Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman will yield further, the President had some eloquent language about freedom around the world, which is something we all aspire to. I guess we are saying people ought to have freedom in the House of Representatives to stand up for veterans, and not be punished as the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) was. That is wrong, and we are going to continue to be a voice for veterans so this administration does not cut their health care.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, when they stripped the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith) of his chairmanship, he was sort of politically decapitated, if you will, because he had a dissenting voice in the Republican caucus. He wanted to bring to the country's attention the fact that veterans were not getting their due. That was a courageous step by him. As a result, the leadership essentially lynched him and excommunicated him from the leadership position he held, after 25 years. Think of what that message is to Iraq. We saw Iraqis really courageously go to the polls. That was amazing. They had a 58 percent or 60 percent turnout, almost 82 percent in a lot of the Shiite areas. There were people who walked through violence to get to the polls. This was a lot of personal courage there that we should respect in a lot of ways. One would think we ought to honor that and send some messages to Iraq about how to run a democracy. Well, look at just three examples, how under the leadership of the current House, what our lessons to Iraq are. Number one, to the Sunnis, we want the Sunnis to come into the Iraqi government. We want the minority group to participate in the government, because if we do not get the Sunnis involved in the Iraqi government, this insurgency is going to continue to bloom. So our message is to the Shiites, embrace the Sunnis. Let them come in and have a voice in your government. Let dissent have a voice. Reach a consensus through embracing the minority. What do they do here in the House of Representatives? To their own Member, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), who had a dissenting viewpoint, kind of the position the Sunnis are in as a minority, boom, off with his head, silence him. Take him out of the political discourse here by removing his chairmanship. That is not a good message to the Iraqis about how democracy ought to run.

Mr. INSLEE. And the soldiers that are active duty.

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

Mr. INSLEE. Exactly, Mr. Speaker. And if the gentleman will continue to yield, three times, three times the amount of money it would take to fix this problem with veterans so they would not have to stand in line for 6 months to get treatment when they come back from Iraq, this administration lost three times as much money in the financial netherworld of Iraq, and they refuse to do anything about it because it is embarrassing.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think I know, if I can posit a hypothesis, in general how the President would answer, perhaps in more diplomatic terms than I will offer, but I think he would say: Mr. Strickland, with all due respect, you just do not get it. Our administration has made a decision for the first time in American history to fight a war, but the only people we are going to ask to sacrifice are veterans. Nobody else is going to have to sacrifice.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. If my colleague will yield once again, it seems to me our goal ought to be a policy that we can be proud of. This is not a budget to be proud of on behalf of our veterans. I just want to reiterate, and continuing along the same vein that the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) has, I want to read from what Mr. Thomas Cadmus, Director of the American Legion, said in questioning this budget. He said, ``Is the goal of these legislative initiatives to drive those veterans paying for their health care away from the system designed to serve veterans? The President is asking Congress to make health care poaching legal in the world's largest health care delivery system.'' Health care poaching, instead of assisting the veterans, is not a budget America can be proud of. That is why we are going to continue this effort, and we hope others will join us to make sure that the sacrifices of our men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan are honored with a budget that America can be proud of and can stand up and defend. This President's budget falls way short and it must be changed.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, this is a bit of an unusual thing that a Democrat is praising the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Smith), the former Republican Chair of this committee in the House, and I want to just ask this: My perception of this is that here we had a Republican Member who is stalwart in attempting to preserve and improve the veterans' health care in our country, who was willing to rock the boat to do that, had the moral fiber to do that, and was in a sense excommunicated because he had the willingness to stand up to people who stood up at Guadalcanal and the people who stood up in all of those places whom we have had harmed, and he was a bit of hero I believe myself, and I am just going to ask my colleague to categorize this. I think what the Republican leadership and, by extension, the White House, which I have to believe had some knowledge of this, was a slap in the face of every veteran in this country. Do you think that is a fair characterization?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I think what is disappointing about the President not putting it in his budget, is that we probably have over 160 or 180 cosponsors of this bill to raise that benefit for the families, yet it is still not there. And it is really just one of a whole suite of insults for the people coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. Do not forget the contributions of our people in Afghanistan who are suffering and still dying in Afghanistan. What is so troubling to me, and I think a lot of my constituents, are two aspects. You have to ask yourself: How could an administration in the middle of two wars even think about cutting benefits to veterans? How could you possibly do that? I am trying to think, how could there be any possible rationale to do that when you have these people coming home in such dire straits? I think there are two things going on here: One, I suspect that the people who are coming up with these cockamamie, unfair, inequitable, I am going to call them un-American ideas, maybe that is a stretch but I am going to say that, when we are talking about heroes of the American Nation? How can you deign to raise copayments, charge them $250, make them stand in line longer, make them wait longer to get cardiac care? How can you even think about doing that? I think one of the things is that these folks who are making a pretty good salary, who are in the agencies and working at the White House, who are driving a decent car, kind of think, Oh, it is $250. Big deal. What is $25 extra for a prescription? Big deal. That is just pocket change. Falls out of crumbs or tips at lunch around here in Washington, D.C. On K Street, where lobbyists hang out, that is just tip money. I think people forget when they try to stick injured GIs with this, they forget these folks are just absolutely scraping when they come back. I saw a story about a family who lost a young father and husband in Washington State, and they interviewed the widow, who had four children, and they were living in the basement of their parents' house. She was trying to get enough to get back to community college to try to earn a living to support these four children. It was really a matter of feeding and clothing these kids. And $250 is the difference between making it and not making it to these folks. I think people making these decisions forget that. They just are not in touch with that, number one. Number two, and this is the basic flaw of the entire budget, I think, is that the folks who drafted this budget have a view about our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and their view is that there are only a certain very small percentage of Americans who should bear all of the burden of these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the view of this administration that only those select individuals should take the entire weight of this conflict, not only in their physical health and whether they live or die but in their fiscal burden as well, and those are the people actually serving in the military in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody else in America should have any bit of sacrifice associated with this war in Iraq and Afghanistan. I do not think that is the American way. And I do not think Americans really expect that. Americans believe that it is not only the GIs who should be the ones bearing some sacrifice from this endeavor. Yet the President wants to take every single dollar we spend there and make it deficit spending. The part he will not make deficit spending, that he is too embarrassed to put on his debt on our grandchildren because he has a deficit that has blown through the roof, and it is terribly embarrassing, the part he will not make a deficit to put on his debt on our grandchildren, he will put on our veterans by cutting their health care. These are the very people who lost their limbs. He wants them to bear all the burden. He does not want to ask anybody else in America to be associated with this. And that is wrong.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to ask if the experience in Ohio is the same as it is in Washington. The gentleman has just read quite an extensive list of multimillion dollar cuts to the services that the VA system can provide for veterans. That may seem like abstract numbers, but I want to ask my colleague about this. In Washington State, veterans now, in the existing budget before the cuts, are waiting months and months and months to get in for basic health care because even the existing budget does not allow them to get help. And so I talked to World War II veterans who literally are waiting months, and these are people in their upper 70s, to get basic health care with the existing budget. This budget purports to cut multiple millions of dollars to reduce that, to increase the waiting line so when a person needs to go in to get various body parts checked, from their urinary tract to their cardiac function, they are in a waiting line. The people who went on the sands of Iwo Jima, they did not want to go to the back of the line. They went out the front of the boat. Now this budget is going to make the waiting longer. That is the experience in Washington. I just wonder what the experience is in Ohio.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, let me add that it is not just the veterans of this country that we think should be rightfully outraged about this insult to veterans. It is also those of us who have our liberty because of veterans. I did something a little unusual for me; I actually watched the Super Bowl this year. It turned out to be a good game. It was very, very unique in Super Bowl history. I think the wrong team won, but still a good game. And the most telling commercial to me, which they always talk a lot about, the Super Bowl commercials, was the scene where you are like in a train station waiting room or an airport waiting room and you see people milling about, and then they all of a sudden somebody started clapping. You cannot see what they are clapping at, at first. Then the clapping rolls and pretty soon everybody in the room is clapping. Then you see these troops coming by, we assume coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan, and pretty soon the whole group is clapping. I think that commercial really did encapsulate how Americans feel about our sons and daughters and husbands and wives who serve there. This is really deep and touching and it is good for America. During Vietnam, there were a lot of disagreements. The gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) and I had enormous disagreements with the President about Iraq, and a lot of my constituents, a big majority of my constituents had a lot of disagreements. But to a person they felt the same way about our GIs coming home; the Marines, soldiers and sailors. That commercial showed people wanting to applaud them as they came home. That is the spirit of America, yet this administration draws a budget that reduces the protection that these folks ought to have after coming home from the front line. That is just totally out of touch. The veterans are a very uncomplaining group. I find veterans to be the least demanding group, perhaps, of any people I work with. It is just not in touch with the spirit of America of wanting to embrace these people. It is denigrating their contribution. It is not understanding how deep people feel about the sacrifices that these folks have made in Iraq and Afghanistan. That is why we will have a very vigorous effort to restore this funding.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, for some time now, several of my colleagues and myself have come to the floor of the House to address issues surrounding our national policy in Iraq, and tonight we intend to have a few comments in that regard, particularly in regard to the budget and how the budget refers to our ongoing efforts in Iraq. And I was thinking about that in combination with the President's suggested budget the other day. That same day I was looking at the President's budget, I was reading a story about 3 GIs who were walking through a town in central Iraq, and they were trying to alert people about essentially the polling activity and the election activity that was going to go on, but they knew they were in a very hostile environment when they were doing so. And a group of them, about nine soldiers were walking through an area, and they were just sort of handing out leaflets to folks about the election activity to let them know where they could vote and what kind of security was going to be provided, and a shot rang out. The leader of the platoon was shot and went down, and they immediately started to receive fire from all points of the compass. The thing that struck me is that it said what immediately happened is two of the soldiers who were near the fellow who was shot immediately, instead of taking cover, jumped up and sort of literally sort of shielded the injured GI with themselves as they returned fire. That is just one of the many acts of heroism that our troops have been involved with in Iraq. What it made me think about was, to ask the question frankly, whether back home we are matching the responsibility and the values and the heroism that are going on in Iraq. Because whatever you think about the Iraq policy, and I voted against the Iraq war. I thought the President's assertion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction was overstated, that his assertion that Saddam was responsible for September 11 was inaccurate, and I voted against the war. But, nonetheless, all of us respect what our GIs, Marines, and other service personnel are doing in Iraq. And the question I was just thinking about is whether or not their courage and responsibility and the values, American values they are displaying in Iraq are sort of met on the domestic side here in Washington, D.C., particularly in regard to the budget that this administration has just proposed to the people in the U.S. Congress. I was thinking about how you would test the budget that the President has proposed against the values that we are seeing by our troops in Iraq. And in thinking about it, it became pretty clear to me that there are some real questions about that, about whether this budget really is up to snuff and up to the level of character that we have seen of our people in Iraq. Let me give the first example that comes to mind. We now have literally thousands of our sons and daughters, husband and wives coming home injured from Iraq, some very, very seriously. In fact, one of the most disturbing things about this war is, because of our excellent medical care, we are actually having people come back from Iraq with more devastating injuries than other wars because we have been successful in saving lives. But people are coming back with very, very debilitating injuries. And they are coming back to a system that we would like to see is eminently successful in treating them, the veterans health care system. The first question I think we ought to ask about the President's budget is does the President's budget in the veterans health care system meet the heroism and the commitment and the sacrifice that our troops have put on the line in Iraq? So when I looked at the President's budget I was absolutely flabbergasted to see what the budget proposal from this administration has in mind for our injured people coming home from Iraq. Now, one would think that an administration that took our country into war in Iraq, sent our sons and daughters into combat, knew they were coming back by the thousands with missing arms, shattered faces, difficult trauma to deal with, one would sort of think that the budget would rush to their aid and embrace them with the arms of Americans who so much have embraced our troops and their spirits and their prayers since the war began. One would think that the spirit that I saw at an old car wash being organized in Redmond, Washington that people had to send money and gifts to troops to help them through their trials, one would think that that same spirit would be imbued in the budget put forth by the President. I must sadly report that in looking at the President's budget, this budget stiffs our heroes coming back from Iraq. It cuts their benefits. It increases what veterans have to pay to get medical care they should have for free. It reduces our national commitment to veterans in meaningful ways. And I can reach no other conclusion than that the budget falls well short of our national commitment to our veterans. This President who started a war in Iraq, a war that has caused such debilitating injuries, has proposed to make our veterans coming home from battle pay more out of their pocket for prescriptions and to get medical care. How is that consistent with the values of America? How is that consistent with what we expect when we want to honor our troops, to dishonor them by cutting the veterans health care system and making veterans pay more out of their pocket, a co-pay for their health care? Where is the honor, I ask the White House, in cutting the benefits available for our troops coming home from Iraq? Where is the honor in requiring our veterans to pony up $250 who are in certain categories even to get their health care? Where is that family value? It seems to me that there ought to be a bipartisan consensus, that there ought to be family values, that if you send your son or daughter into harm's way for the benefit of your national family, that when they come home, if anything, you ought to increase the benefits that we have available to these folks. But that is not the case in this President's budget, because this President really had to face a choice in this budget. It was pretty clear. We have over a $400 billion deficit today, and this President really had to face a choice between two competing values. One value would be to provide for the health care of our veterans. One value would be to preserve the President's favored tax cuts for people who earn over $400,000 a year. Now, in order to at least staunch the red ink which, by the way, this does not do because this budget still does not decrease the deficit. It increases it. But one way to do it, this budget had to make a choice; this budget had to choose between two values. It had to choose between the value of honoring our veterans or the value of honoring those folks who earn over $400,000 a year and to make their tax cuts they got permanent. The President chose to honor that less than half of a percent of Americans to make those tax cuts permanent and abandon the value of honoring and embracing the health care needs of our veterans. Budgets are not just monetary issues. They are statements of values. They are statements of what we believe in as a country. They are statements of what you hold most dear. And it is clear that this budget says that the most dear value that this budget reflects is the value of keeping those permanent tax cuts for people earning over $400,000; and the people who are coming home from Iraq with missing eyes and shattered bodies and shattered psyches and missing limbs, who are coming home trying to rebuild their lives, they can just go fish according to this budget because they are going to have to pay more to get basic health care now. Now, I do not think those are the values of America, the values that my constituents have, my neighbors have, Republicans or Democrats. Because I have to tell you, the Republicans and Democrats that I talk to and I represent in my district in Washington State, I think if you ask people on the street if it comes to a choice between those two things to reduce the deficit, what should you pick, I think it is about 95 percent would pick to give health care to veterans. But that is not a choice this White House made, this administration made; and it is sad. I hope that we in this Chamber in a bipartisan way can join to preserve, defend, and protect those who preserved, defended, and protected us, which is our veterans. And it is not being done in this budget, and this is a symptom of an illness of this budget in total because it has sacrificed numerous values on the cross of making these President's tax cuts for people who earn over $400,000 a year, that that value trumps everything. It trumps health care for veterans. It trumps reduction of the deficit. It trumps cleaning up nuclear wastes that are going into the Columbia River in my neck of the woods. It trumps cleaning up other Superfund sites around the country. It trumps enforcing our clean air laws so that our children do not get asthma. This President puts that value above every other value that we have, Americans now have to have a chance to express in this budget; and it is sad and it is wrong and it is not consistent with the American values, I believe, on a bipartisan basis are held. Now, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Strickland) has joined us, who has been an absolute stalwart talking about the importance of maintaining veterans benefits.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I oppose the language in this Omnibus bill that significantly restricts a woman's access to health care services. This year, 2,500 Washington State residents traveled across America to march for this right protected by the U.S. Constitution. As the 108th Congress comes to an end, I am disappointed to be faced again with an omnibus piece of legislation containing political poison pills that attack constitutional liberties. I regret that Congress must pass this appropriations bill to keep our Government running yet simultaneously approve a bill that encroaches on a woman's right to make private medical decisions with her doctor. Embedded in this legislation is a Federal Refusal Clause which creates an impossible situation for women in my State that are protected by local pro-choice laws--laws that these citizens time after time support--which ensure women access to reproductive health information and services. This provision would break contracts that Washington State has with Medicaid providers to prohibit the local healthcare facilities participating in Medicaid from referring patients to abortion services--even when medically necessary, even upon patient request and even though law entitles it. This provision is a blow to the right of a woman and her doctor to make private healthcare decisions and I urge my colleagues to correct this outrage.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. I just want to say that there is a future in Iraq. The one thing we should recognize and we are in it together, Democrats and Republicans, whether we voted for this war or not, and we all have responsibilities to try to make tough decisions about what to do now. Our discussion of the past does not mean to suggest that we can walk away in the next 24 hours from Iraq, but I think what we are saying is that we need people that we can trust with decision-making in Iraq, that we will have a rational, decision-making process that is based on the facts rather than just hopes and wishes. I remember just even 6, 8 months ago listening to the Vice President talking about how things were going so remarkably well in Iraq and we had the Mission Accomplished incident. We had Ambassador Bremer telling us and Wolfowitz telling us that this entire thing was going to be financed with oil revenues from Iraq. He told us, to Congress, I remember this very well. He said, ``There won't be a single taxpayer dollar associated with this project.'' How many billion are we in it now? It is hard to tell. As the gentleman from Ohio pointed out, the one thing we know about every billion dollars this President has spent, it has been of my grandchildren's money. He has not asked any sacrifice of us. Winston Churchill said, ``All I have to offer you is blood, sweat, toil and tears.'' This President has said, ``Just go shopping.'' That is how he has approached this. So we are asking this horrific sacrifice of our men and women in Fallujah tonight. But this President wants to keep cutting taxes for the wealthiest folks, his friends. That is how he handles it. He is the only President in American history who has insisted that in the middle of war when our warriors are out there risking their lives, he does not want to risk anything except his tax cuts, and he will not even risk that. He is the only American President who has ever done major tax cuts in a war. I would assert that he is in the panoply of those who are the most economically and morally irresponsible. This is a moral issue to ask our soldiers to go die in Fallujah and go back here in the homestead and try to boost his popularity by giving tax breaks to the rich. That is a moral issue. And there has been a lot of talk about moral values in this last election. I want to say, I look at that as a violation of the values that I hold and I think a majority of my constituents hold. We ought to be in this together as Americans, and this President does not want any American to be in it except those on the frontline because he does not want people to know how costly war is. And it is not cheap. And that is a moral failure. And if we raise our voices on occasion, it is because there is cause for anger here. And there is cause for anger when I hear in the last week that this President gives promotions. There is not a guy who has lost his extra vacation day in this administration as a result of the debacle in Iraq. What kind of message is that to send on personal accountability when a guy who told us that it was not going to cost the taxpayers a dollar is sitting fat and happy as the Secretary of Defense, has never got his hand even slapped, did not even get a memo in his personnel file, and his buddy takes over the National Security Council and had the President tell us something that was a blatant falsehood to start this war? And now we are going to make calls, all four of us, to family members who lost people in Fallujah. That is a moral insult. It is not just bad public policy.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it troubles me because I am going to call some parents tomorrow who lost their 19-year-old son in that battle. I am not going to broach this with them. I do not know if the thought has crossed their mind, but I cannot reach any other conclusion. What possible reason was there to wait 6 months to go into Fallujah except the fact that there was an election on November 2, and then do it just a few days after the election. What possible reason could there be other than the fact of the election schedule? We saw how horrendous the fighting was in Fallujah. Some of these tunnels were reinforced with steel, and we gave them 6 months to do that. People's heads should roll in the administration for that. Again, what we hear tonight is the people responsible for that have been promoted into higher positions of authority. We are not going in the right direction in Iraq. Unfortunately, let me note a reality in Iraq, we have to some degree obtained some degree of success over Fallujah, but just read what happened everywhere else. In Samarra, we had a Fallujah-like assault several months ago, and we thought we were successful there, but this week the Iraqi police stations were raided by the insurgents, and 33 Iraqi soldiers and policemen were killed, injured 48. In Ramadi, a slew of suicide car bombers wounded 20 U.S. Marines. Guerillas raided three police stations, killing 22 officers. In Diyala Province, a governor's aide and two members of the Provincial Governing Council were killed, and bombs exploded across Baghdad at a Catholic Church and against U.S. convoys along the main road to the airport. We still cannot secure the main road to the airport in Baghdad. We still are hiring the people responsible for these debacles and giving them promotions. It is wrong.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what the gentleman said on the failure to successfully pursue any international involvement. The bad news is that the President's plan is even unraveling with those who originally made some commitments to him. I read in the paper last week that Hungary has just announced that they will withdraw their troops. This was on top of withdrawals, either actual or announced, by Spain, 1,300 troops; Poland, 2,400 troops; the Netherlands, 1,400 troops; Thailand, 450 troops; the Dominican Republic, 322 troops; Nicaragua, 115 troops; Honduras, 370 troops; the Philippines, 51 troops; Norway, 155 troops; and New Zealand, 60. These are relatively small numbers, but I think it is a symptom of some bad decisionmaking. And the reason we talk about the past is the President is perpetuating his decisionmaking that created these conditions. He sees no reason ever to change. We had a small coalition to start this, and now the small number of troops sent to help us are being withdrawn so our people are having to bear the burden of the fighting. In Fallujah, this long after the fight, we had token Iraqis with us, and one of the reasons is the administration did not set up an infrastructure for training the Iraqis. Last month, 4 weeks ago, all that time since the original invasion, we still had only 40 percent of the trainers that the plan called for on day one to train Iraqis troops. This thing has been botched, and the problem is the President is promoting people who are responsible for it, and we are getting deeper. One thing that bothers me, the gentleman mentioned the President knows how to use power. He should not use it in a way that lets politics dictate military decisions. It is pretty clear to any neutral observer that is what happened in Fallujah, because this spring we had an offensive into Fallujah. It was called off. Everybody knew we were going to have to go back in there, and it would seem to me it would make prudent sense to go back in there before we give thousands of insurgents time to build bunkers, accumulate their communications network. What did the President do? It is pretty clear. Not until after the election because there is going to be American blood flow. One week after the election, all of a sudden we get the attack on Fallujah. Thirty-eight Americans die in the attack. It is pretty clear, and it is sad to say what happened here. There was a political decision to avoid this assault and, as a result, these insurgents had more and more time to fortify Fallujah. That was wrong by a Republican, a Democrat or anybody, to put our men in harm's way, to allow the enemy to consolidate their position, and we had to walk our people into those dens of fire.

Mr. INSLEE. I thank the gentleman for his comments, Mr. Speaker, and let me continue. Later on in the memo, Goss has language that says ``We provide the intelligence as we see it and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker.'' But when you send a memo to your employees suggesting they dare not ever say anything to challenge the President's preassumptions, that sentence does not bear out this memo. The message was sent and I am sure received by the CIA. And I am very disturbed about something I saw last night, a show I was watching, and I cannot remember the name of it, but a former CIA person who has now left the agency and who was the person in charge of the unit searching for Osama bin Laden was on this program. This was the gentleman whose professional duty it was, for about 6 years, to lead the hunt for Osama bin Laden. In fact, he was so aggressive about it, for about 2 years they took him off the job because he was driving his superiors nuts because he was raising these red flags about Osama bin Laden. After September 11, they put him back on the post because they realized he was right about how serious this issue was. He has now left the post, but last night he said there was absolutely no credible evidence of a substantive link between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The number one guy in the employment of the Central Intelligence Agency last night told Americans there was no link. And for a year or more, the President, the Vice President, you name it, was running around America trying to create this impression in America's mind that there was a link in order to justify this war. That is disturbing to me. Here is a guy that ought to be in the CIA challenging the White House's political decisions. He needs to be on the job rather than spit out of the agency like a watermelon seed. That is what they are doing. Anyone down there who is challenging the White House orthodoxy is getting kicked out. This is not a good thing for our future decisions. We have tough decisions to make with regard to Iraq. This offensive in Fallujah, where heroes died, and they were heroic, but it is not the end of the trail. We have some tough, tough decisions. I yield back to my colleague from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) but not just for this evening. The Iraq Watch, which has been trying to bring a responsible voice to Iraq policy now for many months, was the brain child of the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel), and he really did lead this effort, and we are very appreciative of him, and I know his constituents are, too. I have to tell the gentleman, he has a lot of fans out in the State of Washington that I hear about, why can you not can be as good as Mr. Hoeffel. I hear that many times. But seriously, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Hoeffel) did something that does not happen all the time around here. He really led, and he led in an important issue to make sure Americans heard a voice about Iraq other than just from the White House, and that is important we have that debate. This was a creation of his and I think has been useful, and I know a lot of people have appreciated it, and I appreciate his leadership on that. We look forward to when the gentleman is back in public service. So we hope within 2 years, maybe even shorter. Who knows? But with that, let me turn to the subject here which is a tough one tonight. I have to call a mother and father who lost their 19-year-old Marine in Fallujah this week tomorrow, and it is very difficult because all three of us here this evening voted against this war, and we have all had this experience of talking to families. It is very, very difficult. What I am going to say is, what I know what we all have said, is no matter what you think of the policy, these are all good Americans who served, and no American has died in vain while serving under the flag of the United States. I am going to do my best to make sure parents appreciate that. No matter what you think of the policy, they died as heroes, and the people who are sitting tonight in Fallujah, that is how I think of them, no matter what you think of the policy. I know we all share that view. It is difficult because it does inspire some anger sometimes I think in all of us as to what has happened in Iraq, where a war was started based on false assumptions about weapons of mass destruction and false assumptions and statements by the White House about Saddam's connection to 9/11. The trouble I have tonight is that the same type of source of the mistake was made unfortunately is being perpetuated by the White House. In other words, one would think after the White House started a war based on two major falsehoods, that was given to him by certain people, that the President would be doubly diligent to endeavor to get people who would not perpetuate that same kind of mistake, but in fact, what we have seen since the election on November 2 is sort of like a green light for hubris, a green light to go ahead and actually make stronger in the administration the very voices that fouled up in giving us bad information about this war and making repeated misjudgments about how to perpetuate it. Just look at the decisions that have been made in the last week. The man who himself admitted responsibility for putting a false statement into the State of the Union address, where the President told people that Saddam was trying to get uranium to build a nuclear weapon, it was a clear falsehood in the State of the Union address, and the man who himself admitted being responsible for telling Americans and the world that falsehood did not get docked pay, did not get fired. He just got a promotion to the National Security Council. So here we have the guy who is responsible for a major failure of American information that led to a war where 1,200 Americans have died. He gets a promotion. This is a perpetuation of this arrogant attitude that has got us into this pickle in Iraq. What happens to the Defense Secretary who has had running arguments, as we know, with the Secretary of State Colin Powell about whether to go into this war and how to perpetuate it? Who is the one who leaves? It is the guy who, we are told at least, said let us be scrupulous about this, and the Secretary of Defense stays, the one who has been in charge of this since Abu Ghraib and did not give us accurate information, including the U.S. Congress, leading up to this. Then what do we see happens at the CIA? Well, here's the capper for me. Here we have a man who left this chamber. He is now heading the CIA. What is the first thing he does, almost first thing he does? He writes a memo to all the CIA employees. I have not seen this memo but it is quoted in the paper. It says, he expects all employees that their job is to support the administration and its policies in our work and as agency employees we do not identify with, identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies. He sent a very strong message to CIA employees: what the White House wants, it is going to get. And that is language that people understand. The last thing this President needs is unanimity from his intelligence agencies. He needs debate. He needs to be told some information that may not square with his preordained view of the world. And, in fact, they are going the wrong way at the CIA and firing people who have deigned to give the President information that is different from information he believes to be true.

Mr. INSLEE

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

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Well, Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman for joining me this evening, and I want to make some concluding remarks basically to summarize what the science shows. And I will not be judgmental; I will just conclude with what the science is tonight as we stand here in 2004, in the concluding days of this Congress. In those concluding days we now know, according to the best science the country has to offer, that temperatures have increased 3 to 4 degrees Centigrade, which is 6 to 7\1/2\ or 8 degrees already. In the Arctic, they will probably increase in the next century another 8 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit. Very dramatic global warming. The glaciers are melting at an increasing rate, contributing fresh water to the North Atlantic. That has the capacity to perhaps shut down the currents that our current climactic situation depends on. There is diminishing lake and river ice. There is retreating and disappearing summer ice, with a 15 to 20 percent decline over the last 30 years. And the actual elimination of the summer ice cap that we have had since humans crawled out of their caves will disappear in this century. There are rising sea levels that could raise half a meter in this century. There are ocean salinity changes which have already occurred, and those ocean salinity changes have the capacity of shutting down the halcine cycle, which drives the currents we all depend on. There has been increasing ultraviolet ray exposure to our children, particularly in the Arctic, for at least several decades as a result of this. Exposing them to this ultraviolet radiation can cause an increase in cancer by as much as 30 percent as a result of this phenomena. There is old-growth forest loss, and there are long-term carbon cycle changes which are too esoteric to get into. But the bottom line is this: the Arctic climactic assessment that our government represents is the best scientific information we can possibly get has given us a wake-up call. It comes late in this congressional session, but it is a wake-up call and should be to the administration and to this Congress, to act, and to act in a way that America historically has acted when we are challenged. In World War II, when we were challenged, we responded with the greatest burst of technological achievement perhaps in human history in the armament sector. When we were challenged in the space race, President Kennedy challenged us to go to the Moon in 10 years and bring a man home safely, and we did it. That was the second great technological innovation burst. And now we are poised for a third revolutionary burst of new technologies that can lead us out of this potentially very, very, if disastrous is too strong a word, it may be one that our grandchildren will use when they have to deal with a climactic system that is changing before their eyes, the beginning of which we are going to see now. We are optimistic in the belief we can deal with this problem if people here in Washington, D.C. will accept the science, read it, and act. That is the American way.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, the good news is that our kids' generation gets this. I have got three boys, 27 through 18, and they get this. I think they understand a little bit of the science, but they also see the world changing right in front of them. This is again not an esoteric issue. The glaciers in Glacier National Park are disappearing. In 75 to 100 years there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park. The Committee on Resources will have to change the name to the park formerly known as Glacier because there will not be any glaciers in Glacier National Park. Now, it is just something we kind of grew up with, and we will not all die because the glaciers disappear, but it will be something that is different than what we grew up with. When you take your kids to Glacier National Park, they will have a little sign there, and it will say this used to be called Glacier National Park and it used to have glaciers on it until the Congress in 2004 stuck their heads in the sand and their tail feathers in the air and refused to do anything about global warming. That is what the sign is going to say. Maybe we should put our names on it just so we will be sort of appropriately chastised about doing nothing on this. But you look at the other things that are going on, these are not just a ascetic issues. There are things important to life. One of the conclusions of this report is that climate warming would increase forest fires and insect-caused tree death, further reducing this valuable habitat which is already declining due to other human activities. Well, we have seen some of the worst fire years in the last several years due in part to the horrendous drought we have had in the Western United States, changes that are consistent with global warming. We have had this huge outbreak of insect devastation in our forests in the West and in Alaska, systems that are consistent with trees that are stressed due to change in climate. Now, you cannot pinpoint any single one fire or any single one's day's precipitation pattern to global warming, but these changes are consistent, the scientists are telling us, with what global warming would occur. You know what, people die fighting forest fires, and I know a family who lost a young man fighting a fire up in north Washington. Those are not esoteric changes to me when I fly over the Cascade Mountains and the Rockies and see these burn patches and insect devastation. Fortunately, it is not that terrible at the moment on the route I fly, but I know how bad it is up in Alaska. These are real changes that are happening in our lifetime, and I just question whether we are acting as good a stewards from the creators of the earth as we should be given the mind that we are given. Maybe the highest creation in the universe is the human mind. So maybe we ought to use it. We are suggesting that the U.S. Congress needs to open its eyes and read the science a little bit because right now we are sort of just got the hands over our eyes and we refuse to recognize this report. Now let me give you some other bad news here. November 24, these eight Nations will meet in Reykjavik, Iceland, and the reason for this meeting is to conclude the formal national report for this arctic assessment. This was done under the auspices of eight national governments that wring the arctic, and the scientists want to include a report that says something that is not rocket science. They want to put a conclusion on the report that we need to do something about global warming; that we need to reduce or at least put some limit on the carbon dioxide and the gases that are causing the arctic ice to disappear; causing polar bears to possibly go extinct; causing the lack of habitat for a bunch of critters that we like; causing potentially shutting down the gulf stream that warms northern Europe and a little bit New York city I suppose; causing the Greenland ice sheet to be melting now 15 percent. There has been a huge increase in the melt, 15 percent, in the last several years of the Greenland ice cap. The science says all of those things are happening so they want to take the radical step of putting in this report, we need to cap or limit the amount of carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere. So what did this administration do, the President of the United States, in the face of this overwhelming science that is absolutely consensus? There was not a single scientist in this group, anybody from any country, including the United States of America who contested these conclusions. So what does the President of the United States want to do and what has he instructed his negotiators to do I am told? He has instructed them to not allow this report to suggest that we put some limit on carbon dioxide. Now, if you consider the President of the United States the world's potentially most effective steward of God's creation, does it make sense for him, in the face of science that says God's creation is at risk, to shut his eyes and do absolutely nothing about this problem? I believe that is not consistent with the moral values that this country of any faith shares, and this President has dropped the ball when it comes to this major effort. He has dropped the ball considering one of the greatest risks really that we have had in global environmental history. He has told, I am told this, and if anyone can show I am wrong I would be happy to be disabused of this notion, but we read that he has told his negotiators not to allow anything in this report that say that humans need to act as good stewards to reduce CO2 and limit CO2. Now, I think that is very, very disturbing, particularly given the fact we have the technology to deal with this issue today, and that we can make a buck on. It is very, very shortsighted, and I hope my colleagues, anyone who might be listening tonight, will chime in with this administration and urge them to take a more responsible pattern. Now, maybe the President could get away with this 10 years ago, 6 years ago, 3 years ago, or 2 years ago, when science was not so sure; but the verdict is in. The guilt is there. The glove fits. The DNA evidence is there. There is no doubt about this. And once the verdict is in, we need to act.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, the gentleman's pointed out something that is very important. When you go to the horse races, you want to hit the trifecta. You want to win all three races. It is a big thing, and this certainly is a trifecta of an energy policy because it solves three problems we have. Number 1, it helps us reduce our addiction to Middle Eastern oil; number 2, it helps us reduce global warming; and number 3, it grows jobs in this country. It does not get much better than that, you can solve three problems with one program, which we intend to introduce during the next Congress, early in January or February, we hope on a bipartisan basis. So we intend to have real concrete legislation. We have the cap on carbon dioxide which is now pending in the Senate. There was a hearing today in the Senate on that. We have a similar bill in the house, and we have a comprehensive energy bill, or the new Apollo energy bill, which will encourage the adoption of these new technologies. Both of these are important. One, we have to stop treating the atmosphere just like a global junkyard where we can just dump our junk into it willy-nilly. We have got to stop that. We just cannot do that anymore when we have got the arctic ice cap disappearing on us. Two, we need to inspire these new technological systems that we intend to do, and unfortunately, we are going to give a report card here in a few minutes for Congress. It is kind of an F minus, because at the moment that the arctic ice is melting, at the moment that salinity is changing at the oceans, the moment you have these huge global changes going on, this chamber incredibly has not passed a single energy bill in the last 2 years, and here we are coming down to the last 72 hours of this Congress, with an abject failure to pass an energy bill. Now, that is something I do not think any of us should be proud of in light particularly of this new scientific report that came out that ought to ring alarm bells. There ought to be like fire bells going off in this building about what is going out there in the globe, and there are a lot of environmental challenges we have. Mercury in the air. Of course, the administration wanted to allow more mercury in the air or water. We thought that was a bad idea. Soot in the air. The administration wanted to allow more soot in the air. We thought that was a bad idea. Issues about cutting down and clear cutting our national forests, we thought that was a bad idea and the roadless area policy. There are a lot of things that are contentious about the environment, but this issue I think Americans of all political stripe ought to understand, when you fool with the whole basic climactic system of the globe, which is the only one we have got right now, you are messing around with something, number one, we do not fully understand, and two, we have got nowhere else to go. If the climate system goes south, we just cannot hop off earth to another lifeboat, and that is indeed what is happening right now before our eyes if we will open our eyes and look at this and look at this report. I encourage people to look at this report. It is about 120 pages long but it is pretty interesting.

Mr. INSLEE. Many of us think that is simply what we need again is that same type of vision. We can only do so much with even our existing technology. A report by the U.S. Department of Energy concluded that we could basically reduce our fossil fuel use and have the same economic productivity by 20 percent with existing technology if we just made the right policy decisions. But there is so much excitement for job creation out in the State of Washington right now about the prospects of creating jobs. Let me give you an example. We just built the largest wind turbine farm in the southeastern corner of the State of Washington; 10,000 homes essentially get their energy from wind turbines. These are jobs, and for rural America I might add. It is not bad getting a lease payment just sitting there putting your feet up on the couch and getting a lease payment from the power company to lease a couple of acres of your farm. That works pretty well. In southwestern Washington we have one of the largest manufacturers of solar cell panels for North America. It had been previously owned by a German company. We are employing American workers to make solar panels, and those numbers are going up significantly. The reason is that there is a tremendous trend, we can report to Americans, when it comes to new energy sources, and that is they get cheaper every year. And the reason they get cheaper every year is when we make more of them there is a scale of production. On solar, every time we make 10 times the solar panels that we made before, the price comes down 20 percent. It is a curve. I actually have a graph somewhere that has been a straight line curve for the last 20 years. They used to have the potential to be market-based in a very, very short period of time.

Mr. INSLEE. I really appreciate two messages the gentleman had. One was why this needs to be a bipartisan effort. This should be a totally bipartisan effort. Now we have a start on that. Senator McCain, if I am allowed to use that name, and another, Senator Lieberman, in the Senate have a bill that will help us put a modest cap on the amount of CO2 we put in the atmosphere. We have a similar bill with some of our Republican colleagues that we have co-sponsored here in the House. When our grandchildren look back at us when polar bears are extinct and there is no summer ice cap, and Western Nile Virus and malaria have moved south up into the Midwest, and we have lost some of the birds we are used to having around our houses, and your air conditioning billing goes through the roof in Seattle, Washington, and Wisconsin in March or April, they will not look back and say oh those pesky Republicans or pesky Democrats. They will curse us all for being so shortsighted. So we need to be bipartisan on this. Second message that I appreciate is one of optimism that we can deal with this problem. That is a fundamental thing that we need to have confidence in ourselves to do that. I think you have to ask yourself, why when the science is so overwhelming, why when the science is just absolutely certain that carbon dioxide has increased by 30 percent in the atmosphere, there is absolutely no doubt whatsoever of that and there is no doubt that it acts as a greenhouse gas, and why when you see the summer ice in the Arctic already being decreased by 15 percent by area and almost 40 percent, almost half as thick, we have almost lost half the thickness already in the polar ice cap, when you already see the changes in animal life? We had these squid off the coast of Washington. We have never seen these squid off the coast of Washington. For a hundred years nobody had ever caught a squid. Now they are up there because we have warmer water temperatures. So after all of these efforts, why do some people sort of want to blind themselves to do this? I think the answer is human nature. If you do not think you can deal with it, you just do not think about it. If you put it in that little box of things, maybe like our own mortality that we cannot do anything about it, you just do not think about it. We need to spread the gospel that we can handle this problem and the reason we can handle this problem is we are the most creative people on Earth. We went to the Moon in 10 years when John F. Kennedy challenged us to do it. We can do the same thing now with the Apollo energy project that we are working on here in the House which will unleash the technological can-do spirit of Americans. There is no reason the Danish have to be ahead of us. We went together to Denmark and saw the wind turbines. Denmark will have 50 percent of their energy produced by wind turbines in the next 10 years. There is no reason we cannot do that. There is no reason we cannot be competing with the Germans on solar technology, which has now come down in price 20 percent, every time you increase it by a factor of ten. We need to make a buck off of global warming and this is one of the great economic opportunities for America because we are the smartest, greatest tinkerers the world has ever seen if we have that challenge.

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I come to address the House this evening on an issue that has some similarities to the issue my colleagues, my Democratic colleagues, just addressed on the Federal deficit. The Federal deficit is this long-term, rather insidious challenge to our Nation that sort of is something that can sneak up on us and over the long term can cause us great grief. And the issue that I am compelled to address the House on tonight is a similar issue with even larger global concerns that has the capability of causing major changes to the way we live and our kids live and our grandchildren live, and that is the issue of global climate change, which is being precipitated by our enormous contributions of carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere. And as I come here tonight, this is the first night we have been in session since the election, and a couple things have changed relatively dramatically actually since the election. And one of the things that has changed when it comes to the atmosphere we are going to leave to our kids and our grandkids is that there was a major scientific announcement made last week that basically should send off red lights, alarm bells, and whistles in the United States Congress which indicated that the problem of global warming is much more acute and is happening much more quickly than many of us anticipated. So tonight I would like to address the science that has now become available to this body in the House of Representatives, which I hope that we would act on fairly shortly. Unfortunately, the U.S. House has been somnambulant when it comes to global warming to date. This Chamber, for all its virtues, basically has not acted at all in the face of what has been very rapidly accumulating scientific evidence about this problem. But after the report came out last week, which I am going to address, there really is no longer any excuse for inaction by the House; and that is why this evening I would like to address the scientific report that became available to us. Last week, eight nations that have been working for 4 years now to try to get a handle on the scientific information that is now available to us issued a report called the ``Impacts of a Warming Arctic,'' and this was a report issued by the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment. This is a group that has been working of the best scientists in the United States, nonpartisan, no ax to grind. These people, a diverse group from the National Oceanographic Administration, from the University of Fairbanks have been working in conjunction with seven other nations on this report. Those other countries are Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, Canada, and six indigenous groups in Canada. And this group basically for the last several years has been taking a very acute and sensitive look as to what is going on in the Arctic to determine whether or not there is evidence that can guide us policymakers and whether we should or should not treat global warming as a serious issue. And I have to say that when I read this report, I was blown away. And I was blown away because it is the most concrete, cemented, and alarming report that I have read about an environmental issue in the last 10 years. And this report, which is about 120 pages, one can get online. If I can get the site here, they can read it on line at acia.uaf.edu. That is acia.uaf.edu. They can also get it through the Cambridge University Press at cambridge.org. Basically what this report concluded is that global warming is, number one, a fact; number two, likely caused by significant human activity; and, third, that the rate of global warming in the Arctic regions surpasses anything that we really would have assessed or predicted even 2 years ago and that that rate has the capacity to cause significant changes not only in the Arctic but where we live in our homes and towns where we expect our grandchildren to have a life like we do. And what I would like to do is go through this report. And basically this report synthesized scores of scientific assessments that have been done on the Arctic. For reasons that are quite complex, what we have found is that the changes that are happening in global warming are even faster in the Arctic than other places. So I would like to go through some of the findings of this scientific report. First, the report found that Arctic climate is now warming rapidly and much larger changes are projected. The annual average Arctic temperatures have increased at almost twice the rate of the rest of the world and over the past few decades with some variation. And additional evidence comes from widespread melting of glaciers and sea ice and a shortening of the snow season. We are seeing actual changes in our climactic systems now due to global warming. This is not a hypothetical. This is not a ``Chicken Little.'' This is not a bunch of theoreticians. What the science has shown is that we are seeing significant changes already. The Arctic is where science looked. There are other changes as well, but they are occurring. The numbers that this report came up with are really quite startling. They are not talking about one-tenth of a degree or half a degree in changes, changes that we may not notice in our daily lives. What this report concluded was that because of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses due to human activities, primarily fossil fuel burning, Arctic warming is expected to be 4 to 7 degrees centigrade over the next 100 years. That is at least 8 or 9 to 14 or 15 degrees Fahrenheit during our grandchildren's lifetime. Think about the significant changes in a region of the world where you have 8, 9, 10 to 15 to 17 degree temperature increases. You are talking about major changes in the planet that God created. And whatever our political stripe in this Chamber, I dare say that none of us would believe that there is a moral value to change 8 to 9 to 14 to 15 degree changes in the climatic system designed by the Creator. That is a moral value that is violated. We now have evidence that is occurring, and we need to act on it, and we need to act on it now. This is the most alarming evidence that we have in humans that I am aware of to date of about how significant this problem is. So we know we have seen changes in the Arctic, and we now have compelling scientific evidence. And I want to make sure people understand this is not evidence from some pointy-headed group that just has an ax to grind. This is the best scientists in our Federal Government on a nonpartisan basis in alliance with scientists from around the world who are associated with the Arctic. Now, what this is also showing in the Arctic is that we have had shorter and warmer winters, which perhaps is not rocket science but is true, with substantial decreases in snow and ice cover, and these are expected to continue. We can look forward to unexpected and even larger shifts and fluctuations in climate. The reason for that is we do not fully understand all of the climatic systems to date. So what we have is finding number one, which is that the Arctic is changing rapidly, and that it is likely over our grandchildren's lifetimes to have increases in the 8 to 16 to 17 degree Fahrenheit realm, huge changes in the biosphere in the Arctic, and we are already seeing changes. The second finding that this group has found relates perhaps to our lives as we live them here. I live just north of Seattle, and I kind of like it. A lot of people do not like some of the rain in Seattle, but I think it is a great place to live. I have become accustomed to having a spring, when we get it, and having the glaciers and having snow to ski on and having salmon in the rivers. All of those things are now put into question because of the existence of global warming. That has been suggested by finding number two of this group, that basically found in their conclusion, and I will read from it, ``Arctic warming and its consequences have worldwide implications. Melting of highly reflective Arctic snow and ice reveals darker land and ocean surfaces. It increases the absorption of the sun's heat, further warming the planet.'' Now, maybe this is intuitive, but it bears thinking about it. One of the things scientists are concerned about is that we are dramatically increasing the percentage of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. As you may know, carbon dioxide traps infrared radiation. The way this works is just like a greenhouse. Light can come through the atmosphere, because when light comes from the sun it comes through an ultraviolet wavelength. But when it bounces back, it bounces back at a different wavelength, at infrared spectrum in the wavelengths. Carbon dioxide, methane, a few other gasses, are impermeable to infrared radiation. So it traps that radiation in the Earth. That is a really, really good thing. If we did not have some carbon dioxide, we would be a frozen ball in space. It is important to have that as a blanket to a certain degree to keep us warm. But, unfortunately, those rates of carbon dioxide are up 20 to 30 percent in the industrial period of time and are expected to double, double, the highest carbon dioxide rate in our atmosphere in several millions years in the planet Earth's history, if we do not act. So the science is compelling that this material traps heat in the Earth. But the thing that is disturbing to a lot of scientists is that there are also what are called feedback effects. Feedback effects means that when you change the atmosphere you warm the planet due to this trapping mechanism like greenhouse panes in a greenhouse, but you also set up a phenomena called feedback effects. One of those is, if you melt more ice, you effectively warm the planet through a doubling effect or an increased effect, because ice is more reflective. It reflects back more energy than dark ground or the oceans. So you have this kind of reflective barrier up there in the north and in the Antarctic and the Greenland ice cap, and if you lose that reflective barrier, you absorb more heat and increase the rate of increase in temperature. That is what we are seeing right now. This report concluded that is likely to happen, and it will have implications not only in the Arctic but where we live down in the 50 States. It also says that increases in glacial melt and river runoff add more fresh water to the ocean, which will raise the global sea level, possibly slowing the ocean's circulation that brings heat from the tropics to the poles, affecting global and regional climate. If you go on-line and look at this map, you will see there are significant areas in the United States which could be affected during our grandchildren's lifetime of raising sea levels due to global warming. I am familiar with a lot of beaches. We like the breaches. Frankly, I do not like them being underwater. But that is the circumstance our kids have to look forward to if we do not act. It works in two ways: One, warming sea water expands simply because it is a warmer temperature. But we also have additional volume from additional melt. So we have that phenomena. But the report also had this disturbing line, and you can read about this in detail, which says that this could possibly slow the ocean's circulation that brings heat from the tropics to the poles. This is something when I went on a tour of some of the regions that could be affected by global warming, some of the countries in Northern Europe are very concerned that because we have more fresh water melt off of the Greenland cap and Arctic, we can reduce the salinity of the North Atlantic, reducing the action of the current which drives the Gulf Stream which really warms Northern Europe. This has the capacity of altering or shutting down that Gulf Stream, because, paradoxically, you could end up with a little ice age in northern Europe due to global warming. It is an interesting phenomena you would not think of intuitively. But this report indicated that is something we need to be concerned about. The third conclusion, Arctic vegetation zones are very likely to shift, causing wide-ranging impact. What they are finding is that the tree line is moving northward into higher elevations, with the forest replacing an existing fraction of tundra and tundra vegetation moving into polar deserts. Now, this may sound a little esoteric, but it has meaning to us in the 50 States as we start to see northern movement of these biospheres, if you will, as well. You can basically, this is a little simplistic, but look to the south of you and assume that is what is going to happen. Frankly, that may look okay to me and from Northern California, moving north, but to folks in the south, having a Mexican climate moving north into California and Oregon may not be a prospect folks really look forward to. The fourth conclusion, animal species diversity and ranges and distribution will change. This is one that those who are fond of polar bears and seals, and I think a lot of folks are, they are threatened. They are threatened because reductions in sea ice will drastically shrink marine habitat for polar bears, ice-inhabiting seals and some sea birds, pushing some species towards extinction. Whatever you think, I believe that we have an obligation to our grandkids not to leave a planet barren of some of the animals and critters we grew up with. I do not think that is too outrageous a statement. There was an instruction by the Creator to Noah to bring two of every animal and to keep them alive, and ``to keep them alive'' was the operative word. If that was the instruction to Noah, perhaps we ought to have an instruction to the U.S. Congress to pull our heads out of the sand and do something that does not result in huge extinctions on this planet, which unfortunately is the scientific fact that is now occurring. This report is just one more factor that ought to lead us to conclude that we need to act to avoid significant extinction so that we cannot say that we are the generation that took away polar bears, seals, Orcas, you name it, from our grandkids, to enjoy in their lifetime. According to this report, that is a risk we should be concerned about. The fifth conclusion, many coastal communities and facilities face increasing exposure to storms. We are already seeing some of our communities in northern Alaska are having to actually move their villages that have been there for centuries away from the encroaching wave action that is occurring. It is predicted that will occur in part because thawing permafrost weakens coastal lands, adding to the vulnerability. This is a real kind of interesting thing that is going on. If you look at this report, you will see the pictures of the buildings that are collapsing in the Arctic because the permafrost is melting. The permafrost, as the name would suggest, is permanently frozen ground, and people build their buildings on it, they build their roads on it. But that is melting now because of the increasing temperatures. You will see pictures of these cracks running through buildings, cracked roads. It is interesting, because you know folks who want to drill in the Arctic, in the Wildlife Refuge, something I vigorously oppose, ought to take into consideration that, because of global warming, it is going to be more difficult if that were to happen. Because the days in which you can drive over frozen tundra and not sink up to your hubcaps are being reduced by about 10 days to 2 weeks in the last several decades, and that has created havoc up there in the oil drilling fields, even in Prudo Bay. So we have melting permafrost, something that has been there for eons, now occurring. In fact, it is interesting, up in the villages up in the northern Alaska area, you have birds that are appearing that the folks up there do not even have words for. They do not have language for them, because they have never seen these birds before, as they are moving north because of this melting that is occurring. Sixth, reducing the ice is very likely to increase marine transport and access to resources. This is an interesting phenomena. If you want to look at this on the plus side you can say, well, we will be able to have shipping through the Arctic during the summer. There are some changes that might be useful to our economy, but I question whether we want to radically change the climatic system which we have grown accustomed to during the entire period of human evolution in the hopes that we might have a couple of upsides in that regard. I would suggest that we not. I have been joined by a great visionary on this issue and others, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind). I yield to him.