Martin Heinrich

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. I thank the chairman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, the Taos Pueblo Indian Water Rights Settlement Act is critically important to the Taos Pueblo and all of northern New Mexico. I want to thank my colleague Ben Ray Lujan for his leadership on this important issue. I also want to thank Chairman Rahall and Chairwoman Napolitano for their support of this bill during the committee process. This bill is the result of many, many long years of negotiation among the parties to find a fair and equitable resolution to this conflict. Like the other longstanding water rights cases, this case has been in Federal court for 40 years. More than a decade ago, community leaders realized that litigation would not solve this problem but negotiation might. I want to commend the hard work and cooperation of all the stakeholders. This outcome demonstrates a real compromise by all the parties involved. Taos Pueblo is the only living Native American community registered as a National Historic Landmark, and it has been continuously inhabited for over 1,000 years. Under New Mexico State law, that long history gives Taos Pueblo senior water rights and reinforces our duty to help protect their water resources while providing certainty to both Indian and non-Indian water users in the Taos Valley. This settlement also protects one of the pueblo's most sacred sites, the buffalo pasture. The pueblo has agreed to give up some of its water rights in exchange for protecting the groundwater that feeds the buffalo pasture. A settlement agreement was signed in May of 2006 by Taos Pueblo, the State of New Mexico, and many affected non-Indian water users and acequia associations in the Taos Valley. But this settlement still needs ratification and approval by the United States Government, and that's what this bill will do. This settlement will bring much-needed certainty to the Taos Valley and New Mexico water users. As anyone from a Western State knows, water is the lifeblood of our communities. Whether you live in downtown Albuquerque, on a ranch, or at a pueblo, every New Mexican depends on their community's right to clean, reliable water. This settlement is a historic step in ensuring that New Mexico communities have clear and reliable water rights to the water that they need. I would urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, when I took office back in January, the economy was on the verge of collapse. We've taken some tough votes this year to promote a strong economic recovery, and we're beginning to see some signs that the economy is turning around. But to avoid this sort of economic crisis from happening again, we need to rein in the Wall Street banks that brought us to this point and begin to make Washington more responsible. The Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act will prevent risky dealings by Wall Street and begin an end to the days of taxpayer-funded bailouts. At the same time, this bill ensures that small banks and credit unions, which play a key role in their communities, are not subject to undue regulatory burdens. We must bring an end to the era of irresponsible and recklessness on Wall Street. Our country's working families, our small businesses are playing by the rules. It's time that Wall Street must learn to do the same. I would urge my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, it's difficult to put into words the tremendous loss that New Mexicans are suffering due to the passage of an unforgettable New Mexico public servant. Last Friday, we lost former Governor Bruce King at the age of 85. He was our revered ``Cowboy in the Roundhouse,'' who served three terms as Governor of New Mexico. Across our State, we were all touched by this one-of-a-kind New Mexican who personified a rare brand of leadership, perseverance, and integrity. That brand of leadership epitomizes what I love about New Mexico, and I believe it was a result of his humble upbringing on a ranch near the small town of Stanley, New Mexico. There, his parents raised him to always provide water to travelers passing through their homestead, no matter their background, and certainly never asking whether they were a Republican or Democrat. From the very beginning, Governor King's philosophy remained that New Mexicans needed to ``work together and be one large family,'' to be successful, whether from rural New Mexico towns like Stanley or an urban center like Albuquerque. Wherever he went in our State, New Mexicans felt like Governor King spoke their language, and they felt like his agenda was to address their family's struggles. It was clear that he loved New Mexico and New Mexicans. He loved spending time with them. He loved bridging people's differences to get things done. His leadership united New Mexicans, and I think as we near our 100th anniversary of statehood, I have no doubt that his impact will be a central chapter in our history. Governor King passed away Friday on the ranch where he was raised in Stanley, New Mexico, almost 1 year after the passing of his wife of 61 years, Alice King. Alice was equally revered for her contributions to our great State. Together, their humanitarian legacy includes equalizing funding between wealthy and not-so-wealthy schools, as well as establishing the Children, Youth and Families Department to tackle struggles faced by youth across our State. We're heartbroken at the loss of Governor and Mrs. King, but we're comforted that they are together again. Mr. Speaker, I extend my heartfelt condolences to the entire King family, and I thank them for sharing such an incredible public servant with our State. It is an honor to be able to serve in the kind of State that loved two public servants like Alice and Bruce King and that was so deeply loved by both of them.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, during the past few months, we have seen a vigorous and at times emotionally charged debate about how to fix our broken health care system. I spent the last several months conducting an aggressive and thorough health care listening tour across the First Congressional District of New Mexico. Just last week I held a telephone town hall with nearly 10,000 seniors in my district to discuss how reforming the health care system strengthens Medicare. Six principles have guided my work and determined my vote on this legislation: health insurance reform must create stability, contain costs, guarantee choice, improve quality, cover everyone, and include a strong public option. The Affordable Health Care for America Act delivers on each of these principles, and it does so without adding a penny to the deficit. This bill will provide greater competition for insurance companies, give Americans affordable coverage, choice, and stability that they can count on. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of H.R. 3962.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman, I rise today as a proud cosponsor of the Solar Technology Roadmap Act of 2010, and I want to especially thank my colleague from Arizona (Ms. Giffords) for introducing and championing this important legislation. As a member of the Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition, I'm particularly proud to support this coalition priority. My home State of New Mexico averages more than 300 days of sunshine each year and is second in the Nation for solar energy potential, so I have a great appreciation for the positive impact that this bill will have. In New Mexico, even in the midst of this difficult recession, we are adding jobs in the solar energy sector. Many New Mexicans, myself included, power their homes using solar energy, and Sandia National Labs is a world leader in developing new solar technologies, such as Stirling engines and multijunction solar cells. The amendment I'm offering today would require the act's solar technology road map committee to release a draft road map at least 1 month prior to publication in order to ensure that the public has the opportunity to provide their input. Our government works best when the American public is included in the decisionmaking process. This amendment will ensure that the road map reflects the wisdom and experiences of individuals and businesses that already work in this quickly growing industry. In order for our country to reach its potential in growing the clean energy economy, the Federal Government must invest wisely in research and development. Incorporating public comments will ensure that the solar road map is an efficient, effective blueprint for meeting our full potential in utilizing solar energy. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH. I would urge my colleagues' support. I once again want to thank Chairman Gordon and Representative Giffords for their leadership on this very important issue. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, it's clear that our Nation's health insurance system is broken and that the status quo is simply unsustainable. Over the last decade, health insurance premiums in New Mexico have grown 118 percent for the average family, compared to just 50 percent growth in wages. Again, the cost of health insurance grew more than twice as much as wages earned by New Mexico's working families. That same trend has made health care insurance unaffordable for more than one in five adults who went uninsured last year. Mr. Speaker, we must hold insurance companies accountable for these skyrocketing costs. If we are successful in health insurance reform, we will lower the cost of care for our families. Seniors will actually be able to afford their medications all year long, small businesses will save money, and it will end this impediment to this Nation's competitiveness in the 21st century economy. We simply cannot afford to let this historic opportunity slip away.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, on Tuesday we began our Nation's Hispanic Heritage Month. Hispanics comprise over 45 percent of New Mexico's population, and our State's Hispanic community has deep roots and a rich history in our State. I am truly honored to highlight this important community in Congress today. For a population that is expected to triple in size in our country by 2050, education continues to be an issue of fundamental significance. Preparing our children for the future is the greatest investment that we can make for our long-term economic vitality and for our country's ability to compete in the 21st century. We have many disparities to address in education and a long way to go to ensure the success of our children throughout their elementary and secondary education, particularly our Hispanic students. But, Mr. Speaker, I am proud to stand here today to highlight an example of a New Mexico institution of higher learning that is doing a tremendous job of serving our Hispanic students. This month the University of New Mexico was given top rankings by Hispanic Business Magazines's list of top 10 schools in the Nation for Hispanics in the fields of engineering, business, law and medicine. UNM, which is located in my district, is our State's flagship university. UNM's success at serving the Hispanic community is the result of decades of hard work by the university's administration, their faculty, many organizations, and their students. UNM's Law School, which the magazine ranked number one in the country for the third year in a row, has an outstanding number of Hispanic faculty and a school-wide emphasis on the engagement of students, faculty, and alumni in the wider community. Organizations like the Mexican American Law Student Association recruit local Hispanic high school students and then mentor them through their undergraduate years and help them to prepare for admission to the law school. It's worth noting that the UNM Chapter of MALSA was just named Law Student Organization of the Year by the Hispanic National Bar Association. UMN's School of Medicine, which the magazine ranked sixth in the country, has also formalized a pipeline program called ``Joining Communities to Increase Access and Reduce Disparities.'' There, mentors from the School of Medicine recruit students from underrepresented high schools to consider careers in health care, enroll them in the New Mexico Clinical Education Program for undergraduates, and support students taking the MCAT. UNM's School of Engineering, which earned a seventh-place ranking, has steadily grown its enrollment of Hispanic students to 32.7 percent this year. Much of that increase is owed to the school's leadership in creating the Hispanic Engineering and Science Organization's Annual Science Extravaganza with more than 500 youths from our State. And, finally, at the Anderson School of Management, which Hispanic Business Magazine ranked sixth in the Nation, the number of Hispanic students entering their graduate program in the fall of 2009 was double from the previous year. Much of the Anderson School's success is owed to innovative programs such as a regular breakfast that they hold with members of the Albuquerque Hispano Chamber of Commerce to increase interest in the MBA and the master's of accounting programs. Mr. Speaker, across the University of New Mexico community, there is an ingrained commitment that strives to ensure that the university is representative of our community. That commitment is not just symbolic; it is essential to the service that UNM graduates offer to our congressional district once they graduate. I want to congratulate the University of New Mexico for its national recognition as a top university by Hispanic Business Magazine, and I wish them continued success in serving our community and our Nation. Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt that when our Hispanic students succeed, New Mexico succeeds and our Nation succeeds.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I just held a roundtable in my district to hear from small business owners on how they feel about health care reform. Each of the small business owners agreed that the system is broken and that keeping the status quo will only hurt small businesses in New Mexico. With skyrocketing health care costs, many of these small businesses have been forced to consider layoffs and have been forced to consider lowering wages. In some cases, discontinuing insurance coverage for their employees has been the only way to avoid going out of business. There is no doubt that our broken health care system is bad for America's small businesses. We can, and we must do better. We need a long-term, viable solution that creates stability, that prevents insurance companies from cherry-picking customers and businesses. We need a solution that supports a healthy workforce and that improves employee productivity. Now is the time to reform our health care system. Our small businesses cannot afford the status quo.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I'm proud today to be an original cosponsor of the PAYGO legislation that we're going to see on the floor later today because it represents a return to the responsible budgeting principles that we saw in the 1990s. During that time, the Federal Government made difficult fiscal decisions, but those tough choices took our country from record deficits to record surpluses. Yet, the Bush administration abandoned PAYGO in 2002, and our country has returned to record deficits that have since doubled our national debt. Mr. Speaker, we owe it to the working families that elected us to match their tough household budgeting decisions during these difficult economic times. We must once again commit to reduce our national deficit and to tighten the purse strings here in Washington. I urge my colleagues to vote for this legislation and to return fiscal discipline to the Congress.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Madam Speaker, during our last work period, I conducted a health care listening tour across my district to learn firsthand how the health care crisis is impacting working families. I talked to Chris Davis, a single father who makes too much as an electrician to qualify for assistance but too little to afford coverage for his 7-year-old son. I listened to Bernice Romero, a fixed-income retiree who simply can't afford the rising premiums and out-of-pocket expenses to treat her debilitating carpal tunnel and knee problems. Stories like these drive home the fact that we must do all we can to both extend coverage and contain costs in our health care system. This means preventing fraud, waste, and abuse within the system, utilizing prevention and wellness programs that save money, and promoting more efficient delivery of health care so that all regions of the country-- rich, poor, urban, and rural--are on an even playing field. We must address this issue head on, and the time to act is now.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. I want to add real quickly that the gentleman mentioned our nuclear stockpile. One of the other LDRD programs that I think was particularly important was the creation and assembly of safety devices for our stockpile, like the gel mylar capacitors that are used in the W76-1. I think the bottom line is that these programs represent some of the most cutting-edge research that we do. They are critical to our national security. They are critical to our energy independence, and I would urge the support of my colleagues. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chair, I have an amendment at the desk made in order under the rule.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman, I offer this amendment in strong support of research and development at our national laboratories. Specifically, my amendment provides a 1 percent increase in the Laboratory Directed Research and Development, which is commonly referred to as LDRD. LDRD increases the ability of laboratories to retain expertise and pursue innovative projects by providing additional discretion for Department of Energy laboratories to select research activities. These high-risk, high-reward projects yield cutting-edge advancements in science and technology and produce some of our most successful research and development initiatives. These are projects with an immediate relevance and a direct impact on national security and our goal of energy independence. Many LDRD projects have formed the basis of some of the national labs' most successful research initiatives. For example, at Sandia National Laboratories in my district, an LDRD researcher developed the chemistry for a decontamination foam that is used by our military to protect us against chemical and biological attacks. In fact, this was the foam that was used to decontaminate the Senate Hart Office Building after the anthrax attacks of 2001. We know all too well that those who wish our country harm are constantly adapting their methods, making these LDRD projects vitally important to our national security. LDRD is equally relevant to our goal of energy independence. An LDRD project developed a manufacturing process that will substantially reduce the cost of highly efficient LED lightbulbs. These LED lightbulbs have the potential to decrease electricity consumed in lighting by a full 50 percent by 2025. This will translate into meaningful cuts in utility bills for our working families and real savings for our small businesses. Energy independence is a critical element of our national security, and LED efficiency will significantly reduce our demand for energy. These advancements represent just two examples of the multiple innovative science and technology achievements made through LDRD initiatives. Under the 2009 Omnibus Appropriations bill, our labs were granted authority to use up to 8 percent of their budgets for LDRD initiatives, yet the bill before us today would reduce that amount for 2010 to only 6 percent. My amendment would allow our labs to dedicate up to 7 percent of their budgets to LDRD. It is important to note that my amendment does not require any additional spending, as the LDRD funding percentage is derived from the labs' overall funding level, nor does my amendment cut any other program. Simply put, my amendment encourages innovative research and development that will promote our national security and help us to reach our goal of energy independence. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. HEINRICH. I thank the gentleman from Arizona. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of this rule, which includes an amendment I worked to draft with my colleagues, Ms. Titus of Nevada and Ms. Giffords of Arizona. This amendment will make sure that the Federal Government leads by example on clean energy. In my district, Kirtland Air Force Base has tried for a number of years to contract with local clean-energy producers to purchase electricity to help power the base, but there are several Federal policies that stand in the way of these kinds of projects. New Mexico is second in the Nation for solar energy potential, and we have a thriving clean-energy industry in Albuquerque, creating jobs today. So this is a natural partnership. However, many Federal agencies have discovered that the 10-year limit on Federal power purchase agreements made these kinds of agreements uneconomical for their private sector partners in the solar industry. Our amendment will extend the length of these contracts to 20 years, allowing more Federal agencies to sign agreements with clean-energy producers. This will put Americans to work and ensure the Federal Government leads by example in the use of clean energy. I urge my colleagues to support this rule, this legislation.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Absolutely. And always better to be the leader that's creating jobs than the State or the country that's following and watching those jobs go someplace else.

Mr. HEINRICH. Just to thank my friend from New York for really closing, I think, on the issue we need to think about. This is about independence. It's about seizing the moment. And it's about providing the good jobs of tomorrow for the next generation. For my sons who are 6 and 2\1/2\, I want them to grow up in this country with the same opportunities that I had and more. And it's going to be up to us to be able to pass this legislation to be able to provide those kinds of opportunities for the future generations of our Nation.

Mr. HEINRICH. This really is our generation's Apollo Project. It is the greatest challenge of our generation. And we intend to meet it and not cede that leadership to someone else. And the words that keep coming up over and over again, when you discuss these issues, independence, ingenuity, entrepreneurship, conservation, I mean, those are things that this Nation was built upon, and we certainly cannot turn our back on them now.

Mr. HEINRICH. I think not only on the steel front will it help their competitiveness, the way it's structured actually rewards them for being more efficient. We produce steel in this country with far less of a carbon footprint than they do in China. And one of the things that the incentives in this legislation does is it will incentivize spending money on capital investment that will continue to bring down the carbon footprint and increase the efficiency, making steel in this country more competitive worldwide in a way that is even compliant with the WTO. So we will actually be improving the competitiveness of the American steel industry instead of, once again, shipping those jobs and ceding them to another country.

Mr. HEINRICH. I think what my friend from Virginia is describing is actually a very conservative position. And I think that one of the ironies in all of this is when you realize that we have nonrenewable resources and they're very valuable--they cost us billions and billions of dollars in our economy--to use less of them, to stretch those out and to utilize them more effectively, that is a fundamentally conservative position, not to waste the resources that God has given us, but to utilize them as efficiently as we possibly can. You know, I remember during the campaign of 2008 there was this whole issue of the tire gauge, and hearing Rush Limbaugh just make fun of this idea that a tire gauge could be of any value at all. And when you think about the fact that we will fight like dogs and cats in this Chamber over this little postage stamp of oil and gas in the North Slope of Alaska, the same amount of which could be conserved in a few years if people would use those tire gauges, that is, I think, a fundamental irony in all of this. We're going to continue to use oil and gas; we're probably going to continue to use coal for a number of years. We should use those nonrenewable resources as conservatively as we possibly can.

Mr. HEINRICH. That word, independence, I think, is absolutely critical because this legislation will give us the independence that, as Americans, we crave. And I can say, you know, one of the pieces of this is renewable energy portfolio standard, something that says all the utilities are going to create a certain portion of their power from renewable and clean sources, we've had that for a number of years in New Mexico; and it's worked remarkably well. In concert with photovoltaic technology, this spring, you know, starting March or April, I started getting a credit from P&M resources that you mentioned earlier because I've got solar panels tied into the system, and during the day when we're not home, we're selling power back to the grid at the very time when everybody's turning on their air conditioner. It is innovative solutions like that that are already working in so many places that are going to give people freedom from those energy bills and independence from this international and foreign oil that sucks so much money out of our economy in the United States.