Steven LaTourette

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. It's fraught with difficulty because, out of these 240 amendments that are out there to H.R. 7, I may have a different view on your rule today unless there is some assurance you're going to produce a second rule that is somehow going to resemble an open rule on these remaining amendments. I yield to the gentleman for whatever response you choose to make.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise to engage the gentleman from Florida, the manager of the rule, in just a discussion if I could. I don't have any problem with the rule--I don't think. The underlying legislation I've got a lot of difficulties with, which is why I filed or participated in the filing of many, many amendments, particularly on H.R. 7. What causes me some angst is on page six, at the conclusion of section three of the rule, it indicates that after general debate on H.R. 7 the Committee of the Whole will rise without motion and no further consideration of the bill shall be in order except pursuant to a subsequent order of the House. Now, I think that you can't go to passage without a subsequent rule and you can't do a variety of other things. But my concern is, as a conspiracy theorist in training, that that line could produce a result--you're asking for us to vote on the rule today, but could produce a result where you don't bring a subsequent rule dealing with the amendments.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the chairman. One of the useless sorts of pieces of trivia I carry around in my head is that the originator of Superman comics was from Cleveland, Ohio. I think he sold the rights to it for a pittance and was very sorry after that. One of the things I could never get my arms around in the Superman series was the Bizarro Superman. As I listen to this debate, I think that I have landed in a ``bizarro'' world. To go to another children's story, everyone knows the story of the three little pigs. Those who are criticizing the process or the criticism of the process, not those, the criticism of the process that has brought this bill to the floor, is a little bit like there is a fourth little pig that didn't even bother to build a straw house or a wood house but gets to the brick house where the wolf can't get in and is complaining that the brick furniture is too hard. Now, listen. No budget was produced in the last Congress. Not one. And so, for the process lovers around here, you know where all of the numbers came from that we had to deal with in the appropriations committee? In the mind of one man from Wisconsin who is now retired. That didn't happen. The budget was passed. You know what else? The budget this year gave lower numbers for the second time straight under this majority, and it is a little more difficult to spend less money than more money. It's easier to spend more money. But Mr. Dicks and Mr. Rogers did something that was never done under the stewardship of the previous Speaker, and that is we had bills come up in subcommittee. You know what? Any Member could offer an amendment--good amendments, bad amendments, stupid amendments, wonderful amendments--and we voted on them. They went to full committee. The same thing occurred. I'm going to tell you, the bills came to the floor under open rules. I think I could count on--I wouldn't have to take off my shoes to figure out the number of open rules under the previous Speaker's administration, as they privatized the Nation's health care, one- seventh of the economy of the United States, as they put in place a national carbon tax with no amendments. So for those who are squealing about process, it's really an inappropriate exercise. And relative to the other body, and I have nothing but respect for Mr. Dicks, but to say that the Senate wasn't doing anything nefarious by linking this bill that was going to put on furlough and shut down the government at midnight tonight and link that to the payroll tax cuts and others, listen, the Senate has become again and again and again the place where legislation goes to die. It is not enough to sit over there in the lofty Senate Chamber and say, ``We don't like what you did, House,'' and not produce a product. The time has come for them to pass a bill, and then the process is we're only one-third of the government. You can't have this bill unless the Senate passes it and the President signs it. So again, Merry Christmas to all, and we should get on with this.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank both chairmen for yielding and also for the recognition. Mr. Speaker, it's like a breath of fresh air has blown through this Chamber. I will tell you what a relief it is. Congratulations goes to Chairman Rogers and Ranking Member Dicks and to the subcommittee chairs and the ranking members for getting us to a point that was normal practice for the first 12 years that I was here, which is to do things like have a subcommittee markup. It's where people get to offer amendments--good amendments, bad amendments, in- between amendments--but they were thoughts that they had. We'd debate them; we'd discuss them; and we'd vote on them. The same thing happened in the full committee; the same thing happened on the floor; and we actually had a conference between the House and the Senate. Some people had never been to a conference before because they hadn't been here that long. I had Members come up to me who were new--we have 87, 88 new Republican freshmen, and we even have some sophomores and juniors--who didn't even know what the 5-minute rule was for the discussion of an amendment on the floor. So everybody in this Chamber understands that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, but at the end of the day, if you've had a chance to express yourself and to articulate why your position is correct and then it's either accepted or rejected by your colleagues, you can go home and put your head on the pillow and feel pretty good about it. This product is a result of that. I'm particularly proud of the piece from the subcommittee that I'm involved in with Mr. Latham as the chair and Mr. Olver as the ranking member. What is remarkable to me is that this wasn't a ``my way or the highway'' negotiation. There were numbers that were important to some of us and not important to others but that were improved between the House version and the conference report. I would cite, for instance, the highway level. Now, because no one is willing to make the adult decision about what to do with the income stream at the highway trust fund, it was proposed to be a paltry $27 billion. However, through negotiation between the House and the Senate, it's now restored to the authorized level in the extension at $39 billion. The Community Development Block Grant program as well is recognized in this conference report as being a valuable source of seed money for local communities to add other money and to do good works. Something that is popular and unpopular in certain segments on both sides of the aisle is Amtrak, which is now receiving the money necessary to do its mission. They've done a good job, and I urge its passage.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman. It's mutual. And Louise likes me too. But listen, here's the deal: There's not going to be anybody recreating on Great Lakes, fishing, and all the wonderful things we get to do on Lake Erie, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, and Lake Huron, because nobody's going to be working. And so without jobs, people are not going to have the opportunity to enjoy the splendor of 28 percent of the world's freshwater. Again, sadly, people in New York have decided they want to come up with a standard that nobody can meet. Now, in 2013 when fully implemented, what does that mean? That means a boat comes down the St. Lawrence Seaway and travels into New York, and if you can't meet their standard, 1,000 times more stringent than the international standard, guess what? You can't sail. The people can't sail on the ship. The people can't put goods on the ship. Now again, despite my affection for the authors of this amendment, I've talked to the longshoremen. I've talked to the Canadians. I've talked to the people on the St. Lawrence Seaway, and they say that the problem with invasive species today in the Great Lakes isn't ballast water, it's the Asian carp swimming up the Mississippi River, and it's things brought in from other sources. It's not ballast water. It's not ballast water because Republicans and Democrats, since the beginning of my time here, 18 years, have worked together to get this right. This is wrong, and I urge it to be defeated. I thank the gentleman for yielding to me.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I really had something pithy to say, but we will continue this later. I thank the Chair.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I will yield to you in just a second. But here's the skinny: New York's regulations are more obnoxious because they cover just passage. You don't have to take a drop of ballast water in if you're in New York waters, and you don't have to discharge a drop. Just the mere fact of sailing through New York waters--which you have to do in the Great Lakes--would cause these regulations to come into effect. Now, I had to go to the extraordinary length of offering an amendment in the Interior appropriations bill that said if New York continues on this crazy course, that they get no money out of the Interior appropriations bill. Now, that wasn't designed to cheat our friends in New York out of funds. That was designed to get their attention. We have their attention. We have to work together to solve this in a bipartisan way. This amendment and the next amendment are not going to do that. I am happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the chairman for yielding. I rise with great affection for my friends from New York, both Mr. Bishop and Ms. Slaughter; but I have to set the table on what this is about. The Coast Guard has been promulgating a Federal standard in line with the international maritime standard for the discharge of ballast water. And despite what people say--they say a new invasive species comes into the lakes every 28 days. That's true; but they don't come in in the ballast water of ships because industry, governments--both American and Canadian--and the States have worked hard to make sure that that does not occur. But in the face of that, an organization called the New York Department of Environmental Conservation proposed regulations, as Mr. Bucshon said, that when fully implemented would be a thousand times more stringent than the IMO standards. And what that effectively means is--and when you talk to these folks they say, Well, that's the great mother of invention. If we put these standards out there, the great mother of invention, they're going to invent something. But sadly for New York, their vendor--the one that they were counting on for this technology--said they are not even willing to have it be tested by a third party for verification that it works. So this amendment and those proposals would basically shut down waterborne commerce in the United States of America.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Again, I have nothing but affection for Mr. Dingell and Ms. Slaughter.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Again, I rise with great affection for both Mr. Dingell and Ms. Slaughter, who are wonderful colleagues and friends in this House. But this amendment is the Bishop amendment on steroids. So this amendment, unlike the Bishop amendment, would go back and remove the requirement that's in the bill, and New York would be free to go about its business and shut down waterborne commerce in the Great Lakes. Now, the sad thing for the State of New York--and I know the people in New York think that they are pretty important and they run the whole place, but they don't. And, sadly, we have five Great Lakes that flow through and touch a number of States, Ohio being included in that. And just a couple of observations. You know, this isn't a bunch of people that don't like the Great Lakes versus a bunch of environmentalists that want to protect it. The very first piece of legislation I had signed into law by President Clinton--and it's tough to get a bill signed into law by a President of the other party--was the reauthorization of the National Invasive Species Act, coauthored by John Glenn in the United States Senate. I know invasive species. But I am going to tell you, because of the work of John Glenn and because of the work of a lot of good people, since 1995, I challenge anybody offering this amendment to come up with one invasive species that has gotten into the Great Lakes--and this notion that it's 28 days--yes, they come in on boats; they come in in people's boots; they come in swimming from other places. The biggest threat that we've got is the Asian carp. It's not coming in ballast water. It's swimming up the Mississippi, and we have got to fight with the President about whether or not we have an electronic barrier that keeps these awful fish out of the Great Lakes. Now, the longshoremen don't like what New York is doing. Labor is not onboard with what Ms. Slaughter and Mr. Dingell are attempting to do. A July 2011 evaluation by the United States Environmental Protection Agency--so fresh off the charts--determined that the technology does not exist, does not exist. Even if a ship owner had a gazillion dollars and wanted to buy something off the shelf, it doesn't exist to meet the water quality level stipulated by New York. For this reason, the maritime industry, together with labor, believes that these regulations are unworkable and if left unchanged will cause economic harm when they come into effect, resulting in complete cessation of commercial maritime commerce in New York waters. Now, at a time when everybody around the country is screaming about jobs, what are we going to do? All the longshoremen, you don't have to work anymore. The guys that drive the boats, you don't need to work anymore. The folks that unload the boats, no, you don't need to work anymore. Why? Because one State out of the eight States that border the Great Lakes has decided to come up with something not passed by their legislature, passed by this New York environmental council. It's crazy. We, again, in a good bipartisan way need to work together to fix this problem. Let's find the right way to keep the zebra mussel and the round goby and the sea lamprey and the Asian carp out of the Great Lakes. But to allow New York to go down this path with the passage of this amendment is destructive to jobs in the Great Lakes, and I hope that the amendment is defeated.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to honor Eric Stransky, who recently retired after 35 years with the Social Security Administration, with 28 of those years in management. Stransky has been a tenacious advocate for my constituents in need of help from the Painesville, OH, Social Security office, and has been a trusted and reliable source who has worked closely with my caseworkers to get problems resolved. He is a model employee and his departure will leave Social Security with very big shoes to fill. A graduate of John Carroll University, Stransky has been lauded for his work at the SSA, and received a Regional Commissioner Citation for leading a workgroup that resolved over 5,000 overpayments in six weeks. He's been a Supervisor at many SSA locations in Ohio--Marietta, Athens, Painesville, Cleveland East and University Circle Area. In 1998, Stransky served as the Area System Coordinator ensuring a smooth transition for all employees in Northern Ohio to individual desktop system access. Stransky managed the local Euclid office for two years, Warrensville Heights for three years, and spent eight years working just a few blocks from my district office in Painesville while juggling a two-year stint in the U.S. Army as a Senior Joint Doctrine Developer at the Joint and Allied Doctrine Division, Army Capabilities Integration Center in Ft. Monroe, VA. Retired Lt. Col. Eric Stransky served in the US Army Reserve for more than 29 years. He attended the following Military Schools: Armor Officer Basic; Junior Officer Preventive Maintenance Course; Armor Officer Professional Development Course; OPSEC Course; Special Warfare Center and School, PSYOP Officer Course; Armor Officer Advance Course; United States Army Command & General Staff College; United Kingdom PSYOP Officer Course; Physical Security Course; Individual Terrorism Awareness; Logistics Managers Course; Joint PSYOP Course; Joint Planning Orientation Course; Joint PSYOP Staff Planning Course; Faculty Development Phase 1 Course and Commanders Safety Course. In June 1995, then a Major, he was Chief of Psychological Operations at a United Nations Mission in Haiti. Stransky commissioned in the Army Reserve as a Second Lt. in July 1978 and continued to move up through the ranks, ultimately promoted to Lt. Col. in April 2000. He retired in August 2006, but remains actively involved with the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and Catholic War Veterans. Stransky has received the following Military honors: Legion of Merit; Army Meritorious Service Medal (3); Army Commendation Medal (2); Joint Service Achievement Medal; Army Achievement Medal; Army Reserve Achievement Medal (7); National Defense Service Medal w/star; Global War on Terrorism Service Medal; Armed Forces Service Medal; Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal; Armed Forces Reserve Medal (with silver hour glass and M(2) device); Reserve Component ODT Ribbon (6) and United Nations Mission in Haiti Medal. Stransky has a great wit and a tremendous work ethic, and clearly can juggle many tasks at once with little effort. His military service has provided him with tremendous discipline and his attention to detail and process has catapulted the various Social Security offices he's managed into well-oiled, highly efficient, responsive and successful offices where both the employees and constituents are well served. He's a motivator who gets results. With his remarkable career and his decades of service to our country, you might suspect that Eric Stransky is an Eagle Scout as well. And alas, he is. It's been an honor and a privilege for me and my staff to work with a man whose goal in life is to help others, and it's a tough task to show him an appropriate level of gratitude. I'm sorry to see him go because he was one of a kind. He's served our nation and those in need with heart and purpose, and I wish him and his loving family all the best. Please enjoy your well-deserved retirement.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Speaker, this moment in time on the floor reminds me exactly of a period during the 1990s. You know, there is a lot of publicity given to the new freshmen class, and we from the revolutionary class of 1994 are feeling a little neglected these days, but welfare reform was the discussion. We endured overheated rhetoric on this floor about how our proposals were mean to pregnant women and children and old people and young people and poor people until one day the President of the United States, President Clinton, decided that he wasn't going to be the protector of overheated rhetoric, he was going to be the President of the United States, and he signed the welfare reform bill. I happened to walk on the floor, and you would have thought that my friends who were here on the other side of the aisle at that time that their dogs had all died because they looked so depressed. But the fact of the matter is that President Clinton decided to lead. Now, I don't know what's going on in all of the other offices, but we've taken a lot of phone calls over the last 4 or 5 weeks. Some people call in and tell me to hold the line; some people call in and tell me I'm an idiot. But the overwhelming sentiment of the calls is: You guys have got to work this out. So to the President of the United States' credit, President Obama, he had the Speaker, Mr. Boehner; the minority leader, Ms. Pelosi; the Vice President; Senator Reid; Senator McConnell down to the White House, and they worked this out. I don't think I'm going to stand here and listen to this continued harangue about how we are being mean to people because I don't think anybody on that side of the aisle believes that President Barack Obama would do the horrible things that the people are indicating he would do. I just don't believe it.

Mr. LaTOURETTE

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

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank you. You know there are eight States that border the Great Lakes. One State in particular, New York, has imposed ballast water exchange in innocent passage that can't be met by any technology that exists today. That set of standards will cripple, will literally cripple and bring to a halt all waterborne commerce in the Great Lakes. My amendment says, listen, if you want to impose that kind of standard, you're not going to get any money until this thing gets sorted out when the EPA and the Coast Guard come up with a uniform ballast water exchange. But let me just tell you, since you're talking about the regional programs, the Great Lakes are unique. The Great Lakes were unique in the world. And I can remember a couple of years ago, Senator Dodd, he wanted to have Lake Champlain become a Great Lake. And I said to the distinguished Senator at the time: Lake Champlain is a good lake; but it's not a Great Lake. The Great Lakes are the five Great Lakes that every grade schooler learns on how to identify them. It is 20 percent of the world's fresh water. And if we don't take care of them, as the President of the United States recognized we needed to do in a big way, we're going to be in trouble in this country. I thank the gentleman for his courtesy. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman very much. I wanted you to yield because you mischaracterized the other part. What the other piece of language in the bill does, it says to the State of New York----

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I move to strike the last word in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, you know, if a little green man from outer space came and landed and watched this debate, he'd be puzzled. If the gentlemen on the other side were so concerned about the Culberson amendment, I'm puzzled why they didn't request a recorded vote in the committee. This was adopted in the committee, full committee markup, by a voice vote. But beyond that, nobody wants another Deepwater Horizon. But this language that the gentlemen are objecting to says that this new agency will report quarterly to Congress on the status of permitting and why permits were rejected. Now why would the gentleman not want to have transparency and oversight over an agency to which we appropriate dollars? Now this wouldn't puzzle me if we just hadn't come off of 4 years of a majority that was preaching to us about transparency and oversight and openness. Why wouldn't you want some report issued by the agency that tells us what they are doing with the money that we appropriate to them and what's the status and why a permit was rejected. That's a reasonable question. Just to move to a different agency--you may not know this, Mr. Moran. I've lived in Mr. Moran's district for a period of time when I'm here in Washington, D.C., and I never saw anybody grazing and I never saw anybody moving livestock. But in my area, I will tell you that we're the nursery capital of the world. We are very much concerned with the guest worker program. Under this administration, applications for guest worker applications have been denied at an alarming rate. When we ask the Department of Labor how many have been denied and how many have been appealed and how many appeals have been successful, they keep those records. You know why? Because that's a reasonable inquiry by a Member of the Congress, a member of the public, a guy who's growing arbor vitae in Perry, Ohio. So to describe this as somehow burdensome and crippling and somehow going to lead to a another Deepwater Horizon disaster is just ridiculous. The guys on the other side, Mr. Chairman, are great Members and great advocates for a lot of things, but this argument doesn't even pass the straight face test. And I would respectfully urge that it be defeated.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I yield to my former Congressman, the gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Reclaiming my time, I can appreciate the pressure that the gentleman found himself under. There are over 200 amendments. We're approaching 200 amendments on this particular piece of legislation. I recall sitting in another full committee markup where the gentleman asked for a recorded vote on whether or not we could use Styrofoam containers in the House cafeteria. So clearly, the gentleman has to be as concerned about knowing what it is this new agency is doing relative to permits as he is about Styrofoam containers in the cafeteria.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate it. I know the gentleman said ``comity,'' not ``comedy.'' I think it's comedy with a ``d'' that reigns here. I trust that the gentleman has had his tongue firmly implanted in his cheek as he made that observation. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. LaTOURETTE. I thank the gentleman very much for yielding. The reason that this is the greatest deliberative body in the world is that sometimes during the course of a very intelligent discussion the truth and facts come out. Now, both the gentleman from Washington and the gentleman from Virginia have been able to cite chapter and verse of how many applications have been applied for, where they are, and what has happened to them. So, to suggest that somehow this is going to create some additional burden, you've got to add a line: ``We denied it because . . . '' So I trust that, based upon the sunshine that has now been brought forth to the good facts by the distinguished ranking member, perhaps we can get past this amendment, in the interest of comity, without a recorded vote as we did in the committee.

Mr. LaTOURETTE. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk occurring on page 65, line 5. I actually have three amendments all on the same subject, but one amendment touches line 21 and one amendment touches line 73. In the interest of comity, I would ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to offer all of those amendments en bloc.