Marcy Kaptur

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, Politico recently reported that U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman is pressing for another trade bill as soon as possible. This one is called the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), to be signed with Asian Pacific countries, about a dozen of them. But whether it is the Obama administration, the Bush I or Bush II administration or the Clinton administration, the executive branch continues to push the same old failed trade model that puts foreign involvement and multinational interests ahead of America's workers and America's businesses. In fact, these deals have cost America millions and millions of jobs as our trade deficit continues to get worse. This TPP proposal is particularly disturbing as a new trade deal. Because, if you look at the results of the first Obama administration trade deal, the Korean deal, you will see the proof is in the pudding that things didn't get better with our economy, they actually got worse. We were told with the Korean free trade deal that America would create 70,000 jobs here at home. Guess what? The fact is, in reality, with the Korean free trade deal, America has lost another 40,000 jobs as a result of that agreement alone. That is about 4,000 jobs lost each month because of the Korean free trade deal. We were promised with the Korean deal that our economy would grow through increased exports by $10 billion to $11 billion. Guess what? In reality, U.S. exports to Korea have actually declined by roughly $800 million since the agreement took effect. Yes, that is a 20 percent decline. That translates into lost jobs and lost income. America was told that if we signed the Korean trade agreement that, actually, our trade deficit would shrink. Well, guess what, the month the Korean trade agreement took effect, the U.S. trade deficit with Korea was $564 billion. It has nearly tripled to $1.6 billion, adding to the sea of red trade-deficit ink and more lost jobs. We were told that America would actually level the playing field in the field of automotive trade if we passed the Korean free trade deal. I didn't vote for it. But guess what? Since the Korean agreement took effect, U.S. exports of motor vehicles to Korea have gone up monthly by, guess what, how much--44 cars--44 cars. That is it. At the same time, guess how many more cars the Koreans are shipping in here per month--20,000. All told, Korea has imported more than 1.5 million motor vehicles to the United States since the agreement took effect. Meanwhile, America has only exported 34,000 cars--only 34,000. That is a 44 to one advantage on Korea's side. That doesn't sound like an agreement that is working to me. Why model the new TPP on that agreement. The Korean deal isn't working. The sad thing is the American people have been told the same free- trade agreement lies for the past quarter century. All the lies that are contained in them have resulted in a sea of red ink that is costing us jobs. It is no surprise America has amassed a $17 trillion budget deficit when you have a $9 trillion accumulated trade deficit over the last 25 years. Too much of our economic powerhouse has been traded away. Mr. Speaker, it is time for Congress to stop these bad trade deals. Focus on creating jobs inside our country. I call on Republican leaders to sideline the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal and bring up my bill H.R. 192, the Balancing Trade Act, as a start. This legislation would require the administration to outline actions to balance the trade deficit with every single country with which we have a trade deficit--including Korea--country by country. America can then again begin to create jobs in this country at a level that the American people expect--to yield a vibrant economy here at home--and grow our middle class forward, not backward.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, during this month of October, the American people honor the life of Polish General Casimir (Kazimierz) Pulaski whose love of liberty, bravery and military prowess in founding the American cavalry played a pivotal role in winning our American Revolution. Let his timeless story inspire generations to come. May the eagles that soar over both our lands--as symbols of liberty--strengthen our partnership in freedom's cause. Onward. Commemorating the Life of Polish General Kazimierz Pulaski Thank you to all who have gathered here today to remember and to commemorate the contributions of General Casimir Pulaski to our nation's victory in the American Revolution and to passing to us the blessings of liberty. As a young child, I first learned his name as the street on which our grandparents lived which was named ``PULASKI''. Kazimierz Pulaski was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1745, 268 years ago, son of Polish Count Jozef Pulaski and Marianna Zielinska. Within a little more than two decades, he would come to be known as a freedom fighter and ``the father of the American cavalry.'' Through his family in Poland, Pulaski became involved at a very early age--age 15--in political and military activity. He accompanied his father and other members of the Polish nobility to publicly oppose the Prussian, Russian, and Austrian empires' designs on dominating their Polish homeland. Pulaski pushed for Polish independence, free of outside interference. When he was outlawed in his homeland by the Russian empire after initial uprisings failed, he decided to travel to Paris, France, in a self imposed exile. In so doing, he came to befriend Benjamin Franklin, a father of our country, who also had travelled to France imbued with the spirit of the French Revolution and its values of liberty, equality, fraternity. They both were seeking alternatives to the empire-driven political systems of the European continent. Franklin was captivated with the ideas of the Enlightenment as he tried to help lead a fledgling nation, casting off the oppression of Great Britain's monarchy. Franklin was impressed by Pulaski and wrote of him to George Washington: ``Count Pulaski of Poland, is an officer famous throughout Europe for his bravery and conduct in defense of the liberties of his country against the three great invading powers of Russia, Austria and Prussia . . . he may be highly useful to our service.'' A century before their encounter, new ideas of how people should live, and govern themselves, were brewing and emerging on a European continent fraught with empires and suppression of individual liberty. These ideas were transformational concepts in human history. They revolved around how people should live and govern themselves. The new concepts emphasized democracy not monarchy; equality not subservience nor serfdom; liberty not repression; freedom of thought and reason, not dogma nor emotion; freedom of expression not regimented thought; freedom of press, not propaganda; and full separation of church and state, not theocratic control of government. For those of us living in the 21st century, with our nation an heir of Enlightenment thinking, perhaps we have become so accustomed to our way of life that we forget how radical these thoughts were at the time. Let us remember what a price was paid for their emergence globally. Pulaski's life reminds us of that early struggle of our founders to build a new America, casting off the remnants of old empires. Pulaski volunteered his services in the Revolutionary War of the United States. America's founders were about building a brand new nation girded by Enlightenment ideals. That struggle did not happen overnight. In fact we should recall that almost 4 decades after Pulaski first volunteered, the new America was still fighting for its future. The ballad ``Battle of New Orleans'' recounts America's fight to finally drive the British from its territory. You might recall the words from the last great land Battle in the War of 1812 . . .``in 1814, we took a little trip, along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip. We took a little bacon and we took a little beans, and we caught the bloody British in a town called New Orleans.'' Of course, this year of 2013, our region of the United States is commemorating the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Lake Erie, when Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry defeated the British in Lake Erie, the only time the British Navy has ever lost a battle on the high seas. The British monarchy finally was driven out of the westernmost reaches of the new America. So, imagine, Casimir Pulaski fighting bravely 33 years earlier before the War of 1812, at the dawn of the American Revolution. To my knowledge, there are no ballads written yet about his achievements, though they are legendary and worthy of expression. Pulaski travelled in 1777 to Philadelphia--America's first capital--a decade before our Constitution was drafted and signed. He wrote to Washington: ``I came here, where freedom is being defended, to serve it, and to live or die for it.'' Washington knew that the colonies had no trained cavalry, so he met with Pulaski and introduced him to Marquis de Lafayette and John Hancock. Pulaski showed off some of his riding abilities, and tried to convince Washington of the superiority of the cavalry over the infantry. And in Sept. 1777 Washington persuaded the Continental Congress to give Pulaski temporary command of the Cavalry. On that very same day, Pulaski pushed back the Birdshot at the Battle of Brandywine in which he came to the aid of Washington's forces and demonstrated his brilliant military tactics. He saved Washington's Army from defeat, and some have recorded he took a bullet aimed at George Washington himself. Congress acknowledged Pulaski's leadership and commissioned him as a Brigadier General. He was placed in command of four light cavalry regiments. But, Pulaski as a foreigner had difficulty with the Continental Congress allowing him to fight. So he asked Washington to allow him to start his own legion. He even offered to pay for them. Congress finally agreed. With 68 horses and 200 foot soldiers, the Pulaski Legion would become the colonists' first fully trained cavalry. He spent the winter of 1777 to 1778 at Valley Forge with most of the army. He was then ordered to defend Little Egg Harbor in New Jersey and then Minisink on the Delaware; Washington then ordered him to proceed South to Charleston, South Carolina. During the Battle of Savannah, on October 9, 1779, Pulaski was wounded by cannon as he charged into battle on horseback. He fell to the ground, mortally wounded. He died from complications from that wound. But Pulaski was so respected for his courage, even by his enemies, that he was spared the musket and permitted to be carried from the battlefield. He died on Oct 15, 1779 at age 34. There is a Pulaski Monument erected in his honor, on Monterrey Square in Savannah, Georgia. In 1791, twelve years after his death, his homeland in Poland adopted a new constitution modeled on that of the U.S. Constitution, which just had been adopted in 1789. The Polish Constitution too was a revolutionary document as Poland became the first nation in Europe to outlaw serfdom. Indeed, her constitution was so threatening to Europe's empires, Poland was wiped off the map of Europe for 126 years emerging as a nation after World War I and the Peace Treaty of Versailles due significantly to the friendship between U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and Polish pianist Ignacy Paderewski. Many national recognitions of Pulaski's contributions to America's victory in our Revolution have been accomplished. On October 29, 1779, the U.S. Congress passed a resolution that a monument be dedicated to him. The first memorial was built in 1854 and a bust of Pulaski was added to busts of other heroes in the U.S. Capitol in 1867. In 1910, President William Taft of Ohio unveiled a Congress-sponsored General Casimir Pulaski statue. In 1929, Congress passed a General Pulaski Memorial Day. There is a federal observance of General Pulaski Memorial Day commemorating Pulaski's death from wounds suffered at the Siege of Savannah on October 9, 1779. After a previous attempt failed, on Nov. 6, 2009, President Barack Obama signed a joint resolution of the U.S. Senate and House conferring on Pulaski an honorary American citizenship, 230 years after his death, making him the 7th person so honored. Today, we, here in the heart of Cleveland, again bear witness and respectfully remember General Casimir Pulaski. We express our gratitude in America's third century for his bravery and vision. And we collectively join together, as eagles fly above both our nations, to say: Long live his memory, long live America, long live Poland and long live liberty.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank Chairman Mica so very much for the privilege of extending the deepest condolences of the people of Ohio to the Young family, to the constituents of Congressman Bill Young's district in Florida. It was such a privilege to know him. Truly, he was not just a vigilant patriot, though that surely would have been enough, but he really was a man of the House. He belonged here, and his people knew that for over four decades. When I think of Bill Young, I think of words like ``courage,'' ``perseverance,'' ``insight,'' and ``fair play.'' He had a gentlemanly demeanor at any time that I ever encountered him. He had a respect for regular order, for the gavel, and for seniority, which I share. He had a fortitude about him that people in my part of the country call real ``spunk,'' and he had a sparkle in his eye and an easy smile and an understanding. He was such a real human being. Part of that is the fact that he grew up very poor in Pennsylvania in a coal town in an old shack. He really knew what poverty was. He didn't have an easy childhood and he never forgot that. Yet he rose to be a master appropriator. In that capacity, he was not imperious but collegial, and he handled the gavel with fair play. He loved his wife, Beverly, so much. I can still see her sitting in the gallery or coming unannounced into a committee meeting. He loved his family and he loved Florida. He worked so hard for the men and women in our armed services and our veterans, certainly in his own State where right near him is the Bay Pines Veterans Medical Center, the fourth largest veterans facility in the country, but also all the operations of SOUTHCOM, as in his last decade of service dealing with all that we have to on the Defense Subcommittee in terms of the wars being conducted in Afghanistan and, of course, Iraq. He was engaged in all the intelligence at the highest levels and kept his good measure. His endurance and his heroic battles in these years that all of us witnessed showed the true measure of the man. In closing, Madam Speaker, I would just like to say I will be seeing Bill Young in all the old familiar places, not just here on the floor, but as we travel in codels to some of the most godforsaken places on Earth, as we visit some of the highest level research facilities in our country and our men and women in uniform. I shall always remember Bill Young and be grateful for having been able to serve with him.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise in tribute to our former colleague, Congressman Major Owens of Brooklyn, New York. Major and I were elected in the class of 1998 and had the joy of serving together for several decades. He was a fighter for learning and perhaps the first librarian ever elected to the Congress of the United States. He came from Brooklyn, far from where I lived, but his predecessor, Shirley Chisholm, was the only Member of Congress that in our first campaign came to campaign for me. I shall never forget that. Major was a social critic, and he was a voice from a Brooklyn that I only imagined as a child with the Brooklyn Dodgers. With the old Ebbets Field torn down, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, and baseball changed forever from a human institution where the players came from that region to an enterprise where they were traded like chattel. Major understood the difference, and the work that he did here, whether it was fighting for learning, fighting for libraries, fighting for jobs in America, for the training of workers, he handled in a very measured way. He had a poetic sense about him when he came to the floor many times in the evening and delivered some of his handwritten lines. Through his work both in Brooklyn and for our country, he helped to build a better America, and he left us a better place for his service. I wish to extend to his family and to his former constituents the deep sympathy of the people of Ohio. He was an honest man and an honorable man, and it was a great privilege to serve with him those many years which seem just like yesterday.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. The greatest power a banker has is to create money. Banks can also abuse that awesome power. And it seems like the bigger the banks are the more they abuse that power. Let me relate a vivid example: It was over 5 years ago that America was hit with the great Wall Street-induced recession. Five years later, those banks are still paying our people--their customers--almost nothing if customers have deposits or certificates of deposit with those institutions. That is harming seniors across this country. That is harming people who are trying to make a go of it. It is harming investors. Meanwhile, banks continue to post huge profits, especially the very biggest ones that are market controllers--for example, JPMorgan Chase, just in the last year, took $21 billion in profit; Wells Fargo, $19 billion; Goldman Sachs, $7.5 billion in profits; Citigroup, $7.5 billion; Bank of America, $4 billion--while Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet and recuperate from that Great Recession. Now, it has been reported this week that JPMorgan Chase will agree to a $13 billion settlement of the civil suit filed by the United States Department of Justice and the Federal Housing Finance Agency in order to resolve several investigations into their fraudulent mortgage securities business. One question I have with that $13 billion: Are they actually going to pay it, or is JPMorgan Chase going to use it as a deduction on their taxes as a business expense or some other tax dodge that their accountants and lawyers figure out? From September 7, 2005, through September 19, 2007, JPMorgan and its affiliates knowingly misrepresented the value and quality of their mortgage bonds that it sold to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The result of their actions are reverberating still throughout our economy, as foreclosure rates in places like Ohio continue to go up. They are still above the national average. In August, foreclosure starts in Ohio were up 44 percent from the previous month, for a total that month of 9,542 foreclosure filings. Tens of thousands of people are being affected from coast to coast. Minority neighborhoods were especially harmed by the financial crisis. A report by the Urban Institute estimates the loss of home equity in African American households as a result of the foreclosure crisis is at $194 billion. All the wealth that was accumulated since World War II vaporized. They were hit very hard. Hispanic communities lost $177 billion in home equity during the same time period. Awesome. Although a settlement has been reached in this particular case, this should not be the end of the investigation into Wall Street banks because JPMorgan and their brethren have proven to be repeat offenders. Criminal charges should be pursued, not just civil. This settlement is just one of many recent penalties that JP has had to pay. In June 2011, JPMorgan had to pay $153 million in penalties to the Securities and Exchange Commission for misleading investors about a collateralized debt obligation. In August 2012, the bank had to pay $1.2 billion for what it had done to conspire with VISA and MasterCard to set the price of credit card and debit interchange fees. In July of this year, JPMorgan had to pay $410 million in penalties and repayments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission for revealing that the bank had been manipulating the California and Midwest electricity markets from September 2010 to November 2012. JPMorgan Chase had to pay a $100 million fine for reckless conduct and market manipulation in connection with its 2012 London Whale trading scandal. The question I have: Can they deduct any of these penalties from the taxes they pay, or are they really paying back in full those penalties to the government of the United States free and clear to pay back the American people for their criminal behavior? In the past 3 years, JPMorgan has posted year-after-year record profits, driven by their stock prices. Last year, the firm made $21.3 billion. Therefore, with this recent settlement, it would be about only half of their most recent profits. For a frame of reference, there are only seven Dow Jones Industrial Average companies that made more than $13 billion profits last year. We can say to ourselves, Would these fines, if they were really paid, do any harm to JPMorgan? Think about this. They have $87 billion in reserves and their total assets are valued, by their own accounts, at over $2.25 trillion. That is a ``wow,'' by any account. The result of all of this misbehavior is many Americans have lost all of their accumulated equity. Mr. Speaker, it is time to restore prudent banking. I ask my colleagues to sign on to H.R. 129, the Return To Prudent Banking Act of 2013. Let's restore the Glass-Steagall Act and the value of our money.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I thank Ranking Member Lowey for yielding me time. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the Senate's bipartisan compromise to end the government shutdown, reopen the government, avert a debt default, and pay our bills to spur economic growth and job creation in this country. This compromise today is what the American people expect of us. They are tired of the partisan bickering and the economic uncertainty that the deadlock has created. The biggest challenge facing our country is creating growth to help to balance the budget. We can start by coming together on a budget agreement. So let's restore regular order. Let the Budget Committee go back to work. Let the Ways and Means Committee go back to work. Let the Appropriations Committee go back to work under regular order, not just continuing resolutions. And let us move our bills in regular order and not govern from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis. I will vote for this this evening. It is the best we could get under the circumstances, but it is far less than we are capable of.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, it appears a negotiated proposal that is bipartisan will come to a vote before this House today to end the government shutdown and avert a debt default. The American people surely are looking for reassurance that their government will offer them the security and dependability that they expect. Our citizens expect a Nation that is confident and certain, not unsteady and uncertain. With the expectation that this compromise from the Senate will now be brought before the House, the Dow today already is up 200 points. That is what America wants--a growing economy, job creation here at home, a government run efficiently as part of a larger whole in which we all have a stake. As our Nation grows itself out of the deepest recession in modern history, the least any Member can do is do no harm. A working bipartisan majority here in this House holds the power to govern this Nation. All it needs is the will. Frankly, the world depends on the certainty of the U.S. dollar. Let's get back to regular order. America's challenge is to grow our economy and the jobs that go with it. Mr. Speaker, let's vote to end the shutdown today, pay our bills, and get America back to work for the American people. It is overtime.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the Republican shutdown of government and their move to default on our debt are like forcing the wrong medicine on a sick patient--you might get them to take it, but it could kill them. The only way America can pay back our Nation's debt is through economic growth and job creation, not bad medicine. Let's not forget that we are still digging our way out from the Wall Street-induced Great Recession. Where did the $17 trillion of national debt come from? The Wall Street recession cost American households $19.2 trillion in lost wealth and the country 8.8 million jobs. Under President Obama, we have had 42 consecutive months of job growth, leading to 7.5 million jobs being created, unlike in the Bush years when there wasn't a single job created. In fact, we lost over a half a million jobs. In the last 12 months of the Bush years, the country lost 4.6 million jobs. Let's not forget that America has accumulated an $8.4 trillion trade deficit since 1975 and that we have racked up $4 trillion in unpaid-for war spending. So what is the Republican solution? Shut down the government. Don't pay the bills. The latest idea is to govern by supercommittee. Mr. Speaker, we need to restore regular order, to move bills, to create jobs, and keep America's promises to our debtors. Let's nurse our Nation back to health, and stop continuing the economic pain with bad medicine.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on House Republicans to end the Federal Government shutdown. The shutdown is causing significant negative impacts on our economy, jobs, and consumer confidence across our country. The number of people applying for unemployment benefits jumped by 66,000 this week. Local economies across our Nation are losing $76 million a day from people not able to visit our Nation's parks. Just in one location, the closing of Zion National Park in Utah has cost the surrounding community over $3.5 million in lost visitor spending. The Head Start program already has turned away over 7,000 children across this country. U.S. consumer confidence has deteriorated in October to its weakest in 9 months, since the first Federal shutdown over 17 years ago. The Federal shutdown is stalling almost 130 highway and bridge projects in 35 States, which means lost jobs. Mr. Speaker, let's end this uncertainty for our Nation. Let's stop the battering of jobs in this economy. Bring a clean continuing resolution to the floor and reopen the government of the United States.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Oregon, Congressman Earl Blumenauer.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would thank the chairman for that courtesy and just say that I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this particular piecemeal continuing resolution. Hopefully, others will come to their senses and we will be able to vote for a clean continuing resolution, which I think the majority of members of our subcommittee would appreciate, so we can reopen the government and deal with all of the responsibilities that we have under this particular bill and meet our responsibilities to energy and water across this country. I thank the gentleman for his courtesy, and I hope to reciprocate sometime.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I want to thank my colleague, Congressman Frelinghuysen, for his comments though, obviously, I have serious reservations about this bill because our country has been the world's shining example in how a democratic Republic can actually work efficiently, successfully, and democratically. Yet, today, we continue with the shenanigans from a minority of the majority, wasting God's good time. For my colleagues who are listening, and for the country, let me say this bill should be coming to the floor at a level of $31 billion to meet the national security, energy, and water needs of this country. The measure before us today contains $10.6 billion and only deals with the nuclear security portion of the legislation. That is simply not sufficient for this great country. We cannot continue to be governed by staggering from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis, and the folly--some would say madness-- of what is going on here must be stopped. It is creating great uncertainty inside this economy, and it is harming us globally with our trading partners and with countries who simply can't understand what is happening here. Over the course of the last several weeks, my Republican colleagues have loudly called for compromise. They have said, Negotiate to reopen the government, but, all the while, changing their demands daily and moving the goalpost. They moved it up the field, down the field, off the field. We start the day and never know exactly where we are. Mr. Speaker, the Democratic Members of this House have agreed to a total spending level that is the Republican level of $986 billion for all of our bills. That is not a number I personally agree with. It will not meet our Nation's needs, but it is a compromise offered in good faith to move our country forward. My advice to all those who are listening is to bring that clean continuing resolution with the Republican budget number in it to the floor. Let's reopen the government, and we can deal with our tangential issues that have nothing to do with operating the Government of the United States. Our economy is still in the process of recovering from a horrible Great Recession. We have still not come back to the preemployment levels in this country that were so deeply harmed by the Wall Street- induced housing crisis. Shouldn't we be debating ways to spur economic growth, not continuing to debate a shutdown that is slowing economic growth? Under the Obama administration, we have had 42 consecutive months of economic growth. We are crawling out of a mammoth hole. The American people view the disarray here as very, very destabilizing to their own security because they are worried about their futures, and what is going on here adds to their anxiety. For the entire country, the Republican shutdown is already having real and negative consequences. Over 800,000 workers have been furloughed. They are having to borrow on their credit cards because they don't know how they are going to make their mortgage payment. They have to put their kids in school. They have to buy groceries. From coast-to-coast, we know--although we don't have people in place at the Department of Labor right now--that over 66,000--up to 300,000-- more unemployment claims have now been filed in the country because of what is going on due to these 800,000 more people that have gotten some form of a pink slip. For the entire country, this shutdown is wrong and unnecessary. The impacts will be felt across this economy--and already are--in the services that the American taxpayers pay for and that the Federal Government has, up to now, provided. As we continue to shortchange critical energy and infrastructure investments so vital to a strong economy, we will witness, as dusk follows dawn, the slowing of economic growth and the hindering of American competitiveness. Let me turn to what is not funded by the piecemeal approach that this bill represents. Our bill should be coming to the floor with all the parts of the Department of Energy and Army Corps of Engineers and National Nuclear Security Administration in it. The bill should be coming to us at a level of $31 billion. The bill is but one-third of that. At a level of $10.6 billion, it is two-thirds underfunded. Let me turn to what is not funded in the bill that is before us. First of all, the Corps of Engineers, one of the most important instrumentalities in our government to create jobs, is not even in this cynical bill. Communities across our country will continue to feel the consequences of this decreased investment. We should be doing more to prevent flooding, to build infrastructure, to create jobs, not less. For those of you who have been yelling from the rooftops about the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, this bill does nothing--zero--for your ports and harbors. This bill does not fund any of the energy technology accounts so critical to our Nation becoming energy independent again. As our foreign competitors double down to develop 21st century technology-- look at the Chinese stealing our solar technology--and undermine our markets through illegal dumping and intellectual property poaching, our choice in this bill: do nothing. So, renewable energy will receive cost competitiveness by whom? Which countries will succeed? Who will develop it and own that technology? According to this, we are ceding the turf to them, ceding the field to them. If you look at U.S. trade accounts, you don't have to be a mathematical genius. What is the number one category of trade deficit of this country? Imported energy. And what is the number two category of trade deficit? Automotive and automotive parts. It is all connected. If America doesn't heal those accounts, we become weaker as a country; we have fewer jobs here at home, less wealth creation here at home. And this particular bill is absent any forward thinking about new energy systems for our country. The United States has spent $2.3 trillion importing petroleum just since 2003. I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we have a $17 trillion debt that we have to pay off. We sure do. And where do you think it has come from? It has come from the lack of wealth creation inside this country for a quarter of a century, starting with imported energy. This represents thousands and thousands and millions of jobs across this country lost and dollars out of the pockets of working-class Americans who see their purchases of fuel transferred to build giant hotels in Dubai, supporting universities in Dubai, all across the Middle East, while we see companies close, communities shut down, Detroit go bankrupt; and all these problems because we are not energy independent and we are not transportation independent. These are dollars spent not in much-needed job creation but siphoned off overseas, assisting our competitors in developing their economies and their energy futures, not our own. Is it any wonder that America has a debt? It is rooted in very major holes inside this economy. You could start with two wars. What did those cost us? Probably $4 trillion to $6 trillion--unpaid for. There wasn't any war tax imposed when President Bush took us to war. I remember Donald Rumsfeld saying, Well, you have got to go to war with the military you have. Well, they borrowed to do that, and now this President has begun to keep his promise to the American people. We are out of Iraq and we are moving out of Afghanistan, as we try to hold those sad places together with our allies. The housing crisis of 2008, it is anybody's guess what that cost us, but we know it hollowed out money creation in this country. We have the largest transfer of wealth and loss of equity in modern history. Do you think you crawl out of that in a month or 2 months? It takes years. We have had 42 months of steady job creation. The trade deficit, America hasn't had a balanced trade account in three decades. Since 1975, the cumulative trade deficit of this country was $8.4 trillion. There was more petroleum coming in here from abroad than American energy exports out, more cars and auto parts in here from abroad than cars and auto parts out, and more electronics components coming in here than American electronics exports out. So if you add up $8.4 trillion of trade deficit, $6 trillion of war expenditures, if you take the cost of the meltdown on Wall Street--only God knows how many trillions that cost us--is it any wonder that the United States has a budget deficit and debt and the Federal Government is trying to hold the Republic together and our 50 States from coast-to-coast? It is pretty clear to me what is going on here. So we look at this bill. Our Republic will not compete in the 21st century and beyond if we further reduce investments in energy and cede our energy future to other countries. The bill before us today does nothing about that. In fact, in one of the most important related sectors to us, manufacturing, this bill does nothing in manufacturing. One of the reasons we don't have as much economic muscle in this country is because every community you go to, what do you see? Shuttered factories. Every product you pick up, what does it say? ``Made in China.'' Anytime I go to the store and find anything made in America, I buy it in hopes that it will help somebody somewhere along the way. This bill does nothing for manufacturing. We have lost 15 percent of our manufacturing jobs. And it isn't just because of technology; it is because they have been shipped out, outsourced, made in China, not made in the USA, made in countries some of my constituents don't even know where they are, and these goods come in here. And every time American jobs get displaced in the manufacturing sector, 8.8 million manufacturing jobs disappear. Manufacturing is one of the most important drivers in our economy, and yet we have a huge trade deficit in manufacturing. There is little merit in using Federal dollars to foster technological advances or breakthroughs for products that are not ultimately manufactured domestically in our country. This bill usually provides a means for us to do more to reverse the trend of domestic firms shifting manufacturing overseas because, to put it simply, domestic manufacturing drives domestic innovation, and that drives wealth creation and job creation in our country. This bill does nothing in the advanced manufacturing sector--off the table. How sad. How sad for those people across our country who know the value added from manufacturing. This bill does nothing for science or advanced science and energy. Return on investments from our publicly funded research and development ranges from 20 to 67 percent. What a bang for the buck. With this rate of return, we should be passing a bill that invests in science and high sciences, but that is not happening inside this bill. In fact, across this country, at all of our major labs, the workers are furloughed or have the threat of being furloughed hanging over them--at Livermore, at Sandia, at Argonne. The brain power of this country is being put on the shelf while they watch this charade here inside this Chamber. This bill does nothing to address the funding for the Office of Environmental Management, whose mission is to complete the safe cleanup of what they call an ``environmental legacy'' and that I call a ``nuclear mess,'' brought about by five decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research. So what do we do to clean up nuclear mess around our country in this bill? Zero. We do nothing. What about our promises to the people who live near those communities? What about those who sacrifice so much for America's nuclear superiority? We shut the door. So long. Nothing. There is nothing in this bill. This energy and water bill is one of the most critical investments we can make in this country. It should promote job creation. It should ensure national security. It should protect and promote our vital infrastructure and advance American competitiveness through energy independence and through strengthening manufacturing and scientific capability right here at home, right here in the good old USA. Unfortunately, a minority of the majority of Republicans is choosing to ignore all of these critical investments in order to execute a blatantly political stunt that is already harming our country, upsetting our people, and tamping down on job growth. Mr. Speaker, our Nation is stronger when we come together. We as a people can solve the serious challenges facing our country; yet here we find ourselves today again, wasting time on a lopsided bill which only extends the GOP-driven shutdown. We should be spending our time passing a clean continuing resolution, not holding the entire country hostage to a reckless political stunt that some must get great pleasure out of but that is such a sadistic approach to the governing of this country. We ought to work together toward a long-term solution, not continue to award a faction of one party which has no interest in governing this country. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, might I inquire as to the time remaining on this side, please.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentlelady from New York, Congresswoman Nita Lowey, our esteemed ranking member.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute and 15 seconds to the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hakeem Jeffries.

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the esteemed gentleman from New Mexico, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, as the House Republicans continue to shut down our Federal Government, I rise to draw attention to the impact it is having on our labor markets and job creation in this country. The House Republican shutdown has prevented even the Bureau of Labor Statistics from releasing the September jobs report, and the Bureau is down to just three employees from its usual number, while the Republican shutdown is, in effect, making it impossible to compile the data for a jobs report for our country. All we know is that our labor market, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits, increased somewhere between 66,000 and 300,000 people. We don't know what the unemployment rate actually is because we don't know how many people are looking for work, and we can't find the data. So we don't know what actually happened completely in September and this month. This is creating needless uncertainty in our markets and makes it harder for businesses to know what is actually happening in our economy. Before the House Republicans shut down the government, what we did know about our labor market was we still had 11 million people looking for work following the deepest recession since the Great Depression. Mr. Speaker, it is time for the Republicans to bring the clean continuing resolution to the floor that has their budget number in it, and let's reopen the government.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate fifteen individuals who were recently recognized for outstanding achievement by the Toledo African American Legacy Project. The Toledo African American Legacy Project is dedicated to bringing together people to document and preserve the history of Northwest Ohio's African American communities and to celebrate their impact and influence upon Toledo and the greater world community. The organization honored six people, as well as two posthumously and eight up-and-coming residents during its ninth annual celebration. The six people receiving honors this year were: Myra Waters, who graduated from Toledo's Libbey High School and is now the Director of the Counseling Center and Adjunct Faculty Member at the University of Baltimore. Samuel L. Price, a Scott High School graduate, is a respected businessman and restaurateur. Joseph Sommerville is a Professor Emeritus in the University of Toledo's College of Education. Lola Glover is a champion for our region's marginalized residents and founder of the Coalition for Quality Education. Dr. Crystal Ellis, a Springfield High School graduate, is an educator who became the first African-American superintendent of the Toledo Public Schools. Wilma Brown, also a graduate of Toledo's Scott High School and the first African-American to become president of the Toledo City Council, served the citizens of Toledo in elected office. The Toledo African American Legacy Project also posthumously recognized Daniel Mack, who owned and operated the highly regarded Candlelight Cafe and Robert Powell who owned Toledo's iconic Powell's Beauty and Barbershop. In addition to honoring current leaders from northwest Ohio's African American community, the Toledo African American Legacy Project also highlights young, emerging African American leaders from the region. This year, eight people were recognized for their efforts: Kenyetta Jones an autoworker from Toledo who last year introduced President Obama in Ohio and later addressed the Democratic National Convention; Alicia Smith, an educational coordinator at Toledo's Padua Center; Hope Bland, a field instructor at the University of Toledo and Wayne State University School of Social Work; Merdia Allen, Associate Director of the Office of EXCELlence and Multicultural Student Success programs and part-time instructor at the University of Toledo; Joshua Peterson, an associate at Eastman & Smith Attorneys at Law; William Pierce, Interim Director of Undergraduate Admission at the University of Toledo; Rodney Eason, Jr., Director of Human Resources at The Andersons; and Keith Jordan, President of the Toledo Board of Community Relations. I join our community in congratulating this year's African American Legacy Project honorees. Each person's contributions have made us stronger and bettered the lives of many in our region. We salute the efforts of each honoree.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, the majority party's latest idea is to create a supercommittee to figure out how to reverse their Republican shutdown of government. Frankly, Congress doesn't need another committee. It only needs the Speaker to unlock the Tea Party chains put on regular committee order and their function in this House. Let the Appropriations Committee do its job as mandated by our Constitution. It can and will get the job done. Though it is not my first preference, we can begin by allowing a vote on a clean continuing resolution, that is, allowing the Senate bill which contains the Republican budget mark of $986 billion to move forward. Though the Democrats have expressed deep dismay at that number as it is not what Democrats had sought in discretionary accounts, it speaks loudly to which party is willing to compromise. And then if the majority party does not like the Affordable Care Act, use your real power in the regular committee structure that you control to change it. But closing down the entire government is a sledgehammer when what you need is merely a needle and thread. Meanwhile, the Republican shutdown is wreaking havoc on our economy. More and more working Americans and businesses are getting singed. How can this be good? The Republican shutdown costs the American people $12.5 million each hour and $300 million a day. As of today, the GOP shutdown has already cost the American taxpayers over $2 billion. Is that responsible government? The Republican shutdown has caused rising uncertainty about our economy. It has already placed a downdraft on our economic markets and job creation. Yesterday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 160 points. This is part of a recent precipitous slide which has seen the financial market lose nearly 400 points this month alone. Overall, the trend is strongly in the wrong direction--down. The International Monetary Fund, as a result of the Republican shutdown, cut its growth forecast for our economy by 0.3 percentage points to 2.9 percent for this year and 3.6 percent for next year. This surely will cost the American economy more jobs going forward. The sapping of U.S. growth will be felt globally, as U.S. economic sluggishness impacts other nations. Global markets continue to fall as well, wondering what will happen to the value of our Treasury bonds. Chaos and uncertainty trigger poor markets. We sure don't need any more of that medicine. There are over 800,000 Federal workers who have been furloughed as a direct result of the shutdown. They are worrying about whether they can pay their bills, pay their mortgage. NASA, for example, had to furlough 97 percent of its more than 18,000-person workforce due to the closing of the government. At NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, only 100 of 3,150 civil servants have not been furloughed. An additional 10,000 contractors with the Johnson Space Center will face being furloughed. According to a local FOX affiliate, the NASA Glenn Research Center in Brook Park, Ohio, near Cleveland, which I represent, has essentially furloughed nearly all its 3,000 employees at NASA's key propulsion center. This absolutely punches down the local economy as well as the national. The Republican shutdown has also caused many more contractors who do detailed work for our government to lose their jobs. Defense contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin have had to furlough thousands of employees because the shutdown has halted awards and payments to those companies. The Republican shutdown hurts government agencies and weakens our national security. There are currently no death benefits given to families of soldiers killed in action; medical treatment for those in the military has been scaled back; and furloughs are creating backlogs for VA disability claims. Mr. Speaker, just bring the clean continuing resolution that has the Republican budget number in it to a vote. Reopen our government. Use the regular committees to work out any difficulties you have with the Affordable Care Act. And, please, put America's economy back on an even keel.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I rise to congratulate the three recipients of the Nobel Prize in medicine for 2013. All three work at American universities. Dr. James E. Rothman chairs the cell biology department at Yale University. Dr. Randy W. Schekman works at the University of California at Berkeley. Their German counterpart, Dr. Thomas C. Sudhof, is on the faculty of Stanford. The Nobel committee has recognized the importance of their lifesaving work. The question is: Why don't the House Republicans? On the very day that three researchers at American universities won the Nobel Prize in medicine, the House Republicans continue their siege against the Government of the United States, and their siege includes the National Institutes of Health, where the American people through their Federal Government support medical research and path-breaking, basic research in the difficult search for cures. Mr. Speaker, I should note that Dr. Rothman of Yale received two grants under the Obama Recovery Act for his work in developing a better way to study cells. Of course, he would have received none if the Republicans in Congress had had their way. More to the point, the Republican shutdown has jeopardized hundreds of research projects like Dr. Rothman's, Dr. Schekman's and Dr. Sudhof's. The Republicans have essentially shut down the National Institutes of Health, which has told researchers that they cannot process their grant applications, which eventually will bring federally supported research to a halt. I count more than 30 research projects underway just in Ohio at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and at least a dozen more at the Cleveland Clinic and at the University of Toledo Medical University--cutting-edge research, peer-reviewed research, research that could save lives. Thanks to the Republican Congress, these are ``dark days for medical research.'' So says the Atlantic Magazine. Between the sequester and the shutdown, repeated hits to research funding may have serious consequences for scientific advancement. That's not something you see in the flash of but one day. But it erodes America's real strength over time. Almost three out of four employees at the National Institutes of Health are sitting at home, thanks to the Republican Congress. They're not allowed to do their work of finding cures and stamping out disease. The Republican Congress locked them out. Two hundred patients at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center were turned away due to the Republican Congress' throwing its little temper tantrum over losing the Presidential election again. Many of those 200 people are cancer patients, and 30 of them are children, paying a heavy, heavy price for Republican intransigence. The Republicans told them, Go away. Mr. Speaker, even if the Republicans lack any empathy whatsoever, at least you would think they would care about jobs in America. Research and development, including research and development in biotechnology, provides a competitive advantage for the United States. It's a very promising sector for economic development and job growth. Just come to Cleveland to see the new Health Innovation Center, or look at the neuropsychiatric research being conducted at Case and the University of Toledo Medical Center. Look at what it draws around it. Yet The Atlantic magazine says the sequester is killing 20,500 jobs this year in the life sciences field, and the government shutdown threatens to ground medical research into cancer, Alzheimer's, diabetes, and disabling neuropsychiatric disorders. The Nobel committee gets it. The American people get it. A recent poll showed that 83 percent of the public believes investing in medical research is important for our economy. So why don't the Republicans get it? As NIH Director Collins told The Atlantic last week: We will not know what grant that was going to lead to the next breakthrough in cancer research didn't quite make the cut. We will not know what brilliant scientists, who were going to win a Nobel Prize, basically gave up because of the failure to get support from the current system and decided to do something else or move to another country, which some of them are doing already. We won't know. That is the sad tale that is wrapped up in all of this. The good news is that three scientists working on the frontier of scientific research--three scientists at American universities--did not give up, and they have captured the Nobel Prize in Medicine for 2013. The bad news is that House Republicans apparently have given up. They apparently don't care whether the U.S. keeps distinguishing itself by winning such prestigious awards. They apparently don't care whether we support the research that will help humankind and eliminate diseases and save lives. They don't care if the United States remains the global leader in medical and scientific research and enjoys the millions of jobs that it will create in the future--what a shame--and how easy it would be to bring up a clean continuing resolution and put the government of the people of this country back to work.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, this Republican shutdown and their threats not to pay America's bills are not only reckless, but they're playing with economic fire. Their irresponsibility is burning the American people. There are currently more than 800,000 Federal employees out of work, with thousands already filing for unemployment benefits because they've been furloughed by the GOP shutdown. These are working men and women who have to pay their bills, their mortgages, their car loans. The Republican shutdown is harming the whole economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average went down another 136 points yesterday and has been down nearly 200 points during the course of this Republican shutdown. It is currently at its lowest levels in a month. Global markets continue to slide due to the uncertainty that the Republican shutdown has caused. According to news reports, it has already cost us over $2 billion because of the shutdown, and it is hurting U.S. trade because inspections of imports and applications for exports can't be cleared by agencies like the EPA due to the fact that the staff in charge has been furloughed. Mr. Speaker, it is well over time to bring up a clean continuing resolution for a vote. End this needless Republican shutdown, which is not only hurting the American people, but the entire economy.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Madam Speaker, I want to apologize to the people of southern Ohio in Pike County at the uranium enrichment facility for not being able to be with them today. We did not anticipate that our schedule would be completely disrupted by the shenanigans here due to the GOP shutdown of our departments of government, which is so unnecessary and so absolutely discourteous to the people of this country. Initially, when this happened, the calls that came into our office were calls of dismay and shock and upset about the inability of this Congress to reach agreement because of a very reckless faction on that other--majority's side of the aisle. The calls have changed. Now we're getting calls from people who've gone to apply for Social Security benefits and there's nobody there to take their application. Now we're getting calls from veterans who are returning from theater and there is nobody there to process their benefit claims. We have over 800,000 people furloughed from the Federal Government. Guess what? One of my communities had sent officers for training at one of the FBI academies, and they're riding back home right now because that training was not available. Madam Speaker, our responsibility is to provide a stable government that gives confidence to the people of this country, advances economic growth, and meets our responsibilities. All Republicans have to do is send a clean continuing resolution to the floor and this could end.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. I want to thank Ranking Serrano, and ask unanimous consent that the House bring up the Senate amendment to H.J. Res. 59, the clean continuing resolution, so we can go to conference on a real budget. Let's end this Republican government shutdown that is already harming economic recovery and has already slowed growth by a third of 1 percent.

Ms. KAPTUR

Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, GOP irresponsibility that led to the government shutdown is already having an impact across our country. I spent part of my day down at the World War II Memorial here in Washington. As the author of the bill that created the memorial--and we worked for 16 years from point of introduction to point of dedication in 2004--I witnessed an irony that Senators and Representatives who voted for the shutdown showed up today to remove the fence that was placed around the site because honor flights were coming in here. Around our country, veterans are still coming with those who sponsor them. I thought how ironic to see this, that they would have the gall to show up at a site that they voted to shutter last night. Knowing that honor flights are coming in from Ohio next week, I wondered where we would be. For the first time since the memorial was dedicated in 2004, do you know what, it was absent people, absent the American people. Last Sunday, we saw how crowded it was as the largest honor flight came in from the east coast. I just say to my colleagues on the Republican side of the aisle: Did you really want to do this? Don't the American people deserve better than that, a vacant site, a fenced site? It is time for our colleagues to wake up and not think about their party or themselves, but think about the American people.