Conor Lamb

Mr. LAMB

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, this is my last speech. The first time that I walked in here, I looked all around the Chamber the way that new Members do, and it really struck me that there are only two paintings in here. They are right behind me now. One is of George Washington and the other is of General Lafayette. I think what struck me is that neither man ever served in this House, but on that first day, I felt that they were looking right at me and saying, we have a message for you: Don't take this place for granted. Other people had to fight for us to be able to do what we do in here. On that first day, I had no idea that within less than 3 years, the D.C. police and the Capitol Police would have to fight for us again right here, that hundreds of them would be injured, that some of them would give their lives just so that we can walk back in that night and do our job. I saw a recent poll that showed that just 21 percent of Americans approve of the job that we do in here; 75 percent of Americans disapprove. And most of us know why that is. We have been in our Congressional districts during a government shutdown and after we fail to pass yet another bill that most Americans support, and also because the bad news about this place travels much farther and much faster than the good news ever does. But I just keep thinking about how those officers fought for this place. They fought for us. And I think they would do it all over again if you asked them to. We can take confidence in that fact. We can take confidence in the fact that this institution did its job on January 7, hours after being attacked on January 6. We can take confidence in the fact that since then our fellow Americans have continued to reject so many candidates around the country who are not committed to this democracy. If I could only make one observation on my way out the door here, is that I think we all have to be confident about this institution and we should be more confident in ourselves. Our failures are noticed more. We all know that. But our successes are real. And we have to value those successes because they are a credit to people like Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick or to Representative John Lewis or to a young Air Force staff sergeant from my district named Dylan Elchin, people who sacrificed and shed blood for this democracy and for what it means. The things that we have done in here and that you will continue to do next term reflect the greatness of these people. I keep thinking about these brown cardboard boxes of food that the Department of Agriculture put together during the pandemic. They rushed them to food banks, and I loaded a lot of these boxes into people's cars when I was back in my district. These were honest and good people. In their trunks, these were people that had work boots and tools; they never thought they were going to need something from a food bank. But it was our votes that fed those people and gave them help in their hour of need. I could go on and on about the things that we have done in this room that are so special. My staff knows I talk endlessly about the fact that our district was home to the first-ever civilian nuclear power plant, and its successor power plant was at risk when we came into office. It is now secure because of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the Inflation Control Act; thousands and thousands of jobs, clean power that our region needs in investment and science. I would talk about the teamsters and the miners and how we saved their pension if I had time. How we rebuilt a bridge in Pittsburgh in less than 1 year because of Federal funds. How the microchips and hydrogen that we have set aside money for are themselves an expression of so much confidence in our future in this country. My time is up, so I will just say that I don't want to deny that we have our problems in this country, we definitely do, but I have only been here for 4 years, and it is obvious to me that we have everything we need to be successful. For an Irish guy, that is a very emotional thought, but I have seen it. When I was a kid, I had this plaque that my grandmother gave me that said the words of St. Paul, which were that we have a responsibility to stir into flame all the gifts that God has given us. God has given this country so many incredible gifts. I just think we have to be worthy of that. We have to honor our inheritance; and on our best days, for the last 4\1/2\ years, we have done that. It has been the honor of my life to do that. Mr. Speaker, to all my colleagues, I just say that I am confident in you. I know what you all are capable of and what this institution is capable of. To my constituents, I say thank you. It has been a tremendous privilege to be here in your name.

Mr. LAMB

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, if you were in western Pennsylvania for the 2020 campaign season, you would have seen a lot of commercials about what Republicans were going to do on the issue of energy and for energy workers and what Democrats were going to do. The contention was that Republicans were going to make us energy dominant, that they were going to help all these workers and give them more job opportunities, and that the Democrats were going to take all that away. So here today, we have a bill that is all about energy dominance and energy jobs. If you build pipelines, this bill is for you because of the increased money for carbon capture and hydrogen. If you make the steel tube that goes into those pipelines, if you work at a nuclear power plant, or if you build things for the nuclear power plant, this bill is for all of you. It strengthens and widens our energy portfolio and gives us more options at a better price. Yet, today's bill is not a Republican bill. It is a Democratic bill. I wish it wasn't only a Democratic bill, but it will be because when it comes to the needs of these workers and the true need for our country to be energy secure, we are the ones doing the job.

Mr. LAMB

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill not only for the important semiconductor provisions but for some of the provisions that are less noticed, including the text of the SUPER Act authored by Representative Gonzalez of Ohio and me which focuses on how to get the carbon emissions out of steelmaking. It is often the people from steelmaking parts of the country who stand up in support of provisions like this, but this is important for every American. Every American uses 600 pounds of steel every single year. If you think about the roads you drive on, the bridges and buildings you enter, your own car, and your own house, Mr. Speaker, it starts to add up. There is nowhere in the world that they make this steel without emitting more CO2 into the atmosphere. Somewhere someone in the world is going to figure out how to do that. If we do it here in the United States--we are already emitting less than everybody else-- but if we can get it to zero, then we will have a product that everyone in the world is looking for and is crucial to our future. This bill will help us do that.

Mr. LAMB

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, before I came to Congress, I was a Federal prosecutor in my hometown of Pittsburgh, and the biggest law enforcement challenges that we had then, and really still have today, are opioids and gun violence. Marijuana just didn't register in terms of the risks that it posed to people on a day-to-day basis compared to those two things. Yet, because of the way the Federal criminal laws are written and the way that cannabis is placed in schedule I, it is very easy for a marijuana offense to actually get someone a worse sentence than an opioid offense like overprescribing Oxycontin, selling fentanyl, or a firearms offense like possession of a firearm or shooting at someone. Our Federal laws are out of place. It is in the spirit of wanting to make sure that our law enforcement priorities are focused on the most serious crimes and the most violent crimes that I can support the removal of cannabis from schedule I. This bill came up once before in the previous Congress under a closed rule in which there were not opportunities for amendment, so I want to thank the leadership and the chairman this time around for allowing Members under an open rule to make some amendments. While I do support the removal of cannabis from schedule I, I think, as we have heard in the debate today, there are many questions about what happens the day after that and are we being careful enough to ensure that the public gets the best possible balance of the benefits of taxing and regulating cannabis while still protecting children and making sure that we have safe and efficient workplaces. The amendment that I am offering here today aims to answer a couple of questions. Essential workers--firefighters, people who operate heavy equipment on infrastructure projects, people who work in public safety and national security--what are we willing to tolerate as far as those workers on the job site potentially with cannabis in their system? We need to know how to test for it. We need to know what the rules are to keep people safe on that job site and, most importantly, keep the public safe so these people can continue working. The same question for schools: What are the best practices for schools in a world where cannabis is no longer in schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act; in a world where cannabis could be in corner stores that children walk past on their way home; in a world where school bus drivers or teachers may be legally authorized to use cannabis in their off time? All we are trying to do is answer these questions. There are some who see problems with a change in the law. They see challenges, and they shrink from them. They say: Let's keep the status quo the same. Let's not tackle problems. What we are trying to do here is do the public one better than that. There is an ironclad case for removing cannabis from schedule I and focusing our law enforcement priorities where they should be, but we have to take steps to make sure that we do this in a careful, cautious, and correct manner. That is what my amendment offers, Mr. Speaker, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 30 seconds to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time for closing. Mr. Speaker, I want to address one point from my colleague from Oregon's side of the debate. Today, after the passage of this bill--hopefully, with my amendment-- we will be sending a letter to both departments addressed by this amendment to ask them to begin these studies right away. I agree that it is important that the public needs this information and knowledge. Employers, workplaces, and schools need it as quickly as possible. What I am not sure our colleagues on the other side really realize at this moment is that people are already using cannabis. It is very common in all segments of society and all people with all different types of jobs. The place that the public has been left in is an overly harsh criminal penalty, with very little specific guidance to workplaces, employers, and schools of what they are supposed to do in this new world. What many of them do is react as harshly as possible, matching the criminal sanction of our Federal Government. They do drug tests and have strict bans, basically, on this substance that many Americans feel is actually safe and part of the lifestyle that they want to live. Our study will allow a better answer than that. In a world where people are going to be using this drug, this substance, and where it is, in fact, much less harsh than prescription drugs that are regulated lower on the scale than that, we need to get the answer out there to these workplaces and schools as quickly as possible. That is all that we are aiming to do here. We are making policy for the real world with this amendment, and I encourage all of my colleagues to support it. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMB

Mr. LAMB. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Michigan. This is the mask of the Allegheny-Fayette Labor Council, which represents the coal miners that President Trumka loved so well. Madam Speaker, before he was the president of the AFL-CIO and an internationally known figure, he was a western Pennsylvanian. Rich Trumka was a football player, a deer hunter, a member of a great family. What I respected about him so much is that the western Pennsylvania part of Rich Trumka never went away. It always shone through. I heard him speak one time where he said one of the problems with our opponents in politics is that they want you to think the economy is just like the weather. It is just something that happens to people, and we might be able to predict it and prepare for it, but there is nothing we can do to change it. He knew that in parts of the country, like ours in western Pennsylvania, people had heard versions of that for so long at such high volume with so much corporate money and messaging behind it that it threatened the basic fabric of our community. The unions built the middle class not just in America but particularly in western Pennsylvania, and that has eroded over time. The benefits and the value of the labor movement have receded in a lot of people's minds. To me, the most western Pennsylvania thing about President Trumka was that he never gave up on it because he knew that our people never really accepted the result of the recession of the labor movement, the inequality and injustice that has grown, the way so many of our towns have been hollowed out, and the way people looked to the future now sometimes with cynicism instead of optimism and hope. Madam Speaker, to me, what he represented was that he really lived out the kind of abstract idea we have that the interests and the struggle of a coal miner can be the same as the interest and struggle as someone who works in home healthcare or someone who survived a nursing home during the pandemic working for less than $15 an hour. We have a lot of those in western Pennsylvania now. Healthcare is one of our biggest economic drivers, and those people are not paid well for the risks that they take and the hard, backbreaking work that they do. Coal miners know something about that. I think that the best way we can honor President Trumka is to set aside some of the many differences that we have, even within the Democratic family and the labor family, and refocus ourselves on the core economic issues that tie together all the working- and middle-class people in this country that, themselves, represent such a powerful force that they really can't be stopped when people unite with each other. Madam Speaker, I thank Mr. Levin for pulling this together, and may God protect Richard Trumka.

Mr. LAMB

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Wisconsin (Ms. Moore).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 508, I rise to offer amendments en bloc No. 1.

Mr. LAMB. Madam Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 508, I rise to offer amendments en bloc No. 2.

Mr. LAMB. Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMB. Madam Speaker, I will try to do it in 30 seconds. The bulk of our emissions reduction has come from the transition from coal to natural gas. Most of the critical science that is behind the shale revolution was developed within the national lab system, particularly at the National Energy Technology Laboratory, proudly located in western Pennsylvania. Of course, private-sector innovation played a huge role, but there were many key scientific advances that would not have been possible without Federal investment paid for by this very Congress. That is how we are responsible for many of the emissions reductions that have taken place and that will continue to take place in the future.

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this en bloc amendment, which provides for the consideration of 42 amendments. The amendments contained in this en bloc touch upon various policy areas in the base bill. The surface transportation amendments include: increasing funding for the National Scenic Byways Program; creating a climate-safe infrastructure working group to prepare transportation infrastructure for the effects of climate change; requiring a GAO report to Congress on access to nonemergency medical transportation for disadvantaged populations; requiring the Secretary of Transportation to submit a report to Congress on the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program; and ensuring underserved communities are considered in the expansion of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. These are just some of the highlights of the amendments included. I thank my colleagues for offering such thoughtful amendments to improve the surface transportation portions of the INVEST in America Act, and I urge adoption of the amendment. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Rhode Island (Mr. Langevin).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Jones).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I would just note for my colleague's edification the strong role that the Federal Government and national lab system played in the very energy innovation that he was mentioning in his remarks. It was not done by the private sector alone. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Torres).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Auchincloss).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time is remaining.

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Ocasio-Cortez).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

Mr. LAMB. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from Texas (Mrs. Fletcher).

Mr. LAMB. Madam Speaker, I am prepared to close whenever the gentleman from Louisiana is prepared to close. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. LAMB. Madam Speaker, just kind of wrapping up everyone's comments today, I think that this bill is a significant down payment on the future that we are all working toward. The reality of American history is that the government often works together with businesses to stimulate investments and speed up new markets. That is what we are trying to do in this bill. That has been true in natural gas; it has been true in public transportation; and it is true in electric vehicles. And that is what this bill is about. We are very proud to offer all of these amendments, and I reserve the balance of my time.