Jay Inslee

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Woolsey), a great Congresswoman from California; but she grew up on the shores of Puget Sound.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I want to alert Members this morning to a disturbing report we received in response to our demand for an accounting of privacy violations on governmental Web sites. We just received the other day the audit report of the Department of Defense Web sites. We found disturbing information. Of 400 sites that were reviewed, over a quarter of them had privacy violations where Americans' privacy rights were being abused by Federal agencies. There were 128 sites that had unauthorized use of cookies which is essentially a system used to collect personal information on your system placed there by a government Web site. There were 100 sites that had no privacy notice. Perhaps most disturbing, there were seven sites where the government agencies had used Web bugs which essentially are capable of tracking an individual's uses of the Internet. This is extremely disappointing after all of our work on privacy here in this Chamber for the executive branch to be so callously indifferent to people's privacy. I urge Members to be alert to this. We need to work together to make sure that these agencies stop these nefarious practices. Government should start respecting Americans' privacy.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. My Speaker, my Republican colleagues' fiscal plan is a little like a money-laundering machine because every dollar they give to the American taxpayer, the taxpayers are going to give $2 to the energy companies, and the Republicans will not do a single thing about it. While energy prices go up a thousand percent, they do nothing. Last night, I was reading Tom Brokaw's book about the greatest generation. He quoted Roosevelt saying, ``This generation has a rendezvous with destiny.'' Well, under this plan, the baby boom generation has a rendezvous with a fiscal disaster when we start to retire. The Republicans have put us on the horns of this dilemma. When the baby boomers start to retire 10 years from now, when the Republicans sunset the repeal of the estate tax, which gives a whole new meaning to estate planning, the Sopranos may have a job under the Republicans' plan in the year 2010. If this goes through, Saturday, March 26th, 2001, will be a day of fiscal infamy. Defeat this bill. Join us in a fair plan where the baby boom generation will stand up for fiscal responsibility.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we now know who is in control here in Washington, D.C. In the House, the Republicans are in control. In the Senate, the Democrats are in control. In the White House, the oil and gas industry is in control. The fact that this line came from a famous talk show host does not mean it is any less true because while wholesale electrical rates from the energy industry have gone up 500 to 1,000 percent on the west coast, while my constituents' energy costs have doubled, this White House has done nothing, absolutely nothing, to help the energy crisis in the short-term in the Western United States. This White House should listen to the people they ought to be working for, the people whose hard-earned money is going to these energy costs. I will say, every single dollar any American may get from this tax cut in the next 2 years, I will say exactly where it is going, it is going to the energy costs and enormous spikes in these costs that this White House is doing nothing about. We call on this President to adopt a cost-based system. We call on this President to not sit on his hands. We call on him to do something with FERC.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, the President offers this tax cut plan as his energy plan. He refuses to do anything about prices of energy, which has gone up a thousand percent on the wholesale electrical market in the State of Washington, but instead offers a few dollars in the tax cut plan. As a short-term response to our energy crisis, this is an abject failure; and I will say why and I will say how. We live in interesting times. Tomorrow we cannot say who is going to control the U.S. Senate, but we know the oil and gas industry is going to control the White House. As a result of that, every single dollar, every single dollar that my constituents might get next year back from this tax cut, maybe 15 bucks a month for a middle-class family, is going to be eaten up several fold by energy companies. They are going to take that couple bucks from Uncle Sam, and they are going to ship it in their envelope to the energy companies, many of them who happen to be the President's political allies. Now, at a townhall meeting a guy told me he was cutting his energy use, but his prices were skyrocketing. And he said, Jay, that plan, that tax cut plan, sort of reminds me of a money-laundering operation. One just takes the money, launders it through the taxpayers and gives it over to the President's political allies in the energy industry. Why not just cut out the middleman and just give it all to the energy industry, just cut out the middleman? That would be wrong because we have people losing jobs today in the State of Washington, 43,000 people losing jobs, and the President and the Republican Party will not act on this. It is a travesty. We should be doing a price cap, a price mitigation plan tonight instead of this bill.

Mr. INSLEE

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

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the reservation of objection of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), because this is truly the wrong moment to be dealing with this issue when we have a crisis of such enormity. Let us talk about the amount of action that our friends on the Republican aisle want us to take in light of this crisis, which is zero, to the people who have cut their energy use by 40 percent in some instances to conserve electricity in the State of Washington but whose bills have gone up nonetheless. The message of this bill is tough luck. Mr. Speaker, we need to continue our effort.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for another moment, the gentleman has alluded to this point. I want to make sure that Members who are aware of this proceeding tonight are aware of exactly what the administration has said. They have held the environment hostage, because what they have said in their budget is unless we give up the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and allow drilling there, we are not going to spend one single dime on these conservation and new technology renewable efforts. To me, if they are going to hold somebody hostage, the last person they should hold hostage is Mother Nature. That is who they have held hostage on this. To say that unless they get their way, unless these major oil companies get their way, the real party in interest here, to me it is an incredibly shortsighted approach to take, particularly since, as the gentleman knows, if we increase our mileage 3 miles a gallon, if the administration would yield to our efforts to increase our CAFE standards, our average miles, if we increase it 3 miles a gallon, we will save more oil just by that one step, without stepping a foot in that refuge, than we will ever get out of the wildlife refuge. That is the route we ought to be going. We hope at some point the administration will see the light in that regard.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership on this. I just have something to report for a moment. In our Subcommittee on Natural Resources today, members of the energy industry came to us and testified and reported that they were happy, tickled pink, is the way I would characterize it, about the administration's alleged plan to deal with energy. I guess it is really not a great surprise that they would be very, very pleased. I think one of the reasons, although it was unstated, is that this plan is one of total inaction in dealing with the crisis in the western United States of wholesale electrical prices. Because while the prices we have to pay in the west for wholesale electricity have gone up 500 percent, 1,000 percent in some circumstances, this administration willfully, and in what I think is a pretty amazing display of casual indifference to the plight on the West Coast, has said they are going to do nothing about those prices. To the people I represent, people who, like a fellow who told me he has conserved half of his energy in his house to respond to the need for conservation, but his energy bill has gone up. The Bush administration's message to him is real simple: tough luck. To the small business operator in Shoreline, Washington that has an ice rink who is going to have to curtail their hours of operation and reduce their small profits, to try to keep their mom-and-pop operation going, the Bush administration has one simple answer to them: tough luck. To the Edmonds school district, which is having to have hundreds of thousands of dollars now going to large energy generators, instead of hiring teachers and textbooks, the Bush administration has a real simple message: tough luck. And the message of tough luck is one that, although it has been music to the ears of the energy companies when they come testify to us on the Committee on Natural Resources, the message of tough luck is not one that is being well received by my constituents, who are in very, very tough shape. I go to food banks now and I talk to family after family and they say they have never been to a food bank before until they have been hit with these energy prices, and yet the administration is refusing to do anything about it. I just want to report to my colleagues that it is terribly upsetting to us that this administration will fail to do anything about price mitigation plans that have been proposed with at least several Republicans in this Chamber who are supporting an effort to bring these incredible prices under control. This weekend, I read an article that I thought was salient, because the administration has argued that they do not want to do anything about these prices, because they are afraid it will act as a disincentive to the creation of a new generating capacity. We need the President to read the San Francisco Chronicle this weekend. I want to read a couple paragraphs from an article from this Sunday's San Francisco Chronicle that leads with this paragraph: ``Large power companies have driven up electricity prices in California by throttling their generators up and down to create artificial shortages, according to dozens of interviews with regulators, lawyers and energy industry workers.'' It goes on to say that ``According to the accounts of three plant operators,'' a Corporation X, I am not going to expose them right now, my colleagues can buy the newspaper, ``Generator X operation schedulers on the energy trading floor ordered them to repeatedly decrease, then increase output at the 1,046 megawatt at plant X. This happened as many as 4 or 5 times an hour. Each time the units were ramped down and electricity production fell, plant employees watched on a control room computer screen as spot market energy prices rose. Then came the phone call to ramp the units back up. Quote: They would tell us what to do and we would do it, closed quote, said one of the men, who only agreed to speak on condition they would not be identified because they feared being fired. Quote: Afterward, we would just sit there and watch the market change.'' Well, they sure did watch the market change. They watched these prices go up 1,000 percent. Now, if we want this diminution of power to continue, if we want the continued reduction of power as much as 30 percent in the California market, up to 30 percent of the generators right now have their plants turned off, for goodness sakes. At the time we have blackouts in California, at the time we are paying 1,000 percent more for energy, these people have turned off 30 percent of their plants. Now, if we want that to continue, it would seem to me we would want the status quo, which is what the Bush administration has proposed. They are going to do nothing. We already have a disincentive for power in California, Oregon, and Washington. That is the existing dysfunctional market, because these folks can turn off their plants and jack up prices 1,000 percent. We want to create a market condition that is an incentive to bring these plants online. That is a cost-based system, where at least for the next 2 years we can have a short-term time-out of this dysfunctional market, have a cost-based system, give these generators the cost of producing their power plus a reasonable degree of profit, and bring some sanity back to this market. We could give these generators the highest profit margin since Bonnie and Clyde were in operation and we would still cut these prices in half. That is what we ought to do. That is what we are calling on this administration to do. So we are going to continue on this effort to ask this administration to get off the dime, do its job, tell FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to do its job, and get some short-term cost-bid pricing.

Mr. INSLEE. If the gentleman would continue to yield for one comment, we believe profits are American. There is nothing wrong with profits. But when demand for electricity in the State of California has gone down since last year, and demand has actually gone down from last year, supplies have gone down as much as 30 percent on a given day, but then they have a way to game the system to jack their prices up 1,000 percent, something is rotten not just in the state of Denmark, it is rotten in the State of California, and Oregon, and Washington. We are losing 43,000 jobs in my State because of this rampant gaming that is going on. We are going to continue to try to fix that. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) being here and asking that question. I am reporting from the State of Washington up in the Pacific Northwest about what is not just a California problem, but indeed a western United States problem of price gouging on the electrical markets. I now can report back to the House the reaction the President's energy inaction plan is getting from my constituents in the State of Washington. In the immortal words of Siskel and Ebert, it is two thumbs down, big time as they would say. The reason is that while California- bashing is one of the favorite sports of the State of Washington, the President's callous indifference to the whole West Coast is not just hurting California. It is hurting small businesses and people in Washington and Oregon who are paying wholesale electrical prices that have gone up a thousand percent, a thousand percent wholesale electrical prices, from last year. Where communities that paid $25 for a megawatt of energy in Washington, not California but in Washington State, $25 a megawatt hour last year, we are now paying $600-plus for a megawatt. No one on this floor, I have heard, had the courage, I guess it would be, to come and try to defend that kind of a pricing change over a year. It just bears repeating that it is not just California that is suffering here. The State of Washington may lose 43,000 jobs as a result of the President's willful neglect of this crisis on the West Coast. Now, if the President has some indifference to the State of California, for whatever reason, we do not appreciate allowing him to have the energy-gouging locusts that sort of visited that plague on the whole West Coast, and we are getting hurt, too. Last weekend when I went home, I had people coming up to me in the ferry boat lines and in the supermarkets absolutely shaking their heads, livid about this failure of the elected official. The President, he has had ties to the oil and gas industry. That is not exactly a secret. But he does not work for the oil and gas industry anymore. He works for us on the West Coast, and he has simply sent a message to the West Coast in this moment of trial, to guys like Cliff Syndon, who has cut his energy bill by like 40 percent and has seen his bill go up; who has been dedicated to conservation, a guy who wrote me an e-mail and said, I have cut my energy almost in half and my bill went up. What are we supposed to tell people like that who are trying to be good Americans in this moment of crisis, as we are when everybody wants to pull together, and then have the President say, well, Cliff, go fish; you can just go fish, for all I care. Yet, that is the signal the President is sending to the West Coast of the United States. Now it is not like he does not have a tool. As the gentleman has indicated, I have introduced a bill supported by a goodly number of folks that essentially would have a short-term cost-based pricing system in the western United States. This is a very reasonable, common- sense tool the President already has. We should not have to pass a bill here to make him do this. He should do this because it is already the law, because the law of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is that they will require reasonable rates to be charged in this country for wholesale electricity. What our bill does is simply call a time-out for this plague, and the time is that for 2 years we simply have cost-based plus a reasonable degree of profit for the wholesale electrical market, something similar we have done for decades in this country since the Edison Round; we are simply saying we ought to do this at least for 2 years while these markets become better established. We also would respond to the President. I talked to the President. He told me he did not want to do that because, well, nobody will build any more plants to generate electricity if we did that. Well, the President missed one aspect of our bill. We would exclude new generating capacity from the impact of this cost-based pricing. It cannot be a disincentive for someone when they are excluded from the application of this system, which we would do to make sure that these energy sources can continue to come online. That is something he has simply missed in his analysis. So I can say that on the Main Streets of the first district in the State of Washington people are very, very angry about this President's callous indifference to their plight. It is small businesses that are curtailing hours. We have heard about the big industries, the aluminum industry that is going to heck in a handbasket; the pulp and paper industry that has shut off hundreds of jobs, but the small businesses are getting hit, too; the Highland Ice Rink in Shoreline that has to curtail its hours because they cannot pay the energy costs. Restaurants are having trouble. School districts, they are now not being able to hire the teachers they need to. Edmonds School District, the prices are going up $600,000 in one year for energy. These are real people that are really suffering. For the life of me, I cannot understand why the President will not seriously consider this issue, except perhaps the history of their economic lives. And that is extremely disappointing. We are going to continue on this floor to advance this issue because it is too important to let go. Let me also say that I think there are short-term and long-term strategies we have to have on energy. The problem with the President's proposal is he has exactly zero short-term proposals. Zero. It is sort of like the people in the West are drowning and he says, well, I have a strategy for them as soon as they can swim to shore. Well, 43,000 people are not going to make it to shore. They are going to lose their jobs in the State of Washington alone; and he has offered them exactly zero short-term relief, no caps on electrical prices; no jawboning OPEC; no nothing. We are going to suffer as a result of that. We are going to continue this effort. We hope FERC will reexamine this issue. Let me point out one other thing, too. I will give you some good news. We should have some good news in the House just for a moment. I talked to Steve Wright, who is the acting administrator of the Bonneville Power Administration, last week who told me that there are currently 28,000 megawatts of energy plants which in the Pacific Northwest or at least in some fashion are considering opening up plants in the Pacific Northwest, 28,000 megawatts. That is a big chunk of electricity. That is the good news. The market is responding to what is going on. When we have an economic major dislocation with the economy going to be in the tank by the time that new energy gets here, we are going to look back at this period and the White House's indifference is going to have to cost this economy a good amount. That is why we are going to continue to insist that the President reconsider this, and we are going to pass legislation here if we have to do that. I hope I explained this proposal.

Mr. INSLEE. I need to leave the floor. There is just one point I would like to add. I want to make sure people understand that our proposal is not going to leave these energy-generating companies penurious. What we are suggesting is that they receive, for a 2-year period, their costs plus a reasonable degree of profit. They are going to be assured making money. What we have suggested is pick the highest level of profit ever historically enjoyed by anyone possibly in the oil industry and these prices probably are still going to be cut in half. We are very generous, profit-oriented in saying pick the highest number that we cannot have people laugh at us on Main Street and we will go along with it; but when they are charging, as the gentleman knows, the equivalent of $190 a gallon for milk, that is wrong. We ought to restore some sanity, just for a couple of years, while this industry gets back into a market-based approach and we get some of that 28,000 megawatts back on line.

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

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I was in a town hall meeting the other day, and I had a constituent that sort of suggested that it would have been simpler just to cut out the middleman of giving us any tax break at all when it goes right to the oil companies. He said it reminded him of a money laundering scheme. I do not think that is too far off the mark. Mr. Speaker, I have a message for the rest of the United States, and that is it is not just California. And it is coming to you in your neighborhood, because it is in Oregon and it is in Washington now. It may have started in California, but right now in the State of Washington, we are suffering potentially 43,000 people losing their jobs, Mr. Speaker, as a result of these oil companies and generating companies increasing their prices, not twice, not 5 times, not 10 times, but on the wholesale spot market for electricity right now in the State of Washington, these companies have increased their price 1,000 percent, 2,000 percent, without spending another dime to generate one single electron. These are windfall profits that people are enjoying right now at our expense. Forty-three thousand families out of work because these folks have a callous indifference to the economy of Washington, Oregon, California and, soon, whatever State you are in. This is coming to you because they have figured out a way to game this system starting in the West. Mr. Speaker, what we Democrats have proposed is a short-term solution. We need a long-term solution, but we have to have some short- term solution to this. Unfortunately, the President, what has he decided to do? What has his message been to America? Go fish. You are on your own. We do not have any short-term solution. We are not going to do anything. Mr. Speaker, we have suggested a couple of things. Number one, that he call FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and he ask them to impose a 2-year cost-based pricing system for wholesale prices for the western grid of the United States. We are asking a simple thing: that the companies for the next 2 years get their costs and a reasonable degree of profit, and pick the highest degree of profit, it will still be half of what they are charging today. When they have increased their prices 1,000 percent; like if you bought a car for $30,000, it now costs you $300,000 to $600,000, if Detroit did the business the way that the generators are doing right now. We are asking for a time-out on this ludicrous explosion of prices. People have said, will this not decrease the supply of electricity? Hogwash. If anything, it will increase it. These companies have figured out how to reduce supply and drive the price up. Fully one-third of all of the generating capacity in California in the last 4 months has been turned off, and they have driven these prices sky high. Mr. Speaker, we have asked the administration for simple relief. They have refused it, and they give us no simple relief. I want to say that there is good news in the long term and short term when it comes to conservation and efficiency. We should be optimistic. There are plenty of causes for this country to be as optimistic as we were when we decided to go to the Moon, and there were naysayers then too about new technology. But there is just as good news for us from a technological basis for wind, solar, new transmission, fuel cells, as there was for new technologies which took us to the Moon. For example, in Seattle right now, there is a company called MagnaDrive. MagnaDrive is manufacturing a coupling device based upon, as you can guess, magnetism, which basically has two plates which act as a coupling for electric motors. This device can save 30 to 40 percent of the electricity to drive an electric motor. It is just starting to develop a market. We need to recognize technologies like MagnaDrive and recognize their potential. That is the good news. The bad news is that some of these technologies are being developed not in America, because we have not given them the incentives for the development of these. For example, hybrid cars, electric gasoline- powered cars. The one on the road right now is from Japan. Why should America give up this market to the Japanese manufacturers? Why should we give up this potential development of jobs to those manufacturers? Mr. Speaker, I think this Nation ought to be confident enough in our technological ability to say we are going to lead the Nation in new car technology. Yet in that very specific field, the President's budget has gone backwards. We ought to lead the Nation in efficiency and conservation. If we stand up to Mr. Cheney's shortsighted statement that conservation is just a personal ethic but does not have anything to do with sound economic policy, he is dead wrong. Efficiency is a personal virtue, and it is an economic virtue, and it is a job-growth strategy that this country ought to use. Mr. Speaker, that is why I am proud that the Democratic Party has come up with a comprehensive plan to combine conservation and short- term price mitigation. It is a short-term solution and a long-term solution, and I appreciate the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) bringing us here tonight.

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Sherman).

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I had a constituent at a town hall meeting in Washington ask a very interesting question, I thought, about the President's tax cut and energy bill which must be considered together. He asked this question: What earthly good is it to get some very modest tax cut, if every single dollar I get in a tax cut I have to turn around that month and give to an energy company in Texas? Every single dollar I get, I am going to give it to the energy industry which increases electrical bills and gas prices. He is right. What good is it? Mr. Speaker, what he asked me, if the Republicans want to do that, if they want to take absolutely no action about this energy crisis in the short term, nothing to help people in the short term with energy prices, what he asked me was why do they not just eliminate the middleman. Why not just give all of the tax cut to the energy industry and not have it go through us? I thought about that and thought it is clear. The Bush energy inaction plan, together with the Bush tax plan, is a giant money-laundering operation. The Republicans are not content to give 43 percent of all the tax cut to the top 1 percent, much of which goes to the wealthy oil barons; they want to make sure all of the money gets to the energy industry oil barons. That is not right. Why not have a sensible substitute and a sensible energy tax policy? We need a time-out from this madness of having the energy industry increase their prices to my constituents 1,000 percent in 1 year. It is a crime. This simple money-laundering operation to make sure all of the money in this tax vehicle goes to the energy industry is not going to do anybody any good except President George Bush's political friends. It is time for this President to understand he does not work for the oil industry anymore. He works for us. Reject this bill, pass the Democratic substitute and our energy policy, which will help middle- class Americans.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, there is some good news and some bad news in this budget process. The good news is our Republican colleagues, indeed, did find the missing 2 pages, and that is good news. The bad news is that it allowed us the time and the American people to the time to find out the dollar figure that our Republican friends across the aisle cut out of the education budget that was put in by the Senate. We have had the time and America has had the time to figure out what that number was, and that number is minus $294 billion, $294 billion for smaller classes that America wants, $294 billion for more teachers that America wants, $294 billion for better quality in our education that America wants. The U.S. Senate put that money in for better schools. The Republican Party took it out. The President just recently asked an important question. He asked, ``Is our children learning?'' In this budget, they is not.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I come to the well today to alert the House to a decision that the administration will make this Friday, May 4, extremely important to the future of our forests in this Nation, because this Friday, this administration will either come to the aid, to the preservation of our roadless areas and our Forest Service land, or it will take a dive and refuse, in fact, to defend the law of the United States that is designed to protect these roadless areas in a lawsuit in Idaho. I am here to urge this administration to follow the law, to follow the will of the American people to protect these last remaining roadless areas in our forest lands. Let me tell you why I feel strongly about that. A couple months ago the President came to this Chamber and gave a speech that was well received. One of the things he said, he quoted Yogi Berra, which I liked, he quoted Yogi Berra in the famous quote, ``When you come to a fork in the road, take it.'' But unfortunately, recently this President has taken the fork and he stuck it in every environmental policy that has come before him on his plate. May 4, this Friday, is an opportunity for this President to change that pattern of failure for our environment by, in fact, defending the roadless area policy that needs defending in a lawsuit in Idaho. Let me tell you why, clearly, the administration ought to take these steps. Number one, the American people want it. In one of the most exhaustive processes in adopting the roadless area policy, we have come to a very clear consensus that in fact the American people want this roadless policy. They want their wilderness areas protected. They want their old growth protected from the incursions of roads for clear- cutting, for oil drilling, for mining. How do I know that? I know that because the Forest Service conducted over 600 meetings over the last couple of years in every corner of this country. In my State of Washington they had scores of meetings, in towns like Morton and Okanagan, not just Seattle, but little areas, 600 meetings, where over 1.6 million Americans told their Federal Government what they thought about the roadless policy. The results were amazing. In Washington State there were tens of thousands of people who contacted their government. You know what they told their Federal Government? Ninety-six percent of the people who responded in the State of Washington told their Federal Government to protect these roadless areas. As a consequence, the last administration issued a rule that did exactly that, that followed 96 percent of the people in the State of Washington, who responded to this issue, to protect these roadless areas. So it seems to me, when 96 percent of the people tell their Federal Government what they want, the Federal Government ought to respond, ought to listen to those wishes. But, unfortunately, following a long series of listening to the special interests, we are very concerned that the Bush administration will in fact take a dive in this lawsuit of folks who are seeking to overturn this rule. The reason I say that is a recent Washington Post article that revealed that the administration had asked the Attorney General for ways to get out from underneath this rule, to in fact take a dive. We had testimony in my Committee on Resources a couple of weeks ago where a Department of Agriculture official revealed, in fact, they had been asked about how to do exactly that in this rule. That would be wrong. What would be right would be to listen to the will of the American people and let this roadless policy stand. I will tell you why Americans feel so strongly about it. It is my second point here today. This roadless area policy is required to respond to certain American values of taking care of your natural world, to preserve it for your heritage and your kids and grandkids and great-grandkids. In fact, what we found the testimony in these 600 meetings revealed is, people do not want to see their salmon habitats destroyed by clear- cutting, because what we found in the State of Washington is, when you do this clear-cutting in these roadless areas, you get erosion off the hills and that silts up the salmon streams and that destroys the salmon and that creates an endangered species, and that ends salmon fishing in the Northwest, a heritage that we have enjoyed throughout the generations. This roadless area is designed to prevent the end of salmon in the Pacific Northwest and other places. We need this administration to listen to the people who said we want to preserve our salmon. So, Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I just want to say it is not the time to start drilling in our National Forests. We ought to stick with this roadless policy. It certainly would be wrong to drill in our National Forests at the same time we do not increase the average mileage for our vehicles.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, let us be candid. This debate is all about preserving the woman's right of choice. It is about preserving a woman's right of choice at the beginning of this debate, it is about preserving a woman's right of choice at the middle of this debate, and at the conclusion of this debate, it will be all about preserving a woman's right of choice. The women of America who are afraid of losing that right sincerely, and rightfully so, understand this debate. They understand that if the desire of this Chamber is to punish, to give jail time, to give long periods of incarceration to any heinous criminal who attacks a pregnant woman, we would pass a bill that would do that with 435 votes, and the bill that the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren) has brought before us does exactly that. Now, why cannot intelligent members of this House, 435, come together on a bill that does exactly that? Why can we not design a bill like that? The reason is that certain folks who want to take away a woman's right of choice. And I understand that their beliefs are sincere, and I respect their beliefs, but their beliefs do not respect the U.S. Constitution. Those folks have proposed language that is trying to set the stage to end the right of choice in this country. It is a calculated, concerted, and long-term plan to do that. Let me tell my colleagues why that is important. Every morning I walk by the U.S. Supreme Court building. I live right across the street from the Supreme Court building, and every morning I look at that building, and when one looks at that building, one understands that if one vote changes, as the current President of the United States will attempt to do, there will be no longer constitutional protection in this country for a woman's right of choice, and that issue will be here in this Chamber. Those who resist the approach of the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lofgren), those who resist the thing that would get 435 votes, those who resist the approach that brings union, not disunion, to this Chamber, seek to set the stage for a legislative taking away of a woman's right of choice as soon as the Supreme Court's protection for a woman's right of choice is taken away from American women. That is what this debate is about. Support the Lofgren amendment. That is the goal we want to pursue, with 435 votes.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, we have come to the floor today to offer a critique of the President's first 100 days in office. I think it is only fair that before we offer some of our valid criticisms, that we recognize where praise is due. I think before you give a new person on the job a critique, you always start with something positive. I want to start with something positive for the President. President Bush's FEMA director, Joe Albaugh, has done a good job responding to the Seattle earthquake, Mr. Speaker. We had this earthquake out in Seattle. He sent Mr. Albaugh out there and they have done a crackerjack job responding to my constituents' problems and we have appreciated it out there in Puget Sound country. But, Mr. Speaker, there has been another earthquake of longer ramifications in my State and that is the earthquake of these incredibly high energy prices, electrical rates that are going up 30, 50, 100 percent, people who are charging wholesale electrical rates five, 10, 20 times higher than were just charged last year. Wholesale electrical generators, many of whom happen to be from the President's home State, who were charging $20 a megawatt-hour last year are now charging $250, $500 a megawatt-hour, 10 to 20 times what they charged last year. Mr. Speaker, you can imagine what that is doing to the economy of my State. We have had 400 people laid off from a pulp and paper mill that has shut down. We have got small business owners that are curtailing hours. We have got the prospect of 40,000 jobs lost as a result of these incredible price hikes. What has this President offered the people of the West Coast, Washington, Oregon and California, in the face of this crisis? Nothing. We have come to this President and offered meaningful price mitigation legislation. We have asked him to urge FERC to ask for a meeting in the next hour or so to potentially consider a response to do something about these incredibly obscene prices that are not justified by cost, not justified by new generating capability but are only occurring due to folks who are gaming the system. What has he said? ``Let them eat cake.'' He said this is just a California problem. It is a Marie Antoinette energy policy and my constituents are suffering because of it. We are continuing to urge this President to give up this sort of mantra that this is just a California problem. California is still attached to the rest of the country. The earthquake has not caused it to be separated. My constituents in the State of Washington are suffering just as badly as the constituents, if not worse, in California. We need this President to recognize he is the President for all the people, not just those in Texas, not just for the generators in Texas but he has got a responsibility to the people I represent. We need him to work with us to design a price mitigation strategy. If he will do that, he will win the applause of the folks on the West Coast. Until that happens, Mr. Speaker, he is getting a D-inus when it comes to this energy crisis on the West Coast. We need his help and we are here to ask for it. The second issue, Mr. Speaker, is on the environment. The President's first days, first 100 days, have been tremendously inspirational. They are inspiring people to come up to me in bus stops, in grocery stores, on the ferry boat and they are saying, Jay, can you stop him? Can you fight him? Can you fight him when he is trying to cut the Hanford nuclear cleanup budget? Can you fight him when he is trying to loosen arsenic rules? Can you fight him when he is trying to allow drilling in the Arctic refuge? Can you fight him when he wants to loosen the roadless area policies so that they can do clear-cutting in our roadless areas, the last remaining nonclear-cutted areas in the country? He has been an inspirational figure. He has inspired people who have never before lifted a political finger to get out there and get active to try to resist this environmental jihad that is going on right now. Mr. Speaker, I believe that when the votes come up on the floor of this House, those inspirational messages will be heard and we will defeat this President in his effort to drill in the Arctic and we will have an opportunity to defeat this attack on the roadless area policy, because what my constituents are telling me, Mr. Speaker, is that in the first 100 days of this President's administration, his environmental message has been, ``Leave no special interest behind.'' We are going to continue this fight.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, as Members of Congress, we spend countless hours in this chamber discussing issues related to juvenile crime, and we all agree that we must do more than merely punish juvenile criminals--we must develop programs in our communities to keep our youth from becoming criminals in the first place. I rise today to pay special tribute to some wonderful individuals from the Snohomish County Prosecutor's office that are helping our young people to become healthy, productive, law-abiding citizens. These volunteers, in collaboration with local schoolteachers, conduct the Courtrooms to Classrooms program. This innovative program, funded through a federal grant, provides young students an opportunity to learn nonviolent problem solving techniques and avoid self-destructive behaviors. Initiated by Prosecuting Attorney James Krider and adapted by Lynn Mattson-Eul, the Courtrooms to Classrooms's curriculum allows students to: bound with positive role models, appreciate how laws influence their daily lives, learn about our justice system, and explore new career options from local prosecuting attorneys. The Courtrooms to Classroom program assists students in understanding the individual responsibilities one has as a member of society, and developing analytical skills when making routine and serious decisions. One of the highlights of the program is the mock trial of the storybook character ``Goldilocks.'' It is obvious that the important lessons these young people take away from the Courtrooms to Classrooms program will stay with them the rest of their lives. I encourage my fellow colleagues to join me in thanking the following individuals for taking the time to improve this country by participating in the lives of our children. Those individuals are: Kathy Jo Kristof, Scott Lord, Becky Quirk, Walt Sowa, Charlie Blackman, Julie Twito, Jim Townsend, Paul Stern, Mara Rozzano, Aaron Shields, Jason Cummings, Tom Curtis, Chris Dickinson, Colleen St. Clair, Dave Kurtz, Randy Yates, Dave Thiele, Patricia Lyon, Seth Fine, Steven Bladek, Michael Held, John Swanson, Serena Hart, Kerri Oseguera, Sandra Walters, Marie Turk, Ted Mueser, Mark Roe, Craig Matheson, Lisa Paul, Remy Leonard, Barbara Finnie, Matt Hunter, John Stansell, Kathy Patterson, Craig Bray, Cindy Larsen, Erica Temple, Hal Hupp, Ed Stemier, George Appel, Karen Jorgensen-Peters, Lisa Hanna, Linda Scoccia, Tim Geraghty, Sherry King, Karen Moore, Dave Wold, Diane Kremenich, Susan Lewis, Debbie Cicardini, Karen Kahmann, Diana Kinnebrew, Patricia Bear, Tricia Bryant, Anna Clark, Chery Park, Amy Matthiesen, and Cheri Wantola.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's leadership in getting this group together. I just have a couple of points I want to make; and perhaps it expands on a few issues people have been talking about. First is personal disappointment by a guy who turned 50. I turned 50 last week, and it made me think about, besides imminent mortality, of course, the generation we are in and how this budget is such a disappointment to those of us who are in the baby boom generation and really see this as an opportunity for the baby boom generation to grow up; a real opportunity for the baby boom generation, who at times have been accused of being a little self-absorbed, a little selfish, to really decide we are going to do something pretty dramatic, which is take responsibility for our own retirement. Because the baby boom generation with all of our great attributes, having given birth to the Beach Boys and rock and roll and some of those good things we brought to the country, but what we give to the country is a prospective economic collapse starting about 10 years from now when we start to retire. This budget which we are going to vote on in the next few days is really going to tell us what the baby boomer generation is about, whether we are going to be about irresponsibility and sort of hiding behind these fiscal hallucinations saying these things are honky dory for the last 10 years and pass the majority's budget, or whether the baby boom generation is going to stand up and say we are going to be responsible for our own retirement. Because everybody knows from the Members the gentleman has up here today shows that when we start to retire 10 years from now, that looks fairly decent the next 10 years, but the day we start to retire 10 years from now all heck breaks lose, and we go right down back into the enormous hole in Social Security and Medicare benefits, unless we make some investments today in our future and paying down the debt and taking care of Social Security and Medicare, which this budget in a starkly obvious fashion does not do. I do not think this budget is about numbers. This budget is about whether the baby boom generation is going to grow up and take personal responsibility for their own retirement. And this budget proposed by the Republicans says we will not, and I think that is wrong. As a recently turned 50-year-old, I think we ought to stand up and take care of our own retirement. And the majority party has sort of said, they show us these numbers, we have seen their charts, and they say during the next 10 years, we are going to have these rosy surpluses. There may be some surpluses, if things go perfectly. We do not know that, but there may be some. But after those 10 years, what they do not tell you, everything goes negative. It is really interesting. Almost 10 years to the day, almost everything goes negatively very, very rapidly when we start to retire. I think what their economic policy is tantamount to is the guy who has fallen out of the 20-story, the 20th floor of the building, and he goes through and we know the stories, he passes the 10th floor on the way down and the guy says how are you doing, he says okay so far. I think it is time for the baby boomers to reject this budget and take responsibility for our own retirement. It is the right thing to do to our kids and for our kids, and I hope we will be successful as we go down this road.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I, as a Democrat, have an admission to make. I have come before the House to admit that I was fooled into believing that the new administration was actually serious about doing something about global climate change. I was fooled into having hopes that this administration would abide by its promises to show some leadership to do something about carbon dioxide, which is polluting our atmosphere and warming our planet. I had those hopes until yesterday. I want to tell my colleagues why I had those hopes. The new director of the Environmental Protection Agency, former Governor Christie Todd Whitman, said last week that she wanted to work to do something to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from our polluting plants. A few weeks ago, the Secretary of the Treasury said that he believed that this was a serious problem, that it needed to be addressed, and the government could no longer afford to ignore it. The President of the United States last September told the American people and promised the American people that, if elected President of the United States, he would work to curtail carbon dioxide emissions from our power generating plants in this country. A promise, a pledge, a commitment that yesterday was sadly broken when he bowed down to the oil and gas industry and said he was not going to lift a finger to reduce these CO2 emissions, to reduce the pollution that is coming out of our plants. I was fooled, and I am greatly disappointed. But I have not given up, and the reason I have not given up is because I believe that there are good Members on both sides of the aisle in this Chamber who are willing to show some leadership in moving forward on climate change issues. I am just alerting Members of the House to this fact that I do not think we can look to leadership from the White House on this after yesterday's stunning reneging on a promise to the American people, and that we need to show some leadership. I am telling the House this because, if we are going to have action by the Federal Government of doing something about the climate change problem in this country, we in the House are going to need to get out in front of this issue. I know there are Members on both sides of the aisle who are willing to do this. The gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Gilchrest), who is in the chair today, has shown a recognition and some leadership in this regard. To do this, I am urging my fellow Members to do a few things: first, to join our Global Climate Change Caucus, a bipartisan group of Members who are committed to finding common sense and workable means of reducing climate change emissions. Second, I would ask our Members during this tax cut debate that is going on that, no matter what happens in the tax cut, we devote a portion of it to creating incentives for efficient clean energy sources of new technology, wind, solar, fuel cell technology; to bring those technologies to market-based prices; and to use this tax cut debate in a meaningful way on an environmental basis. I ask Members to join the bipartisan group that is working to try to fashion some package of tax cuts that can help these new technologies become a market base so that we can put them in our homes and our houses. I ask Members to cosponsor a bill I have called the Home Energy Generation Act that will allow one when one puts a solar panel on one's home to sell one's excess power back to one's utility and have one's meter run backwards so one gets a credit. There are a lot of things we can do, but I am urging Members of the House to come to the forefront and be leaders because there is going to be a vacuum, unfortunately, out of the White House. Let me tell my colleagues another thing very disturbing that happened yesterday. The President of the United States, when he decided to ignore the explicit promise to the American people on this CO2 emission issue, said the reason he did so was because he was concerned about prices of electricity going up. Well, frankly, that is a surprise to us because, for the last 2 months, we have been asking the President of the United States to do something about electrical prices in the West, and he has refused to do anything about it. We have asked him to adopt a short-term wholesale price cap, to have a circuit breaker to reduce these extraordinary price increases that we are having on the western United States right now. He has refused to even consider it. We let the greatest transfer of wealth from the western United States to generators of electricity since Bonnie and Clyde roamed the prairies because of these huge run-ups in prices, unprecedented, unjustified, and unreasonable. By the way, this is not just me talking. Our own FERC, the Federal Energy Regulation Commission, under the Bush administration made a finding that these prices were unreasonable, unconscionable. I think unconscionable is my language, but at least they said unreasonable. Despite that finding, the administration has refused to lift a finger to limit these extraordinary increases in electrical rates. We believe we are going to ask the administration, we have been asking for 2 months to do that. Let me tell my colleagues why that is so dangerous, Mr. Speaker. I am going to read from the Wall Street Journal article in yesterday's paper, which I will now summarize. We have the possibility of losing 43,000 jobs, this the State of Washington alone, if the administration does not work with this Congress in a bipartisan fashion to adopt wholesale price caps. I hope all my Members will join me in this effort.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, that wrenching sound we heard from Pennsylvania Avenue yesterday was President George Bush breaking a promise to the American people. Last September President Bush promised the American people he would work to reduce carbon dioxide pollution from generating plants. Yesterday he broke that pledge. Despite the fact that since last September the evidence has accumulated rapidly, the global climate change is occurring due to carbon dioxide pollution. Even though that evidence has increased, unfortunately, so has the administration's willingness to follow the dictates of the oil and gas industry. For a President who said that the reason he did this is that he is worried about an energy crisis, we find that laughable in the West, because for the last 2 months we have been asking the President of the United States to do something about energy prices, to impose a short- term wholesale price cap, and he has refused to even consider it. We are going to urge him to reconsider that, because I can promise the Members this, this President broke his promise. It has not broken our spirit to bring Americans clean energy at a reasonable price.

Mr. INSLEE

Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to express a view from the northwest on this subject. I have a child who went through special education, so I am particularly interested on a personal level in this. I just want to make a comment about what happened today with the tax cut as it broadly relates to a lot of issues, and not just special ed. I think it was a great opportunity missed by our new President, our new President who certainly has talked a lot about uniting the country; and yet we found today, with this tax cut brought to the floor of this House with no opportunity to talk to the Democratic Party about the tax cut, or the budget, whatsoever; it was rammed through this House. Frankly, the new President's tax cut had all the uniting qualities of a guillotine in cleaving this House right down the middle with no discussion with the Democrats or the Republicans, for that matter, on a budget, special ed or otherwise. I just want to note that I think it was a tremendous opportunity lost. We are now going to hope that the President talks with us about special ed and some other issues. Let me just mention one of the other casualties of this tax cut, without a budget first. On the very day we had a 6.8 on the Richter scale earthquake in Seattle, the President announced that as part of his efforts to make room for the tax cut, he wanted to kill Project Impact, which is a project that we used in Seattle to help get ready for earthquakes and have earthquake preparedness. We had efforts that went on in Seattle that helped us avoid any loss of life in Seattle as a result of that. But in blind observance of this tax cut, without any consultation with the rest of his government, he wanted to zero out this $25 million project. Why did he do it? The Vice President told us he thought it was an ineffective program. I went to Stevens Elementary School where a one-ton tank of water was over these kids' heads, it was secured and did not collapse, partially as a result of this earthquake preparedness money. Those kids thought it was an effective program. So it is interesting. We asked the FEMA director, Joe Allbaugh, what he thought of this, and he said, well, you know, nobody asked me about this project. They zeroed out a project in the FEMA budget and nobody asked the FEMA director appointed by President Bush and, on educational issues, this was rehab money for school districts, and in the seven schools where this money was used, nobody got hurt and no structures collapsed. Mr. Speaker, I would just point out it is one instance where we had a loss today.