Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Well, that is what we call in the business a rhetorical question, and we were just optimistic. We all walked down the steps 6 inches in the air when the President said this the other day; but the next morning reading the budget, it was just a slap in the face. It was a slap in the face to anyone in America who believes that we truly do need to have new technological advances. What we are proposing is that we should grab a hold, as we did in the new Apollo energy project or the original Apollo energy project, we need a new Apollo energy project that will have the same type of creativity and challenge to the American people that Kennedy had in his State of the Union speech on May 9, 1961. He said we are going to the Moon in 10 years. We did it. We now need a budget that will say we have the same degree of aggression and optimism that we had in that to wean ourselves off of foreign oil. Nothing else will do. We Democrats are proposing to take a major step forward in that regard with flex fuel vehicles, which are on the street today. We just need to get more of them by using cellulosic ethanol which increases the return per acre of biofuels by a factor of three to four above existing ethanol levels. That is what we need to do.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you mentioning this little small business that has had a little success, it is called Microsoft, in my district that has been one area that has recognized the power of innovation. There are many others in my district. I will just tell you, I want to mention a couple of my favorite constituents, about why they believe this Democratic Innovation Agenda makes sense, that we should seize the creative powers of Americans and put it in harness. One of my favorite constituents, my mother, I talked to her today, and she was brimming with laughter. We had a great talk, and it was great to hear her laughing because she went through a tough patch with some health problems about 6 months ago, and it was a tough time for her. Since then, she has got on a medical technology that was developed in Seattle by some brilliant doctors doing research in basic and applied research; and because of their work now done over a decade ago, my mother was laughing today and probably is alive today. The reason that she was laughing today is that someone had the wherewithal and the foresight to make an investment in basic research medical technology involving the blood system over 10 years ago. We have rolled out this idea to increase and accelerate research in medical technology because we belief there are a lot of people that can use this; but unfortunately, the budget the President has submitted to Congress today, we had Mr. Leavitt, Secretary of Health and Human Services today, he let us know that they are proposing to cut blood research by $20 million. At this time of the most rapid time of potential scientific growth, when we have mapped the human genome, when we could be looking at the dawn of medical technology, that we could make penicillin look like a small investment, they want to cut medical research.

Mr. INSLEE. Under the current control of the Federal Government, if China invades Taiwan, we will have to borrow money from China to fight the war. That is a very sad irony, if not a joke. I wanted to point out one thing before we finish, an aspect of the Democratic Innovation Agenda that we have not talked about, and that is our efforts to help small businesses innovate because Democrats recognize that small businesses are tremendous engines of innovation. That is where a lot of our creative genius comes out. I want to point out a few things that we have proposed to make sure that small businesses are successful in innovating, and one is we have a constellation of proposals that will help small businesses across what is called the valley of death which is where they cannot get financing when they have a good idea but cannot quite get to commercialization. We would make sure that the Small Business Innovation Research Program is held up and supported. This administration is actually cutting the availability of small businesses to use the innovation grant program to get their innovations to market. They purport to believe in the power of business but will not help them with that. Second, we propose that we will help reward risk taking and entrepreneurship by promoting broad-based stock options, and not just for top dogs in corporations but for the rank and file. Third, we want to protect intellectual property by making sure that patent fees go to help the patent process so these businesses can get their patents. Fourth, we want to help specially tailored guidelines for small businesses to help with the Sarbanes-Oxley requirement in accounting. I point these out because I think it is fair to say that the Democrats have put forth four very concrete proposals to make sure small businesses can thrive in a challenging environment. That is important because we know that government is not the source of all great ideas in our society. We want small businesses to achieve, and we have good proposals for that to happen.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we have another concern today arising about the administration's potential abuse of the scientific process in making policy. Today, the Associated Press reported that the Bureau of Land Management under this administration has suspended funding for the final year of a study from Oregon State University on the impact of logging in national forests burned by wildfires. Findings of these studies were published last month in the magazine Science, and they suggested that the administration's stance on salvage logging runs counter to the real goals regarding forest regeneration and fire prevention. I am concerned in this case that we have seen yet another situation where funding may have been frozen to punish scientific results legitimately conducted at Oregon State University, and that is why I have called on the Interior Department's inspector general today to investigate whether or not this in fact has occurred. Did Daniel Donato and his research team from OSU lose funding because of this cause? Is this another punishment situation? We need to find out. We have got to respect science and use it accordingly.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if absolute power corrupts absolutely, so does oil. And the continued lust, the continued rapacious grab for oil in one of our most pristine areas in this country has corrupted this body absolutely. We stand here in the middle of the night tagging on in this scheme, something that could not pass this body tonight in any other way other than through this subterfuge. And yes, those artificers who tried to run this scheme recognize it is difficult to ask Members to vote against any defense bill because all of us, Republican and Democrat, stand for our troops. But I hope we take a little bit of inspiration from our troops. Mr. Cole and I went and visited Baghdad a few weeks ago, who are standing late night sentry duty, and it does get cold in the desert this time of year. Alone, away from the holidays, they are doing a little tough duty. And maybe we can have a few Democrats and Republicans do a little tough duty tonight and call foul and blow the whistle on this corruption of the Armed Services appropriation process on a bipartisan basis. Whatever you think of the Arctic drilling, and for those who think it is such a great thing I will just tell you, I went out to the Washington Mall. I went for a walk tonight. It is a beautiful night. Saw these beautiful monuments. People were out enjoying the Lincoln Monument tonight, even in the cold. And they feel the same way about the Lincoln Monument as they do about the wildlife, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We should not drill in the Yellowstone, in the Glacier, in the National Mall or the Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Why? Because it is not an answer to our problem. We can solve our problem with 2 miles a gallon fuel efficiency. You can believe in Santa Claus, but you cannot believe the Arctic is a solution to our energy problems. Vote no on the biggest environmental vote, which is on the rule today. Vote no against corruption of the Armed Services appropriations process. Vote no to restore integrity of this situation and vote no on this rule.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, the worst thing a parent can endure is the loss of a child. And it is important for me, in the context of this bill, to share the story of Lane and Patti Judson, who lost their daughter, Crystal, to domestic violence and have turned their sadness into a will to help other families. Crystal was murdered by her husband, who was chief of police in Tacoma, Washington, at the time. We all know what obstacles domestic violence victims face. But imagine the choices a victim faces when their abuser is in the very profession that is charged to protect her. Congress today took steps to address these circumstances and, for the first time in the country's history, included a grant program in the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act to help law enforcement agencies develop procedures for dealing with domestic crimes committed by their own employees as well as train special advocates to assist victims like Crystal and her family. Women who have been victims of domestic violence should not have to stand alone, and after today, they will not have to. I thank the Judiciary Committee chair and ranking member; my colleagues from Washington; advocacy groups; and, most importantly, Lane and Patti Judson for making this program a reality. Unfortunately, domestic violence continues to be in all of our communities today. And the Judsons' courage and conviction remind all of us that we have more work to do toward finding new solutions to protect families across our Nation. From a family tragedy, the Judsons have forged a strong measure to protect families across the Nation. We honor their diligence and the life of Crystal Judson Brame.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, the odds of success in Iraq are not enhanced by Congress continuing to act as a rubber stamp for President Bush. We need a change in strategic vision in Iraq. This resolution says that setting a timetable somehow is a Communist plot, but, in fact, the President himself set timetables in Iraq when he set timetables to have transitional elections in Iraq. He set timetables for elections because it focused the Iraqis to demand performance, and that is what we should do in setting a timetable to transition to Iraqis true sovereignty for three reasons. Reason number one, we should no longer provide a crutch for an indefinite period of time to the Iraqi politicians. We need to focus their minds on making the compromises that are necessary if a real government is going to be followed. We cannot fall into the trap of enabling Iraqi politicians to continue their bickering. They need a solution. Number two, people say a timetable will encourage more violence. Let me ask you this: If there is a young unemployed man who is angry about foreign troops marching on his neighborhood, what do you think will make him more angry and more likely to plant an IED, the fact that we tell him we are going to leave in a year or so, or tell him we are going to stay there as long as George Bush says so? We need to tell them that we are going to come home. The third reason we ought to think about this is that in our briefings we have received, we have been told that the Iraqi military will be fully trained by next December 2006, and it is realistic, it is commonsense, it is a measure to focus the Iraqi politicians on the necessity of seeking compromise, to say that we should begin transitioning next year and substantially conclude by December 2006. During that time I have one message for the administration. They need to do a better job arming the Iraqi military forces. They need radios, they need Humvees, they need logistics. We cannot allow that force to fall apart. We need to defeat this resolution.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, in the last week there has been a collection of relatively extraordinary events in the future of not only our country, but the entire planet, when it comes to our ability to maintain a climate to which we have been accustomed, and in fact that climate is now threatened by global warming, and during the last week some extraordinary things have happened that demand comment here in the House. I have come here tonight to suggest that the U.S. Congress needs to act with vigor and vision to lead the world in dealing with global warming. What precipitates my comments is a collection of scientific information that has become available to the world in the last week, together with the recently concluded conclave of world leaders in Montreal, Canada, that just concluded without meaningful participation by the executive branch of the United States, which I think is most disappointing to my constituents and I think much of America. So what I want to do tonight is address some of the new science that has come forward just in the last week about global warming and contrast that with the abject failure, unfortunately, of the executive branch of the United States to fulfill the leadership role of the United States, which has historically been on a bipartisan basis as the technological leader of the world, which this chief executive has abdicated in refusing to lead the world to a resolution of the problem of global warming. If I can first just briefly summarize some of the things that have happened in the last week regarding global warming. The Goddard Space Science Center, one of our preeminent scientific institutions, in the next few days will announce that 2005 remains on track to be one, if not the, hottest year in global history since records have been kept, which continues a trend of many of the hottest years in recorded history being in the last decade. British scientists this week announced that their records are similar to the findings of the Goddard Space Laboratory. We are in an unprecedented period of increases in global temperatures. This is confirmed by a huge majority of the scientific measurements. The Earth is warming, and it is warming faster probably than it has been ever in the last 1,000 years, at least. This is new and appropriately disturbing evidence. The same week, if we read the Wall Street Journal, a publication not known for its certainly being far out there on environmental issues, reported on December 14 that scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. The bears spend most of the time hunting and raising their young on ice flows, but the problem is the ice flows are disappearing. That leads to the third bit of information that we have received in the last couple of months, which has found that the Arctic ice shelf has melted to an extent previously never seen before in human history and probably never seen before for thousands of years. These are an amazing continuation, where one cannot open up a newspaper or a scientific journal in any given week and not see a continued cascade, an avalanche of scientific information, nailing down the coffin of any remaining doubt that we are now facing significant global warming as a result of increased concentrations of carbon dioxide, which we all, Republican and Democrat alike, are putting into the atmosphere. We are experiencing this with our own eyes. If we take a look at a picture here in Glacier National Park, one of our most treasured jewels of our crown of our national park, we have already lost 30 percent of the glaciers in the last 75 years in Glacier National Park. If we look at the Grinnell Glacier, a picture here in 1938, you will see the glacier coming off this cliff band and extending down into the valley. This is 1938, one lifetime ago. In that one lifetime, the lifetime certainly of my mom and dad, we now see the Grinnell Glacier is probably less than 40 percent of its preexisting size. You see this entire area, it used to be a glacier, is now a lake where the glacier has melted. The sad fact is that when my mom and dad took me to Glacier National Park in my youth, I got to see these glaciers. If this trend, according to scientific evidence continues, at least my great-grandchildren will not be able to go to Glacier National Park and see glaciers because the glaciers will be gone, extinct, period. I suppose some wag would suggest we will have to rename it as ``the Park Formerly Known as Glacier.'' The fact of the matter is that as we speak, the world and the United States is undergoing a significant change from that which we grew up with. Glaciers, polar bears, fields of wheat that support one of the greatest food baskets in the world, where we are going to have significant change in our ability to produce agriculturally in the Midwest. With irrigated agriculture, the science shows, we just had a conference of this up in Seattle, Seattle is known for our rain, but in fact we depend on irrigated agriculture for a good part of our agriculture, and that irrigated agriculture depends on snow pack. I just returned from a conference in Seattle in the last several weeks where the scientists predicted that our irrigated agriculture in the State of Washington, upon which our apple crop, the best apple crop in the world, depends, will be jeopardized because the snow pack is disappearing. It is projected we will have less than half the snow pack we have had historically in the next several decades, which jeopardizes our apple industry in Washington State and many of our irrigated products. So the disturbing fact is that the scientific evidence is becoming overwhelming. By the way, it is just not Glacier. I will show you a picture of Argentina, one of the large ice sheets. In 1928, this photograph is of this enormous ice sheet down in Patagonia, in the southern tip of South America. You see in the same picture in 2004, and I was there several months ago, where you can see where these glaciers have been. This enormous ice sheet that existed in 1928 is knew essentially gone, replaced by water where the ice sheet has melted. These are in very blinks of geologic time that we are seeing these changes take place, in one lifetime seeing these changes take place, and this has never happened before at these rates. We have had ice ages and had melts, but scientists will tell you this has never happened before in world history, as far as we know, with this rapidity to have this enormous change. Very briefly, the reason it is occurring is that we are putting into the atmosphere gasses that trap infrared radiation. Light comes in. As ultraviolet radiation it can pass through the atmosphere. When it bounces back it is at a different spectrum, at infrared frequencies, and carbon dioxide and methane that comes out of our tailpipes and smokestacks trap ultraviolet radiation. We look at this chart and it shows levels of COG. These are parts per million, the amount of COG in the atmosphere. We go to pre-industrial times in 1000, it was about 240 parts per million. When we started to burn coal and gas in about 1800 it starts to go up, and in the 1800s and 1900s it goes up dramatically. Now in 2000 we see it is going up like a rocket, and it is projected that by the close of this century we will have parts per million in the 780 to 800 range, at least two times higher than it has ever been in human history. It is predicted to continue to skyrocket after that. This is a fact. No one, no scientist in the world, disputes these conclusions. Global warming is a fact, and it is a fact that we are responsible for and need to act as leading the world to deal with this problem, to adopt energy technological solutions to this problem, which we can do if we have the same vision that John Kennedy had when we had the first Apollo project. I have introduced a bill to do that. But in light of this science, what has the Bush administration done? In light of this cavalcade of information demanding a response, what has the Bush administration done to fulfill our destiny to be the leader in the world when it comes to technological innovation? Well, what it did is it sent an emissary named Watson to Montreal last week to basically tell the rest of the world, when the rest of the world is working together to try to find a solution to global warming, to try to come up with a post-Kyoto agreement that is better than Kyoto, that is fairer, that is more effective than Kyoto, what did the President send our emissary to do? The greatest country in the world, the most technologically-oriented country in the world, the country that has led in the growth of democracy, that led in the effort to solve the problem of the ozone layer, which we have done some very good work in on a bipartisan basis, what did the President's emissary do? He went to Montreal and told the rest of the world essentially to go fish; the United States was not going to participate in any meaningful discussion to come up with a global solution to this global problem. This is most embarrassing for our country, the greatest country on Earth, to refuse to take any meaningful position to advance some global solution to this problem. In fact, the President sent our emissary to adopt the posture of the ostrich with the head in the sand and the tail feathers in the air. We should be adopting the posture of the American eagle, leading the rest of the world to a solution of this problem by using the technological creativity with which America has been blessed with for centuries. Instead, our emissary went there like this, where over 200 countries agreed to continue discussions about how to deal with this known problem. Now, I have to admit there was some small success. The President's emissary on the last day of the conference picked up his papers and literally walked out on the rest of the world, literally walked out on the rest of the world, making this comment which no one to this day understands about walking like a duck, and, frankly, it was relatively embarrassing. The good news is the administration was so embarrassed by the world's reaction to that and by America's reaction to that following an address by President Bill Clinton suggesting that we need to work in a bipartisan fashion on this issue that the next day apparently they got a cable from the White House, I am assuming, and the emissary walked back and said, well, now, we will at least agree to continue some informal talks. Not real talks, not formal talks that could actually lead to an agreement, but something called ``informal talks,'' which would at least not allow the administration to be humiliated. This is not good enough to fulfill our mandate as the greatest Nation on Earth. This is not good enough. It does not respect the ability of the geniuses in America who are going to adopt the new energy technologies so that we can continue to grow our economy and solve this problem at the same time. It is well below what we should expect of ourselves and it is well below what we should expect of our President. We are calling on the President of the United States to finally adopt some measure of teamwork with the rest of the world to solve this problem. Now, why should we do that? Well, one reason is we put 25 percent of all the carbon dioxide on this graph, where we see it is now skyrocketing, we in America put it in the atmosphere. We are a very small percent of the world's population, but 25 percent of all the COG in the atmosphere comes out of our pipes. So that is one reason why we really as a matter of moral responsibility need to be part of this solution, as does China, and we need to demand that China participate in these talks as well. But as important, we are the country who is going to develop the new energy sources, clean energy, renewable energy, that are going to solve this problem and not destroy the climate of the Earth, because, frankly, we are the great tinkerers. We invented the light bulb, we perfected the Internet, the jet airplane, a man on the moon. The list needs to go on when it comes to clean energy. If we have leadership we will get that done. So tonight I would like to say the science is clear, the destiny of this Nation is clear. We need to lead the world forward on global warming, rather than hiding from it. This is not a Nation that cowers in fear and from challenges. And this president ought to understand the confidence that this American country has in doing something about global warming. We hope that it will have a new attitude beginning tomorrow.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I very much compliment the prime sponsor (Mr. Matheson) for this bill. This bill really does unlock a secret to very significant cash available to our seniors. This limit that we now have that is going to be removed by this bill really has no particular reason for its existence, and what we are finding is that there is a tremendous demand for these reverse mortgages because it could unlock something like $64 billion of equity that seniors have. Seniors are equity-rich but cash-poor in a lot of circumstances. We are also finding that seniors are using these reverse mortgages in new ways, to help their grandchildren with their college education, for their recreation, as well as the obvious reasons, for health care and assisted-living facilities and the like. So this has tremendous opportunity. I hope this is a first step in a continued program to make these mortgages more available. I am working on a bill I hope at some point will pass that will also go to a unified limitation in the dollar amount, the cap that now exists and limits the amount of equity that our seniors can get out of their homes. Right now, some people can get access to $300,000 plus, but some are limited to under $170,000. So we hope this is a first step in a continued effort to making these reverse mortgages more available. I think seniors will be universally happy with this. Again, I commend the prime sponsor of this, Mr. Matheson, for his leadership.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is true that dogs collect fleas, and so do large fiscal year bills. This bill is no exception. I want to talk about one of those fleas infesting this bill. One of the worst infestations in this bill is a provision slipped in in the dead of night, like many of these things happen, that will essentially give away America's most pristine areas in our national forests to the special interest friends of the majority party. There is a provision in this bill that will allow places that have been ``patented for mining,'' to be essentially given away to these special interest companies that can take our most pristine national forests, somewhere between 300,000 and 20 million acres, and give it away to special interests, give it away to special interests and increase the deficit at the same time. What will happen with that property? Anything the special interests of the majority party wants. It is not about mining. There is a provision in this bill that will allow your special interest friends to come into the Mount Baker National Forest in Washington, the national forest in Colorado, the national forests of California, take that property, pay the taxpayers nickels, literally nickels, and take that property away from the people that want to enjoy those national forests right now. It is bad enough that that bill will leave future generations $1 billion of debt. You would think you would give them the Cerces to take their kids out to be able to have a picnic in the national forest, portions of which will be gone because you want to feed the rapacious appetites of your special interest friends. This is a rip-off of American taxpayers. It is unfair to the kids that want to go up to the national forests and enjoy this property. There is no excuse for it. You are doing it in the dead of the night. You ought to be ashamed. There is nothing sacred to the Republican Party except tax cuts. You would sell anything in America to finance your tax cuts. The Washington monument could be next. This is a shame. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. INSLEE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address comments made by distinguished Chairman regarding a provision of the bill that addresses the FCC's proceeding on unlicensed operation of wireless broadband devices in the vacant broadcast bands, commonly known as ``white spaces.'' I thank the Chairman Barton for recognizing the importance of additional unlicensed spectrum. Unlicensed, wireless broadband devices have spurred entrepreneurship, technological innovation and phenomenal new capabilities for the country. Hot spots in coffee shops and airports, and wireless access in homes and offices, have made it easier and easier for people to access the Internet. These unlicensed uses have generated billions in new business for U.S.-based manufacturers, retailers and providers. However, these devices could do more to bridge the digital divide and bring more broadband choices to consumers if they could operate in spectrum below 1 GHz, (spectrum below 1 GHz propagates over greater distances and through tougher obstacles than does the spectrum being used by today's unlicensed wireless broadband devices). Mr. Chairman, I know you are aware that in some smaller markets, only a handful television stations are actually operating. In some rural or suburban markets, there may be dozens of TV channels available for other uses. Nationwide, the white spaces offer hundreds of megahertz of spectrum for unlicensed wireless broadband devices to operate in. In its white spaces proceeding, the Commission proposes to allow unlicensed devices to operate in those spaces where the spectrum allocated to broadcast television stations is not being used, subject to the additional condition that the devices do not cause harm to licensed television broadcasters and certain other users of the spectrum. The Commission's proposal outlines possible noninterference requirements. In response to the Chairman's point on preventing harm to broadcast signals, I would note that interference should be easily avoided, because ``smart'' unlicensed devices identify frequencies in use with ``listen-before-talk'' technology and similar capabilities. Developers and producers of equipment for wireless broadband operation in the white spaces have every incentive to demonstrate that their equipment is designed so as to prevent interference to television signals, where such signals are actually being transmitted. The reward of preventing interference is tremendous; the risk of being forced to exit a market because of an engineering mistake is equally weighty. The Commission has had this proceeding open for over a year, and meanwhile, innovation that could occur to deploy broadband to a greater number of Americans has been delayed. In ordering the Commission to complete the white spaces proceeding within one year, my colleagues and I expect the Commission to promote robust and efficient use of vacant spectrum by unlicensed wireless broadband devices and networks. I thank the Chairman for his efforts on this issue, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Chairman to promote the use of additional unlicensed spectrum in the vacant broadcast bands.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express concern with report language that was included in the Fiscal Year 2006 Energy and Water Appropriations Conference Report (H. Rpt. 109-275). It is my hope that you can assist me in my efforts to seek clarification. The final conference report contains language directing the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to cease funding of an important independent scientific research center based in the Pacific Northwest, known as the Fish Passage Center. The language directs BPA and the Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NPCC) to transfer the functions of the Fish Passage Center in a way that ensures ``seamless continuity of activities'' without giving any direction about how this transfer should take place. The Northwest Power Act called for the NPCC to establish a Fish and Wildlife Program. That Program has called for BPA to fund the Fish Passage Center for the past 20 years. The data and analyses the Center has provided have been invaluable to the States and tribal fishery managers of the Columbia Basin. BPA should be clear that this report language does not supersede the NW Power Act or the specific provisions in the NPCC's present Fish and Wildlife program calling for a number of key functions to be performed. I certainly would assume that BPA will ensure that the State and tribal fishery managers will have input into how the Center is reconstituted and will take actions to ensure that the fishery managers continue to receive the same independent analyses they have in the past.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Just a couple of comments, Mr. Speaker. I want to applaud our Republican colleagues. I am told now there are a couple of Republicans in the other Chamber who are willing to see to it that the American people get this report from the Senate committee about the White House involvement and this misinformation. I think that is very important, and I applaud our Republicans in the Chamber who are standing up to do that. But I want to mention why that is so very important. The gentlewoman from Florida talked about the fact that Valerie Plame was, in fact, an undercover agent; but I think it is really important to realize what she was working on. Her specialty was trying to suppress weapons of mass destruction. That was her specialty in the CIA. What a great irony of it that here is a woman who dedicated her professional life to try to suppress the expansion of weapons of mass destruction, and yet she gets attacked and her career destroyed because the administration used bogus information in their State of the Union to assert there was a weapon of mass destruction when the evidence itself showed there was not. And I think her career ought to be respected. And, by the way, I mentioned this admiral I was talking to today. We talked about the need for spies for the intelligence agency. I was not talking about this specific situation. But this bottom line is about the security interest of the United States, and both Republicans and Democrats ought to care about that, and both Republicans and Democrats ought to be behind getting to the bottom of this. That has not happened and it ought to.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I suppose we should feel ourselves fortunate that the administration, after the failures in Katrina, did not out some other intelligence agent, one of their critics. So I do not know if they have learned their lesson or not. I should not be facetious about such an important thing. Let me ask a question on this. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan) points out accurately, imagine the incredible high level of energy that the highest level of government in the United States, what they were focused on when the truth came out that they told something untrue about the uranium yellow cake in the State of the Union. What did they do? Instead of saying, let us get to the bottom of how this happened so it does not happen again, the first thing they did is say we are going to attack our critics and we are going to attack them by outing the wife of one of the critics. We are going, as you indicated, to spend this enormous amount of energy. Karl Rove, Chief of Staff to the President of the United States, is it the most important thing he can do is try to destroy the credibility of Joe Wilson who wrote what turned out to be a true article for the New York Times? Is it the best use of time for the Chief of Staff for the Vice President of the United States to organize this sophisticated campaign to smear Mr. Wilson? Why was it they were willing to make this such a high-priority issue? I think there is a clear answer to that. The reason that they were so concerned about this is that they realized that their case for war on Iraq was built on this sort of one- legged stool of the mushroom cloud. What they figured out was that the vision, the image of the mushroom cloud could scare Americans so badly that they could win the right to go to this war. Once that was gone, their justification for the war was gone. It was imperiled once the truth came out, because the only thing they had was this uranium yellow cake which was shown to be a fraud. How do I know it was a fraud? It was not Mr. Wilson. By the way, some people have said Mr. Wilson's report did not show that; it was inaccurate. Well, hogwash. The President of the United States retracted the 16 words from his State of the Union speech once Mr. Wilson blew the whistle. They would not have retracted it unless it was wrong, and it was wrong, and they finally retracted it, but then they went on to smear Wilson. I want to make a couple of comments about Joe Wilson, and the reason I do so is he has made clear it is not about Joe Wilson. This issue, he is not the important element here. It is the security of the American people and preventing the deterioration of our security service. That is the important thing. But this administration you would think they would learn to quit attacking their critics after this has caused all this damage to the administration, but, no, they still have their hound dogs out there attacking Joe Wilson, still trying to damage his credibility and say he is the lowest form of life on the planet. I want to say two things about this guy, and I got to know him a little bit about this. He came out and spoke in Seattle about the Iraq situation. During the first Iraq War, he was our last foreign service agent out of Baghdad. The very last representative of the United States who left Iraq was Joe Wilson. I tell you two little stories about him, what kind of guy he is. I ran into a Foreign Service worker by accident on a bus heading to an airplane about 3 months ago who told me that, in the weeks leading up to the first Persian Gulf War, she had a family who came and had some children who were in possession of a stepfather in Mosul. She called Joe Wilson and said, can you help me make sure these kids are okay? She said, I know I am asking you a lot because right now the war could break out at any moment. There is chaos on the roads. Security forces were already in Iraq. Joe Wilson personally made sure that kid was okay at risk to his own life, and he did not tell me that story. I just ran into this Foreign Service worker who told me about it. The second thing, when Joe Wilson called all the Americans in Baghdad just in the few days before the bombings started and said, I want to try to get you out of the country, Saddam Hussein told Joe Wilson, I will kill anybody who tries to get an American out of here. He did not say so. Obviously, he wanted to maybe hold them hostage. That is a direct statement to you. You better leave those people here. Joe Wilson got those people into a building in Iraq, and it was not widely reported, but put a noose around his neck physically and said, Saddam Hussein, you can come get me because I am taking my people home. He took every single American home. Not a single American was lost to the depravations to that madman thug Saddam Hussein. I have to tell you I have some respect for Joe Wilson. He stood up to Saddam Hussein, and he stood up to Karl Rove, and I think it took some degree of courage to do both. It was a despicable act of Karl Rove, or whoever is responsible for this, to go after him, after he stood up for America against Saddam Hussein, to destroy the career of his wife and put in danger other security agents of this country. Karl Rove messed with the wrong guy when he took on Joe Wilson, and I think that is something Americans ought to know.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. I know what the Vice President meant by ``know.'' It was clear from any fair reading of this situation that when a person knows that the person they are trying to punish was an agent for the CIA and was involved in giving that information to a subordinate who destroyed the career and outed a security agent of the United States Government, and then would not want the public to know he was involved in that despicable act, he would say ``I do not know Joe Wilson,'' even though he knew Joe Wilson's name, what his wife did for a living, that she worked for the CIA, and, if he disclosed that, it would destroy her career and out an intelligence agent of the United States of America. He may not have known him and shaken hands with him, but he departed from the truth on a most grievous matter involving the intelligence service of the United States of America.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, I guess the question then comes down to what the definition of ``know'' is then. Is that really the problem?

Mr. INSLEE. Well, Mr. Speaker, if I may, speaking from the State of Washington, what is happening right now is that a young man that I watched growing up, my neighbor's son, I watched him growing up, playing football, spunky, hard-working young man, he is due to go to Baghdad in January; and we all are obviously concerned about it. He is proud of his service. We are proud of his service. We wish the best for him. But it gives a personal dimension to what we are talking about here tonight. Because the reason that this young man that I watched grow up is going into the killing fields of Baghdad is because an administration started a war based on false information. So this is a very personal matter as well as a public matter in my neighborhood; and it seems to me that, under those circumstances, for him and his mother and his father and his neighbors and all of the other young sons and daughters that could be in Iraq for we do not know how long, this administration owes it to come clean with the American people to tell us how this debacle happened, that they sent our sons and daughters into war based on a falsehood. They have not done that yet. They have not come clean. And I want to note why this is so important. I just had dinner with the Chief of Operations for the U.S. Navy, and one of the things we talked about was the need to improve our human intelligence. It has been debased over the years. We have just lost the spies, the old-fashioned spies we have had; and we thought we could do it all electronically. That does not work. We talked about the need to increase our human intelligence, to do old-fashioned networks of spies. What does it do to our ability to recruit spies when it comes out that the Chief of Staff of the Vice President of the United States, at least under this assertion, was involved with outing the intelligence agency of the United States, which also exposes every single person that Ms. Plame had dealt with when she was overseas. Everyone she had ever met is now under suspicion as well. What does that do to our ability to recruit new spies internationally? And what does it do to the sons and daughters we are sending to Iraq? The administration still has not come clean. And let me just make a suggestion for the administration's own benefit, for their own benefit. We have seen this same error repeated over and over again, of administrations that get their hand caught in the cookie jar. What do they do? They get in the bunker. They start trying to hide the ball. They do not come clean. And these things drag out for years. You know, if the Vice President or President had come forward 2 years ago and said, this is how this happened. This is where the intelligence came from. This is what Scooter Libby said. This is what Karl Rove said. I insist that they tell the truth, and I am going to insist on that or I am going to fire them on the spot. Forget the grand jury. This could have been over with 2 years ago. Instead, we are here talking about it tonight. Now I want to mention one other thing I think is important in this. We are not sitting here as some criminal tribunal. We are Congressmen and women. We are not jurors. There is this grand jury and this pending indictment. There is a presumption of innocence. Mr. Libby is still presumed innocent in the eyes of the law, and I am going to treat it as such. But what we are here to do is to make sure that if an administration, Republican or Democrat, tells us tomorrow that Iraq has nuclear weapons and we have to do something about it, that we can trust our administration with this information. And I got to tell you, I cannot trust my executive branch of the Federal Government now to tell me what is going on in Iraq, Syria or Korea or anywhere else, because the President still has not come clean fully about what happened in Iraq, and that is very, very important. I used to prosecute cases. I was a prosecutor, just misdemeanors. They were not higher-level felony cases. But I learned one thing in talking to police officers, and that was that there are certain things when you watch people that can indicate that they are up to no good, and one of those things is what is called furtive behavior. The gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Delahunt) is an old prosecutor. He knows about this. Furtive behavior means when somebody does something that looks they are trying to hide. When you do something that looks like you are trying to hide, it makes you think that person thinks that they have something to hide, which suggests that they are up to no good. Well, let me suggest that there are two things that give me a little pause here. Mr. Libby, when he was talking to all of those reporters, according to Judith Miller, Judith Miller said that Mr. Libby said, hey, when you identify me as the inside source of all of this information, do not identify me as Chief of Staff of the Vice President, or even the executive branch, call me an ex-Congressional staffer. Now if that is not furtive behavior I do not what is. The second thing that causes me pause is that on September 14, 2003, we have got it up on one of those charts, Tim Russert, who is interviewing the Vice President of the United States, asks the Vice President, says, Mr. Wilson came back from Niger and said that in fact he could not find any documentation that in fact Niger had sent uranium to Iraq or engaged in that activity and reported back to the proper channels. Were you briefed on his findings in February or March of 2002? Vice President Cheney responds, no, I do not know Joe Wilson. I never met Joe Wilson. Now, why wouldn't the Vice President of the United States of America just tell the truth and say, yes, I know Joe Wilson. We looked into some issues. I had Libby look at it. Why would he not come out and tell the truth? Instead, what he says is, I do not know Joe Wilson, which we now know, according to Mr. Libby, assuming that is accurate, according to the indictment, the Vice President is the one that told Mr. Libby about Joe Wilson. Yet 3 months later we have the Vice President of the United States telling America he did not know Joe Wilson. Now this causes me pause as an old prosecutor. And this is not a criminal matter. From my basis, we should not be wrapped about the axle of criminality but we should insist that Americans be able to trust the administration when it comes to war and peace; and we do not have that level of trust right now. We need the cooperation of the President of the United States and the Vice President to come clean about what happened here and ask and answer questions that both Congress has, which they have refused to do, that is why we have the other Chamber wrapped up in this issue today, and ask questions that we ask essentially of the President and the Vice President. America deserves that.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, Mark Twain once observed that mankind is the only species that feels shame or needs to. That thought crossed my mind when I was reading about this corrupt effort to punish Ambassador Joe Wilson who told the truth and blew the whistle on the administration's misinformation about the Iraq war. Apparently in the grand jury testimony Judith Miller said, ``She agreed to Libby's request to be cited in stories as a `former Hill staffer,' a rather deceptive description for the Vice President's Chief of Staff.'' Well, the Los Angeles Times got it right. It was deceptive, and there was a reason. Anyone who would participate in any way to punish an American for blowing the whistle on the President's misstatements should feel shame. Obviously, Mr. Libby did feel shame and that is why he hid from the public, or attempted to, that he was actually part of the administration that attempted to punish an American for telling the truth. We should not wait for the grand jury. This President should root out the corruption and discharge the people responsible for these misdeeds.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I acknowledge the students and staff of Bertschi School in Seattle, WA, for sending heartfelt greetings to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I traveled to Houston to visit the evacuees who were housed in the Astrodome. I brought handwritten letters from citizens of my home town, Bainbridge Island, WA, and handed them out as I met so many courageous individuals who had lost everything; their homes, their jobs, their belongings, and in some cases, their families, during their hurried evacuation of New Orleans. As I handed out the letters written by citizens who live thousands of miles away, I witnessed how meaningful these words of compassion and support were to these displaced Americans. Students at the Bertschi School in Seattle, WA, read about my trip and the positive impact the letters had on the hurricane victims and they wrote to me, asking if they could also send letters to families during my next visit with hurricane evacuees. While I was not able to return to Houston with their letters, I did have the pleasure of reading over their beautiful and inspirational words and art work before the letters made their way to Texas Children's Hospital, where some of the youngest hurricane victims were relocated. It is among the greatest honors as a Member of the House of Representatives that I have an opportunity to meet and work with young people who are involved in their communities and who are deeply committed to making our country and our world a better place. Our future depends on these young people, who are capable of reaching out and showing support for their fellow citizens. Though the students of Bertschi School are only in their elementary years, they already have a deep sense of civic pride and connectedness to the greater world and feel they have something to offer, even if it is, as in this case, sharing words of encouragement and compassion. I commend the students and staff of Bertschi School for their efforts and wish them continued success in the years ahead.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, this bill is a giant missed opportunity. We had an opportunity to do something significant. Kennedy said we were going to go to the Moon in 10 years; this bill will not get us to Cleveland. And the reason is it invests in old technology. Did Kennedy challenge the country to invest in propeller plane technology? Here we are simply investing in oil fossil fuel technology, a giveaway to the oil and gas industry of millions and billions of dollars of taxpayer money. We need a new Apollo energy project. H.R. 2828 will get us there with new technologies and fuel-efficient cars, new technologies and new productive capabilities in wind and solar and wave power and a whole slew of other things. We need new ideas, we need a new vision, not an old giveaway to oil and gas. Mr. Speaker, this bill is one small misstep for man and one giant leap backwards for mankind, and it should be defeated.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to address the offset of this legislation. I obviously applaud the extension of transitional medical assistance, which provides health insurance for people leaving welfare and going back to work. This is obviously a great thing to do. I believe, however, it is dangerous to allow 435 Members of Congress, most of whom lack medical training, to pick and choose among which illnesses and which treatments should be deemed acceptable under those provisions. There are thousands of physicians across this country that have recognized, for instance, the need for ED medicine, not as a recreational activity but as part of living a normal adult life. We also set up a potentially dangerous precedent by allowing Members to pick and choose individual treatments that they feel do not serve sufficient medicinal purposes. Today, it is a medicine for ED, but should we choose to go down this road, next year we could be having the same debate about mental health treatments or biologics deemed too expensive. This is not the place for these decisions. This is a conversation for doctors to be having with their patients. I find it worrisome we are on the verge of using the doctor's office as a setting for interjecting our preferred social policies where they do not belong. Doctors today prescribe ED medicine because it treats a serious medical disease that can lead to divorce and depression. ED is a common side effect of prostate cancer surgery and diabetes, and it affects millions of men nationwide which, in turn, can affect their families. There is not just an issue of men; it is a family issue. This is an attempt to interject a political viewpoint into a personal decision that should be made by a doctor and a patient, and I hope we respect that personal decision more in the future.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address my comments to the Members who do have serious concerns about the Endangered Species Act who have had frustrations from their citizens about its application, but still believe that we ought to have a workable Act, and I want to suggest that voting for this bipartisan substitute and ``no'' on the Pombo bill will really satisfy their needs for five reasons. Reason number one, the substitute bill will make a significant change to reduce the amount of frustration that landowners feel by moving the listing process of habitat from the time of listing to a time of the development of the recovery plan. And the reason this will alleviate much frustration by landowners is it will allow these services to make a more acute and scientifically sound judgment where this land needs to be listed for habitat and will relieve significant frustration of landowners. Second, the substitute will make sure that we try to use public land first when we try to protect habitat to take care of these species. Third, and importantly, it will have a conservation grant program to allow the use of federal funds to help private landowners who will agree to use their lands to help in the preservation of these species. These are three very significant changes to the Environmental Protection Act which will help property owners avoid some of the frustration that now exist while still moving forward with the purposes of this Act. But we then need to vote ``no'' on the underlying bill for these two reasons: First, the underlying bill is a massive entitlement program that could be subject to massive fraud because the language is so loose and so speculative, we would be expecting the American taxpayers to shell out literally millions of dollars on highly speculative developments. When a developer comes in there, buys up land that is used for a wheat field and says he wants to put in a strip club or a casino, American taxpayers, under the underlying bill, would now have to pay entitlement funds where there is no money in this bill appropriated to do it, or even especially authorized for these highly speculative enterprises. Why should the taxpayers have to pay for this flim-flam type of speculation? And, by the way, nowhere in American law is any taxpayer required in any jurisdiction in this country to do that right now. This is a radical change which exposes the taxpayers to millions of dollars of loss that is not required by the U.S. Constitution and makes no common sense. And second and lastly, very importantly, the underlying bill provides no enforceable protection for the habitat of these species. Sure, it says that the agencies have to draw these maps, but what is a map if they do not have to follow the map? Five reasons. Members can vote for this with honor, go home and tell their constituents this they have relieved their frustration and protected these species and protected the taxpayers. Respect for the taxpayers and respect for God's creatures at the same time.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I think it is appropriate to refer to the first Endangered Species Act in Genesis. ``Bring out every kind of living creature that is with you, the birds, the animals, and all the creatures that move along the ground, so that they can multiply on the earth and be fruitful and increase in number upon it.'' Are we acting in the spirit of Noah when we purport to vote, some may vote, for a bill that would prevent protecting the bald eagle from pesticides, when DDT almost removed it from the treasure-trove of American icons? Are we acting in the spirit of Genesis? I think Americans think we are not. When we act to remove any meaningful enforcement provisions to protect the habitat, are we acting in the spirit of Genesis? Americans think not. What is a fish without a river? What is a bird without a tree to nest in? What is an Endangered Species Act without any enforcement mechanism to ensure their habitat is protected? It is nothing. This is not a modernization of the Act, this is a euthanization of the Act, and I will tell you why. The underlying bill says that we are going to have these maps of habitat that will be developed, and that is a wonderful thing. And under the bill, as written, the maps will hang on the walls of these agencies in beautiful pink and blue, and the Cub Scouts and the Girl Scout Troops can come through and look at the beautiful maps. But it has one missing thing. If we pass this underlying bill, we would have removed any single legal enforcement mechanism that those maps had whatsoever. The bipartisan amendment will say that those maps have some degree of teeth. This underlying bill is a chimera. It is a total falsehood to say it does the first thing for habitat because there is no enforcement mechanism for those maps. I want to tell my colleagues of a woman who was in my office the other day. She wants habitat protection so she can see those salmon. And just to make sure no one thinks this is just some esoteric thing, her name is Gail and she lives in Miller Bay in Washington State, Kitsap County. She told me about the thrill of seeing the salmon going up the stream on Miller Bay, and they do that because we have an enforceable mechanism to protect habitat. She knows that if we pass this bill, we will remove the ability to protect the streams. We remove the enforcements mechanisms. Mr. Chairman, that is why we need to do this substitute, which has a better way of identifying habitat in the recovery process so we do not have this frustration with the landowners, so we do not waste 3 years just bothering landowners and not recovering species, but we have a mechanism to get this job done. I want to reiterate what the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) suggested. To suggest that an Act that saves 99 percent of the species from extinction is a failure is not a way to keep score. If you want to know how to do more, let us make sure that the executive branch enforces this law. Clinton listed 500. The first Bush listed 250. This administration has done zero without a court order. Let us pass the substitute bill and reject this underlying bill. Honor creatures, honor the taxpayer, honor yourself.