Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I speak in favor of the substitute and against the bill. This Enron collapse really did rock underlying confidence in the American people, and I think all of us know that the American people want and expect a real guard dog around their life's savings, a bulldog, someone with teeth, vigilance. This bill, charitably, has all the attributes of a Chihuahua. It fails. It fails to do even what the President of the United States has suggested to require CEO accountability. It fails in dealing with board independence, to make sure that the board answers to stockholders and not management by preventing payments to the directors by management. It fails to address the separation of accounting services that even accounting companies have adopted on their own initiative. It fails and it is disappointing. It is going to disappoint the American people, but it will not surprise the American people that the Republican Party, who gave us an energy policy based on Enron, is giving us an accounting policy based on Arthur Andersen.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I commend the Shoreline/South County YMCA on their outstanding contribution to youth and families in the greater Shoreline/South Snohomish County area of the State of Washington. Now in their 49th year of service in the community, the YMCA builds upon a long-standing tradition of putting kids and families first by providing a location where families can spend time together and young children and teens can find a safe environment full of stimulating and educational activities. For an increasing number of children, the YMCA fills the void in their lives and gives them direction and support in our ever-changing world. Through a variety of innovative and supportive programs, the Shoreline/South County YMCA serves more than 3,450 individuals each year. The YMCA reaches out to families of young children through such programs as Y-Guides & Y-Princesses and an endless array of youth sports activities. Additionally, the YMCA child care sites at public schools and summer day camps give working parents the security of quality, affordable day care, with nearly a third of participants receiving financial assistance from the YMCA. In an effort to reach out to teens in the community--many of whom are considered at-risk--the YMCA partners with area schools and city governments to provide tutors at middle schools, after school programs through Klub Kellogg, and leadership building skills for teens through their YMCA Youth & Government program. The YMCA does not do this alone. The greater Shoreline/South County community generously supports the YMCA to sustain these invaluable services. This year alone, Shoreline/South County residents, community leaders and area businesses donated a record-breaking $100,000 to the annual Partners for Youth Campaign. Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in honoring the Board of Directors, staff, and volunteers of the Shoreline/South County YMCA for their unwavering commitment to youth and families and their tireless work to improve their community, one child, one family at a time.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, the Arthur Andersen accountants are really confused today. For the last several weeks, they have been listening to the Republican Party trooping in front of the television cameras and calling them irresponsible, reckless and fiscally negligent. The Republican leadership then comes to the floor today and proposes a bill that will blow a trillion dollar hole in Social Security below the water line, ensure deficits for decades; and they call the Arthur Andersen accountants irresponsible? Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership is on a course to do to Social Security and Medicare and fiscal responsibility what Ken Lay and Arthur Andersen did with Enron. We ought to reject it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, today the majority party will ram through a bill making their tax cuts permanent; but it is not just tax cuts they will make permanent. They will make a $4 trillion raid on the American Social Security trust fund permanent. They will make their $1 billion raid on the Medicare trust fund permanent. They will take their temporary wound to Social Security and make it into a permanent scar. Just when 40 million Americans will be entering Social Security, they will be permanently raiding it for $4 trillion. They will be doing so as part of an ultimate dream to privatize Social Security and realize what one Republican called the hope that Medicare some day would just ``wither on the vine.'' Mr. Speaker, today's bill ought to be called the ``Permanent Raid on Social Security,'' the ``Permanent Injury to Medicare Act of 2002''; and we should reject it.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for bringing this motion which I support. I would just suggest that there are two things that are pretty much universal in our country that ought to support this motion. One thing that is universal is the presence of hunger in all parts of the country. The reason that I have come to the floor to share the story that I represent, in a sense, a very upscale area. There are a lot of software millionaires in my district. I represent Microsoft Corporation. But even at the height of the economic boom in the year 2000, the food banks in my area of Washington were experiencing an increase of people coming into the food bank from anywhere from 12 to 50 percent depending on what time of the year. I think that story is an untold story across America. Even in the midst of great prosperity, we have had individuals, because we have a wage structure in this country that does not sufficiently honor work for a lot of folks, that they are still hungry. The second thing that I think is universal in this country, or ought to be, is respect for everyone that works at every wage level. I represent a lot of people who work in software countries, many of whom are legal immigrants, who are fairly well compensated, and their work is absolutely fundamental to the American economy. But I hope Members will agree with me that people who are working in our nursing homes caring for our parents, the people who are cooking our food in our restaurants, the people who are working in the hospitals helping clean the ER rooms after surgery of our relatives, those people deserve the same level of dignity and the same level of respect and legal protection as other folks who are here legally in this country working over 5 years. Mr. Speaker, I would submit those two universalities of this country, which are pockets of hunger, and respect for all levels of dignity of work, ought to merit that we pass this motion and do it proudly, and turn our back to the sad statement that some people have been making lately in this Chamber that legal residents somehow are unAmerican.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) for such an eloquent statement. The gentlewoman has expressed better than I can the outrage that Americans are feeling that this administration is ignoring asthmatic children to favor the polluting industries. I heard over and over again in my district, people would come up and say, we understand there is a war on, but we cannot allow that to be camouflage for having a war against the environment. That is essentially what we are having right now. The administration is removing clean air rules that protect asthmatic children, trying to remove rules against arsenic in the water. Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind) who has been a voice on a variety of environmental issues.

Mr. INSLEE. I thank the gentleman from New Jersey. I am sure at least some of the people who have heard you realize that you are, I think, the only physicist in the House. Is there another physicist in the House or are you the only physicist in the House?

Mr. INSLEE. We are going to try to change that orientation where right now 85 percent of all the resources here in the House-passed bill goes to the old industry and only 15 percent to the new. We are going to try to change that. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Holt), who has been doing a great job.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I really appreciate the gentleman from Wisconsin's comments, because I think it gave the lie to this sort of myth that if it is good for the environment, it must be bad for the economy. I think that wrongheaded thinking has led, frankly, to a lot of the administration proposals that have gone backwards on the environment, because the fact is that somebody is going to make a ton of money on these new technologies, in hydrogen and wind power and solar, in new hybrid cars. Somebody is going to get filthy rich on this, and it should be us.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I have come to the floor today, now that we are approaching Earth Day on April 22 this year, since this is a good time to review the policies of the United States in regard to the environment. I think it is a time where it is appropriate, particularly, to review the performance of the President's administration when it comes to that vital task of protecting our clean water, our clean air, and our tremendous and beautiful natural lands across the country. I think that is appropriate because the presidency of the United States has been an office that has been used to great beneficial effect over the years for the environment, to the benefit of the environment, as a positive force for the environment. Take a look at what Teddy Roosevelt did earlier in the century that in fact helped so much to establish this precedent of protecting our natural lands. So today we think it is appropriate for the next while to review this administration's performance on the environment, and to ask in fact whether this administration has done the job it should do to protect our clean water and our clean air and our natural lands, which is its obligation. Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, when we have reviewed this administration's policy, we have seen nothing but abject failure. We have seen time and time again this administration taking actions not only just not to go forward on the environment but to actually go backward: to reduce our protection for clean air and clean water, to reduce our protection of natural land, to reduce the ability of the Federal Government to assure American kids will have clean air to breathe so they are not subject to asthma. We now have had a chance to review over a year of the administration's performance in that regard. What we have found is an unbroken litany of actions against the environment. That is very sad to say. We were very hopeful at the beginning of this administration that it would follow the creed and spirit of Teddy Roosevelt, rather than Ken Lay and the oil and gas industry. Unfortunately, this administration has followed an environmental policy that has been consistent with the attitude of Mr. Lay and the oil and gas industry, and inconsistent with those who started the first Earth Day some years ago. And I just want to review with you, Mr. Speaker, some of the nine items that we have kept tabs on in the administration, and I just want to read nine items in that regard and then I will address each in more depth. Arsenic in the water. The administration acted against the environment. Mining reform. The administration acted against the environment. The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The administration acted against the environment. Protecting clean air so kids do not have increased asthma. The President acted against the environment. Climate change, global warming. The President acted against the environment. CAFE standards, our average mileage standards for our vehicles. The President acted against the environment. The Superfund clean-up fund. It is designed to remove toxins from our most dangerous landfills in America. The President acted against the environment. National monuments, monuments that protect some of our most precious natural lands around the country. The President even today is acting against the environment. Someone strikes out with three strikes. These are nine strikes against the environment. And it is very, very sad when this country has had such a deeply ingrained and obvious commitment to protect our children's clean air, our children's clean water, our national parks, our national monuments. This is something that is very deep within the American character. It started with Teddy Roosevelt and, unfortunately, that has been dropped today. I would like, if I can, to talk a little bit about each one of those strikes that are now striking against the American environment. And I do so in the hopes that this administration and that the leadership of this House will change its behavior and change its habits. I am hopeful that it will change. I believe it can change, but it cannot change unless the American people know what is going on here in Washington, D.C. and unless we talk about it here on the floor of the House. So let me start with arsenic. Arsenic, everyone in America knows the problems related to arsenic. The National Academy of Sciences has done over the years very, very extensive work about the dangers associated with arsenic. And as a result of that, a rule was adopted, proposed to go into effect, to assure there was a maximum level of arsenic in our water. That is pretty common sense. It is really not that much rocket science, I suppose, to pick some level. Unfortunately, when that rule was established in the very early days of the administration, the President's administration essentially threw the rule out, said I am not going to abide by these recommendations of a present rule to limit the amount of arsenic in our water. And what happened? Well, fortunately there was a firestorm in America when people heard about this. And we got busy here in Congress trying to roll back this repeal of the arsenic standards. The National Academy of Sciences came out with a report that showed the health dangers associated with these arsenic rules. We thought it was a mistake for the administration to be in league with the polluters on the arsenic question, we thought they should be in league with those of us who want to drink water, which is a very high percentage of the American public. And we eventually, because of public pressure, forced the administration to recant, and the good news is that the rule is going to be restored. So I will tell you the good news is that even though the administration wanted to increase the ability of putting arsenic in the water, they did ultimately change their position after listening to the country. And that is one of the reasons I am here today to talk about this litany of problems in the hopes that the administration will change its direction to the American public. The second issue is mining reform. We have found that a very, very large percentage of the toxins, including arsenic and cyanide, that are in our waters come from mining areas, particularly those that are abandoned, that are not restored. And, as a result, the Federal Government issued rules to assure us additional tools to make sure that the mining industry does not allow these mines to be left abandoned so that cyanide and arsenic and other toxins, selenium, and a whole bunch of heavy metals, do not leach into our drinking water. These rules were established. They were about to go into effect. America was within inches of allowing this mining reform to go into effect. And what happened? This administration went back and essentially gutted the rules. They took away the tools that could be used to assure that mines do not leave these cesspools of heavy metals to leach into our water. They took away a tool that would require there be certain clean water protections by mines when they abandon their mine. They took away a tool for the Federal Government to assure that if there are particularly sensitive environmental lands involved, that a mining permit will not be allowed to happen. They took tools that were designed for the American people to keep their water clean for mines and they threw the tools away, and they abandoned that protection and they did it unilaterally. They did it without a vote of the House or a vote of the Senate or anybody else. They just did it, and it was wrong. It was wrong because the science is compelling that mines continue to be a clear and present danger to the health of this country. We had the ability to do something about it, and in its second strike the administration took away the tools to deal with mining reform. Third strike, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. We have, and I can state from personal experience because I have been there, one of the most magnificent places in America is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It was set up by a Republican President. Teddy Roosevelt was the only Republican who has done good things for the environment. Dwight David Eisenhower had the wisdom to set up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The reason he did it was because he realized that we Americans have something unique in there, the largest intact ecosystem in the North American Continent that protects and provides for the porcupine caribou herd. It has untrammeled pristine areas in the Arctic. If you think you are not related to the Arctic, if you look outside your home and you see a bird, it just may be one that actually breeds in the Arctic. I live on a little island called Bainbridge Island, Washington. If I go down there today, I will see birds out there on the water on Bainbridge Island. They are there because we have the Arctic National Wildlife that provides the breeding place for them. And that is why a Republican President had the wisdom to establish an Arctic Wildlife Refuge. Now we have an administration that wants to stick an oil dagger right in the heart of the breeding area for these creatures, and it is wrong. And it is wrong for several reasons to kowtow to the oil and gas industry in this regard. It is wrong, number one, because it is not a solution to our problems to drill in the Arctic. America knows by now that if you got all the oil you ever could out of the Arctic, it only provides you about 6 months' worth of America's fuel. It is not enough to solve our problem, because the fact of the matter is unless and until we develop additional nonfossil fuel-based resources, we are still going to have to be kowtowing to the royal house in Saudi Arabia. And the fact that the President wants to go drill in the Arctic instead of trying to develop alternative renewable resources that our technology now has available to us, will continue our addiction to Mideast oil, because it is an international market and the market is decided and determined largely by what the Mideast does. So continuing this addiction to oil is not going to solve our energy problems and certainly not with the Arctic. Perhaps that is one of the reasons you do not actually hear any of the major oil companies very excited about it. Perhaps that is one of the reasons. But a second reason is when you look at the science. I have to say, Mr. Speaker, that is one of the most disturbing things I have seen. We have professional scientists that have been reviewing this issue for years. And they issued a report recently on the Arctic. What they concluded was that drilling in the Arctic had a substantial risk of damaging these porcupine caribou herds amongst other wildlife in the Arctic. And they wrote a report to that effect. And these are nonpartisan, these are civilian scientists. They are not Republicans. They are not Democrats. They are not yin, they are not yang. They are scientists. And they have written a report for us. It said there was a danger to the wildlife in the Arctic. They issued that report. And what did the Secretary of Interior do? He said, no, that is not the answer I wanted. Go back and rewrite it. That is not the way we should do science in this country. The American people deserve to know the real science and not the partisan science. Sure, that report got rewritten because the administration told them to rewrite it. Imagine if the politicians had told NASA how to run the Moon shot, where would we have ended up? Somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. In fact, the administration has had a blackout on this science and they are making a bad decision as a result. That is why we are very hopeful that the Senate will reject this proposal that is not going to solve our energy crisis, is going to damage a precious resource that Dwight David Eisenhower started. Strike number three, as an anti-environmental action by the administration. Number four, we have a remarkable resource right now and it is in States all over the country, and that is our roadless areas in our national forests. We have about 50 percent of our national forests have already been carved up by roads that have been built by us, by taxpayers, so people could clear-cut timber on the national forests. So about 50 percent of it is gone from the standpoint of it being an intact system of forests untrammeled by clear-cutting. We only have about 50 percent left. About 18 percent of that has been protected in wilderness areas, leaving about less than one-third that is available for protection; but we have not protected it, except for this. Here is the good news. We had a rule that was adopted that protected that remaining one-third of our roadless areas so that our children could be assured that our national forests would be protected from clear-cutting so that when our grandkids go out to these national forests they do not see a row of stumps, they see trees; and that is a pretty significant asset. This roadless area rule was adopted a couple years ago to protect that remaining one-third of our uncut national forestland. But what happened? You guessed it. The new administration came in after the Attorney General of the United States, John Ashcroft, pledged, pledged to the U.S. Senate, he would protect this roadless area bill. You know what he did? He took a dive. He refused to effectively defend it in Federal court. He allowed it to lapse. He let down the American people. And that roadless area rule is now in jeopardy. We are very concerned that the administration is going to whittle that rule down to essentially gut it like it has on so many areas of environmental policy. So instead of having a rule that will protect the last one-third of unprotected non-clear-cut areas in our national forests, the President's administration has jeopardized this remaining heritage of our children. And I will state, I have talked to a lot of people in my State of Washington and they are very angry about this. They are very angry because they were involved in making this roadless area bill. This rule was adopted after the largest public input process in American history. More Americans, something like 1.1 million Americans took time to write the Federal Government to tell them what they thought of this roadless area policy. Over 600 meetings were held. And the American voice was very strong. The American voice was this: Protect our remaining roadless areas. And we had a rule that did that until this administration chucked it overboard. So that is strike number four. Number five, clean air. You know, I think you may know people who have children who have real bad asthma problems. And it is becoming, if not an epidemic, at least an increasing concern in this country. We have new science which has shown that very small particulate matter, soot, very small particles of a potentially deadly nature that we did not understand 10 years ago, the National Academy of Sciences just came out with a report in the last month or so that showed tens of thousands of Americans die as a result of this small particulate matter, soot, in the air. As a result of that, the Federal Government adopted a rule some time ago that would require polluters to improve their anti-air pollution control systems. This was an expensive rule. It was adopted after lots of input, lots of consideration. It was adopted some time ago. It was adopted because even the old science let us know that this was a real problem. The new science makes it even more important that we adopt this, what is called the new source review. It is a fancy term basically requiring large polluting industries to have additional available technology to reduce these fine particulates. What happened? Well, in a refrain, the administration tossed the rule overboard and the administration again gutted the rule, and it is extremely disturbing to me, having seen kids with terrible asthma problems, to think we have existing technology that can help solve these problems with our air pollution, we have an existing rule that would do it; and the President, his administration, in order to get in line with the big polluters, are reducing the protection for clean air for kids in this country. That is a pretty bold indictment of the action by the White House, but I make it because it is true. They are wrong, and Americans have got to know what is going on back here in Washington, D.C., that these fundamental commonsense measures we have adopted to protect our air and water are being gutted every single week. It seems like every Monday when I open the newspapers there is a new attack on our clean air and clean water bills, the statute and rules; and we have got to know about it to stop it, but we are going to do everything we can to roll back the administration's decision in this regard because Americans deserve it. That is strike number five. Strike number six, and this may be the granddaddy of them all when it comes to our children, our grandchildren, our great grandchildren, and that is the problem of global climate change. The science is now clear. It is unambiguous. It is certain. It is no longer debated in credible scientific circles, and that is this simple fact is happening in the world today. We are accumulating certain gases in our atmosphere called global climate change gases. Those are principally carbon dioxide and methane. Carbon dioxide comes anytime we burn anything, coal, oil, gas, anything else. What carbon dioxide does is it goes up in the atmosphere, and it lingers, sometimes for over a century, stays in the atmosphere for a long time; and carbon dioxide is not a bad gas as gases go in a lot of ways, but it has one feature that is a problem. That when carbon dioxide is in the atmosphere, light can come in as ultraviolet light, which it does from the sun, but when it gets bounced out as an infrared beam of energy, it cannot get out, and that is called the greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide works the same way a pane of glass does in a greenhouse. Light comes in, it gets reflected back, but it is trapped by the windowpane and carbon dioxide does the same thing. Every credible scientist essentially who has been involved in this understands that phenomena, and now we have convened an international panel of scientists who have concluded that this phenomenon is changing the world's climate in unpredictable ways. Generally speaking, it is warming the Earth. It is going to continue to warm the Earth as long as that concentration of carbon dioxide and other climate-change gases increases. Why am I concerned about that? I am concerned about that because I kind of like the way the world is. I like having glaciers in national park, glaciers that are now disappearing. In 50 years to 100 years there may not be glaciers in Glacier National Park. We will call it sort of like the artist Prince, the National Park Formerly Known as Glacier. I like having an ice sheet in the Antarctica that just broke up in this massive breakup of the Antarctic ice sheet recently. It totally stunned the scientific community to see such a rapid, radical change in such a huge area that is as big as Delaware or Rhode Island or some State, I cannot remember which one. I like the fact that Denali National Park has a certain system, has a tree line where it used to be, and now it is going north because the temperature is increasing. I like polar bears, and polar bears when the ice sheet continues to decrease in the arctic will not be able to stay hunting close to shore and may be extinct in 150 years. A lot of things we cannot predict about the environment; but the one thing we know for sure is we are changing it, and I mean all of us. As a result, the President, when he ran for President, in a very hopeful statement, when I heard him say this I was very, very hopeful, he said he was going to do something about this problem. He said he was going to help us use these new technologies and energy, solar, wind, geothermal, cars that get better mileage, conservation technologies, so that we save energy in our houses. He said he was going to do something about this to try to reduce these climate-change gases. Well, what did he do? First thing he did is he told the world he was not going to talk to them about a climate-change treaty that the rest of the world had agreed to in Kyoto; and there may have been some imperfections in that treaty, but he basically told the world he did not want to talk to the rest of the world about this, America was just going to go on its own. I think that was a mistake. I think we need to talk to some of our neighbors across the world on how to deal with this problem. Okay, if he did not like that treaty, what else was he going to do? Well, unfortunately, he essentially has ended an American attempt to deal with climate change, and I think this may be the most significant failure on an environmental perspective in the last 2 years because what he did is when he offered his climate-change proposal, do my colleagues know what it was? He called it a volunteer proposal, and I do not mean any disrespect by this because I think the President's done a good job dealing with the Taliban in Afghanistan. I think he has done a good job rising to the occasion of dealing with this tremendous security threat to our country, and we should be happy that he has risen to that occasion; but we have another huge threat of a longer termination of global climate change, and his proposal was essentially to go to the polluting industries and say, pretty please, will you stop doing it. They are going to stop doing it just as fast as the Taliban would have left if we had gone to them and said, pretty please, let go of Afghanistan. It is not going to work. We need leadership from the White House. We need leadership from this President. We need leadership of a President who has rallied the Nation in our actions in Afghanistan. We need him to act when it comes to do with climate change. Failing that leadership, we are heading for bad times when it comes to the climate on a global perspective. Strike number six. Number seven, I will tell my colleagues something that may shock them and I was not aware of until about a month ago, but the cars we drive get worse gas mileage on total than they did in 1980. Think about that. We have technological geniuses in this country that have developed the entire software industry since 1980, a good part of the biotechnology industry since 1980. We have come up with all these tremendous new technologies, but the cars we drive that have been given to us get worse gas mileage than they did in 1980. To me, this is a stunning failure to use our technological genius of this country; and now we have cars that fit my frame and I am kind of a bulky guy, I am six-two and about 205. We have got cars now that are wonderful, five, six passengers in. They get almost 45, 50 miles a gallon; and yet what did the White House do when we suggested a modest improvement in our mileage standards of our fleets overall? We were not trying to get rid of SUVs or anything else. Americans like their SUVs. We simply proposed as an average that we increase the average of the cars on our streets a few miles a gallon, nothing radical, something within our technological ability, something we have the technology to do today. The administration again refused to do even modest increases in our mileage standards, and those are called CAFE standards. It is an acronym for increasing our mileage standards, and we can do this today and drive the same size vehicles that we drive. We do not have to give up the luxuries that Americans enjoy. We simply have to insist that our manufacturers as a whole use the technologies that are now available to increase mileage, to decrease climate-change gases that are going out the tailpipe. In these vehicles we have got fuel cell technology coming on. The only thing that comes out of the tailpipe is water. We have got existing hybrids that get 45, 50 miles a gallon that we ought to be using today. We ought to be insisting that we do not give up the markets to Japan, which we are doing again like we did in the 1970s. In the 1970s we gave up our markets to the Japanese. We are doing it again today. We are letting them come in with hybrid vehicles, and we are not producing them. Now I hope and I am told that our local domestic producers are going to start to do that in the next couple of years. I am very happy about that, but we need the administration to help us increase our mileage standards, and they have refused to do it. It is strike seven on the environmental list of what we have been working on environmentally in the last 2 years. Number eight, the Superfund. The Superfund. The Superfund is a fund that was started on as a basic idea and that idea was that polluters would pay for the toxics they put in the ground in these Superfund sites. There is a Superfund site, just to tell my colleagues one I am familiar with in the State of Washington, it is on Bainbridge Island. It is across from where I live. It is a place where there was a creosoting plant that put creosote in lumber; but the creosote, thousands of gallons went down and were stuck on top of the water table and land, and the idea of the Superfund site was to clean that up. We should not have to pay for it. The American public should not have to pay for the discharge of creosote over years and years that contaminated these sites. Who should have to pay for it? The polluters, and it was a pretty commonsense idea. The Superfund bill was created so that the polluters would pay for the right, the privilege, the enjoyment of putting toxics into the ground; and that system worked for years, and it was funded through a charge on polluters. Essentially those who manufactured, presented the risk of this discharge would have to pay so that the American people did not have to with their taxes. That bill has come up for renewal, and in strike number eight, the administration dropped the ball and refused to help us reinstitute this Superfund provision so that the polluters would pay instead of the American people, and that is wrong. Americans should not have to pay for this pollution. The polluters should, and we have yet another example of the administration working with the polluting industries to avoid responsibility to try to keep our water clean and toxins out of our water. We would like the administration to change its feelings in that regard, to help us. We hope that happens. On the ninth strike, in our national monuments, and this will be my closing discussion, and that is that our national monuments, again, this idea was started by Teddy Roosevelt. It is the idea that Presidents can establish for the American people in perpetuity our beautiful landscapes; and Presidents have done this, almost every President, except a couple in the last two decades. This has been very important to protect areas from certain natural resource industries that can threaten these areas. Again, today, the Departments of the Federal Government are thinking about opening these up for mining for oil, drilling for who knows what, without congressional approval. This Chamber voted against that. This Chamber passed a measure that would slow that down, if not prevent it. We would like the administration to follow that vote. We think that is the right thing to do. We are calling upon them to do so. So we have gone through a sorry litany of environmental degradation of our laws. It is not a happy thing to talk about this. I would rather be here, not only complimenting the President for what he has done in Afghanistan, but complimenting him for environmental progress; but we cannot do that because in nine separate ways we have just talked about, in fact America's gone backwards. Our protection of clean air has gone backward; our protection of clean water has gone backward and it is important that people know this. It is important, Mr. Speaker, that we talk about this on the floor of this House because when we go backwards in so many ways, we are going to end up back where we were in the 1950s and 1960s. We made real progress in this country cleaning up our air and water. We have done good things. Mr. Speaker, I remember when the river in Ohio caught fire. That was before America started to do things positively for the environment. Things can go backwards as well as forwards. Now with our new science about how children can be affected, morbidity and mortality rates can be affected by cleaner water, this is not the time to go backwards. We hope the administration will, in fact, start to review their administration policies. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis).

Mr. INSLEE. As our only physicist, we really appreciate you coming down here today to talk about this. I agree with you. The most important insult is the climate-change issue, the one that I think has got to be most demanding; and what I really liked what you said was, we are not the pessimists in this debate. We are the optimists. We are the guys with the can-do spirit. We believe America can deal with this problem effectively, but sticking our head in the sand and taking the posture of an ostrich is not effective. Unfortunately that is what the administration has done. What I liked from what you said is that essentially we are capable from a scientific and economic standpoint of dealing with climate change; but we lack one thing, and that is leadership. We lack somebody at the White House telling America that we can get this job done. I think that is what Teddy Roosevelt would have done. He would have said, What do you mean we can't build new technologies? You mean the Japanese are smarter than we are? You mean the Danes are smarter than we are? You mean the people in Iceland are somehow more technologically advanced than Americans? That is nuts. Yet right now the White House has taken this position of surrender to these other countries that are leading us in these new technologies. I appreciate your words of optimism because I believe they are the right ones. I want to thank the gentleman from New Jersey for his comments. Mr. Speaker, to summarize here and comment, we have been talking about a disappointing aspect of our American public policy. The disappointment is that on a whole host of issues, the leader of the free world, the administration that has the capability of rallying this Nation to tremendous positive change from an environmental perspective, the administration that has within itself the ability to adopt rules to try to reduce kids from having asthma, is going the wrong way. The administration that has the ability to reduce the amount of arsenic and selenium and cyanide in our drinking water is going the wrong way. The administration that has the ability to assure that the last one-third of our national forests that have not been clear-cut so our grandkids will be able to see those forests some day is going the wrong way. The administration that has the ability to lead the world to deal with this problem of climate change so that we can keep this general system as we have it, the way we grew up, so that it rains when it should and it gets cold when it should, is going the wrong way. The administration that has the ability to make sure that mines do not leak toxic substances is going in the wrong way. The administration that has the ability to make sure that our Superfund site rules, so that you do not have to pay for the toxics in the soil that get the cleanup, the polluters have got to pay for it, is going the wrong way. The administration that has the ability to get our cars to be some modest level, better efficiency to save us money and save the environment is going the wrong way. It is a sad story to have to say this today, because we are a great, optimistic, and creative people and we have the ability, the heart and the desire to leave this planet as good as it was when we were born. I stand here today to say that this House should join the U.S. Senate and the administration to go forward on the environment rather than backwards, and this administration is going to turn on a dime and go 180 degrees different from where it is going right now, which is backwards on the environment. I urge anybody that feels the way I do to take every step you can to see to it that we go that way.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I do not know the residence. I cannot tell the gentleman offhand. But I can say this is subject to your bill if it is a class action, and therefore it is wrong.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, the point I bring to the gentleman's attention is this is exactly the kind of case that is subject to removal if there is diversity. They plead fraud, they pled negligence; and under your statute, you want to give them the right to get out of Texas into Federal court. We think that is wrong.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, it takes real chutzpah to bring this bill at this time. It takes real chutzpah, after we have thousands of Enron employees having lost their life savings, to bring a bill to diminish the rights of Americans to be compensated for their losses. It takes chutzpah to bring a bill to the floor of the House at this time to the benefit of the Ken Lays and the Mr. Skillings of the world. Now, think about the timing of this. Think about the timing of this. The very first bill that comes to the floor of the House after Enron takes the life savings away from Americans is to make it easier for people to do that and harder for people to get compensation when it happens to them. Now, before we go home for spring break, when we go home and talk to our constituents and they ask us, Joe, Mr. Congressman, What did you do about the Enron situation, I do not think the first thing we should say is, We made it hard for Americans to get compensation for their losses. In fact, that is what this is about, because when we strip away the verbiage and the philosophical language that we have all sincerely engaged in here today, this is about one thing. Some people who have been burned because they got caught with their hands in the cookie jar in class action litigation want to make it harder for Americans to bring class action litigation. That is what this is about because they know a simple thing. The Federal courts do not have room for any more class action litigation. They will go to the end of the line. This simply will result in making it more difficult for people to have their cases get a day in court. If my colleagues do not believe me, listen to Chief Justice Rehnquist who said, and this is in 1998: ``I also criticize Congress and the President for their propensity to enact more and more legislation which brings more and more cases into the Federal court system. This criticism received virtually no public attention. If Congress enacts and the President signs new laws allowing more cases to be brought into the Federal courts, just filling the vacancies will not be enough. We will need additional judgeships.'' The fact of the matter is, as the proponents of the bill and those who advocate this bill know very well, there is a pipeline that is this big in our Federal court system. Now we want to take cases out of State courts and try to jam it through a pipeline with that pipeline getting no bigger, they will not go. They will not go. That is why this bill has sought the support of those like Jack-in-the-Box Corporation who served E. coli with their hamburgers, the result of which was a young girl and many hundreds in the State of Washington ending up with kidney damage. They used the State courts class action for compensation. Now, I do not think I should go home and tell them that we are reducing our ability to have a fair day in court in our State courts. For that reason, we should reject this.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, we hope that the first legislation passed in this House in the post-Enron world should not be to make the world safer for Enron. My friend, the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), challenged me earlier when I said that this could make the world safer for Enron. Well, we just did a little bit of research about that over the lunch hour and found a case called Bullock v. Arthur Andersen, et al. It is a case in Washington County, Texas. If it were to be certified as a class action under this legislation, the defendants, who include some names Andrew Fastow, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, would be given the privilege by your legislation to force this to be removed to Federal court away from Washington County. Now, that is exactly one of the reasons why we think this is the wrong approach. And even if you exempted Enron in its entirety, Enron is an example of why we are going the wrong way because of all the other companies that potentially could be liable.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I rise to inform my colleagues that when they get on their airplanes this evening or tomorrow morning, it is highly, highly unlikely that the checked baggage that will go into the belly of their airplanes will be checked for explosives. Despite the passage of 4 months after this House and the other Chamber and the President signed into law a requirement that 100 percent of all the checked baggage be screened for bombs, not one single bomb-detection piece of equipment in response to that legislation has been installed in an American airport. The reason for that is that finally, 6 months after September 11, the Federal Government finally this week got around to placing an order for the first 100, about 5 percent of what we need, of these machines to get this job done. We have to buy 2,000 of these machines to get this job done, and 6 months after this event the Federal Government still has only ordered 100. We want to urge the administration to act with greater dispatch to meet this 100 percent target. We were told this week the Inspector General said the target of December will not be met. We want to make sure the administration moves and moves quickly. We need to get this job done.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, an hour ago a woman named Marilyn Robinson testified over in the Rayburn Building. She told the story about her 18-year-old son Liam Wood, who was killed in the explosion of a gasoline pipeline. Two hundred thousand gallons of gasoline were released and exploded, incinerating two young children and killing her son. The reason her son died in part was because this institution did not pass any meaningful laws to make sure gasoline pipelines do not explode. The reason this institution failed in that duty is in part because we are shackled by special interest money. I am here to say for the spirit of Ms. Wood and those who can potentially be victims of this continued slavery to special interest money, that we should bury this cynical amendment that throughout history has stopped any campaign finance reform. We should bury it today so that others may live.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, where are the smartest people in the world going? They are going to America. Physicists from Ireland, computer specialists from India, folks from all over the world are coming to this country as the mecca of democracy, and they are making our economy stronger. If my colleagues want to know what it means, come to my district to see what it means for Microsoft and real networks to make this economy boom. I will just say one thing: The fellow who said Patrick Buchanan says that this is hurting America, he is dead wrong, and we ought to reject it to put a stake in the heart of that attitude in this country tonight.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pay tribute to a great conservationist, Celia Hunter, who died December 1 at the age of 82. We need to acknowledge heroes of the conservation community like Celia so that future generations may see and know what made this country the great nation that it is today, what shaped us as a freedom-loving people, and what made us kind and considerate stewards of the land. Though she was born and raised in Arlington, Washington, Celia's greatest contributions came in protecting our last frontier, Alaska. Our national parks, our wildlife refuges, and our national forests in Alaska have come to be heirlooms that we may pass on to our children and their children in large part because of Celia Hunter. Celia was a member of the Women's Air Force Service Pilots, flying fighter planes from factories where they were built to airfields and ports for use in World War II. She and lifelong friend Ginny Wood then had the opportunity to fly surplus planes to Alaska. They landed in Fairbanks on January 1, 1947 with temperatures at minus 50 degrees and never looked back. Celia, Ginny Wood, and Ginny's husband Woody built Denali Camp in 1951 on the edge of then-Mt. McKinley National Park. Their vision for an ecologically friendly, conservation-education, backcountry camp survives today under the management of Wally and Geri Cole, who purchased the tourism accommodation from Celia and Ginny in 1975. In 1960, Celia and Ginny, with a few others in Fairbanks, founded the Alaska Conservation Society, the first statewide conservation organization run entirely by volunteers. The Alaska Conservation Society was the precursor to today's three regional organizations, the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, and the Alaska Center for the Environment, as well as the Alaska Conservation Foundation, another organization Celia helped to establish and on whose board she served for two decades. In the latter part of the 1970s, Celia served as executive director of the Wilderness Society, and in 1991 the Sierra Club awarded Celia its highest achievement award, the John Muir Award. She also fought, literally until her death, to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I had the opportunity to visit this beautiful land in July, and while there I witnessed an explosion taking place on the coastal plane of the Arctic--an explosion of life. In fifty years of exploring the back country of America, from Yellowstone to the Appalachian Trail, I have never seen such activity--birds singing, caribou calving, and tundra flowers blooming. It was hard to take a step in the soggy, tussock-filled tundra without scaring up a well- camouflaged ptarmigan, stepping on some happy Mountain Aven blossom, or spying a bunch of caribou heading for their traditional calving grounds. The Arctic Refuge represents the largest intact ecosystem in America, a unique expanse where industrialization has not broken one link in the chain of life. Celia Hunter was an inspiration to a generation of wilderness enthusiasts and others who wished to make the world a better place. In a 1986 interview she said, ``Each one of us has a responsibility to take care of the part of the world we live in.'' Celia wanted to live in a world where there were wild places, peace and quiet, and compassion for her fellow man and woman. In this vision, she led by example, and she will be sorely missed, but never forgotten by those who worked with her, lived near her, and met her.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of the season, I must admit that under the Republican controlled House, it is indeed a wonderful life. Because when the Republicans control the House, whenever the voting bell rings, a corporate tax lobbyist gets his wings. Merry Christmas, Enron. Merry Christmas, General Electric. To my friends across the aisle and their corporate tax lobbyist friends, God bless everyone, because when the American people find out that Social Security was raided to take care of Republican friends, the American people will not.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, one of the real bright spots following September 11 in this country has been the number of times that Americans have stood up for tolerance and against hate. Last weekend I was at the Northgate Mosque north of Seattle to visit a mosque where people had actually tried to burn down the mosque. When I got there, there were four people standing out in front of the mosque waiving at people driving by, and I asked folks in the mosque what those folks were doing. They said that they were a neighborhood watch guard that had been established by the neighbors of the mosque, none of whom were Muslim, of the Muslim faith, to guard the mosque. I think there has been a lot of good sides that we have shown the world of protecting our neighbors in this regard. Now the U.S. Congress ought to do its part and pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act so that we can help local law enforcement help the folks in these neighborhoods protect those who are the subject of hate. That is the American message, and I think it would be a good holiday statement by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, consider the tale of two of my constituents. Greg is a computer software genius at Microsoft. His intellectual property is frequently stolen from him overseas, and he could use a President with Trade Promotion Authority to try to prevent that theft. And now consider my constituent, John, who came up to me in the lobby of a building the other day and said, ``I just got laid off from Boeing. I am 56 years old. I am worried. I don't know what I am going to do, and I need help.'' For the last 2 months, while we have passed bailout after bailout, this Congress has done nothing for the American worker. Nothing. And we have to learn if we are going to advance a trade agenda, we have to make sure we respect both the Gregs and the Johns of the world. Yes, you can run over the Democrats on the floor of this House, but you cannot run over the legitimate needs of working people and the environment time after time, and then expect us to develop a trade agenda with the support of the American people. Vote no on this today. Come back, develop a realistic package of worker protection, and we will pass what we need for our international agenda.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. As our country recently prepared for its annual commemoration of the first Thanksgiving, my state was also honoring those who founded the city of Seattle 150 years ago. On November 13, 1851, the Denny Party, composed of 22 men, women, and children arrived at Alki Point in the pouring rain. They arrived only to find the cabin which the leader's brother, David Denny was supposed to prepare, unfinished and without a roof. David Denny himself lay sick and feverish. Like those who survived the first tough winter in Plymouth, the Denny Party persevered. Their dreams of a city would not have survived, however, without the help of Native Americans. As the sopping wet and nearly helpless Denny Party struggled to survive, the Duwamish tribe, led by Chief Sealth, chose to camp around the party in order to protect them. While Seattle celebrates the landing of the Denny Party, we must also remember those who lived here before- and continue to live here today. Without the assistance of Chief Sealth, the Duwamish tribe, and other tribes, the Denny Party could not have achieved their dreams of a city; a city named for the Chief who protected and helped those early settlers in their quest for a new home.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor the humanitarian workers in Afghanistan like the Mercy Corps group who when the Afghani people said, ``I need you,'' they did not respond, ``Don't bother me.'' I want to tell you, it is a long, long, long and hard road that they are walking. And their efforts are their own, not paid for by the taxman. Their work is really something. And because of their work, someday the Afghani people will be able to say, ``Here comes the sun,'' and I say, ``It's all right.''