatt. So it's the cheapest way of getting a barrel or a kilowatt, and it also has the least environmental impact. So I'm very happy about the weatherization component of this. Marine/hydrokinetic, we in New York are aware of the work that's been done recently by Verdant, Inc., a company that has been doing a test on six hydroturbines that are running below water in the East River, east of Roosevelt Island. As Long Island Sound, the western half, drains out through East River, under the Throgs Neck and the Whitestone and the Triborough Bridge, alongside the UN down the East River past Manhattan Island and through New York and out under the Verrazano-Narrows, half of Long Island Sound, millions of tons of water every day twice going out into the ocean and then back in through the harbor again. And that's what's being done by the action of the moon's gravitational effect on the ocean. And the fact that we are not harnessing that is just absurd. And their biggest problem, Verdant, Inc., in terms of putting in a hydrokinetic-generating station that use these turbines, there's so much force at work in the East River that it kept breaking the blades off the turbines, and they had to use titanium instead of steel and lessen the pitch so that there wasn't quite so much force on them to keep the turbines intact. Now, they're going back in, I believe, this year with a second round of more highly refined generators to test it again, but it's obvious that the power is there, whether it be wave action or whether it be tidal action or any of the other renewables that we are talking about. And if we can transition ourselves to these with whatever liquid fuels like, for instance, ethanol, I know that there are some problems with ethanol, but there's a surplus right now of ethanol in this country. I checked on the Internet last week. I just did a little Internet search and found that it's selling, as of the middle of last week, for $1.97 a gallon. That's half the cost of gasoline. We had somebody call our office in Upstate New York, in Carmel, Putnam County, a woman constituent, who said, ``I'm so excited. I just bought a flex-fuel vehicle. Where can I get some flex-fuel?'' And my staff had to tell her there are two pumps in all of New York where you can buy flex-fuel. Well, West Point which is in my district, the United States Military Academy at West Point, where, I'm proud to say, my nephew is a cadet, just announced at our Board of Visitors meeting last week that they are planning to put in a 5,000 gallon underground tank for ethanol so that they can carry flex-fuel E-85 in the motor pool and at the commissary and start with a big quantity that's going to be used by that community of faculty and graduates and West Pointers who still live around the academy.

Mr. HALL of New York. I don't know how much time we have left, my friend, but I just wanted to say once again that I support the Invest in Energy Independence Act and am doing my best to convince more Members of this body on both sides of the aisle to support it. I believe that it will help to ease market tensions. It will help to keep the price of gasoline from rising too much higher and hopefully eventually to bring it back to more affordable levels by providing competition with other kinds of fuels and other kinds of energy. And when that day arrives, Mr. Lampson, when that day arrives that we can tell the Saudis or the Russians or whichever country it is that's shipping imported oil into this country ``No thank you, you can turn your tanker around and send it somewhere else,'' that day a big weight will lift off the shoulders of America, off the American public. And I believe it will be a moment similar to the day when we first landed on moon. Because I was a kid when Sputnik was launched, and I remember the feeling of this thing. It was beeping overhead, that the Russians had gotten to it first. And it didn't really do anything other than beep. But the fact it was there above us was symbolic of, we thought and we probably were right, a technological breakthrough that another country had made that put them for the time being ahead of us in that field. And I believe that we can't afford to let Japan or China or any other country get more of a lead in energy than the one that exists now. And the day that we are once again able to throw our shoulders back, hold our heads high, and say that we can fuel our own economy and our own industry and our own recreation and our own family's trips to and from work and from school and so on without depending on some other country that might have policies and human rights or other things that we don't like but we have to sort of bow to them and ignore that aspect of foreign policy because we need something that they have, that will be not just energy independence, it will be independence. We're talking about sovereignty here, and I think that will be a day that Americans together, regardless of party or no party at all, if they're paying attention, all Americans on that day will be proud to be Americans. Not that we aren't proud now, but we will be proud of an accomplishment that will be uniquely American and something that I believe we will accomplish and that we have to look forward to.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I would like to express my admiration and support for the brave men and women of our military who are nobly serving in Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, they continue to perform an important mission by taking action against our enemies in the country that served as host to the Al Qaeda organization that attacked the United States of America on September 11th, 2001, and they do so with complete skill, courage, and professionalism. I am fully supportive of them and their mission. I have voted to provide funding solely for our military activities in Afghanistan, and would do so again if such a bill were to come before the House. However, the funding measure in Amendment Number 1 brought before the House today included funding for the ongoing war in Iraq without accompanying conditions on those funds or a timeline for withdrawal of American forces. I remain opposed to the President's mistaken war in Iraq, which has now claimed over 4,000 American lives, undermined our military and ability to respond to other threats abroad, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars that could have been used to meet pressing needs at home. I believe that we must change course in Iraq, and cannot support the appropriation of additional funds without measures to impose conditions on that funding and start bringing our troops home. Accordingly, I could not vote for Amendment Number 1.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for recognizing me in a colloquy regarding this bill, which I do support.

Mr. HALL of New York. I thank the chairman for his prior support of a muck soils conservation program. Unfortunately, this House language did not survive in conference. Existing programs like CREP do not address the needs of muck farmers, like the black dirt farmers in Orange County, New York. In the Hudson Valley, this has led to full retirement of soil and rent inflation. The needs that would have been addressed in the House bill remain. Proposed administrative changes in future CREP contracts will not address impacts of contracts that are in place today and will be for several years. These are ongoing challenges for farmers in my district and throughout the northeast, growers of specialty crops and producers of muck crops who have been thrice underserved by previous farm bills. Again, I thank the chairman and ask if he would be willing to continue working with USDA on solutions that will meet conservation goals and address unintended economic consequences of existing programs.

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman and congratulate him on successfully bringing this conference report to the floor after many months of hard work and committed effort. I also thank him for his prior support for inclusion of a muck soils conservation program to address serious challenges being faced by the farmers in my district and throughout the country. Although such language was included in the version of this bill passed by the House, it was unfortunately not able to survive the conference negotiations. Currently available conservation programs have shown that they do not specifically address the needs of farmers who produce crops on muck soil. The existing Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, CREP, seeks to prevent erosion and protect water quality through a voluntary retirement program. In areas like the Hudson Valley, this has created unintended consequences including the full retirement of productive soil and inflationary pressures on rental rates. The program included in section 2303 of the House version of the bill, which would have sought to meet conservation goals with practices that would also keep these lands active and address local rent pressures, will not become law as part of this bill, but the needs it was meant to address remain. Similarly, efforts to make changes in future CREP contracts at the administrative level will not address the rent inflation that has been created in places like Orange County, NY, by contracts that are in place today and will have standing for several years. The issues of unintended land retirement and rent inflation are ongoing challenges for farmers in my district, who as farmers in the Northeast, growers of specialty crops, and producers of muck land crops have been thrice underserved by previous farm bills. The chairman has been extraordinarily understanding and supportive of efforts to address these challenges. Again, I thank him for his efforts and ask if he would be willing to continue our work on this issue and to work with USDA on solutions that will meet the conservation goals of farmers on muck soils and address the unintended economic consequences of existing programs.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 320, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman and I thank my friend from across the aisle for his comments on conservation and the sharing of the same root between conservatism and conservation. Perhaps he would be willing to tell our Vice President who said a few years ago that conservation may be a personal virtue, but it is no way to build a national energy policy, that he is wrong. I am pleased to hear Members of this body on both sides of the aisle voicing that opinion, that conservation efficiency in effect has to be part of our national energy policy. I also was happy to hear his comments on electric cars. In Israel, which I visited last August, and which I would like to wish a happy 60th birthday to, Israel is leading the way on not just solar energy in which they are collaborating with a California company on a huge solar photovoltaic project which will provide today, this is not some distant time in the future, today will provide enough electricity for 400,000 homes. Solel, Inc., is the Israeli company and Pacific Gas and Electric is the partner here in the United States. Not only are they a leader in photovoltaic solar electric power, but they are pioneering in Israel, as we could be in this country, electric cars that travel from one station to another and instead of charging the battery, they just switch it. They are working on a battery that will be interchangeable between all cars. So one can drive up to the gas station which will now be an electric station or whatever fuel one moves toward, remove the old battery that is run down, immediately get a new one installed and drive away in a matter of minutes rather than waiting for it to be charged up. All these options are available, and I'm here to say they're available today. I would also dispute, however, the assertion that nuclear power is non-emitting, that nuclear power is clean. First of all, nuclear power does give off greenhouse gas emissions because, in the process of mining and milling and transporting nuclear fuel, there are fossil fuels burned. There are, in my very district, in fact, strontium, nydium, tritium, among other cancer-causing radioactive particles being released into the groundwater and even under normal operations, into the air. And lastly, of course, the spent fuel has to be transported, again using fossil fuels, to a repository, which may be Yucca Mountain whenever that happens to be opened. In the meanwhile, every nuclear plant and every nuclear shipment is a potential terrorist target. We know that Mohammad Atta wrote, for instance, in the papers that were found after 9/11, about canvassing New York City, flying on commercial airliners, and that he took notes about a nuclear plant that he flew over as a potential target that we believe to be Indian Point. So I would remind those on both sides of the aisle that our diplomatic stance around the world has been one of trying to stop other countries from taking a ``peaceful nuclear program and turning it into a military nuclear program.'' It's a very gray area and a blurry line once one learns how to enrich fuel. It's only a matter of how far one enriches that fuel. So there are some things that we agree about. I totally agree that we need a moon shot technology revolution. We need to put all the resources of this country that we can behind this, and that American ingenuity can solve these problems. But speaking as one who's burning 20 percent biodiesel in my home heating oil, who's getting 1,500 kilowatt hours a month from wind power, who's driving an American-made hybrid today that gets 33 miles per gallon, and an SUV with 4-wheel drive, not a little tin can, but actually a pretty sizeable vehicle, I think these technologies are available if they're given the proper incentives, tax breaks and subsidies today, and if we lead the way in government with preferential purchasing and the decision-making that we make as the powerful government that we are. So I'm happy to be a part of this exciting time in our energy history.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Madam Speaker, I am pleased that I have the opportunity to rise today in strong support and commemoration of the 60th anniversary of Israel. It is an honor to be able to speak on behalf of a country born in the aftermath of tragedy, erected against formidable odds, and yet has prevailed to become a beacon of hope and an example of the prevailing strength of liberty and freedom. Israel was not simply established, it was built. It was built through the toil, strife and resolve of the Jewish people and upon the premise of hope--hope that even in the wake of the ashes of the holocaust, goodness can prevail. And indeed, as we commemorate Israel's 60th birthday, we can see that goodness has prevailed. In many ways, the path of Israel has mimicked that of the United States. It is in no way perfect and makes its fair share of mistakes. However, it is part of the same experiment of democracy, and built upon the notion of a state becoming a light unto other nations. In our century, the partnership between Israel and the United States has conjoined to thwart the existence of terrorism, advance the frontiers of human knowledge, and make an indelible contribution to the human condition. Madam Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to foster the United States' alliance and friendship with this great nation to join me in wishing Israel a very happy 60th anniversary.

Mr. HALL of New York

Mr. HALL of New York. Mr. Speaker, I have no doubt that the faculty and staff employed in America's charter schools are working hard to educate their students and give them the tools needed to succeed, I respect their efforts, as well as the overall goal of charter schools to pursue innovative approaches to education that will allow children throughout our Nation to reach their potential. However, in an era when the funding shortfalls under No Child Left Behind have created a burdensome unfunded mandate on public schools and property taxpayers, I am extremely concerned about any diversion of funds, to charter schools or otherwise, from public schools across the country that are already struggling to maintain a diverse curriculum and serve their students. I voted present on H. Res.1168 in order to make sure that this concern was acknowledged.