Martin Heinrich

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 4445) to amend Public Law 95-232 to repeal a restriction on treating as Indian country certain lands held in trust for Indian pueblos in New Mexico, as amended.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support H.R. 2340, as amended, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. H.R. 2340 would ratify an agreement between the United States, the Bering Straits Native Corporation, and the State of Alaska. The underlying agreement provides for the conveyance of certain Federal lands to the Bering Straits Native Corporation and to the State of Alaska. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was enacted in 1971. It was intended to resolve longstanding issues surrounding native land claims in Alaska. Under this act, Alaska Native regional corporations are entitled to a certain amount of public lands. The Bering Straits Native Corporation is one of those regional corporations entitled to certain lands. In addition, the Alaska Statehood Act grants the State of Alaska the opportunity to select a certain amount of public lands for the State's benefit. Normally, legislation is not required to implement these selections. In this case, however, both the State and the Native corporations selected some of the same lands. After years of negotiations, the parties, along with the United States, arrived at an agreement to resolve this conflict. I want to commend our colleague, Mr. Young of Alaska, for his hard work and dedication to this legislation, and I ask my colleagues to support its passage. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill under consideration.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Madam Speaker, I rise today in honor of West Mesa High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which was recently selected as one of America's best high schools by Newsweek magazine. Since 1966, West Mesa High School has been the heart of Albuquerque's west side. Recently the school was a great partner when they hosted one of my job fairs, as well as my service academy nomination information night. Last year the school had an outstanding 75 percent of its students enrolled in at least one advanced placement course, the kind of rigorous classes that push students to achieve their potential and lead our Nation in the 21st century. The late educator, Jaime Escalante, associated with the film ``Stand and Deliver,'' told his students, You do not enter the future; you create the future. I want to thank the West Mesa Mustangs for pushing themselves and for creating a bright future for themselves and for our community. Again, congratulations on this well-deserved recognition.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Chairman, I strongly support this amendment, which improves and perfects strong underlying legislation to keep the American people safe and to spur economic growth in places like central New Mexico. The bill, as amended, will expand TRICARE coverage to include dependent children up to the age of 26, something our troops and military families deserve. It also provides our military with the cutting-edge resources that they need to defend our Nation. Many of these advancements originate in central New Mexico at Kirtland Air Force Base and at Sandia National Laboratories. For example, the Operationally Responsive Space satellite program and the Airborne Laser Test Bed will both receive greater resources to accomplish their important missions, and the bill will authorize a secure microgrid energy pilot program on a military installation to advance our goal of energy security and independence. This bill is a true reflection of our 21st century military strategy for keeping Americans safe, and I urge my colleagues to support the amendment and the underlying legislation.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. Speaker, central New Mexico has been flanked by the majesty of the Sandia and Manzano Mountain ranges for thousands of years. Most of these mountains have been preserved as part of the Cibola National Forest, the Sandia Mountains Wilderness, and the Manzano Mountains Wilderness. Today I am introducing legislation that would add the Crest of Montezuma to the north end of the Cibola National Forest and extend a wilderness designation to the Manzano Wilderness Study Area to the south. To families living near Placitas, this legislation will ensure their access to critical water infrastructure for farm irrigation and other important uses. It will also ensure that East Mountain families can use these places for recreation. Finally, it will preserve the area's critical role as a wildlife corridor for animals that migrate from north to south across our State. I urge my colleagues support this legislation that will protect some of the greatest natural assets that make our State the Land of Enchantment.

Mr. HEINRICH

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

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Madam Speaker, earlier this year we lost a national treasure and a personal hero of mine, former Interior Secretary Stewart Udall. Though quiet and humble, his impact was that of a giant and his defense of our Nation's wildlands will remain immeasurable. Secretary Udall's lifetime of achievement will continue to be felt by every American. Thanks to his work, our national parks and public lands belong to every American and will remain a treasured part of our Nation's spirit for generations to come. Throughout my life, I have drawn personal and professional inspiration from Mr. Udall's remarkable leadership. So I was proud to sponsor H.R. 5128, a bill that will designate the Department of the Interior building in Washington, DC, as the Stewart Lee Udall Department of the Interior Building. It is only fitting that we honor his legacy by naming the Interior building after Secretary Udall. I would urge all of my colleagues to support this legislation.

Mr. HEINRICH

Mr. HEINRICH. Actually, I don't recall that exact number.

Mr. HEINRICH. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Madam Speaker, I just wanted to return to sort of where we were a couple of years ago when several of us who are joining you here tonight were running for Congress for the very first time. Mr. Tonko from New York, for example, another mechanical engineer, has only been around here for what is it, 14 months now, 16 months now? And Mrs. Dahlkemper from Pennsylvania as well, the gentlelady from Pennsylvania, we didn't run on passing the Recovery Act. None of us went to Congress because we were hoping to pass a Recovery Act. We did what was necessary to be responsible to clean up the mess that we were left with. You can take the example of how the United States and this Congress has responded to this recession versus how a country like Japan, when it got into its last big recession, responded. They did too little too late, and as a result, they were left with 10 years of recession, a decade of job-killing recession, a decade of reduced tax revenues, when their competitiveness in the world was dramatically reduced because they weren't willing to stand up and to lead and do what was right. So we passed the Recovery Act. And when you want to look back at history and judge what happened with this Recovery Act, as a mechanical engineer, rather than just listening to the rhetoric, I think it's very critical that we look at the data. And as you have shown here tonight, when you look at, well, let's take the stock market, for example. This graph shows what has happened with our investments over the end of the Bush administration and the beginning of the Obama administration and the leadership that this Congress showed. It's incredibly important to realize that this isn't about Wall Street. This is about the people in my home State of New Mexico who are relying on their investments for their retirement. It is about the people who have their retirement accounts tied up in investments and their annual and monthly incomes. Whether or not they get to do anything besides pay the mortgage is dependent on the value in those accounts. And we saw a precipitous decline that took real wealth out of the pockets of people all across this country as trillions of dollars of wealth literally disappeared in a matter of months from our constituents. After the Recovery Act was passed and the many other pieces of legislation that we passed to try and recover this economy, we have seen an increase in that value that you just can't argue with the data, between 10,000 and 11,000 in the Dow for the last month.

Mr. HEINRICH. Thank you. And I think that's a perfect example. You know, facts are stubborn things, and when you show these graphs, they don't lie. They tell a story of an economy out of control and how we have been able to turn that around and move it back in the right direction. And I think when you talk about the Recovery Act, it's important to realize that an enormous portion of the Recovery Act was about taxes as well. If you look at the rhetoric versus the data on the whole issue of taxes, you see a very different story than the one you might hear in some of the national media or see on a placard at a Tea Party rally for that matter. The USA today talked about how, Mr. Tonko, if you would be so kind as to hold this up, a headline, ``Tax bills in 2009 at the lowest level since 1950.'' We passed an enormous tax relief package as part of the Recovery Act so that people would have those hard-earned dollars in their pockets and put them to work for our Nation. And if you look at how much support we had to do that from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, it was nonexistent, if you look at the work that we did for the homebuyer tax credit, which was absolutely critical to bringing back our housing market and construction jobs in this country. I met a man named Julian Gomez who works in construction in Albuquerque, and he lost his job because of this recession. And he's back today swinging a hammer at New Life Homes, building homes in Albuquerque because of the financing that the Recovery Act made possible. So I think it's incredibly important that we look at the facts versus the rhetoric.

Mr. HEINRICH. Absolutely.

Mr. HEINRICH. So just 7 percent actually said, We are going to be part of the solution?

Mr. HEINRICH. I knew it was one of those numbers you could count on your hand.

Mr. HEINRICH. I believe you are absolutely correct.

Mr. HEINRICH. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. HEINRICH. Once again, I think you're painting this picture of contrast of leadership. And the important question here is asking whose side are you on. And our colleagues on the other side are busy protecting BP and making sure that we have a BP bailout, to make sure that their damage cap doesn't get raised. And we're passing legislation like the Recovery Act that invests directly not only in renewable energy, but in energy efficiency to make us more and more energy independent as a Nation. And I remember in asking whose side am I on, I spent some time at a gentleman's home just a couple months ago named Juan DeLeon whose house is being retrofitted with some of these Recovery Act loans to put insulation in the roof, to have high-efficiency appliances. And for someone who is low income, fixed income, in retirement, they literally see their bills change in a way that gives them economic freedom and independence for the first time. You know, we're standing up for homeowners like that. Retirees. People who've worked their whole life but who are throwing away huge amounts of money every month on their energy bills, and our colleagues on the other side are standing up for corporations like BP.

Mr. HEINRICH. Absolutely.

Mr. HEINRICH. Will the gentleman yield? I know the gentleman from New York, Mr. Tonko, knows a great deal about this whole issue of energy security and of creating a new energy economy. And when we passed the Recovery Act, we made this single biggest investment in changing our economy to a clean energy economy ever in the history of this country. And I saw it directly. I went out to a company called Ktech that's at the Sandia Science and Tech Park in my district, and they are using Recovery Act grants to figure out new ways to store energy and to seam together a new grid that includes putting renewables into the system, unique storage devices, and how to manage all of that so that our entire grid is more secure and so that we can put people back to work in those new energy technologies. And I'd yield back to Mr. Tonko or Ms. Wasserman Schultz.

Mr. HEINRICH. Well, I think we should show that one graph of jobs one more time before we wrap up here tonight, because there's nothing more important than, one, as you said, just the facts, ma'am, and actually looking at data and not rhetoric; and, two, nothing's more important than jobs. We've seen our stock market recover. We've seen housing starts come back and those kinds of indicators, but what really matters to the American people are jobs; and that precipitous decline that we saw in the run-up to this horrible recession and the irresponsible activity that we saw within housing finance markets and within Wall Street and the reversal with the Recovery Act and new policies put in place by this Congress to jump- start manufacturing again, to jump-start real jobs where we design it in the United States, we build it in the United States, we install it in the United States, and we put more people back to work, and watching that line go up and up to where now we're finally adding jobs at the kind of rates that we need to turn our entire country around.

Mr. HEINRICH. And as you mentioned, we have a long way to go. We are just getting started trying to rebuild after 8 years of disastrous policies, the recession the likes of which we haven't seen since the Great Depression. But if we can stay on this path, if we can continue to grow these job numbers like the strong job numbers that we saw in March and April; if that trend can continue for the rest of 2010, we would see more jobs created in 2010 than the entire Bush administration, the entire 8 years of the Bush administration. And that is where we need to be headed as a Nation. We need to keep seeing that line of wealth in the average American family going up, up, up, not going down the way it did continuously during the Bush administration. And it really is about that contrast of responsible leadership versus policies that continue to put our Nation at a competitive disadvantage, not only our families, but versus countries around the world.