Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, modest uncertainty is not an excuse for major inaction. When the captain of the Titanic steamed out and just kept going straight at the same speed because he was not sure if there was an iceberg there, because he was uncertain if there was an iceberg there, that was a mistake. And this body, with the language in this bill, which now continues to ignore this problem of global climate change, is a major mistake. I am just going to ask my friends across the aisle to look at two things that happened today within a quarter mile of this building. Number one, The Washington Post, headline this morning: ``Penguins In Major Decline. Fifty percent of these stocks are disappearing in the Antarctic.'' Why? Because they have had a reduction of ice in the Antarctic, a death of the crill population that penguins rely on and a potential huge collapse in a couple of their populations. It happened today. I am just going to ask people across the aisle to not adopt the attitude of the ostrich and ignore these facts. Number two, right now, 200 yards from now, are two fuel-cell-driven cars, one manufactured by the Ford Company, that run on fuel cells and emit water instead of carbon dioxide in their emissions. We, and I mean we, have the potential if we get together to emphasize research in these new technologies, we are going to lead the world, instead of the laughingstock of the world, of the country that refuses to be anything but an ostrich on this issue. Mr. Chairman, I am going to ask at some point that we work together to lead the world. We did not have to wait for the rest of the world to do a clean air bill. We did not have to wait for the rest of the world to do a clean water bill. We ought to lead the world on global climate change. That is the right approach. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to the time we can do that on a bipartisan basis.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, if I may inquire as to the time remaining?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I note that the argument just propounded essentially was rejected in a lawsuit which refused to stay implementation of these rules several weeks ago. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, just to expand on the comments of the gentleman from West Virginia (Mr. Rahall), for 4-5 years, the administration could not act even though 35,000 people had impact on this decision. Now it is time for us. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, when there was a discussion about rolling back arsenic standards some time ago, the American people went into basic revulsion. If we reject this amendment today, we will be heading in the same direction, rolling back standards designed to keep arsenic out of our streams and rivers, cyanide out of our streams and rivers, sulfuric acid out of our streams and rivers. I believe the American public made their position very clear on this during the last several months while people in this town were discussing going backwards on the environment. I stand here today to say that in this appropriation process, we should not go backwards on arsenic. We should not go backwards on cyanide. That history has given us 12,000 miles of polluted rivers and a problem with arsenic in our water. That is why the League of Conservation Voters is so keenly interested in this vote. That is why I hope we stand together on a bipartisan basis and make sure that we adhere to the existing standards on arsenic.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to respond that we seek to maintain the existing regulation, which is fully consistent with the NAS study that concluded we needed better regulations against arsenic and cyanide in our waters. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell). (Mr. Pascrell asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. This is a bipartisan amendment offered by the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn) and myself. It is a bipartisan amendment intended to maintain, maintain, existing environmental protections. It is about arsenic, it is about cyanide, it is about sulfuric acid, it is about making sure that we do not roll back existing rules in place today that have been implemented to prevent the discharge of arsenic and cyanide and other toxics into our streams and rivers. Mr. Chairman, here is why this amendment is necessary. Before the adoption of these rules, we had a scandalous situation in mining and release of toxics. Twelve thousand miles of streams in the West are polluted from mining tailings, 40 percent of streams in the West. Ninety-six percent of all of the arsenic compounds artificially released in the environment have been from the mining industry, without these rules that have now been implemented; 600 million pounds of arsenic and arsenic compounds a year from the mining industry. Mr. Chairman, we need to make sure in this appropriation bill that no hand is taken to reduce the effectiveness or repeal these rules that have been adopted after 4 years and 35,000 pieces of input from the American public. Now, let me tell my colleagues, there are three things at risk here: Number one, the existing rules adopted by rule. Number one has environmental performance standards, standards that every mining operation has to meet to prevent the discharge of cyanide. And because of the implementation of cyanide heap leach mining, this is extremely important. Number two, we have got to have a way for local communities to have input in these decisions of siting, and we do not want to allow any hand to remove the ability to have local communities where there is substantial irreparable harm to a local community. This is a local control issue. Number three, we want to make sure the mines put up adequate bonding capability. Under this rule, the administration, to its credit, has said they will keep this part, this one-third of the bill, and this is the part we want to make sure we keep the administration policy in hand. So, Mr. Chairman, this is a bipartisan bill, and so we seek bipartisan support. It is a strong problem that deserves that we keep the status quo for the environment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Horn), the cosponsor of this amendment.

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

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, this debate has a bit of an Alice in Wonderland feel to it for this reason: the FERC action of 2 days ago which the administration says they support, which I hear my friends across the aisle say they support, is a price cap. It is a price limitation. It says you cannot spend any more money than this dollar figure of the least efficient, most expensive, dirtiest plant in the whole western United States. It is a cap. What is wrong with it is it is the wrong cap. It is the wrong limitation. It is like setting the bar at a limbo contest and setting it at the lowest level that Shaquille O'Neal can get through. It is like setting the testing standards for fourth graders, finding the slowest student in America and that is where you set the limitation. It is not going to work, just like the failure of Congress and FERC for the last 6 months. They have not done a darn thing. I will just close by saying this. There is a famous story, we have heard it, where the grandchild comes to the grandfather's knee and says, ``Grandpa, what did you do during the war?'' And the grandpa tells his story. When the majority fail to allow us to offer a refund amendment, when the majority fail to allow us to even vote, even vote on something to do about these absurd, outrageous prices, when the majority insist that we do nothing, when your grandchild asks you what you did in the power crisis of 2001, you can tell them, ``Nothing.''

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, I appreciate what the gentleman has to say, but the fact of the matter is we have been trying to get a vote for these through the regular order, through an authorization bill, for over 6 months, while my people are dying on the vine paying these extraordinary bills, and yet the majority has not allowed these bills a vote by this Chamber, the elected representatives. I want to ask a simple question: I just want to ask the gentleman, will the gentleman help us ask the Republican leadership of this House, bring these bills to the floor for consideration in the next couple of weeks so we can have an up or down vote and see where the votes lie?

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

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I would like to note the graciousness of the gentleman from Florida (Chairman Young) in allowing us to speak and address this issue in debate today. We appreciate that. But I also want to note that people do not pay us to talk here, although we do that a bit. They pay us for action. And the majority is not allowing a vote by the elected representatives of this Chamber on two or three of the most important issues in the West Coast and that part of the country right now, refunds for consumers and small business people, on inadequate price limitation. Despite the graciousness on debate of the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young), which we have had plenty of, we have had plenty of debate, but we are having no votes, and America, in the small democratic tradition, with a small D, ought to have votes. So I want to yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Young) and ask him a very sincere question: We have many people who have paid literally billions of dollars too much in their electrical bills in the West Coast in the last several months. We have small businesses going out of business because of that. Does the gentleman join us in asking for a vote on these issues in some bill in the next couple of weeks?

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to offer this amendment with the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi) as a real and a meaningful and a truly effective price mitigation strategy for the West Coast. The West Coast is a great place. We do not have hurricanes like the Southeast, but right now we have an economic tornado that is ripping right up and down the coast of California, Oregon, and Washington. In Washington, our wholesale prices have gone up not twice, not three, not four times, but by a thousand percent. And while those prices have gone up a thousand percent, while people in the State of Washington, 43,000 of them, may lose their jobs this year in the State of Washington due to this economic tornado, what has the Federal Government done for our citizens on the West Coast? Nothing. In January, when we asked FERC to act, they did nothing. In February, in March, in April, they did nothing. In May and today, when we have asked the majority party to join us, nothing has been done. This amendment would do something meaningful. What it would do is to set a 2-year period of cost-based pricing for wholesale electrical generators. A reasonable thing to do. We would, by this amendment, simply require FERC to order cost-based pricing on the West Coast of the United States for 2 years. That means generators would charge reasonable rates based on their cost. Each generator would get what they have coming to them, which is the cost to generate the electricity, plus a reasonable degree of profit. That is not too much to ask when we have 43,000 people in the State of Washington that may be coming home with no job. Now, as my colleagues know, finally, after we have drug this administration and my friends across the aisle kicking and screaming to the price mitigation bar, the FERC finally did something 2 days ago. But FERC doing something does not mean that this House should do nothing. Because what FERC did would essentially adopt a price mitigation strategy that may not mitigate anybody's prices. Look what they did. They said nobody can charge more than a certain price. But the price they picked was the most expensive generator on the whole West Coast, the least efficient generator on the whole West Coast. Mr. Chairman, it would be the equivalent if we had FERC dealing with two high prices in the automobile industry. If we gave them that job, they would pick the cost of a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud as the price for the limit. That would not help any car buyers, and this is unlikely to help consumers on the western coast of the United States. It is likely to be an ineffective proposal. So what we have done is to do what historically has been done, which is to adopt cost-based pricing. Something meaningful. When we talk about incentives, think about it from this standpoint. If we are going to send a message to the generators of electricity, the message that FERC sent to the generators is they said turn your most expensive, your least efficient, your environmentally dirtiest plants on first. Is that the message that the U.S. Government wants to send to the industry to adopt their dirtiest most expensive generators first? Yet, that is what the FERC order has done. To those who argue that economics say we should not adopt price mitigation, I want to quote from Dr. Frank Wolak, who studied this effort. He is an economist from Stanford. This scheme, referring to the FERC order, guarantees that consumers pay more for wholesale electricity than they would pay for cost of service pricing. Under the FERC plan, consumers have the potential to pay significantly more than total production costs to receive the same amount of electricity in order to preserve a market clearing price mechanism which provides incentives. This is not enough. It is time for this U.S. House to act.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Madam Speaker, I come to the well of the House today to speak in favor of and to recognize the importance of collective bargaining. I would like to do it from the perspective of my particular district. I represent a high tech district in the State of Washington just north of Seattle that includes Redmond where Microsoft is located as well as many software firms. It includes a biotech corridor where some of the new medicines are being developed with our new genetic technology, Immunex and others. From that perspective, a lot of folks have thought in the new economy where we have high tech jobs and software and biotech that the importance of collective bargaining or organized labor would fade away. I just want to say today that from the perspective of the high tech economy represented by my district, the importance of collective bargaining to people remains just as large and fundamental as it always has been in this country. I want to tell just a couple of stories as to why that is true. First the story of Northwest Hospital in my district where a large group of employees desired to be represented by the SCIU, the service employees union, from a variety of professions at the hospital. Something interesting happened when those workers decided they wanted to be represented by SCIU. What was interesting that happened is that the hospital management, unlike a lot of places, decided not to try to intimidate workers, not to try to browbeat workers, not to interfere in the decision by the workers who are really the people who ought to have the decision whether to be represented or not represented. As a result of that, the workers freely voted and indeed in this case voted to be represented by that bargaining unit. To date there has been peace and harmony and increased productivity at that hospital I think because of that peaceful relationship. It was one example about how where management took a progressive attitude to allow workers to freely voice whether or not to be represented, things worked well. Now I want to talk about the current situation at the University of Washington where the teachers assistants have expressed a desire to be represented by a bargaining unit of the UAW. Despite, I think, their clear manifestation of a desire, the administration of the UW has felt constrained, they believe they do not have the legal authority under the Washington State legislative structure to enter into a bargaining unit at the University of Washington. Many people, myself included, believe that is a misinterpretation of Washington law. Nonetheless, that has created a lot of tension and the lack of the ability to move forward between the management, essentially the administration of the University of Washington and the teachers assistants. It is a situation where collective bargaining has not been able to move forward at least due to the perceived belief of the University of Washington management that we have not been able to move forward in a collective bargaining agreement, much I think to the detriment of the institution as a whole. I think it has been instructive as to why collective bargaining needs to be recognized. We have been hopeful that the administration would take another look at the interpretation of Washington law. Failing that, we have also been hopeful that the Washington legislature would do some house cleaning and simply grant very specifically to the University of Washington administration the ability to collectively bargain. I am told that our friends in the other party have blocked efforts of that in the Washington legislature. I think that is very, very shortsighted. To simply give the University of Washington management the same authority that other management anywhere in America has to enter into collective bargaining units. I want to say today from a high tech corridor, there is good news in a bargaining situation in a hospital. There is bad news in another high tech corridor, the University of Washington. We are hopeful that that gets resolved so that the parties can move forward in this very important right of collective bargaining to organize. That is the story from the high tech world.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Udall).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), who has done a tremendous job fashioning this bipartisan success story.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I am happy to rise in support of H.R. 1157, a great bill that has been introduced by our colleague, the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson). Basically, it authorizes the Secretary of Commerce to provide financial assistance to the States of Alaska, California, Idaho, Oregon and Washington for salmon habitat restoration projects in coastal waters and upland drainages. As many of our colleagues are aware, there is more than 25 species of salmon on the West Coast right now that have been listed as endangered or threatened under the Endangered Species Act. Several more are currently under consideration for listing. In 1999, the States of Alaska, California, Oregon and Washington proposed to tackle this crisis with a coast-wide salmon restoration effort, conservation effort, that would allocate $50 million of Federal funds to each State for 6 years to support salmon conservation. An habitat restoration project was very important at a regional and local level. In response to this request, Congress established the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund and appropriated $58 million for these purposes in the fiscal year 2000 and $90 million in fiscal year 2001. In Washington State, our funds are allocated by the Salmon Recovery Funding Board, also known as the SURF Board, one of the great acronyms of all times, which is operated by William Ruckelshaus, a name I think is familiar to many. The local regional project supported by the Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund will restore habitats and help stem the continued decline of the salmon populations on the West Coast. H.R. 1157 authorizes the activities that will be carried out using the appropriations in this fund; requires States and tribes to develop a conservation and restoration plan. To receive grants, it specifies the activities that are eligible to receive funding. It requires a one-to-one match of any Federal dollars that are provided and it thereby doubles their conservation efforts, a really good feature of the bill. Finally, it adds Idaho, a great State, to the list of States that would participate in the program. Mr. Chairman, in my own State of Washington, this program will enable us to work in conjunction with funding from the Puget Sound Initiative, a bipartisan bill I helped pass last year which authorizes the Army Corps of Engineers to use their expertise in designing community-based habitat restoration projects. In King County, money appropriated to the funds has already been used to acquire 93 acres of land along Bear Creek, which includes a large wetland, a beautiful little area in my district, salmonid spawning areas and large beds of freshwater mussels, the noninvasive type, I may add. King County also acquired 172 acres at several high priority habitats along the Snoqualmie River watershed. The acquisitions focused primarily on the spawning areas in the Snoqualmie Basin, which are very important. With future funds, we will be looking to provide more protection for salmon habitat along the Cedar River, which is the watershed feeding Seattle. This area has long been known for its critical habitat values, and has everything that salmon need to thrive. In addition to Chinook, sockeye and coho salmon, steelhead will also benefit from this newly protected area in the years to come. H.R. 57 is a great bill. It will ensure these projects will continue. It is supported by the Governors of all five States, the tribes, fishermen and the environmental community. While the administration has not provided an official position on this bill, it has requested $100 million for Pacific Salmon Recovery Fund in fiscal year 2002 budget submission. That is good news, and I urge Members to support it today. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, we do not intend to express any objection to the gentleman's amendment, but I do think it appropriate to comment that the recommendations, the goals, the suggestions of the Governors encapsulated in the report to which the gentleman's amendment is addressed are not the sole things that we need to consider to be done in regard to salmon recovery. I just think it is important for us to note that. The way I read the amendment, it does not purport to say that these are the only things that need to be done for all time in our efforts. There are certainly other things that I think need to be done, and I know there are others who also think there is more to be done. So it is important for others to be aware that passage of this amendment will not be the end of our efforts in this Chamber to restore these runs.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I have no comment.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I just want to tell a personal story that relates a bit to this bill. Last week I was sitting in my living room. I live on Puget Sound in the State of Washington. I was talking to one of my staffers about an environmental issue. We were sort of bemoaning some of the problems we have, both environmentally and legislatively, as it pertains to the environment here. We were particularly concerned about the salmon, who really are on the ropes up and down the West Coast. These salmon are very much on the edge of extinction in a lot of these runs. We were sort of down-mouthed at the moment, and just at that moment a bald eagle came soaring by, literally with the wings straight out, not flapping, just soaring on the wind as it came up over the shoreline, sort of eye level right past our house. It was sort of a message, I think, maybe from some other power that we ought to keep our heads up when it comes to these endangered species; that if the bald eagle can have a spectacular recovery, perhaps the salmon can, too. I think this is a good step forward towards that end. I want to compliment our friends on the other side for their work in getting this bipartisan product out. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Larsen).

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps).