Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. I want to note as far as cycling, as a biker myself, the things we are talking about in a lot of communities that are improving their bike options, we are just giving people options. This is not the storm troopers coming down making everybody ride a bike. We are talking about giving Americans more options in how to get to work and back. This is one that in my town of Seattle, every year there are scads more people riding bikes.

Mr. INSLEE. Almost, to compliment Mr. Blumenauer's hometown, Portland, Oregon, is the first city in the United States to reduce the number of miles that people drive per capita. And that is a fundamental achievement, and I know how they have done it because they have visionary leadership, Mr. Blumenauer included; they have more public transportation options with light rail and buses, more bike options, better land use, planning that allows people to live close to public transportation options, and they are well on their way to meeting the CO2 targets that they have set. And it has happened because they have simply given people options. They haven't told people what to do. They just gave people a smorgasbord, and people did what was comfortable for them. A lot of it is bicycling, if they can catch Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. INSLEE. We know we can do this. We know, because we have had success. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, we improved our mileage of our cars by 60 percent. Then in 1994 those efforts stopped and we stopped making any progress. Our cars are getting actually less mileage than they did in 1984. If we had simply continued on that rate of improvement, we would be free of Saudi Arabian oil today. Now we have got to get back on this bandwagon of using our brains to get better mileage. We know we can do this. Just as a closing comment, I want to express my appreciation to the Americans doing this. We are not the only ones doing this in the Capitol. I know a woman on Bainbridge Island that greened up her home. I would like to say we're meeting that bar here in the House. Again, thank you, Mr. Blumenauer.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support passage of H. Con. Res. 122, a resolution to support America Recycles Day, the only nationally recognized day dedicated to recycling. And I want to thank the Chair, Chairman Al Wynn, for getting this to the floor; and my cosponsor, Republican Chris Shays, who has been a leader on so many environmental issues, for working on this issue. You know, the economic ramifications of recycling are well known. It creates 1.1 million jobs. It has annual sales of $236 billion gross sales, and has $37 billion in annual payrolls. But I want to focus my comments for the moment on why recycling is so much even more important than it was originally. We know it has been the most successful environmental initiative in the country's history. It allows people to take individual action to preserve the environment. But now that global warming is upon us, the wisdom, prudence, and genius of recycling is even more apparent. When 1 million square miles of the arctic melted, the size of six Californias this summer, the need for recycling has become even more apparent. Because recycling substantially reduces carbon dioxide emissions when it's associated with raw material extraction, with product manufacture, with emissions from landfills or burning carbon based waste, when we conserve material, we don't waste energy, and we don't put global warming gases into the atmosphere. In fact, the Environmental Protections Agency estimates that recycling a ton of mixed recyclables saves 2.8 tons of carbon dioxide from going into the atmosphere. If we simply increased our recycle efforts from the current 30 percent level to 35 percent, we would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to the average emissions from 4.6 million households. There is real savings still available to us. We also have a growing problem with electronic material waste. We only have 1 percent of the 130 million phones currently owned by consumers recycled. We're going to do something about that. I can report in Seattle, at America Recycles Day, Dell, Microsoft and InTechra will raise awareness for recycling of electronics at Safeco Field, home of the Seattle Mariners. Here on Capitol Hill, the Office of Greening has helped promote the House America Recycling Day. So passage of this bill will certainly support these ongoing efforts. We need to build on them. It's time for Congress to recognize this important day. I urge my colleagues to support this bill and find something to recycle, and recycle it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, before I comment on this bill, I want to comment on two leaders who helped to get it here, Mr. Klein and Mr. Mahoney. Usually, when freshmen Congressmen have bills in the House, it is something like naming a post office or something. These two fellows have worked a very well-crafted bill that I hope has broad consensus, and they have my admiration for their great work. I think it is a very important bill for all of us because it responds to the need for a stable insurance market in these areas. Some have suggested somehow this displaces the private insurance industry. In fact, it just allows that market to work. It is preferable to have catastrophe bonds and some reinsurance contracts in advance, rather than trying to deal with catastrophe afterwards through Federal Government bailouts. This is a market-driven way to do it. It makes the market stronger. It spreads the risk in a way that is consistent with our economic system, and we need to pass this bill.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the House this evening to discuss our great irony about our position in the world right now, economically and environmentally. The irony is that we face some real challenges that touch on our energy-based economy, and I think those challenges are obvious to us tonight, a challenge as oil approaches $100 a barrel, $3 a gallon, and there's no relief in sight. Americans right now are feeling the pinch associated with fossil fuel costs going up. We have a challenge in that we still are addicted to Middle Eastern oil as a principal source of oil, and as long as we are addicted to oil we will have a problem being wrapped around the axle of the Middle East. And we have the problem of global warming, which is something that is becoming increasingly clear to us, not with scientific research but with our own eyes. In fact, I was pretty stunned to see the photographs of the arctic this summer where 1 million square miles of the arctic disappeared this summer, totally shocking the scientific community. An area the size of six Californias disappeared, melted unexpectedly in the arctic this summer. And, of course, that's a big concern because the arctic ice cap is sort of like a big sunshade. It reflects energy back into space. Now that it's gone in the summer, or substantial portions of it, the oceans are absorbing six to ten times more energy, having a pernicious feedback loop, making the problem even worse. In fact, if you look at the projections prepared by the scientific community showing the arctic ice cap in the year 2000, if you project up to the year 2040, the scientific community basically has found the arctic ice cap will be gone in the late summer months, essentially in my children's lifetime certainly. And the results of these three challenges that we have, increasing fossil fuel prices, our addiction to Middle Eastern oil and global warming, are certainly great challenges and ought to give us pause. But I'm here to talk about optimism rather than fear because the great irony is that these three challenges have the capacity to ignite one of the most positive developments in the U.S. economy ever, and that is sparking the potential clean energy revolution that we're not accustomed to enjoying in the United States. Our situation is a little bit like it was in the 1960s. If you recall, in the early 1960s, when John F. Kennedy came and stood right behind me here on May 25, 1961, and said that we would put a man on the Moon in 10 years and bring him back safely, that was a very bold and audacious thing to say. At the time, rockets were blowing up on the launch pad, and our computers were in rudimentary stages. We were way behind the Russians. We just put Spam in a can up. We hadn't even invented Tang yet. But we were driven to going to the Moon by a challenge, the challenge with the Russians, and the need for technological imminence that the Americans felt we deserved and had a destiny to fulfill. Indeed, we did fulfill that destiny when we went to the Moon in the original Apollo project. Now we have these challenges involving oil and global warming that we can use to the same effect as Kennedy used the challenge in the space race, and that effect is to rally the United States of America to a brighter future and a higher destiny to use our technological genius to develop a clean energy future for the United States of America. I am here tonight to share some of the good news that is extant across the United States in all 50 States where tonight there are men and women of genius and entrepreneurial perseverance and business acumen that are building the technology that allows us to beat global warming, break our addiction to Middle Eastern oil and, third, grow millions of new jobs in the clean energy economy that we intend to build. I will here tonight, when we conclude, finish by saying we will be able to achieve the same level of technological leap forward as Kennedy achieved in space. We will do for energy what Kennedy did for space. If I can, let me talk about some of the things I have learned in the last year. I have been proposing a bill called the New Apollo Energy Act for some time and, of course, writing a book called ``Apollo's Fire,'' I met a lot of people around the country who are now engaged in this great challenge. I would like to share with my colleagues and the public tonight what I found. First I want to address the issue of our cars. We got great cars. My favorite is a 1956 Chevy, always was, always will be, but we know that we have a great problem that 40 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted as global warming gases come from our cars and trucks. We know that we are paying $3 a gallon and it's going to go up. We know that we are taking our money and putting it in the pump machine, and it's going right to the Middle East to finance people who are attacking us. We need to reinvent the car. We need to take a bold leap forward in technology to find a new way to propel the car in a more efficient way. I am here tonight to say that we have the ability to do that in the immediate future. I want to share with you a picture of a car called the General Motors Volt. This is a prototype of a car that General Motors hopes to have in mass production 5 or 6 years from now. It is a plug-in hybrid vehicle. A plug-in hybrid vehicle, this car is quite stylish, and this physically exists. I actually brought this car to show to my colleagues several months ago. Thanks to General Motors, it exists physically. The way this car works is that it has a tremendous combination of advance battery technology and hybrid drive train technology that allows it to be plugged in at night. When you have this car, you will be able to take it home, put it in the garage, plug it in. The next morning you unplug it. You can drive it for up to 40 miles on total electrical propulsion, no CO2, no gasoline for the first 40 miles. The beauty of that, and the importance of that, is that when you operate on electricity from the electrical grid, it may cost as little as 1 to 3 cents a mile for fuel. It costs 9 cents-plus a mile or more for gasoline now, and it's absolutely clean while you are driving the car. Now, obviously there is some CO2 involved in the production of the electricity, but I will get to that in a moment, so it's basically very inexpensive. Because over 60 percent of all the daily driving is under 40 miles, over half of the daily trips that Americans take will be pure electrical propulsion. Then if you want to drive more than 40 miles before you get home to recharge, you have a hybrid engine similar to the hybrid engines now used in both domestic and foreign manufacturers, to basically use a combination of fuel, and right now it's gasoline, someday it will be cellulosic ethanol, and electricity residual in the batteries to drive until you fill up your tank again or you get back to get recharged. When these cars are produced, we will get over 100 miles a gallon of gasoline. This won't be some small marginal increments, and you know right now we are debating whether to improve our corporate average fuel efficiency standards up to 35 miles a gallon in 10 or 15 years. These are going to blow right by that. It's going to blow right through the things we are debating right now and leapfrog that technology that is actually available today. Cars like this are on the road today being driven. I have driven one. They use a lithium ion battery manufactured by the A123 Systems in Massachusetts. People have taken the Toyota Prius. I drive a Toyota Prius. It is a great car. I am 6'2", 200 pounds; comfortable, safe, quiet, works like a dream for us. Folks have taken these Priuses and converted them into a plug-in hybrid car today. They are driving around the streets of America. I drove the first one that was commercially sold. We are going to have them in mass production in several years, and that's why it's important for this Chamber to send a signal to the auto industry that we are going to have a legal requirement that will improve the economy, and it will be simple to do and economical as well. Economical, because when these are in mass production, they may cost a couple of thousand dollars more than if you didn't have this technology, but you are going to save three or four times that amount in fuel costs later on. A double bonus of these cars is that as you drive them, as the grid electricity gets cleaner, because as we move to solar thermal energy and wind power energy and other sources, perhaps clean coal energy, we will have less CO2 emissions so the car will actually get cleaner. I mean, except wine, this will be the only thing that gets better with age and put out less CO2 over time. A triple bonus, according to people who have studied this, these cars have the potential to help the electrical grid where utilities can essentially use the batteries in the car in the garage at night to store energy. Your utility can be generating wind power at night or wave power at night or any kind of power at night, feed that energy into your battery and rent your battery in your garage. Economists who studied this think the day may come when you are paid $2,000 or $3,000 a year essentially for the temporary rental of your battery once your battery becomes part of the electrical grid. There are companies today in my town of Seattle, Washington, who are developing the software to do that. The point I think is important to make is that as we talk about setting caps on carbon dioxide, as we talk about increasing mileage requirements for our cars, we ought to have optimism and we ought to have confidence and we ought to recognize what Kennedy did about the can-do spirit of America, that that spirit is going to build us cars that can radically improve our mileage and radically reduce CO2 and then become a source of exports so we can start exporting these cars around the world. Why can't we sell these cars to China? We can, if, in fact, we will start sending the signals from this Chamber to the industry that this is going to be very achievable. It makes sense once we limit carbon dioxide. Now, this isn't the only solution to our car woes. General Motors, Ford, Honda, various other companies are also looking at electrifying the car and using a fuel cell hydrogen source to essentially generate the electricity to run electrical motors. That may be as good or better as lithium ion batteries. It is probably a little further away from commercialization due to the storage issues of hydrogen and the distribution needs for the distribution system of hydrogen, but it is another alternative that at least one company intends to have commercially available in the next several years. So we now are ready to have leapfrog technology. It's because of the genius of Americans, and it's getting ready to go, and we should not be fearful in this Chamber. We should be confident of our ability to reinvent the car, thanks in part to guys like Felix Kramer, who essentially built one of these in his garage in California and dared Detroit and the rest of the auto industry internationally to build one, and that's going to happen now. So we know we can reinvent the car. But where do we get the energy for the electrical grid to energize these electrical cars? Well, the good news is that the genius of people building cars is matched by the genius of people figuring out how to generate electricity. I have been stunned in the last year, as I have studied this, and as I have gone around talking to people across America, I have been stunned with the rapidity of the developments that are taking place in the clean electricity field. You literally cannot turn over a rock in this country and not find someone developing a technology that is helping to find a way to generate electricity cleanly. I want to relate a little story of a company I heard about months ago. It's a company called Ausra Energy, Ausra. Ausra is owned largely by a fellow named Vinod Khosla, who is a fellow who was very instrumental in the development of software, founded Sun Microsystems, was very successful, and now has taken his talents to the field of clean energy. Mr. Khosla has now looked at all of the potential places where we can develop clean energy, recognizing that the world is going to demand these new technologies. He is a person, as many of the other people will talk about tonight, who did very well in software and Internet, and now see the same potential in the clean energy world as existed in software and Internet. They recognized a market opportunity, and they recognized that there are technological solutions that can fulfill these market opportunities. A fellow named John O'Donnell sent me an e-mail, who is one of the leaders of the Ausra Company, and it was a really happy e-mail to get. I will tell you why. I was on this floor the first week in August when we were debating what's called a renewable portfolio standard, and in the energy bill that we eventually passed in the House in August, which is a great bill by the way, a good start on this proposal, we were working to get a provision that would call for 15 percent of our electricity to be generated by clean renewable sources by the year 2020. Of course, we talked to each other on the floor, and I was talking to some of my colleagues from the State of Florida. They were explaining to me, and I was saying, well, you know, there are a lot of different sources of clean energy, biofuels, wave power, clean coal technology. Efficiency in conservation is a form of what we call the first fuel and solar power. When I said that, one of my colleagues from Florida said we can't do solar power in Florida. I thought that was a little curious because I thought the license plate said Florida, the Sunshine State, but he explained that because they have some clouds in Florida, it's not as productive a solar field as perhaps the deserts of Arizona. In fact, that is true. Arizona might be 10 or 15 percent better than Florida. But, a few weeks later, I was talking to Mr. Khosla, who told me that his technology has a perfect fit for Florida, it's called Ausra. This is a picture of the Ausra thermal solar generator. The way the Ausra system works is that it is an array of mirrors. These blue long lines are essentially flat-panel mirrors, long arrays. They are quite long. As you can see these mirrors concentrate the sun's energy on a little pipe. You can see this pipe running about here above the long mirrors, and these are all focusing the reflected rays of the sun on that pipe. It heats water and eventually creates steam, and the steam turns a turbine, just like a coal-fired plant would, and generates electricity. Now, this Ausra technology could be and is, as far as we can tell right now, probably the least expensive of the solar thermal technologies that are being considered. The reason Mr. Khosla explained it to me is because they discovered a way to make these mirrors flat rather than concave, and they can make them a lot cheaper. The other provisions have a concave surface to them. They are much more expensive to manufacture. Well, as a result of these and other improvements they made, Mr. Khosla's company just signed for ten, I believe, hundreds of megawatts with the Florida public, with a Florida public power utility for the production of zero CO2 emitting solar thermal energy. So here we have a situation in a State that at least some folks didn't think we could produce solar energy, and within weeks we have a contract with a major league, a Florida utility to produce electricity for thousands of people in Florida. And this stuff's powerful. In every 2 acres of these mirrors, you can do somewhere between, you can provide enough electricity for somewhere between 750 and 1,000 homes. This is not just, you know, powering just your fan. It's real electricity. And now I got an e-mail from Mr. O'Donnell 3 days ago that, in fact, a contract has also been signed, a major public utility in California. And the sky's the limit. Now, this power's a little more expensive than coal-based power now, but the folks who run this company believe that can be competitive in just a matter of a few years once the cost of investment capital comes down and their scales of economy, and the fact that the prices of fossil fuels have not exactly been coming down, witness the price of gasoline. So in a very few years, this technology has the capability to be as inexpensive or less expensive than traditional fossil fuel-based systems with zero CO2 emissions without sending our money to Saudi Arabia and without digging up anything in the ground. That's a pretty good deal. Now, there are other companies besides OSRA that have similar technology, and there are contracts being let around the country for them as well. So we have the potential, not the potential, but the existence of real energy. This is not a pipe dream. This exists in reality. And we have the right to be excited about it. Now, there are many other ways to produce potentially clean energy. One of those potentially is clean coal technology, and research is going on, as we speak, in the potential of being able to take coal, gasify it, draw off the carbon dioxide, take the carbon dioxide and inject it underground into permanent geological sequestration, and then burn coal without any CO2 emissions of any significant amount. And that research is expensive, and it is not a guarantee that this tip of technology will be commercially viable. But it is a distinct possibility. In fact, an MIT researcher that reviewed this believed it was probable that this type of sequestration technology, putting CO2 underground in either large saline aquifers underground or in two or three other types of geological formations, that we would be able to do this in many, many places in the United States in commercially viable costs. Now, that technology's being developed too. There's a company called Ramgen Corporation in Seattle, Washington, that has developed a compression technology that costs 30 percent less money that could make this commercially viable to allow true clean coal to occur. And it strikes me that research to make that determination whether this can be done is appropriate investment. Now, this is to be distinguished from something you might hear called coal-to-liquid, which is a very different thing. Coal-to-liquid is turning the coal into a liquid and then burning the liquid. When you just burn the liquid, for instance, in an airplane motor or a car motor, you end up putting CO2 right back into the air. So coal-to-liquid is not an improvement from a global warming perspective. What we call clean coal, where the CO2, from its production is actually sequestered underground, is a marked improvement in global warming, and that's another technology that we are looking at. But there are a host of others, and some of them are off our coastline. And I learned about these technologies in the last year in the course of my research and in the preparation of the new Apollo Energy Act that I've cosponsored. Off of our coastline in our estuaries, we have enormous amounts of energy in the waves and in the tides. And I have a picture here of some of the technologies that are now under development to harness that energy. And to have a, just to get a sense of the energy that is in our waves, if you've ever been thrashed in the surf like I have, you get some sense of how much energy is in a wave. But it's truly awesome. In a 10-by-10-mile stretch of the coast of the Pacific, just in a 10- by-10-mile square, there is enough energy in the waves that could power all the electrical needs for the State of California. That's big-time energy. And the Department of Energy has concluded that if we can commercialize wave power technology, it could produce even in excess of 10 percent of all the electrical needs of the United States. So there's an awesome amount of energy off the waves. In fact, the Pacific Coast of the United States happens to be the, happily, the single most beneficial prospective place for wave power in the world. This has actually been mapped. There are maps of the wave power all around the world, and the best in place in the world is off the Pacific Coast. So now we have brilliant Americans developing technology to harness that. We have a picture of some of them here. A buoy developed by Ocean Power Technology. As this buoy bobs up and down, it compresses air that then compresses, essentially, hydraulic fluid and drives an electrical generator. There are others from a company called Finavera that uses a system as the buoy bobs up and down, it pressurizes a column of water that then turns a generator. There are others that look like these large snakes. As they undulate and move up and down, they, through mechanical transference of energy, basically run a generator that then through a wire sends the electricity back to the coast. Now, the first of these in the Continental United States has now gone in the water off the coast of Oregon. We have them off the, actually powering Navy bases in Hawaii right now that have been in the water now for over a year. We're learning a lot from them. We're learning that there's a lot of energy there. And, in fact, as you might imagine, we've learned that you've got to make them incredibly strong to withstand the forces of the sea. Now, people, we cannot guarantee that this technology is going to be commercially viable. It is an infant industry. But we know, with the energy available in the waves, and we know the advances we can make, I think it is a reasonable opportunity that justifies investment in this technology, and, in fact, the private sector is making a very large investment in this technology. Now, there's another type of power called tidal power which involves currents, harnessing the currents that are driven by the tides, by the Moon, of course. You know, this is kind of lunar energy. The Moons run the tides. And we now have technology using turbines that look like underwater wind turbines. There's a picture of one here manufactured by a company called Verdant that is now in the East River in New York. These essentially work like wind turbines that you've seen. As the tide moves in and out, and of course it's very predictable and happens every day, it spins this turbine very slowly, so it has a minimal impact on marine life and generates the electricity. And these are actually in the water. Now it's interesting, we found out there's so much energy in these currents these have had to be rebuilt, which is a good sign, essentially, because we found out there's more energy than we knew. So we have substantial energy off of our coastlines that we have potential for capturing. Now, a lot of people thought ocean energy is where wind energy was about 20 years ago. About 20 years ago, people started to put up these wind mills and generate electricity from them. And when they started, a lot of people thought they were kind of wacky. It was very expensive at the time. It was a new idea and the oil and gas folks kind of laughed at them. That was 20 years ago. During this succeeding 20 years, we've had continuing improvements of the technology, and now we have wind turbines over 300-foot in height powering over 1,000 homes apiece, producing electricity that is as cheap as any electricity in the Nation. Today, in the State of Washington, where I hail from, in southeast Washington, we have the largest wind farm in the Western Hemisphere producing electricity as cheap as coal-fired electricity. And now it is the largest most rapidly growing form of energy in the United States, and it has still huge potential to grow because we have enormous resources of wind. In fact, it's growing so fast that the wind turbine manufacturers cannot keep up. And I'd like to tell the story of an American company called Clipper Wind. Clipper Wind tonight has several hundred Iowans working in Cedar Rapids building clipper wind turbines; good, well-paid American jobs now spinning, and these are also being exported around the world, producing exactly zero CO2 emitting wind energy. And these are American jobs. And that's what this is about. Whether it's plug-in hybrid cars or solar thermal technology, or wind turbine technology, these are American jobs that we're building. But we're only going to build them if Congress starts to adopt the policies that drive investment into these technologies, rather than just the fossil fuel industry. And that's why we need to take some of these subsidies we've given to the oil and gas industry and we did it in the House bill we passed some time ago, $16 billion, reel it back in and put it into a fund to help some of these nascent industries grow. And we need a renewable portfolio standard to send a message to the investment community that they can invest in these technologies, because we know there's going to be a demand for them. And we need a cap and trade system so that we don't allow polluting industries to put their carbon dioxide and their pollution in unlimited amounts into the atmosphere. And when those things happen, there will be a gold rush, a flood tide of investment capital into the companies that are developing these technologies. That's what they need. They've got the brilliance. As soon as they have the investment capital, they're going to take off. And as soon as the demand is obvious, investment capital will flow. I talked to a fellow named John Plaza. He was here three days. John has a really interesting story. He was an airline pilot, and he said he sort of got bored going back and forth. I know what it feels like because I fly back and forth every Monday and Friday. And he decided he wanted to try something new. So he went out and decided he was going to start brewing up biodiesel fuel, literally in his garage, and started to figure out a way to make biodiesel. And he actually came to believe it was commercially viable. So he went and found an investor, a fellow named Martin Tobias, who was successful at Microsoft; raised some capital, built a little plant on the shores of the Duwamish River in Washington. Really wasn't much to look at. Just your typical little tilt-up warehouse. John was pretty creative. He went to the Rainier Brewing Company, the iconic Big R in Seattle, and he bought two big huge brewing vats from the Rainier Brewing Company, and he moved them down to this little warehouse and he designed a way himself on how to filter some of the material out of biodiesel when you refine it. And he started refining biodiesel, and he started selling it. Well, that was last year. This year he is leading and has constructed the largest biodiesel plant in the world that puts out 100 million gallons of biodiesel at Grays Harbor, Washington, a town that's experienced some economic hardship because of the decline of the timber industry. And John, in his genius and his business acumen, has built a business hiring people in Washington State, now going to be shipping biodiesel all around. They just signed a deal with a distributor to start distributing it. And the very first committed biodiesel pump from this group called Propel was installed in Ballard, Washington, just a couple of weeks ago. So here's good old American know-how, can-do spirit, developing a whole new industry. And the biofuel industry has a very bright future. I would like to talk just for a moment about biofuels. We know we have corn ethanol today in abundance, and 23 percent of all the corn grown in the United States now goes to ethanol. And it's been productive. The price of gasoline actually would have been worse if we hadn't had that ethanol available. It's bad enough as it is. But the good news I want to share with you is that we have tremendous cause for optimism that we are going to grow second, third, and fourth generations of ethanol. They're going to be much more productive than corn ethanol that we are using now because the corn ethanol we use now only uses the kernel, a very small part of the total plant. Scientists have now developed ways to use the entire plant, all of the carbohydrates in the plant, what they call the corn stover, switchgrass, and some advanced feedstocks that have the capability to be four or five times as productive per acre as corn. And I was at a company called Mendel Biotechnology in Hayward, California, a few weeks ago that have developed a grass called Miscanthus. Miscanthus grows about 10 or 12 feet high, a real thick- looking plant. When you harvest it, you take the whole plant. They take it, they chop it up, they expose it to heat and enzymes that breaks down the cell wall and freezes the carbohydrates that then could be distilled into an alcohol. Ethanol is an alcohol. And that feedstock has the potential to produce four or five times as much per acre as existing corn ethanol with less fertilizer and less water needed. We're also making tremendous strides in enzymes. And there are ways to do this even without enzymes. The very first cellulosic ethanol plant in America had the ground broken 2 days ago, I believe, the Ramgen Company, another company owned by Vinod Khosla that I talked about, and we have five others that are going to begin construction shortly. So conservative estimates are that within the next 20 years, we will be able to have 25 to 30 percent of all of our transportation fuels fueled by biofuels. And the best is yet to come. Last night I learned about a company called Solazyme. Solazyme is developing a way to make biodiesel from algae that is 50 times as productive as corn per square meter or acre in its productive capability. Now, it's not commercialized yet. It's quite aways from commercialization. A lot of work has to be done. But when that is done, Katie, bar the door when it comes to biofuels. And when we do that, we are going to have plug-in hybrid cars that we can plug in, run for 40 miles, then burn cellulosic ethanol or potentially biodiesel, and have an infinite number of miles per gallon of gasoline because we won't be using it. We will have a decarbonized car. The car may become total electric, but even if it doesn't become total electric, it can become decarbonized by a combination of plug-in hybrid technology and biofuels. And of course biofuels are zero CO2 emitting net because you don't put any more carbon into the atmosphere than the plant takes out of the atmosphere. It's just a little circle. The plant sucks the CO2 out of the atmosphere, photosynthesis kicks in. You make carbohydrates, build the plant, chop the plant up. You make it into biodiesel or cellulosic ethanol. You burn it, and then CO2 goes back up and the cycle is repeated. There is no net CO2, unlike coal and oil. We are taking stuff out of the ground that has been there for a million years, and that has enormous net increases to the atmosphere. So here we have existing technology that is on the cusp of commercialization and American know-how is going to do it. And that is why we in this Chamber and my colleagues who might be listening tonight, should that be the case anywhere in this fair country, we ought to have confidence that we can move forward with the host of these clean energy policies that we are now considering and realize that the American economy is going to grow as a result of these policies, not shrink, because the world is going to need this clean energy. And it ought to be America that is selling it to China and the rest of the world, and we have every possibility of doing that. Now, there is another place where the clean energy revolution is going to be really important, and that is in our homes, in a lot of different ways. And some people think that to make our homes electrical-generating units or to make them zero CO2 emitters is sort of a Buck Rogers fantasy, and I have learned that that is anything but true. In fact, on the mall 2 weeks ago, we had a solar decathlon where 13 colleges sent kids, and anybody under 40 is a kid to me now, but these college students that came in and built these zero CO2 emitting solar-powered homes. And they were just delightful to look at and fascinating to behold what these young students had created. Now, they did look a little different than my home and maybe yours look like because they had the absolute avant guard technology in them. But I want to show you another home in one of the rainiest parts of Washington, up north in Redmond, Washington. This is the home of Mike and Meg Towne. Mike is a teacher at Redmond High School. And several years ago Mike was talking to his students about the importance of dealing with global warming and all the whiz-bang technologies that he thought was going to come on to help solve this problem. And one of his students said, Mr. Towne, if this is so cool, why aren't you using it? And he said to himself, well, maybe I will. So he and his wife, Meg, decided to go out and build essentially a zero net CO2 home that's solar powered, and they did it. And they did it for very little more than it costs to build a typical home. And here's their home in Redmond, Washington. I want to note this is a very unusual day because it was not raining when this picture was taken, and it tends to rain a little bit where I live, and it rains even more where Mike lives. This is up towards the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, and it's just a very damp, gray environment. But even in that environment, they put up these solar cells, and you will see that they are incorporated into the roofing material. You can just put them on. Mike put them on himself. They used a little extra insulation, decent windows, designed it in a way to minimize heat loss. And right now they have zero electrical net usage because they feed back into the grid frequently of electricity they are not using, and they netted out to zero. And Americans are going to have that right if a bill that I have been working on for 4 years called the Net Metering bill passes, so that when you generate electricity and you feed it back into the grid, you get paid for it. The point of this is that this exists today in rainy climates. It's possible almost anywhere in the country. And we are going to do it. And we have a bill in the House that we have now passed this August that will establish building codes that will decrease energy use by 50 percent in our homes and our businesses in the next 10 years of new construction. That is possible to do. We are doing it. Mike and Meg Towne did it. And we are well on our way as part of an important part of the clean energy revolution. And, by the way, this is going to create jobs, because when we retrofit our homes, when we put in new insulation, when we put in weather stripping, when we put in more efficient heating systems, all of those things generate jobs. And a conservative estimate of the new Apollo Energy Act that I have sponsored is that it will create 3 million new jobs in the next several years. So what we have seen tonight is a host of new economic opportunities for America. And what I started out with, I was talking about that this is an irony. The irony is that these great challenges of global warming and addiction to Middle Eastern oil and the huge increase in the cost of oil and gas are actually disguised opportunities. And if this Chamber will act, and we would like to do it in a bipartisan basis, to adopt this signal to the market, these technologies are going to blossom. And I would like to talk about one policy that is of overriding interest, and that is the cap-and-trade system that we need in this country to drive investment in these technologies. Right now we have a broken market. We have a great market failure. And that market failure is that we are allowing polluting industries to use our atmosphere, a scarce resource, and put unlimited amounts of their pollutants into the air for no cost whatsoever. And that is not only morally wrong; it's economically wrong, because when you have an asset, if somebody uses it up, they ought to pay for that; right? And there ought to be some limit on it. But right now when a utility burns coal and they dump the CO2 in our atmosphere, an atmosphere we have in common, it's like a city park. And we would not allow a utility to back their dump truck into the city park and dump their trash in the city park. We would not allow some refinery putting CO2 into the atmosphere to drive up to the city park and dump their sludge in the city park. But that's what we are doing right now by allowing unlimited amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. And that has to stop. We have to develop a limit on the amount of carbon dioxide that goes into the atmosphere. And a cap-and-trade system does that. When we develop a cap, we will put and guarantee Americans that only a certain amount of carbon dioxide can go into the atmosphere every year. It's common sense. We can't continue to put this into the atmosphere without very devastating ramifications. And we need to charge for that as well. Europe made a big mistake. When they did this, they just handed these permits out, and the utilities took them and then took a huge windfall profit by charging rate payers for an asset that was just given to them. We can't do that. We need to have an auction of those permits to create a price for carbon and to use the market to determine who really needs them and what they will pay for that scarce resource. And this is a resource owned by the taxpayers. The taxpayers own the atmosphere, not the corporations. The citizens of America own the air we breathe, not the utilities. The Congress has a responsibility to our citizens to take care of that asset, and we are not doing it yet. And when somebody uses that asset, they need to pay for using that asset. So what we would propose to do is have an auction and let the market determine what the cost of those permits are for polluting industries. And the sooner we do that, the better; the more powerful impact we will have in driving investment to these new technologies, and the sooner that taxpayers will get a break getting paid by something that they own mutually. And that money can then be used for further research and development into these technologies. It can be used to help lower- income folks with their heating and cooling expenses. And it can be used as part of the clean energy revolution. And we need to increase that R and D. We are spending 25 times more in Iraq today than we are spending on trying to solve this energy problem. We spent seven times more on the original Apollo Project than we are spending today on this energy problem. We have got to ramp up our Federal R and D as the private sector does as well. So in closing, Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that if people come to know the people I have known during the last year; the folks who are developing solar thermal; the folks who are developing clean coal; the folks who are developing advanced forms of cellulosic ethanol and advanced forms of biodiesel; the folks who are developing wind and tidal power; the people who are developing what's called the SIPs industry, the structural integrated panels, where they have built these panels now that you can build a house with them and you can reduce your usage by 40 percent at no additional cost; the people who are developing the plug-in hybrid car, these are the Americans that we need to listen to and have confidence in that they are going to solve this problem. And that is why in the next few weeks in this Chamber I hope we will pass an energy bill that is as bold and as visionary and as optimistic as Kennedy's original Apollo Project. And America deserves nothing less than that because we are just as capable, we are just as smart, and we are just as technologically ambitious as we were in the 1960s. And if we do that, America will produce. It is our destiny. The New Apollo Energy Act will solve these problems and grow our economy at the same time.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Chairman, this bill is about discrimination, but it is also about economic competition. Thinking about this bill today, I was thinking about the 1964 University of Washington Huskies football team that went to the Rose Bowl. They had a slashing, tough, brutal halfback named Dave Kopay, a boyhood hero of mine. He helped them go to the Rose Bowl. Later on after he goes to the NFL, we learn he is gay. If the UW hadn't put that guy in, there are several games they would not have won. And if software companies don't hire gay software engineers, they will not be economically competitive with the rest of the world. In America, let's get one thing real clear: All good athletes play and all good software engineers engineer and all good workers work. That's the American way. Let's pass this bill.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, 40 years ago, U.S. Senator Vance Hartke envisioned the creation of the U.S. Institute of Peace, USIP. Now, the realization of his dream is taking shape. We have broken ground on a new building to house the USIP on the consecrated ground of the National Mall in the Nation's capital between the Lincoln Memorial and the Kennedy Center. Senator Hartke's dream truly is a manifestation of the most ancient and ageless dream of humanity--enduring peace on earth. ``I have the unshakeable conviction,'' Senator Hartke declared when he introduced the legislation, ``that we will have it within our power and capacity not only to end the Vietnam War, but the syndrome of war itself.'' This center is not the only mark on democracy he has left behind. His son Jan continues to help shape the country in the finest tradition of his father in many matters, including efforts to stop global warming, itself a threat to long-term peace. The USIP will not be a monument to an individual nor a memorial to a significant event in our Nation's past; instead, it will be a building dedicated to an idea and the future of all people. It will be a working building where scholars with different disciplines can sift through the dynamics of war and peace and gain insights that can help America and the world avoid unnecessary or accidental conflicts and wars. With its large auditorium, it will be a place where heads of state from many different lands and cultures will be able to address their own strategies for peace. Most of all, it will be a place that illuminates and advances the greatest ideal of all. For without peace, all our other cherished causes and values cannot prevail. The idea for the USIP arose during the Vietnam war, when Senator Hartke had just broken with his close friend, President Johnson. Even though Senator Hartke opposed the war because he believed it was morally indefensible and financially antithetical to the goals of the Great Society, President Johnson interpreted dissent as disloyalty to him and his administration. At that point, Senator Hartke realized that something was missing in the Nation's decision-making apparatus on the great issues of war and peace. Senator Hartke's son Jan remembers, ``Late at night, Dad would be sitting in his chair, reading stacks of books about the causes of past wars. He was appalled at how many wars could have been avoided, reduced in their severity or shortened. He concluded that America needed a non-partisan voice with analytical depth and institutional heft whose sold mandate was to make the case for peace, especially when the drums of war beat the loudest.'' Senator Hartke saw the USIP as a trusted, convincing and unequivocal voice for peace that could speak to the President, the Congress and the people. Senator Hartke knew the terrible costs of war, having served with both his brothers in WWII. He passed legislation to create the Veterans' Affairs Committee in the U.S. Senate. He wrote the law to establish the Business People's Peace Corps and the International Executive Service Corps, to address the root causes of war. Along with USIP, he also introduced legislation to create a cabinet-level Department of Peace. Senator Hartke's challenging and prophetic words still ring true today, ``The attainment of a just and lasting peace will be the supreme moral achievement of civilization. Yet it will not be won by the cynics or the naysayers, nor by those who are afraid of ridicule for being perceived as soft or utopian, nor by those lacking infinite patience or resolve. The victory of world peace will be won by those hearts and minds that never give up on the noblest quest of them all. For in the end, it is the dreamer who is the greatest realist.'' Senator Hartke's dedication to peace was recognized widely. His widow, Martha, recalls, ``After Vance passed away in 2003, his friend President Clinton called my son and told him, `When I came to work in the Senate as a young man, I saw your father as a shining star because of his principled opposition to the Vietnam War.' '' Through the work of the U.S. Institute of Peace, Senator Hartke's star need not fade, but will continue to shed light on the path to peace.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I rise to offer a second Inslee-Welch amendment that will help small business achieve energy efficiency. We need all hands on deck in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, including our Nation's 26 million small businesses. This amendment will help small businesses in low-income areas upgrade to energy-efficient buildings, technologies and practices. It will give them operational assistance in these areas through the New Market Venture Capital program. The majority of small business owners say that they have been affected by rising energy prices and that reducing energy costs will serve to increase their profitability. At the same time, however, half of these entrepreneurs have not yet invested in energy-efficient programs for their businesses. For instance, if a small business owner can replace 20 100-watt incandescent bulbs with 27-watt compact fluorescent bulbs, it does cost the owner $400 up front but saves them $980 a year in energy costs. The owner of the Snoqualmie Gourmet Ice Cream factory in Maltby, WA retrofitted their small business lighting system and reduced their lighting costs by 50 percent. So we know that these simple, new, relatively inexpensive technologies pay for themselves in months, or at most in a couple of years. We know small businesses benefit from energy efficiency and sustainable workplace practices. This amendment will help American innovators with the know-how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in America while increasing their profits. This is a green/green solution in both ways. I want to thank the chairwoman for her support, and urge passage of the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to express my support of this bill and congratulate the Chair for her great work. Mr. Chairman, there's a lot of great news in this bill: updating the definition of small business for today's realities, taking care of small companies that are entering into high-technology capital- intensive industries. Many of these small companies are based in my home State of Washington. There's over 200 biotechnology and medical device companies. They are developing cures for debilitating diseases; they are improving the Nation's biodefense system. Mr. Chairman, 44 percent of these companies have been formed just in the last 5 years, and they obviously rely heavily on venture capital. Unfortunately, there's some outdated SBA regulations that currently preclude small businesses, even though with a handful of employees, from receiving assistance simply because they rely on venture capital funds for their R&D. I want to thank the chairwoman for including as a solution to this a provision that will correct this unwise discrimination that is now going on against small businesses that are so dependent on venture capital funding. Today, these companies will again be able to compete for grants and receive other small business assistance because of a provision in this bill. I have been working on a legislative solution for quite a while, so I am very happy to see this fixed today. We are happy to see the American Dream is going to be helped by this bill. I want to thank the chairwoman again. I look forward to future success.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to support the Inslee-Welch amendment to the Small Business Investment Act which will support the legislation's overall goal to modernize small business investment programs. Small businesses are the backbone of the growth in our economy and will be the brains behind the forthcoming clean-energy revolution. Our amendment will ensure that the small business investment companies give consideration to innovators that create clean energy technologies and services. There are 26.8 million small businesses in the United States. The vast majority of renewable fuels producers, such as biodiesel and ethanol, are small businesses. The chairwoman understands this, and I thank her for her support and commend her efforts to support small green businesses. Under the chairwoman's leadership, the House passed a clean energy package that will help small businesses become more energy efficient and will establish a debenture financing program exclusively focused on investments in renewable fuels. These efforts truly have been outstanding. However, I believe we must ensure that every piece of legislation that passes this Chamber that deals with taxpayer dollars and Federal investment include a provision to encourage investments in truly clean energy technologies. This amendment will help American innovators and entrepreneurs turn their ideas into products that will help prevent our worst-case climate change scenarios and will create green-collar jobs, and I urge its passage. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, 10 million low-income American children will get health care coverage under this bill to renew SCHIP. Some of us think that is not such a bad thing. This legislation is especially important to my home State of Washington because it will cut in half the number of uninsured kids in Washington State. It does that by fixing a long-standing inequity that punished Washington and 10 other States because we provided coverage for kids just above the poverty line, and we fix that long-standing inequity tonight. If you're a Member from the State of Washington, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maryland, New Hampshire, Vermont and Tennessee, vote for this bill and you can go home telling your constituents we fixed this long-term unfairness. I'd like to thank Chairman Dingell for including a 100 percent permanent fix in the House SCHIP bill that we passed in early August. I'm grateful that we retained that fix, and I hope we'll make sure that we do this on a permanent basis ultimately. So we need to pass this bill tonight, extend coverage and fix that inequity.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, since the President's escalation of the war in Iraq began, every month we have had more and more proud, dedicated people from Fort Lewis, Washington, and their families learn they were never coming home. Those men and women have been fed into Iraq by a President whose policies in Iraq were wrong at the beginning, were wrong in the middle, and will be wrong at the end. The fact is very clear from all of the reports that we have been reading in the last week: whether we stay 6 days or 6 weeks or 6 months or 60 years, the destiny of Iraq will be determined by the Iraqi people. And what we have learned in this escalation is that it failed; it has failed to accomplish its design of political reconciliation in Iraq. And until the Sunnis and Shiites reconcile their interests, all of the king's horses and all the king's men are not going to put Iraq together again. It is time for an orderly exit from Iraq.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, last week I talked to a father who lost his son in May in Iraq. He was, of course, devastated. He asked me a question: Why did my son die in Iraq? That is a question that will be on all of our minds in the coming days when we receive the new report from Iraq. When we look at the report in a very calm, dispassionate manner, I hope we think about what is really going on in Iraq. What is really going on in Iraq, what the President has crowed about as a great success in these regions is what you might call the ``re-Saddamization'' of Iraq. The President is going to brag about the sense that he is now giving more power to tribes and tribal sheikhs who at some point when we eventually leave Iraq will be better equipped and better armed to fight the central government that the President used to crow about. I think we need to have a calm, dispassionate review of what we're doing. We are creating the conditions that could result in a worse civil war. We have to have a calm review and make the right choices.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Thank you. I just note Mr. Van Hollen, Mr. Jones and I are offering this amendment to protect our civil workers, and thanks to the Chair for his consideration of this issue.

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

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, this is not the United Nations of Alberto Gonzales, it is the United States of America. In America, we do not allow Alberto Gonzales to listen to our phone conversations while we are sitting in our living room talking to our daughter anywhere in the world without judicial review, and that's what this bill does. In America, we do not allow Alberto Gonzales to intercept our e-mail conversations to our business partners anywhere in the world without some kind of judicial review. In America, we have that concept because we understand people who can make mistakes. I base my principle on fundamental tenet that the Americans trust the United States Constitution more than they trust Alberto Gonzales. What Benjamin Franklin said still holds true, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty and safety. He was right then. He is right now. Don't pass this bill. Come back and have something that allows surveillance with protections from our judicial system.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, this amendment really is critical because we know one thing about America: when it sets grand goals, it is roused to great advance. When John F. Kennedy on May 9, 1961, stood right behind me and set a goal of America to go to the Moon in 10 years, the U.S. Congress did not complain that at that moment we did not have all the technologies we need to set that goal. But Kennedy knew that when America sets goals, it achieves them. Today, we set a goal to have 15 percent of our energy from renewable sources. We know this is an achievable goal. We know that every State in the continental United States, including the Southeast, has more solar energy capacity than Germany, that today, cloudy Germany is getting massive amounts of solar energy. The reason is that we understand that we are the people who invented the airplane, the Internet, software and mapped the human genome. And we are going to do this together. We are going to use clean coal for 80, perhaps 89, percent using our fossil fuel. Is it too much to say that we will use 11 percent for renewables, for wave, biofuels, solar, and 4 percent for efficiency? This is a moment for America to have the same spirit of the original Apollo Project, and for the moment do not shirk and fear. Let's live our dreams. Let's live our aspirations. Let's pass this amendment.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, on May 9, 1961, John F. Kennedy stood behind me and said that the U.S. was going to put a man on the moon in 10 years. That was very ambitious, but we did it. And we're going to have a similar moment of goal setting and aspirations and vision tomorrow when we vote to adopt a renewable portfolio standard for America, where we will guarantee Americans that we will have 15 percent of our electricity coming from clean, renewable sources by the year 2020. This is something we know we can do; States are doing it, whole nations in Europe have over 20 percent clean, renewable energy today. And we should follow the spirit of Oak Ridge, Texas, which 2 months ago became the first city in the United States to have all their electricity from clean, renewable, 100 percent biodiesel. This is something the States can do for a variety of reasons. Let's have another ``Apollo-John F. Kennedy'' moment tomorrow when we pass the renewable portfolio standard.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I would like to commend Representative Jane Harman (D-CA) and Representative Fred Upton (R-MI) for their unfailing hard work and dedication to the issue of light bulb efficiency in the United States Congress. Their leadership in this area has greatly contributed to our national effort to prevent global climate change and reduce our dependence on foreign energy sources. Recently Ms. Harman and Mr. Upton offered an amendment to H.R. 3093, the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act of 2008. This amendment prohibited funds to be used to purchase light bulbs unless the light bulb has the ``ENERGY STAR'' or ``Federal Energy Management Program'' designation. During this vote, Rollcall 738, I erroneously voted against the measure which I wholeheartedly support. Since indoor and outdoor lighting accounts for up to fifteen percent of energy use in the average residence, inefficient light bulbs can consume large amounts of excess energy. With the advent of compact fluorescent light bulbs, Americans have been given an alternative to inefficient incandescent bulbs which waste up to ninety-five percent of consumed energy as heat. These long- lasting high-efficiency fluorescent light bulbs provide equivalent illumination as incandescent light bulbs, so neither comfort nor convenience is sacrificed in this energy-saving endeavor. However, they consume up to sixty-six percent less energy, leading to major decreases in energy bills. By simply replacing the light bulbs in their homes, our constituents will be saving money in addition to energy. Ms. Harman and Mr. Upton have empowered Americans with an uncomplicated, affordable plan that offers only benefits to both individuals and our nation as a whole. As we look to renewable energy sources to minimize our foreign oil dependence and increase national security, each citizen can do his or her part both at home and at work with the nearly effortless action of changing a light bulb.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I rise today with several of my colleagues to introduce a resolution that would require that the Judiciary Committee initiate an impeachment investigation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. I have introduced this resolution only after careful consideration and exercising a great deal of caution. Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Paper No. 66 stated, ``the powers relating to impeachments are . . . an essential check in the hands of that body upon the encroachments of the executive.'' The ``encroachments'' made by this Attorney General subvert several core constitutional values. I believe that it is clear the Attorney General was involved in the decisions to fire several U.S. Attorneys for not pursuing public corruption cases based on partisan political factors. I also believe that the Attorney General has made false or misleading statements to Congress in order to minimize his role in the warrantless surveillance program, the U.S. Attorney firings, and to otherwise obstruct congressional investigations. Our judicial system must operate outside of the political process in order to preserve justice. The American people deserve an independent Justice Department that is not controlled by the political strategists at the White House. Gonzales' lack of candor before Congress perverts and undermines the ability of Congress to trust assurances made by the executive branch and it also retards Congress' ability to carry out its constitutionally mandated functions. Based on the facts we know today, I believe that an investigation will reveal that the level of malfeasance of the Attorney General is impeachable. With the President showing no sign of replacing the Attorney General, Congress must assert itself and remove him from office. His removal is essential to preserve the strength of the Congress and to send the clear unambiguous message to future Attorneys General that the politicization of prosecutions and the U.S. Attorneys across the country is a repugnant degradation of the law.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, one of the great falsehoods I have heard today, unfortunately, is this attempt by one side of the aisle who is against trying to get kids health insurance here keep saying somehow we are raising the eligibility to those folks who are hanging out at the country club. That is simply not true. That is bogus. We are maintaining the same levels of eligibility in America that exist today, yesterday and tomorrow in this bill. What we are doing is simply allowing our State governments, our local governments, the ones that I know many of my Republican friends believe are effective and more efficient than the Federal Government, to fulfill their desire to reach these kids who are eligible today, but the Federal Government is not actually reaching to provide this insurance. Now, where is the criminality in that in that? Where is the inefficiency in that? We have simply said federally that children of a certain income level should have health insurance, and we are simply saying those same children of the same exact economic considerations are now going to actually get it. That's all we are doing. I want to mention another thing we are doing here. We have 11 States that have really been ahead of the Federal Government in providing health insurance for their kids. As a result, for a decade now, they have been punished in that they haven't been able to use the same resources to reach the kid they have already insured. We fix that, 100 percent fix today. The States, if you are from the States of Washington, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Connecticut, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Maryland, New Hampshire, Vermont and Tennessee, do not vote against this bill, because it finally, finally restores this inequity that finally we will be able to get fair treatment for your States and your children. So, today, we have got a fair bill all the way around.