Doug Lamborn

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Coffman).

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman. I rise today in strong support of H. Res. 644. The President's actions in unilaterally swapping five Taliban members for an American prisoner swept away a decades-old policy of not negotiating with terrorists. This policy prevents the United States from being extorted by evil people who hold no regard for human life. The President's actions lead to an open season on Americans all over the world. Are we now in the business of negotiating with terrorists? Is ISIL up next at the bargaining table with this administration? These are senior Taliban detainees, not low-level foot soldiers. Will the administration stop at five next time? Why not 50 or 100? This is unacceptable. The President's actions were also troublesome because he did not inform Congress prior to making the swap. Even the independent Government Accountability Office explicitly said that this exchange broke the law. Some will try to say that this is just partisan rhetoric, but what did they say to the findings of the nonpartisan GAO? While it is a relief to have an American home, the way this was done further erodes the working relationship between the President and Congress. The President asked the Congress to act and pass bills, but how can we trust him with new legislation when time and time again he has abused that trust? How do we know he is not just going to ignore the next law that we send him? Congress must stand up against the way this prisoner exchange took place. We are a nation that believes in the rule of law. We have a Congress that makes law and a President who is supposed to enforce them. In this case, the law was broken, and Congress cannot remain silent. I urge every one of my colleagues to support this important resolution.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize General William L. Shelton, Commander of Air Force Space Command, on the occasion of his retirement from the United States Air Force. Over the course of his 38-year career in the United States Air Force, General Shelton has served with great distinction and made countless sacrifices for our country. We commend his service; the sacrifices of his family in support of his service, including his wife Linda and their two children Sara and Joel; and must express our great appreciation for his leadership and devotion to our Nation's security. A graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, General Shelton's selection as the Commander of Air Force Space Command in January 2011 culminates a distinguished career that began in 1976 at the Space and Missile Test Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. In a career dedicated to the space enterprise, he commanded units at Falcon/ Schriever, F.E. Warren, Offutt, Vandenberg, and Peterson Air Force Bases. He also provided valuable leadership and counsel to the Secretary of the Air Force, Chief of Staff of the Air Force and Joint Staff community during multiple Headquarters U.S. Air Force assignments. His positive leadership directly influenced countless men and women in our Armed Forces, and the enduring effects of his service to our country will be felt for years to come. General Shelton has been a vigilant advocate for national security space programs. As the Commander of Air Force Space Command, he was responsible for organizing, training and equipping more than 40,000 military and civilian personnel to assure space and cyberspace capabilities for the Combatant Commands and for the Nation. While space and cyberspace capabilities clearly contribute to making our military unmatched in combat operations, they also have become essential in humanitarian and disaster relief efforts and are now vital assets for the global community and world economy. Through his leadership, we enjoy unprecedented success in the areas of space launch and acquisition which have led to greater mission assurance and cost savings across the Department of Defense. Further, his vision on future space capabilities will position us to make the changes necessary to provide resilient, capable and affordable space capabilities for the joint force and the Nation well into the future. General Shelton established an unmatched and sustained level of success during a time of increasing challenges. He has worked closely with the House Armed Services Committee, and it has been my great pleasure to work with him in that important capacity. His frank and informed discussions on our space systems, particularly the Global Positioning Satellite system, have helped leaders and citizens around the world appreciate the value and need to protect our Nation's foundational space capabilities. As a member of the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, I am grateful for General Shelton's wise counsel and firm resolve to always do what is best for the Nation and for the Airmen he has led. With nearly four decades of exemplary service to our Nation, General William L. Shelton deserves our most heartfelt gratitude and praise. Thank you, General Shelton--and best wishes to you and your family.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, article I of the Constitution vests the power to make laws in the United States Congress. The President is given the responsibility to faithfully execute the laws passed by the Congress. President Obama has failed to understand this vital distinction. The President is not able to unilaterally bend the law to his own goals and desires. Take, for example, the latest news reports indicating that he plans to expand amnesty and extend work permits and visas for millions of illegal aliens, all by using executive orders. These are not lawful actions. These are the power-hungry actions of a President who refuses to work with Congress. By suing President Obama for failing to faithfully execute the laws of the land, we are saying, stop. The people's representatives will not turn a blind eye to the lawlessness of this President. We will do whatever it takes to hold him and future occupants of the Oval Office accountable. We must make it clear that the U.S. Congress is a coequal branch of government and one that represents we, the people.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank Chairman Jeff Miller for his continued leadership as we work to provide our veterans with the care and benefits that they have earned. Keeping the promises that we have made to our veterans and their families is of utmost importance to me and all Americans. This piece of legislation is a major step in the process of restoring veteran trust in the VA. This bill will expand access to non-VA care, making wait times shorter and increase convenience. Although this will ensure veterans who are currently on a waiting list will get the timely care they deserve, much more needs to be done. I am especially pleased that an independent congressional committee on care will be formed to look at the VA from the ground up. For lasting change to take place, the corrupt culture shown by some in the VA must be purged. It must be replaced with an ethos that puts the veteran first. By authorizing the Secretary of the VA to fire senior employees that are guilty of poor performance or misconduct, this bill ensures that newly confirmed Secretary McDonald will have more tools to hold individuals accountable for their actions. However, granting this authority will mean nothing if it isn't combined with the leadership required to always do the right things for our veterans. Through his words and actions, Secretary McDonald must make it clear from day one that individuals will be held accountable, whistleblowers will be protected, and anyone responsible for poor performance, negligence, or preventable deaths, even, will be held accountable. It has been an honor to serve with the chairman during this conference committee. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the VA conference report.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize General William L. Shelton on the occasion of his retirement from the U.S. Air Force. Over the course of his career, General Shelton has served with great distinction and made countless sacrifices for our country. We commend his service and the sacrifices of his wife, Linda, and their two children, Sara and Joel, in support of his service. General Shelton has been a vigilant advocate for national security space programs. As the commander of Air Force Space Command, he was responsible for more than 40,000 military and civilian personnel who assure space and cyberspace protection for our Nation. He established an unmatched level of success during a time of increasing challenges. His frank and informed discussions on space systems have helped leaders and citizens around the world appreciate the value of our Nation's space capabilities. General Shelton deserves our most heartfelt gratitude and praise. Thank you, General Shelton, and best wishes to you and your family.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor the University of Colorado Colorado Springs on the occasion of its upcoming 50th Anniversary. UCCS is one of the fastest growing universities in the United States, and is the designated growth campus for the University of Colorado with over 11,000 students. It is also one of the largest employers in southern Colorado with an economic impact of over $300 million annually to the state and local economies. Since 1965, UCCS has brought the world-class standards of the University of Colorado System to southern Colorado and continues to educate and inspire not only the students, faculty, and staff of the university, but also the community-at-large. On behalf of the Colorado Fifth Congressional District, I wish UCCS a very happy 50th Anniversary and look forward to the next 50 years of growth and prosperity.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I once again urge all Members to oppose the motion to instruct, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct and yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the motion to instruct would require the House to recede to the Senate amendments to H.R. 3230. As Chairman Miller has stated during debate on nearly identical motions to instruct last week and again last night, the foremost goals of the House and Senate conference committee are, one, to improve timely access to high-quality health care for veterans who have been waiting for weeks, months, or even years; and, two, to improve the accountability and overall operations of the Department of Veterans Affairs health care system. This was the central charge to the conferees at the beginning of the conference and remains so today. I have no doubt that my colleague from California, Congresswoman Brownley, the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Health, shares these goals. However, this motion does not further our pursuit of them. Tonight, our attention is best spent devoted to finding a true compromise--one that best serves our Nation's veterans and taxpayers and lays the foundation for correcting the departmental deficiencies that have brought us here--and not tying the conference committee's hands with an unnecessary, unhelpful, unbinding, and time-consuming motion to instruct. As the gentlewoman knows, because she was in the Veterans' Affairs Committee hearing with the acting VA Secretary, this morning, Chairman Miller offered a proposal that would largely agree with nearly everything in the Senate bill, with a few minor exceptions. Chairman Miller's proposal would accept title I through title VII of the original Senate bill, with amended language to include all 27 leases authorized by the House last December in H.R. 3521 rather than the 26 that the Senate approved; provide VA with $102 million for fiscal year 2014 to address the Department's internal funding shortfalls; provide $10 billion of no-year, mandatory, emergency funding to cover the cost of the Senate's choice provisions, with the remaining Senate provisions subject to appropriations. Mr. Speaker, I am supportive of Chairman Miller's proposal because it is a fair, commonsense approach that ensures Congress is able to continue its oversight to ensure that taxpayers' funds are spent wisely. As we all know, recently, Senator Sanders, chairman of the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee and cochair of the conference committee, has indicated his desire to expand the scope of the conference to include VA's recent request for an additional $17.6 billion. We call that an airdrop. Unfortunately, there is virtually no parachute in the form of detailed justification for this request, and to a great extent, Congress' acceptance of unsubstantiated funding requests in the past have helped get us to where we are today. This summer, the House Veterans' Affairs Committee has held multiple full committee oversight hearings to discuss the access and accountability failures VA has been subjecting our veterans to. These hearings have confirmed that the problems VA is facing today require long-term and large-scale reform. Adding more money, more people, and more infrastructure to a system that has not proven itself able to make effective use of its existing resources that it has been provided without first implementing underlying reforms does not serve our veterans well and will not prevent them from continuing to face unacceptably long patient waiting times. It has been proven time and time again by the VA inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, the administration, and others that VA has been suffering from widespread data manipulation and a systemic lack of integrity. Given that, what confidence do we have that the $17.6 billion resource request that VA is now making is based on data that is valid or reliable, particularly given that the committee has received very little analysis, justification, or verification of these numbers? Before Congress can contemplate devoting such a significant amount of taxpayer money, it is imperative that VA provide a full accounting of each additional dollar that is being requested. The resource request the Department has put forward so far is not the well thought-out and thoroughly justifiable position that our Nation's veterans and our taxpayers deserve. Rather, it is an unsubstantiated guess put together in the back room of a massive bureaucracy. Mr. Speaker, I truly believe we could have already come to an agreement if Senator Sanders would not have insisted on moving the goalposts so dramatically. The House has passed almost a dozen bills reforming the VA that have waited months for Senate consideration. The Senate could pass those bills and send them to the President to become law today. I would remind Ms. Brownley that one such bill, H.R. 2527, would extend VA's military sexual trauma counseling, along with care and treatment programs, for veterans for sexual trauma that occurred during Active Duty or Active Duty for training to veterans who experienced such trauma during inactive duty training. Mr. Speaker, we are continually trying to work out a deal with the Senate, but I would submit to this body these motions to instruct are unproductive, are slowing down the conference process, and have become nothing more than a political ploy to distract from the true issues facing our veterans and the conference committee. So with that, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the motion to instruct. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, at this time, there are no plans to have any additional speakers.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 10 a.m. tomorrow.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today deeply disturbed by the failed foreign policy of President Obama's--a policy of collapses, defeats, failures, and fiascoes. With every day of Obama's Presidency, the safety of Americans abroad deteriorates. Desperate for anything that may seem like a foreign policy success, President Obama and Secretary Kerry are steaming full speed ahead toward another foreign policy calamity with Iran. Sunday is the deadline for nuclear negotiations with Iran. Let me remind you who we are dealing with. The rockets falling into Israel today were largely supplied by Iran. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy in Lebanon, is supporting Assad, Syria's genocidal dictator, and thousands of Iranian-supplied bombs have killed and maimed Americans in Iraq. Mr. President, as you, yourself, have said, a bad deal is worse than no deal at all. A deal that allows Iran to continue enriching uranium and pursuing a military nuclear program while supporting terrorism around the world is a bad deal, and we in Congress will oppose it.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Speaker, the crisis we are currently witnessing at our southern border is the direct result of the Obama administration's selective enforcement of our Nation's immigration laws. Through its repeated inaction and disregard for border security, this administration has created a magnet for illegal immigration. This is endangering the lives of children and is adding additional strains to our already overtaxed taxpayers, and now, the President says he needs $3.7 billion from Congress to address the problem that his disregard for our laws has created. Virtually none of this money addresses the real problem of securing our border. We need to deploy the National Guard to the border. The National Guard is well equipped to handle this humanitarian crisis. It would provide critical relief to our Border Patrol, allowing them to better concentrate on protecting our border. My amendment to the NDAA of transferring $5 million to the Army National Guard would do exactly that.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. I thank the chairman for his great leadership on energy in the Natural Resources Committee. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4899, the Lowering Gasoline Prices to Fuel an America That Works Act of 2014. The offshore and onshore provisions in this bill will create American jobs, contribute to economic growth, and increase revenue to both State and Federal Governments. This legislation takes steps to move our country forward on a path towards energy independence. This legislation will streamline the onshore permitting process and ensure that energy projects can be permitted in a timely fashion. It will instill regulatory certainty into the leasing process by ensuring that BLM, the Bureau of Land Management, leases a minimum number of acres annually, and it will allow energy developers to move forward with energy production. It also requires the Secretary to develop a 4-year plan for energy development, opens up the national petroleum reserve in Alaska for production, and modernizes the leasing process by allowing BLM to conduct lease sales through the Internet. The Obama administration has made energy production on Federal lands so burdensome that companies are avoiding Federal land in favor of State and private lands. Both oil and gas production on Federal land are down under Barack Obama, by 6 percent and 28 percent respectively. In a State like my home State of Colorado, with a significant amount of Federal land, this is a problem because less energy production means less jobs and less growth. This bill injects much-needed certainty into nearly every step of the energy production process. It will ensure timely permit approvals, ensure that BLM field offices have the funds they need to process permits, prohibits the Secretary from changing lease terms, and ensure that our Nation has a plan for an energy future. I urge all my colleagues to support this critical legislation.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Chairman, I want to thank my colleague from Colorado for bringing this bill to the floor. It is so important that we exploit American domestic resources to create jobs, create global stability, and make lower prices for consumers. This bill does all those things. So we have a lot to thank you for, Congressman Gardner, for what this bill could accomplish, and I appreciate that. Let me address a couple of points that I think have been erroneously made. Some said that current users of natural gas won't benefit as much if this bill were to become law. That is simply not true. There is such an abundance of natural gas in this country that we can supply domestic needs and, at the same time, have liquefied natural gas exports to our friends and allies. We can do both, and everyone will benefit. The shale gas revolution in this country is so amazing that that has made this possible. Secondly, some have said that there will not be the same quality of environmental reviews of LNG if this takes place, and that is simply not true either. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission maintains its role to permit the siting of facilities, just as under current law, and FERC, as they are known, is required by the National Environmental Policy Act, NEPA, to conduct an environmental assessment and, if necessary, an EIS, an Environmental Impact Statement, if that is required. That does not change either. The same requirements under NEPA will still be met under this law, should it become law. So we are not in any way degrading or compromising environmental standards. They are still going to be satisfied. So, for all those reasons, I want to thank the sponsor of this bill, Representative Gardner, and I ask all of my colleagues to support it.

Mr. LAMBORN

Mr. LAMBORN. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the chairman's hard work and for his support of this amendment. With that, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMBORN. I yield to the gentleman from New Jersey.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Chairman, when you look at press accounts on what is happening at our southwest border, we are being overwhelmed. This amendment would take $5 million and give it to the Army National Guard out of the Department of Defense's administration operations account so that the National Guard is better able to get people and station them at our southwest border. They do not have dedicated funding or the additional funding they need for this border protection mission, yet they are involved in trying to establish order at the border. The primary role of the Federal Government is to provide for our national security, and securing our borders is part of that national security mission. Mr. Chairman, I believe that this $5 million would be better spent on securing our border than adding more people to the Secretary of Defense's staff.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Chair, I am offering the second Lamborn amendment, 052.

Mr. LAMBORN. Mr. Chairman, I would agree with the assertion that every single fighting man and woman is special. The Special Operations Forces do have some tremendous stresses that they can undergo, especially in the kind of combat missions that they perform. I believe that this is a program that has been successful in preventing suicide, so for that reason, I think it is timely. It is appropriate. There are different programs to treat our wounded warriors who have PTSD, and every program does not work for every soldier, sailor, airman, or marine; but for those who do get the treatment they need, it is literally a lifesaver. For that reason, I think it is a priority to address the aftereffects of PTSD, and this would be a very good program. I do appreciate the Appropriations Committee work that they do and the tough choices that they are constantly making, and I respect that, but I think this is a good choice, so I offer the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.