Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we are all united in every congressional district in coming together in America today. I would like to honor two contributions from the first district of the State of Washington. First, I would like to honor the life and heroism of Army Sergeant Larry Strickland, who lost his life while at his post on the second floor of the west wing of the Pentagon 1 year ago today. Army Sergeant Strickland was a native of Edmonds, Washington, who served his country as a personnel manager and traveled to every post around the world to which he was assigned. He was a senior adviser to the deputy chief of staff, and he earned the greatest title I think anyone in the American military could have. He was a good soldier. But he was also a good son to proud Americans Lee Strickland and Olga Strickland of Edmonds, Washington; and a good husband to wife, Deborah; and a good father to Julia, Matthew, and Chris; and a good grandfather to Brendan. To those family members, we cannot ask to beguile them from their grief; but we hope that they are left with the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that should be theirs for having left such a precious contribution at the altar of freedom. That family can be assured that we will keep Sergeant Strickland's memory alive as we go forward together in a unified way to preserve the freedoms for which he died. Second, Mr. Speaker, I would like to honor Molly Peebles, Chuck Oppermann, and Erik Lindbergh, who led the flight of 51 planes in the Flight Across America from every State in the Union that brought every State's flag and the United States flag to New York this morning, having begun flights all across this country on August 11 to bring a message of resolution and healing to this Nation. They spoke with the spirit of general aviation, which is important in this country for our freedoms and our economy. I hope their contributions send a statement that we have to honor general aviation and help them through this crisis, so we can continue to have both security and a viable general aviation in this country. Mr. Speaker, America is proud of people in every district in this country, and I offer the honor of this Nation to these people from the First District of the State of Washington.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, in 1961, President Kennedy sat right there and said America is a country that can do the moon. Now we have people around here saying America is a country that cannot even check baggage. Why would Members want to take a bill called the homeland security bill and change it into the home air insecurity bill. Members are darn right that there are some challenges in getting this done, but it does not help that this administration has demonstrated rank incompetence for months and months doing nothing on this issue. It took them 7 months to order the first machine after September 11. I will not allow or vote for this administration's rank ineptness to endanger my flying public for the next year. If you cannot get this job done, turn the administration over to us and we will do it because we know if you want some horses to go, you put the spurs to them and this administration needs it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, for 3 years the parents of the three boys who died on June 10, 1999, in Bellingham, Washington, have been unstinting and unyielding in their insistence that this Chamber adopt a requirement that pipeline companies inspect their pipelines. Today it is their efforts that truly ought to be honored to fully and fairly require that for the American people. I want to note the efforts of Frank and Mary King, Marlene Robinson and Katherine Dalen, because they have been insistent that we not leave this House until we require in statute the inspection of these pipelines. This has been difficult for them. It has been difficult because the last time we had this provision on this Chamber, on this floor, we did not have such an inspection. But they were unyielding and unstinting. I want to thank them for their courage in such difficult circumstances to hold our feet to the fire, to go through a multiple- year effort to get this inspection requirement. Their decision not to allow anything less than that in the last Congress today has proven the right decision.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, last Sunday I was driving up on the Tulalip reservation in northwest Washington. I was going to a memorial service for a good friend of mine, and I noticed a really nice white building on the Tulalip reservation in Tulalip, Washington. It was a beautiful place on the water. And when I got to the service I asked my friend what that new building was, and he said that was the Tulalip Boys and Girls Club, and that was the first Boys and Girls Club on an Indian reservation in America ever. It has been supremely successful. And the reason it has been supremely successful, in part, is because this group of folks have developed an industry to make this possible. Now, I know many people have very sincere concerns about gaming, but I just hope that when we vote on this, we will think of the faces of those young boys and girls of Tulalip people who are learning respect for elders, discipline, team work in that building that has been allowed because this industry has been allowed to blossom. I hope we reject this amendment, sincere as it is, for that reason, so these people can continue those American values of the first American people.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I think one thing that we all know about all Americans of whatever party today is that they do not want weak tea, they want strong medicine to deal with this economic crisis. They do not want passivity. They want action. The majority party is giving them nothing but delay and inaction. Did the majority party just pass a 97-0 vote in the Senate? No. Will they accept this substantive amendment to give instructions to the committee? No. But let me tell you what the majority party leadership did 5 days ago. I read about this in the newspaper today. The leadership of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the midst of this economic crisis had time to send a letter to the Public Broadcasting System to complain about the introduction of a new Muppet character. It was not the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Oxley), of course, but the chair of another committee. These majority party Members did not think it was right to have a new Muppet that had HIV. They thought that was a problem they had to deal with. Well, America wants an answer to this question. If the majority party can stand up to Sesame Street, why will you not stand up to Wall Street? If you will deal with the Cookie Monster, why will you not deal effectively with the moral monsters who are stealing America's retirement accounts? That is what America wants to know. It is not enough simply to say you are going to increase jail time, and I will tell you why not. When we were dealing with the terrorist threat to our air system, did we think our job was done by just saying everybody that blows up an airplane gets 50 years instead of 25 years? Did we consider our job done when we did that? No. We developed a security system to check to make sure terrorists do not get into our airplanes, and now we need a security system to make sure fiscal terrorists are not taking over the boardroom. You need to join with us and stop messing around with Sesame Street and start taking on Wall Street to save people's retirement incomes.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, the President of the United States of America has taken action against offshore oil drilling in Florida. The problem we have here is we just have not been able to find any of his relatives in California. I have checked the Santa Barbara phone book and I found an Allison Bush, an Albert Bush and an Anna Bush, and I hope that they or any of the other people named Bush in the Santa Barbara area will call the White House and ask the President to afford them the same courtesy he afforded his relative in Florida. The President takes care of his family, and this is a noble, virtuous thing. We believe in family values on this side of the aisle, but we want to believe that to take care of all of the Bush relatives in the State of California, I do not care if it is a second cousin, third time removed, call the White House and ask him to take care of California.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor of the House tonight to advise the American people about the status of our efforts to deal with the crisis of confidence in our corporate structure, which indeed is deep. Mr. Speaker, I have to say that one thing I realize all Americans share tonight, looking at these repeated scandals, fiscal collapses and debacles in the accounting structure of our corporations, all Americans, I think, share one belief, be they Democrats or Republicans, suburban, rural, north or south, and that is that we need strong medicine rather than weak tea in dealing with this problem. We need more aggressivity and not so much passivity in dealing with this problem. We need action rather than inaction. Mr. Speaker, I must report to Americans that, unfortunately, we have not had enough action in dealing with these problems. Let me give an example of what I mean by that. A few days ago in the other body a bill was passed to deal with these problems by a vote of 97 to zero. Ninety- seven Democrats and Republicans joined together to pass a meaningful bill to provide for the security of Americans, for their retirement and investment in corporations. We should be here voting on that bill tonight. Tonight, we should be sitting here, Republicans and Democrats, passing that legislation which had overwhelming bipartisan support in the other Chamber, but we are not. And why are we not doing that work for the American people tonight? Well, the reason is this, and it is sad to say, but the leadership in this House in the majority party has made a conscious decision to drag their feet; has made a conscious decision to be passive rather than active; has made a conscious decision to answer the needs of some special interests rather than the American investors who are losing their shirts in the last few days in the stock market and in their retirement funds, which are rapidly disappearing. The sad fact is that we have some very commonsense things that we need to do to make sure that there is a fiscal security apparatus in our corporations so that people cannot pull the wool over the eyes of investors, defraud investors, and falsify their books. Unfortunately, the majority party refuses to adopt those measures. Today, on this floor, we had a motion that my party proposed that would require some very commonsense measures so that investors would have greater confidence; measures to give whistleblowers protection, these whistleblowers who have blown the whistle on corporate misdeeds, to make sure they have protection. That was rejected by the majority party. We had a proposal to require records to be kept for a decent interval so we could figure out what had happened and find the trail of fraud in these cases. That was rejected by the other party. We had a provision that would give investors who had been damaged greater leeway, a greater period of time to seek redress if they had been hurt by corporate fraud. That was rejected by the majority party. These are things we could have done today. For the last 2 months, it has been a common litany here that we have proposed ideas and we have had to drag the majority party kicking and screaming to get consideration of these issues. It is really sad, because I have a lot of friends on the other side of the aisle who, unfortunately, are not being given a chance to vote on these commonsense measures. Now, let me mention what the majority party has been doing in the last week. During the last week, when the economy has been in a crisis of consumer confidence and investor confidence in the last week, on July 12, just a few days ago, the leadership of the Committee on Energy and Commerce in the majority party, in response to this, what did they do? Well, they wrote a letter to the Public Broadcasting Service, PBS. In the midst of this economic crisis, the leaders of this Chamber's Committee on Energy and Commerce wrote a letter to PBS. And you know what they wrote about? They were complaining that Sesame Street program was going to introduce a muppet character that was HIV-positive. They were so concerned about this that they wrote a letter to PBS to stop this heinous introduction of this muppet character. Well, Americans want to know the answer to this question tonight: If the Republican Party in this House is willing to take on Sesame Street, why are they not willing to take on Wall Street? If the Republican Party is willing to take on the Cookie Monster, why are they not willing to take on these moral monsters who are defrauding American investors and taking away people's entire retirement income in some cases? This is a time for a bipartisan response to an economic crisis that does not just give Americans weak tea. Yes, the majority party is going to have to stand up against some of the special interests who have been so prevalent in this Chamber in the last decade. Yes, they are going to have to do it. But we need them to do it. We need them to join us to do it. Now, we have heard this response that they have made, and they have joined with Democrats to do one of the things that needs to be done. They have increased with us the jail time that corporate defrauders will be exposed to. And that is a good thing. It is necessary. It is probably not adequate, because I would support mandatory jail time. Because, unfortunately, a lot of white collar criminals spend too little time in these country club prisons. We should have mandatory jail term. But, nonetheless, we have joined in a bipartisan way to increase the jail time. Unfortunately, some Members on the other side of the aisle have said that is enough; our job is done. But that is not enough. If we draw a metaphor to our airline security system, when we had this terrorist threat against airlines, we did not say our job was done as soon as we increased jail time for terrorists. Because that is not enough. We have to draw a security ring around airplanes to make sure terrorists do not put bombs in the checked baggage of our airplanes, do not sneak weapons onto our airplanes. We need to be proactive, rather than just coming after the crime and sanctioning people with jail. So it is not enough for the majority party to simply say we will increase jail times and go home. That is not enough. What we need to do is to assure that we have watchdogs watching corporate behavior to make sure investors are not defrauded. Now, what does that mean? Well, let me suggest some of the commonsense proposals that were adopted 97 to 0 in the other Chamber and have the overwhelming support of Democrats in this House. Let me mention a few. One, a segregation, to make sure that auditors do not have conflicts of interest. We depend on auditors to act as referees or umpires, to make sure there are no fouls. But right now those auditors can have these huge conflicts of interest where they have these giant contracts with the companies they are supposed to be auditing, and we want to end that practice. We want auditors to be real meaningful cops on the beat. The majority party refuses to accept that. That is most unfortunate. We need to get that security ring up and running. Second, we need CEOs to verify their financial statements. We need the people at the top, the captain of the ship, the one who is ultimately responsible for the corporation to sign their John Hancock to verify the financial accounting. If we do not do that, then nobody is in charge. And it is about time to adopt that proposal. Third, we have to have an independent accountancy board to make sure that the rules of auditing are workable, tough, and enforceable. Unfortunately, right now, we have learned that the accounting rules have allowed tremendous creative accounting to take place. Creativity is something we need in artists, not in accountants and auditors. We need to have an independent board to establish the rules of how these audits are conducted, and we do not have that right now. Americans do not have that right now. The profession essentially writes its own rules, and that has been a recipe for disaster. Now, in the other Chamber, on a 97 to 0 vote, that was adopted, and we have proposed this on our side of the aisle. But tonight, as people's retirements are disappearing all across America, the majority party refuses to allow us to have a vote on this House floor to implement that commonsense measure. And I respect people on the other side of the aisle. I have some great friends on the other side of the aisle. But it is wrong not to allow this House to have a vote on those commonsense measures, because ultimately America needs people who will stand up for those investors against fraud. Mr. Speaker, I hope tomorrow that when we convene we will have people in the majority party who will join us on a bipartisan basis to get this job done, and finally convince the majority party if they are going to be willing to stand up to Sesame Street, join us in standing up to the shenanigans on Wall Street and get this job for the American people.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Just one more comment, if I may, and I thank the gentleman for his compliments, I always accept those, but 96 percent of the Americans who commented on this wanted a strong roadless area bill to protect our pristine area, yet what did the President of the United States do? He ignored them. Now he is trying to back up on this rule to allow clear-cutting and roadless area rules. We are going to fight this. We feel very strongly about it. And I thank the gentleman.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman organizing this chance to address this because this is an interesting sort of coming- together of two themes of American values, and one of those values is protect our natural resources for our children, and the other American value is responsibility and accountability and corporate responsibilities which certainly is in the news in a lot of different ways today. I have come to the floor tonight because I am so concerned that I think the administration is grossly on the wrong track on both these issues on an interesting sort of marriage of two values, where the administration is going absolutely backwards. Clearly we have an environmental challenge in making sure that our Superfund sites remain in operation to clean up these most toxic areas with PCB, DDT, creosote, you name it, in it. So we have got this environmental challenge and cleaning it up is an American value. Americans feel very strongly about cleaning up these sites so that we do not leave water pollution for our children for hundreds and hundreds of years. But there is another thing Americans feel strongly about, and that is responsibility for one's actions. That is why years ago this Chamber and the Senate adopted a Superfund plan that would make sure that polluters pay, not taxpayers, and Americans have felt for years that polluters who dump this toxic material into the soil ought to be the one, to the extent humanly possible, to pay for the cleanup, instead of John Q. Citizen or Mary Q. Citizen who pay their taxes, and Americans have felt for a long time that it is only right because why should the taxpayer have to pay when the polluter was the one who dumped the crud into the ground? That has been the law up until George W. Bush was elected President of the United States. Now he wants to change that. He wants to abandon this basic American value of personal responsibility and he wants to shift the cost of that onto the American taxpayer, and I think that is wrong. I think the continued American value is, one, we ought to continue the Superfund cleanup to get these sites done, and two, that the President is wrong in trying to stop the idea and abandon the idea of polluter pays and now make the rule in America being that the taxpayer pays, and somehow we have got to put it on the general fund for the taxpayer to fund these billions of dollars of cleanup, and I think that that is way out of touch with what Americans want to see happen here, and it is but yet one more, just one more manifestation of how the President's administration unfortunately has acted slavishly to these corporate interests instead of the general interests, and the President who has had a history, as we all know, in the oil and gas industry, cannot seem to break that history to answer the general needs of the public rather than the special needs of the polluting industries. This is not something that we are asking the President to sort of invent a new science or even a new type of legislation. We are just asking him to take his hands off the existing legislation, which requires polluters to pay for their own problems they created rather than the taxpayer. We are only asking him to do what has been the law for years and years and years and years, and that is why it is most discouraging that the President has seen fit to try to go backwards both on environmental policy and on the concept of personal accountability, and we are going to do everything we can to stop him in his efforts. In the State of Washington we have a number of Superfund sites. They are at risk with many other Superfund sites of not being funded because of the President's threats, and even if they are funded, we do not think they should be funded by the taxpayer. We think they should be funded by the polluter who dumped the stuff in the ground. I give my colleagues an example. In Bainbridge Island, where I live, one of the largest toxic waste sites in the West Coast is a former creosote plant and that for years and years and years the owners dumped creosote into the ground right on Bill Point which is a point just on Eagle Harbor there in Bainbridge Island. It is a beautiful location. Trouble is now it is one of the most toxic area substrata around because it is full of creosote, which is pretty ugly stuff. Sometimes when I go by, I can see it bubble up out of the water, and it is real stinky and black and it is quite toxic. We think that the polluters who put the creosote in the ground should be responsible for that cleanup, which is going to take years and years and years, rather than the taxpayers in the State of Washington or anywhere else in the United States, and yet the President wants to reduce that protection. I just give my colleague a little comment, too. We are now trying, just to tell him how nasty the stuff is, we are trying a new technology of injecting steam into the ground to try to break up the creosote so it can be pumped out, and it is an experiment, really one of the first or second times it is being tried anywhere in the Nation. We hope it works because if it does not work, we have got to build these walls to essentially have a bathtub to preserve this stuff so it does not keep leaking into Puget Sound and causing terrible things in the food chain, and if we have to do that, we have to pump water out of this literally for eternity. So this is very expensive and we think the one who put it in ought to be responsible. We think that the President should revisit this issue and stick with the existing view of the polluter being responsible rather than the taxpayer. We hope we are successful in this regard. Today the President gave a speech about corporate responsibility, and he said that corporations need to be more ethical, more responsible, and if he feels that way, why the heck is he trying to shift the costs off of corporations who dump creosote in the ground year after year after year after year, poisoning the atmosphere and the environment, and try to change that responsibility off the taxpayers? That is not in league with what I sense he was saying today, which is corporations ought to be responsible for their own conduct. So we will continue in our efforts, and I appreciate this opportunity to join my colleague to talk about this one particular issue that I am very concerned about.

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

Mr. INSLEE. I may just tell my colleague, we have got a lot of great corporations out there, too, that are being extremely responsible, and those sort of good actors are paying corporate taxes, the ones who are not polluting against the law, and what the President's proposal is doing is shifting the burden for the pollution of the bad actors onto the corporations as well as individual taxpayers. He is shifting the burden for the pollution off the bad actors onto the good corporations that are not polluting. So I mean it is not like just individuals are victims of the President's proposal here. The good corporations that are following environmental laws and taking care of their waste and recycling their products, and thank goodness I have got hundreds of them in my district, Microsoft being one. Why do we have to have Microsoft have to pay for some other corporation that is not following the law, that is dumping this stuff in the ground? So we are defending the corporations who are good neighbors and good community members against the perditions of those who are not, and George Bush is in league with those corporations that want to violate the law and dump this stuff in the ground, and we think that is just absurd and that is the best, most gracious language I can use.

Mr. INSLEE. If I may add, the other thing that is frankly disturbing to a lot of my constituents, is that this is just one more of a litany of these antienvironmental actions by this administration. Everybody makes a mistake. We are all human, and we do not expect perfection from the President. But when we look at the number of times that the President, this President, has sided with these special interests to the degradation of clean air and clean water, it really bothers the people I represent. I have lots of them come up to me and say, ``Whatever you do, just do not let him continue down this road.'' It started with his efforts on arsenic in the water; then it has gone on to issues to gut the roadless area rule where we are trying to protect the last pristine areas in our forest areas; then the President ignores any affirmative action on global warming; and then the President takes this action that we are talking about trying to gut the Superfund sites. That was preceded 2 weeks ago by his efforts to reduce clean air rules. This is consistent with his actions, unfortunately, with the Securities and Exchange Commission, to date, where he appointed a gentleman, who, though a very nice person, very intelligent, is from the industry he is supposed to be regulating. Mr. Pitt from the SEC is supposed to be regulating the securities industry and the accounting industry, and that is who he represented. As a result, we have had no effective, meaningful reform in the last 6 months of this horrendous predation on American investors. Yet the President has not stood up for American values, he has stood up and allowed the special interests to dominate his administration to the degradation and damage of the American investors. So this is a consistent pattern where corporations, not all of them, but some of them, who have acted against the laws, have dominated his decision-making. And this is just another example of how an administration has gone off course. We hope he restores that and rethinks through this pattern of his. With that, I would like to thank the gentleman for an opportunity to join him this evening.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I sat in with the Financial Services Committee at our WorldCom hearing yesterday; and if you heard a sense of outrage from the Members on both sides of the aisle, it mirrored the outrage of the American public who have seen their savings go down the drain while there has been so much malfeasance in the accounting and auditing practices in our corporate boardrooms. It is very disturbing because this has created a substantial lack of confidence in our capital markets system. It is clear that we have a very systemic problem we have got to fix. It seems to me that this is a time for action that Teddy Roosevelt would have taken. Teddy Roosevelt did not say, Speak loudly and carry a small twig. He put it a different way. So today when the President addresses the Nation and Wall Street about how we are going to work ourselves out of this terrible situation, I hope that he will be guided much more by Teddy Roosevelt and much less by Calvin Coolidge. What I mean by that is we need him not just to speak loudly, which I am very confident he will do, we need him to act with great fervor. We need action, not just language. Today I would suggest that a Teddy Roosevelt approach to this problem would involve six separate actions, not just speeches. We hope that the President will join us in the Democratic Party who propose these actions. First, I think Teddy Roosevelt would be getting America a new director of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The present director of that organization, Mr. Harvey Pitt, is a man of great intelligence; but America needs more than that. America needs an agent of change at the helm of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We cannot have a leader of the Securities and Exchange Commission that we have to drag kicking and screaming every time that we need to do some modest, commonsense regulation of the industries that Mr. Pitt used to represent and work for. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Pitt has drug his feet time and time again to take even the most modest efforts to deal with these systemic problems. We hope that we have new leadership at that helm. Second, I am convinced Teddy Roosevelt would impose the sternest criminal sanctions on the corporate people and accountants who failed to abide by their responsibilities, who consciously, intentionally defraud investors. I am confident the President will call for jail time for these scofflaws. But we need more than simply maximum times in jail. We need minimum times in jail. Here is the reason I say that. We need mandatory jail times for these flimflam artists. The reason is that all too often in white collar crime, these white collar criminals go up to the judge and says, he was a good man, he belonged to a great country club, he gave money to charity and they do not see the inside of a penitentiary. If you sell 50 grams of crack cocaine, you get 10 years mandatory, no ifs, ands, or buts. It ought to be the same rule for these people who have destroyed the retirement incomes of thousands of Americans. The President should do no less than mandatory minimum jail times. Third, it is not just that we have people breaking the rules; we do not have the right rules in our accountancy and auditing system. We need new rules. So the third thing we should do is we need to divorce the consulting aspects of accounting from the auditing aspects of accounting. Mr. Speaker, I have sat through, I think now, 12 hearings about these disasters. The one thing they almost all have in common is the people who are supposed to be auditing these corporations were also making millions of dollars providing the same corporations they are supposed to be riding herd on, providing them consulting advice. We found that this creates just too many disincentives for rigorous auditing. At a minimum, at an absolute minimum, we should require the auditing committee to agree to those multiple contracts before they allow people to provide those two services. This is a systemic problem, and it is something we have got to fix. Fourth, we need an independent public accountancy board. It is important that it be independent. It needs to be independent of the organizations that it regulates. We need that quickly. Five, we need CEOs to have to certify their financial records so that they are personally responsible. And, sixth, and this is very important, Mr. Speaker, we need stock analyst independence, independent from the investment banking side. Mr. Speaker, I am confident Teddy Roosevelt would take all six of these steps today. I hope the President will do so. America deserves no less.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we appreciate the President's talking about this devastating loss to Americans' retirement incomes, but if he really wants to be a reformer with results, he has to get a new sheriff in town. He has to get a new chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We know Mr. Pitt is a man of intelligence, but we cannot put up with an SEC Chair we have to drag kicking and screaming every time we want to have some modest, common-sense regulation of his former clients. We need action and we need it now. The only way we are going to have it is if the President asks for Harvey Pitt's resignation so we can get someone unfettered by previous work for this industry that he attempts to regulate. Mr. Pitt has had to recuse himself, I think about 25 times, because people before him have been his former clients. We need a full-time, not a part-time SEC director. We urge the President to take action rather than just give speeches and to get us a new sheriff in town at the SEC.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, why should the senior citizens of America have to settle with a big gamble about whether they are going to get prescription drugs? Why should they have to gamble that maybe, maybe an insurance company will show up when no insurance companies exist on the face of this planet today to provide this service? When one thinks about this, the Republican plan does not provide drugs. It provides a pair of dice to roll, and that is not good enough for senior citizens. Now, you do provide them a chance maybe some of them will get prescription drugs, but this generation has taken enough chances. It took chances on Omaha Beach, it took chances on Iwo Jima, and it should not have to have a crapshoot to see whether or not they are going to be able to get prescription drugs, and one would think after the abject failure of Medicare+Choice that you would not place your bets on a horse that has gone lame all over this country time and time again. Mr. Speaker, we ought to reject this pathetic excuse and pass a real meaningful Medicare plan.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman so much. I am glad the gentleman has brought us together to talk about these issues. I want to add two messages to talk about our incredible public lands that we have in this country that we ought to think about. The first is the area in our Forest Service lands, which is such a treasure. People all around the world come to see our forest areas, but they run a risk now because the Bush administration has threatened to essentially reduce the protections for our Forest Service lands and our pristine unroaded, uncut forests. I wanted to alert people to the potential of protecting these pristine forests and ask my colleagues to join us as cosponsors in the Roadless Area Conservation Act, which the gentleman from New York (Mr. Boehlert), a Republican, and myself are prime sponsors of. We now have 175 cosponsors. The reason this act is so important is that it would codify the existing area, roadless area rule, a rule that was adopted with the positive comments of over 1.2 million Americans who basically asked the Federal Government to protect the parts of the United States forest areas that have not been subject to having roads built on them yet. We think this is a very common-sense approach, because Americans value their pristine unroaded areas in our U.S. Forest Service lands. What this bill would do is essentially just put into law the rule that was previously adopted under the previous administration that would protect the areas in our Forest Service that have been designated as unroaded areas. The reason this is so important, and a lot of people think just from an environmental perspective, of protecting our unroaded areas from an environmental perspective, but it is important for a fiscal reason as well. That is because we already have 350,000 miles of roads that Uncle Sam has built in our Forest Service areas. Those roads, many of them, are now falling apart. They are literally washing out into streambeds and contaminating the gravels and ruining the fish habitat in our streams. In fact, we have an $8 billion backlog, an $8 billion backlog of maintenance needs on our existing 350,000 miles of roads in our Forest Service lands. So we think it makes a lot of sense to use maintenance money in the Forest Service to maintain what we have of these roads, because we have this epidemic of roads that are washing out. So we think we should protect what we have before we go punch new roads into unroaded areas. From an environmental perspective, Americans have spoken. When this rule was under consideration in the previous administration, we had the largest outpouring of citizen input of any rule under any agency in American history. In over 600 public meetings, 1.2 million Americans gave their input that said they want a strong roadless area rule. They want to protect the roads we already have and not build additional ones in our roaded areas. If my colleagues can show a bigger outpouring of public support for anything, I have not seen it in this country. The difficulty now is that the administration, even though the Attorney General of the United States during his confirmation was asked by the U.S. Senate whether he would preserve and protect and defend this rule and he said he would do so, unfortunately, he has not done so. And in litigation in an Idaho court, the best thing we could charitably say is that the U.S. Attorney took a dive and did not defend this rule and let the court run over the rule. The administration has now made threats to try to impinge on the rule, to cut it down in various ways and has refused to honor the rule. So we need to act in the U.S. House. We need to pass a law, we need to codify this, and we hope that more colleagues will join us. We hope the majority party allows a vote on this bill, because we think the majority of the House will support this bill. A very important issue. Second issue, if I can, and this is a big issue, one for, I suppose, several hours discussion, but I think it is important to talk about. When we think about our national parks and our national forest lands, they are under the threat of an invisible foe right now. There is an invisible threat to our national parks, and that is the threat of global warming. Our park system today runs the risk of very significant changes as a result of unchecked global warming. We can already see changes in our national parks today of this phenomena which is occurring. As we know, 8 of the last 10 years we have had the hottest years in the last thousand years, and as a result of this trend we are already seeing changes in our national forests and our national parks. In Glacier National Park, glaciers are melting dramatically. Scores of glaciers are on the cusp of disappearing. If this trend continues, which it will unless we change some of our national policies, someday it will be the park formerly known as Glacier. Maybe we will name it after presidents who did nothing about global warming. It is one way to get a national park named after you, I suppose, but that would not be the direction we want to go. In Denali National Park, I was there last summer while looking at the Arctic Refuge, I talked to forest rangers who has been working there for about 20 years and who had seen the tree line move north several miles just during their very brief tenure. What is happening is that the types of trees that we have, the vegetation, is essentially moving because the atmosphere and the environment is changing. The Alpine meadows that we now enjoy in the Rocky Mountains, and I know John Denver could sing Rocky Mountain High, but those Alpine meadows may not be there in 100 years because the environment is changing enough that the biosphere changes and then there is no more mountain left to go to once we reach certain elevations. So the fact is that we, because of our lack of an energy policy, are causing significant changes to our national parks. We can see it right in our homes, and today with the sweltering heat in D.C., it should be obvious, but over the long term, we are changing the substantive environment of our park system in a way that perhaps we do not fully understand. I would like to note, too, that the administration issued a report. We had a debate for some period of time about whether global warming was taking place and if it was, were humans causing it. Well, that debate is done. The Bush administration issued a report a week ago which was the cumulation of scientific knowledge from various Federal agencies, and they concluded several things. President Bush's White House issued a report saying global warming is occurring, and this is an accepted global fact. Number two, a significant portion of that is caused by human conduct. But despite the fact that the administration of the President of the United States concluded that global warming is occurring and humans are responsible for it, the President's response was just get used to it because I am not going to deal with the problem. As a Member who feels strongly about the national parks, that is not an acceptable position because what the President said was, I am not going to act as a result of this report. That is unacceptable to the American people. It should be unacceptable because our national logo, if you will, is the eagle, not the ostrich. This ostrich approach by the President of the United States is not going to solve this problem. We need leadership from the President of the United States, which he is capable of providing. He has provided the country leadership in the war against terrorism, and we need the President to provide leadership on the war against global warming. His response to date has been a volunteer program. He will ask major corporations in America to volunteer to reduce their emissions. Well, voluntary programs may work for PTA bake sales, but they are not going to work to change the course of global warming on this planet. We are urging the President to become engaged in dealing with this issue. It is vital that he do so, and it is vital for us in Congress to take steps as well, first by adopting a meaningful United States energy policy which is important not only for environmental concerns but for our security concerns so we do not have to remain addicted to whatever the political situation is in Saudi Arabia. We are hopeful the energy conferees will adopt a plan to move us toward a more sustainable energy policy to reduce our dependence on Saudi Arabia and whatever peculiar politics are happening there. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for this opportunity to talk about two very important issues, adoption of the roadless area bill so we can protect our pristine areas in the national forests, and this overarching problem of global warming which is going to significantly reduce the character of our national forests and our national parks if we do not act. I thank the gentleman for this opportunity to add my two cents' worth on these issues.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would continue to yield, the report that I made reference to from the White House specifically said that a likely result of global warming are these prolonged drought conditions in the western United States, and what we are seeing now is what we can expect to see in the future in spades. To comment on the fires, some Members who are not of an environmental lilt have tried to blame these fires on environmental laws and people who care about the environment who enforce environmental laws. That is really, to be charitable, poppycock about this issue. We had the chief of the forest service, Mr. Bosworth, before the Committee on Resources; and some Members on the other side of the aisle were arguing that the reason Colorado was on fire was because an environmental group had filed an appeal of a proposal to do logging in a relatively small area, and they were arguing that was the reason that these fires had been cataclysmic. I asked Mr. Bosworth is that the reason these fires have become so huge. And he said no, there is no way that that caused these fires. He said these projects, some of which we do need to do to reduce the fuel load that has built up over decades, some of these projects we need to do; but those projects are going to take 10 years. There was an appeal that delayed a project 5 months and the chief, Mr. Bosworth, a Bush appointee, said those delays were not, repeat, not the reason for the fires in Colorado. The other thing is this is such a tiny measure, something like only 300,000 acres. It is the drought conditions which are so dangerous.

Mr. INSLEE. Because of drought and dryness conditions, it is going to burn through anything even if you have done preventive thinning in these extremely dry forests. The sad fact is, yes, there is some work that we can do to remove fuel loads in some of these forests; but when they are this dry, they are going to burn. Yes, Democrats and Republicans for decades suppressed fires so much that we allowed fuel to build up. But if they are going to be this dry for the next 200 years, we are not going to have national forests if we do not do something about global warming. The White House has the study, and we just need for them to act.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, in a year of honoring heroes, on July 2, 2002, I will have the privilege to honor nine men in my district for their heroism and bravery. These men all fought in World War II and were never awarded the Bronze Stars, which they rightfully earned more than 50 years ago. These veterans, like countless other men and women of their generation, heard the call and bravely fought to defend the United States and our allies. They put the early years of their adult lives on hold to fight in the deserts of Africa, the islands of the Pacific and in the embattled towns and countrysides of Europe. Some of these soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice and never returned from the war. The fortunate ones who came home made sure to take their civic responsibility to heart. Having defended our freedoms on the battlefield, they realized the importance of preserving these same freedoms at home. Like veterans of all wars, those who fought in World War II continue to play a vital role in our communities by voting, participating in civic affairs and sharing their stories with younger generations so that their sacrifice will never be forgotten. I would like to take a moment to recognize the nine men who will finally receive their Bronze Stars on July 2, 2002: Charles Anders of Redmond who served in Europe, Harold Enger of Bothell who served in Europe and Africa, The late Charles Iffland who served in Europe and Africa, The late William Nielsen who served in Europe, James Owens of Redmond who served in Europe, Ernest Schaer of Kirkland who served in the Pacific, Trevor Wilkinson of Redmond who served in Europe, Robert Zappone of Kenmore who served in Europe, The late Elmer Peal, who gave his life for his country while serving in the Philippines. I am proud to have these men and their families in my district. They are true American Heroes.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, global warming is upon us. The glaciers are melting, the West is on fire due to prolonged drought, the tundras of Alaska are melting and the White House has now confirmed this. It has issued a report that says global warming is occurring and we are responsible for it. But what does the White House say they are going to do about it? Nothing. They say we have just got to get used to it. I was talking to a good young man, my son, who is a sophomore at Bainbridge High School, who says that the 15- and 16-year-old kids understand science enough to know that we have got to do something about global warming. We urge the President to get with the Bainbridge kids, the high school sophomores, who know we have got to do something about this problem. America deserves it and we ought to have it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, balancing work and family has become increasingly difficult for families across America. One of the greatest challenges that many families face is finding safe, affordable childcare. It is with these challenges in mind that I am delighted to announce that a week from today, on June 11, 2002, Edmonds Community College will officially begin construction on their new Center for Families. The Center for Families, scheduled to open in September 2003, will triple the college's on-site childcare center from about 5,000 to 15,000 square feet. The Center will also triple its childcare capacity for the children of students, including students who are retraining for new jobs after unemployment and those participating in welfare-to-work programs. Moreover, this new center will serve as a training facility for future professionals in early childhood education and as a model of best practices in parent education, childcare, preschool education (including Head Start), and family support. The Center for Families will have a Family Resource Center providing a ``one stop'' reference service for parents and professionals. Here, families can find the resources they need to stay in school and find the best care for their children, as well as parenting resources, professional help, and support groups. The Edmonds Community College Foundation successfully raised $4 million dollars for this exciting new center from a combination of federal, state, county, city, and private funds. The center will bring together children from all backgrounds--some have parents who are new immigrants, other parents are professionals seeking new job skills, while others are transitioning from welfare. As a community resource, it will create more graduates who are successful and, ultimately, a more educated community. Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to join me in congratulating Edmonds Community College on their wonderful Center for Families. The Center for Families will truly be, ``Expanding Childcare, Educating Families, Enhancing Community.''

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the House today to celebrate 2 great events of human achievement that are both adjoined that we recently experienced, and those achievements are surrounding a fellow named Eric Lindberg who is a constituent of mine from Indianola, Washington. Eric's grandfather was Charles Lindberg, and on May 1 this year, Eric took off from New York in his plane called the New Spirit of St. Louis, a Lancair Columbia 300, and flying alone, 19 hours later, landed, as his grandfather did, at Le Bourget Airport in Paris. A significant event of human achievement, as was his grandfather, Charles Lindberg's, when he took off in his Ryan N-X-211 and landed in Le Bourget after 33 hours. This is something our Nation appropriately honors Eric for, his achievement in honoring his grandfather, in making a solo crossing of the North Atlantic in a single engine plane, and for that we honor Eric. We honor his spirit. We honor his achievement, but that is really only part of his story of human achievement, and it is only part of the reason that he flew across the North Atlantic. Because at age 21, and Eric is now 37, Eric started to develop rheumatoid arthritis that pretty well stove him in. It got so bad that a few years ago he really could not work or fly consistently. He had two artificial knee replacements, and he was having real significant problems, but he had some neighbors in the Puget Sound area working for a company called Immunex and those neighbors at the Immunex Corporation, who are now working with the Amgen Group, were working on a product they wanted to develop to help people with rheumatoid arthritis. After about $350 million of investment and thousands and thousands of man-hours of a lot of my constituents, some who live on Bainbridge Island where I live, they developed a product called Enbrel. It is a self-injected product. It is what is called a TNF inhibitor. It is a man-made protein, and it works with the immune system to reduce the onset of the symptoms associated with rheumatoid arthritis. About 2 years ago, Eric started to take Embro, and within 2 weeks he noticed a very significant change in his ability to walk around, get up and do the daily functions of life, and it allowed him, and he will tell my colleagues this because I talked to him today, it allowed him to train and work towards his goal of duplicating Charles Lindbergh's, his grandfather, flight across the Atlantic, which he successfully achieved on May 1. It really is a story of 2 great spirits of human achievement, one his individual, one flying across the Atlantic in a single engine plane, and two, a group, one of people harnessing the creative genius of this country to develop a product like Enbrel to help Eric train for this particular endeavor. So I would like to honor his achievement that he did; one, to recreate and celebrate the 75th anniversary of his grandfather's great achievement; two, to honor the future of medicine and to give a message of inspiration to the others tonight and today who may be having medical problems, who may be just an invention away of really getting a life change as Eric experienced. I know that he wants America to be inspired by the achievements of Immunex and his personal achievement so that we can go forward to harness this creative genius, not only in aeronautics but in biotechnology. As we go forward in a way to try to make drugs available to people at an affordable price, we hope that we can find a way also to inspire people to continue this creative effort that my other constituents who live in the Puget Sound area of Seattle, Bothell, where some of the labs are located, they can be honored as well. I may also note, too, Eric is associated with a group called the X Project which is a challenge project that has a $10 million reward for creative geniuses who can put 3 people in space with a privately funded vehicle and do it 2 weeks in a row, and we really appreciate his efforts to create an incentive to have a prize. As he told me, we have had great aeronautic advances either when we have a war or a prize and he is working to have this prize to give people some incentive to get privately into space. So, again, I want to really commend Eric for his tremendous personal achievement, my friends in Immunex for helping him to make that achievement, and I hope this inspiration will help others go forward.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, of course Israel has a right to a military response to this immoral terrorism. Of course we stand with Israel. But this resolution has a major omission: it is too weak for America. It does not cut the mustard for America because it does not allow America to fulfill its manifest destiny of the only hope in the world of a force for peace to be an honest broker to help find justice and peace in this region of the world. It rightfully expresses our permanent, unalterable commitment to the security of a Jewish state in Israel, and it wrongfully excludes any reference, any reference of a recognition or even our interest in recognizing the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people for a viable state of their own. This is the national policy of the United States of America, but it was omitted from this resolution for partisan, political purposes. We rightfully condemn suicide bombing, but we cannot blind ourselves to the reality that when the world's only superpower totally ignores one people, it cannot serve effectively to bring peace to the other. We owe the Israeli people more than blind obedience to any of their government's policies. We cannot be a blinded giant. We owe them honesty, and it is honest to say that a national policy of refusing to accept and recognize the legitimate right of Palestinians to a viable state is not a step on the road to peace. Ultimately there will be justice for both, or there will be peace for neither. We know that violence breeds when hope dies and both parties are blinded by hate. Only we can bring hope to this region. Mr. Speaker, in doing so, we ought to give Israel the same love and assistance we would give our own brother. So as we would speak up when our brother makes a judgment as to his own harm, so we ought to speak out and say that the settlement policy on the West Bank is hurting Israel. In our acquiescence, our silence in this resolution hurts Israel and does not serve her true vision of high moral values for which we have always admired her. Mr. Speaker, to make it abundantly clear what this debate is about, and I see the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) has stepped out, I would ask the majority party: Would the majority leadership accept a unanimous consent request to add to this resolution a simple sentence that would recognize the hope of the American people that both these parties can find viable states of their own, living in peace, one next to the other?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, that is most regrettable because that is the aspiration of the American people and the world, and we ought to fulfill it.

Mr. INSLEE. I yield to the gentleman from New York.