Dave Obey

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fattah).

Mr. OBEY. Could I inquire of the gentleman how many speakers he has remaining.

Mr. OBEY. Well, I am the last speaker, and since I have the right to close, I would suggest you use your time and then we'll use ours.

Mr. OBEY. The remainder of the time.

Mr. OBEY. No, we don't have 10 minutes.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, we have heard three times at least now our friends on the minority side indicate that only 12 percent of the original stimulus funding has, quote, left the Treasury. That's a very slippery way to put it, because the fact is that what ``left the Treasury'' means is that after funds are obligated to those who will actually spend it, and after the bills have been paid by those recipients, then the money has, indeed, left the Treasury. The real term to focus on is what has been obligated. And the fact is that for the programs in this bill, 70 percent of the funds previously appropriated to those programs have already been obligated. So much for that argument. Example: The minority press release states, ``No funds out of the $1 billion provided for COPS has left the Treasury.'' The fact is, all of that funding has been awarded. The minority press release states, ``Only $235 million out of the $6.4 billion for EPA wastewater grants has left the Treasury.'' The fact is, 99 percent of that funding has already been provided to the States. So much for that straw man. Let me, Madam Speaker, simply make this observation: we have before us a bill that determines to redirect $75 billion, which had initially been directed to help Wall Street, and we want to, instead, redirect that money to help Main Street. So we provide $27 billion, for instance, for highway infrastructure projects to put people back in construction. You're either for it or you're against it. We have provided enough funding in this legislation to assist more than 670 communities address their growing backlog of water and sewer repairs and put people to work in the process. You're either for it or against it. We've provided $27 billion from Wall Street to Main Street to try to stabilize public service jobs. We're trying to preserve 250,000 teaching jobs over the next 2 years, for instance. You're either for doing that or you're against it. We're trying to use $500 million to preserve the jobs of thousands of firefighters all across the country. You are either going to help or you're not. We are trying to provide 250,000 disadvantaged youth with summer employment opportunities. You're either going to help them or you're not. We're trying to provide 250,000 students with additional college work study funds so they can stay in school. You're either going to help those students or you're not. We're trying to provide funding for approximately 150,000 individuals in high-growth and emerging industry sectors where we know there are job growth possibilities. You're either going to help support that or not. We are trying to provide unemployment insurance for 6 months rather than the 2-month extension that was in the previous bill today. You're either going to help those people or not. We are trying to provide $23 billion to extend the higher Federal match for payments to doctors, or we're not. So, basically, it's about time to decide where you're coming from. An article in the New York Times today described what happens when you lose your job. It pointed out that more than half of the Nation's unemployed workers have had to borrow money from friends or relatives since losing their jobs. They've had to cut back on doctor visits. That same article indicates that a quarter of those polled had said they'd lost their home or been threatened with foreclosure. They also noted that half of the adults surveyed admitted to feeling embarrassed or ashamed as a result of being out of work. And nearly half of the respondents said they no longer had health insurance. The question is, are you going to help those people or not? We can argue what our economic philosophy is until the cows come home, as they say in my area, but it seems to me that the question simply is, We've got a problem; what are you going to do about it?

Mr. OBEY. If the gentleman would yield. Well, he doesn't have the time. I will simply take the time to say that if I had known that the Speaker had been able to come to the floor, I certainly would have told the gentleman. I simply didn't know, and I trust that he believes me.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for that clarification.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, pursuant to clause 7 of rule XX, I move a call of the House.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for the time. Mr. Speaker, it is hard for me to respond to the gentleman's comments with a straight face. I really think we've had a big lesson in Alice in Wonderland reasoning here today. Let's simply let the facts speak for themselves. We presently have had five appropriation bills already signed by the President of the United States. In addition, the bill which we will consider today and which will be sent to the President will mean that we have sent six additional appropriation bills to the White House. That means that during this session, we will have passed every single regular appropriation bill except the defense bill, which we expect to deal with next week. And we did that on top of having to deal with the most calamitous collapse of the economy in 75 years, necessitating a whole round of legislative action to try to salvage the economy. The gentleman and several of his friends on that side of the aisle have continued to complain that we haven't gotten all of these bills done by the end of the fiscal year. Engaging how seriously we should take that----

Mr. OBEY. No, I will not. Mr. Speaker, I do not intend to yield until I have finished my entire statement. The gentleman habitually asks people to yield in the middle of their statement. I'm going to complete my thoughts, and then I will be happy to yield. The fact is I think this House ought to compare our record this year with the record when the gentleman's party was in control. When we took control of this House 3 years ago, what did we find? We found that they had only been able to pass two appropriation bills. They had not been able to pass a single appropriation bill that appropriated a dime for the domestic portion of the Federal budget. And they, in fact, left to the next Congress the necessity to pass all of those domestic appropriation bills. How, with that record, they can come forward on this floor and complain because we are 60 days late in their mind is a joke in my view. Let me cite some of the other records. So far this year, without this bill, we have passed more individual appropriation bills than has been done in five of the last seven years, and most of those years were under Republican control. In fiscal year 2003, Republican control, only two bills were enacted as freestanding measures; the rest were part of an omnibus. In fiscal year 2004, Republican control, six bills were enacted as freestanding measures; the rest were in an omnibus. Fiscal year 2005, Republican control, four bills were enacted as freestanding measures; the rest were put in an omnibus. And the story goes on and on and on. With respect to the amendment process, our friends on the other side of the aisle were able to offer 96 amendments in full committee, they offered 155 amendments on the floor, and in the conference, on this bill alone, they offered nine amendments. Significantly, their Republican counterparts in the Senate didn't offer any; they felt we had done a pretty good bipartisan job in producing these bills, and I do, too. The fact is, we have been subjected to obstruction by delay as the minority has apparently tried to turn the House of Representatives into the Senate through filibuster by amendment. We don't have a filibuster in the House rules, but they can achieve the same thing by tossing up countless amendments, many of which are not serious amendments. With respect to the cost of the bill, they make much of the fact that this bill costs significantly more than its counterparts last year.

Mr. OBEY. Let's walk through what those differences are. Would they suggest that we take out the $3.2 billion increase for veterans so that we can clean up the disability backlog? Would they suggest that there is something wrong with the fact that, in contrast to what happened when they were running the show, we chose to put $14.8 billion for war costs that were previously funded in a supplemental, we chose to put them in the regular bill so you didn't hide the cost in a regular bill? On infrastructure, as the gentleman pointed out, we've had collapsing infrastructure in this country. Would they suggest we remove the $10.8 billion in additional infrastructure funding? On health, we are about to pass the most momentous health care changes in the history of the country. We have $6.3 billion of additional funding over last year to expand the capacity of the health care system to deal with the fact that 31 million more people are going to be using that health care system. Would they suggest that we take that money out? When you total up the cost for those items that I have just recited, the rest of the increase in the bill is $4.8 billion; that is equal to a 1 percent increase. I make no apology for that because, as the gentleman pointed out, we are trying to deal with years of neglect of our domestic economy. This is the bill that does that, and I make no apology for the fact that we bring it to the House today. And I make no apology for comparing our ability to deliver the goods before the end of this Congress in contrast to the inability of the other party to do that when they controlled the House.

Mr. OBEY. I would say never before have we had the kind of systematic obstruction on the part of the minority that we had either.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I have a question. Is the gentleman from California (Mr. Lewis) the same Mr. Lewis who chaired the Appropriations Committee the last year that the Republicans were in control? It's my impression that he is. As I recall, in that year the Republicans passed exactly two appropriation bills through the Congress and had them signed into law. The other nine appropriation bills were not passed in October. They were not passed in November. They were not passed in December. They were never passed. And so the incoming Congress under our control was forced to pass their bills at the beginning of the next session before we could even get to our own. Yet the gentleman with that record is now complaining because, with the passage of this bill, we will only have sent to the President 11 of the 12 appropriation bills needed for the year. And I would point out that by next week, we intend to send the last bill to him. If that happens, the only difference between our friends on that side of the aisle and us is that we will have gotten our work done. Despite the fact that we had to deal with the greatest economic collapse in 75 years, we will have finished every appropriation bill. In contrast to our friends on the other side of the aisle who in the last year they controlled this place were not able to complete action on a single domestic appropriation bill, under those circumstances, for the gentleman on that side of the aisle to squawk about the fact that we are a few days late is truly a case of the pot calling the kettle black. It is very interesting logic. With respect to the spending amount in this bill, I would simply point out, as the gentleman from Massachusetts did earlier, that we are in the process of trying to deal with years of neglect and we are in the process of trying to deal with an economic emergency and catastrophe. The gentleman complains that this bill is 14 percent above last year for comparable bills. The fact is, let's look at what those differences are. We added $3 billion more than last year so we could clean up the disability backlog for veterans' claims. Anybody on that side of the aisle want to take that money out? We have an additional $4.2 billion for the census because we are required by law to conduct that census so we can redirect huge amounts of Federal money to all of the localities in this country in an accurate fashion. Anybody think we ought to forgo that for the next 10 years? We've also put $14.8 billion above the previous year in this bill to cover war costs. We put it in the regular bill so it would show up rather than hiding it in the supplemental as previous Congresses did. Would you really rather go back to the old practice of hiding that $14.8 billion? Infrastructure investments. We have a 28 percent unemployment rate in the construction industry in 14 States in this country, so we are trying to respond to that by putting an extra $11 billion into infrastructure construction programs. Anybody think we ought to take that money out? Health care. We are about to pass the most momentous health care reform bill in the history of the country. That is going to put 31 million more people under our health care system. This bill provides $6 billion in order to expand the capacity of our health care system to deal with those people. Anybody think we shouldn't do that? And then on education, I plead fully guilty. We've got $5.6 billion more than last year, so that people who are losing their jobs and need retraining or need some additional education in community colleges can get it.

Mr. OBEY. Does anybody really think we should abandon those students and those workers? We don't think we should. So I would simply say, this country is struggling to overcome the longest and deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. This bill before us today is a key measure to help address the problems and provide relief for millions of hardworking Americans caught in the struggle for economic survival. And for the minority to complain about the fact that we are 90 days or 70 days late in getting the job done when they never got the job done when they were in control of this place is, to me, strange, if not laughable. With that, I thank the gentleman for the time.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I would like to comment very briefly on the comments of the gentleman from Tennessee, who a few moments ago criticized us because we were some 70 days late in passing the Military Construction-VA appropriation bill. Let me simply point out that we may be 70 days late, but we are getting the job done. In addition to passing the basic bill, we are, for the first time in history, providing advance funding for VA activities. That is something that the veterans community has wanted for years and years, and it has been this Congress that delivered. That stands in contrast to the performance of the minority party when they chaired this institution with respect to what they produced on the Military Construction-VA bill. They complain about the fact that we were 70 days late. They never passed that bill at all. They didn't pass it in October. They didn't pass it in November, which would have been 30 days late. They didn't pass it in December, which would have been 60 days late. They never passed it. When a new Congress took over, we had to pass all of those domestic appropriation bills and the Military Construction bill. I think it is quaint, indeed, when they attack us on the question of performance on, of all bills, the Military Construction bill. I think they need to go back and take a look at the record when they chaired this place. With respect to the funding overall levels in this overall bill, let me simply repeat what I said earlier. When you take into account the necessary increases for veterans disability, for the census, for the war costs which are not being hidden in a supplemental as they were under the stewardship of our friends on the other side of the aisle, when you take into account the infrastructure change in funding and the $6 billion that we needed to prepare the health care system for the legislation which is about to pass, the rest of the increases in the bill before us amount to 1 percent. I hardly think that that's excessive, given the economic crisis that we face.

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, I regret that this has become another typical ``Who Shot John'' debate, but since it has, let me respond to the distinguished minority leader. Let's compare what President Obama inherited with what President Bush inherited. When President Bush walked into the White House, he inherited $6 trillion in projected surpluses. He inherited 3 years in a row of budget surpluses under President Clinton. And he inherited an economy in which all income groups saw their income rise by roughly the same percentage. In contrast, when Mr. Obama walked into the White House, he inherited a $1 trillion deficit, he inherited two wars that were paid for on the cuff, with borrowed money. He inherited $6 trillion in projected deficits. And he inherited an economy in which, for six straight years, 94 percent of the income growth went to the wealthiest 10 percent of people, and everybody else got table scraps. In addition, he inherited an economy that was projected to have a $2.5 trillion hole because of the biggest collapse of the economy in 75 years. And so, indeed, Mr. Obama and the majority party in this Congress spent money to try to prime the pump, to keep the economy going, because we were losing 700,000 jobs a month the last 3 months of the Bush administration. We have now got that down to an 11,000 job loss last month. That's not good enough, but it's certainly a lot better than the situation was when we inherited it. The gentleman squawks about the debt ceiling. The debt has already been rung up, and now the question is, when the bill comes in the mail, is it going to be paid or not. The fact is, out of that $1.8 trillion debt increase, $1.4 trillion of that is directly traceable to policy actions that were taken by the previous administration and the previous Republican Congress. And $400 billion of it are directly traceable to the actions we've had to take to try to bail the economy out of the mess that you folks got us into. So if you want to start comparing records, I'd be happy to. I'd much prefer to talk about the contents of this bill and the individual programs of this bill. But since some the gentlemen on that side of the aisle prefer to politicize everything, I guess we're going to have to have the debate at that level. That's too bad, but I've come to expect very little but that from the other side, I regret to say. I do want to thank the gentleman from Ohio for trying insert a bit of bipartisanship into the debate.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 859 I was involved in discussions with Wisconsin's Governor about upcoming health reform legislation and missed the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I commend to my colleagues the enclosed article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the threat to the Great lakes from invasive species and the need for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative passed by the house last week. [From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nov. 2, 2009] 15,000 Reasons To Worry About State's Lakes (By Dan Egan) Crandon.--A day at the beach in Wisconsin's North Woods didn't used to go like this. Candy Dailey spent a Fourth of July holiday splashing with grandkids on the sandy shore of Lake Metonga when she felt a nasty sting on her foot. She didn't need to look down to know the culprit was a zebra mussel--cuts from the razor-sharp shells have become as unremarkable as bee stings since the mussels invaded Dailey's lake eight years ago. The natives of the Caspian Sea region first turned up in North America in the summer of 1988, thanks to overseas freighters' longstanding--and ongoing--practice of dumping their contaminated ballast water in the Great Lakes, which are now home to more than 185 non-native species. None has wreaked more damage than the mussels, which feast on Great Lakes plankton and have cost the region billions of dollars in starved fish populations, beach-trashing algae blooms and plugged industrial and municipal water intake pipes. Now, this ecological mess is spreading inland. ``The Great Lakes are just a beachhead for invasions that are going to play out in lakes across the country in the next century,'' says University of Wisconsin ecologist Jake Vander Zanden. ``It's just the start.'' Dailey is painfully aware of this. ``I'm a nurse, so I knew to make it bleed and wash it out,'' she says of the cut suffered from the molar-sized mussels. ``I dried it off and taped it.'' Trouble came in the middle of the night when she woke with a throbbing, swollen foot. By morning a tell-tale red streak was creeping up her leg. By sunset she was taking a broad- spectrum antibiotic. Dailey recovered from the bacterial infection, but her holiday was over. It's not the kind of story that makes a headline. It's just one infection from one cut. It's just one person swimming in one inland lake. The problem is Wisconsin has more than 15,000 inland lakes. Real trouble for real estate Politicians have tried for years to force overseas freighters to treat their ballast water--used to steady the ships--before discharging it at a Great Lakes port in exchange for cargo. The shipping industry acknowledges the trouble it has pumped into the world's largest freshwater system, and its leaders profess a desire to do something about it. Yet at the same time they have consistently fought regulations proposed by Great Lakes states to require freighters to install onboard ballast treatment systems, claiming they are impossibly stringent, expensive or inconsistent from state to state. Members of Congress, meanwhile, have repeatedly vowed--and repeatedly failed--to craft an overarching national ballast law that is palatable to both the shipping industry and environmentalists. The result is the door remains open to invasions, the most recent being the ``bloody red shrimp'' discovered in Lake Michigan in late 2006. There could well be others that have arrived since then; it can take years for populations to grow big enough to be noticed. Biologists say the damage being done to the world's largest freshwater system cannot be overstated, but the problem has become bigger than the Great Lakes themselves. It's now clear the failure to slam the door on new Great Lakes invasions has consequences for everyday folks with cottages on inland lakes, places working-class people across the state like to claim as their favorite on earth. ``Where is the fun in playing on the shoreline anymore if our lakes are wall-to-wall zebra mussels?'' asks Dailey. ``Look at the money that we all pay in property taxes to live on a lake that is now not the lake that it used to be.'' The potential economic impacts of this second-wave invasion could prove staggering. Property on Forest County's Lake Metonga sells for an average of about $1,200 a shoreline foot, and the lake has roughly 7 miles worth of it. That means a crude estimate of just this lake's shorefront value--not including any of the homes built on it--lands somewhere above $44 million. At the same time, one estimate of the annual savings associated with using overseas ships to haul cargo into the Great Lakes instead of transporting it via truck, train or barge is only $55 million. That's basically the real estate value of just one inland lake. Global trouble knocks People flock to places like the forested shores of Lake Metonga to get away from the rest of world. It is an illusion. Standing in front of about 400 shorefront property owners at the annual Wisconsin Lakes Convention in downtown Green Bay, University of Notre Dame professor David Lodge dimmed the lights and gave a pointed presentation last spring about the biological perils for a globe that has been stitched so tightly together by increasingly efficient transportation networks. Lodge pulled up a slide showing the Great Lakes are directly connected to 12% of the world's ports. That means a mussel, fish or even virus picked up at a bustling global port in a place like Antwerp, Belgium, can arrive in a matter of days at the Green Bay docks just outside the doors of the conference center at which Lodge spoke. Then Lodge showed a slide that revealed 99% of the world's ports are just two stops or fewer away from the Port of Green Bay, or any other commercial dock in the Great Lakes. This is not a theoretical problem; freighters are blamed for the arrival of nearly 60 new species since the St. Lawrence Seaway opened the Great Lakes to oceangoing vessels 50 years ago. And spreading that misery inland like so many viruses are the fishing boats, Jet Skis and other pleasure craft rolling on trailers down the state highways that provide a 65 mph link between the Great Lakes and inland waters. Wisconsin now has 120 inland waterways confirmed as infested with zebra mussels, though there is not a comprehensive annual survey of each lake so the actual number could be much higher. Beyond slicing swimmers' feet, zebra mussels have been linked to inland lake outbreaks of blue-green algae that produce toxins that can kill an animal and can cause liver damage in humans. This algae was a problem in state waters during the 1960s and '70s, but it faded with a ban on laundry detergents that contained the phosphorous that fed its blooms. Now blue-green algae outbreaks are making a comeback, and scientists are pointing to zebra mussel infestations as a big reason. The mussels encourage the blooms because they eat virtually every type of algae except for the blue-green algae. That gives the toxic algae a competitive advantage over its nutrient-rich cousins that have historically nourished the base of a lake's food chain. Zebra mussels may also further promote these toxic blooms because their excrement fertilizes them. Still, not every lake in Wisconsin is destined to become home to zebra mussels. Many, for example, don't contain enough mussel shell-building calcium. Biologist Vander Zanden's lab analyzed 923 lakes in northern Wisconsin's Vilas County and found 91 of them to be suitable habitat for zebra mussels. It's a completely different story in southeastern Wisconsin, where all but one of 334 analyzed can likely sustain zebra mussels. But property owners on inland lakes have to worry about a lot more than just zebra mussels. ``If you want to know what's coming next, look at the species that are already in the Great Lakes,'' Lodge says. And the problem doesn't stop at the state line; boat ramps around the country are launching more than just boats. Zebra mussels are widespread in the Mississippi River basin, and quagga mussels are now plugging pipes all the way out in California. Invaders on the way The list of Great Lakes invaders that threaten inland waterways includes VHS, a viral disease spreading through the Great Lakes that can be lethal to dozens of fish species. It also includes the quagga mussel, a slightly larger and hardier cousin to the zebra mussel that has exploded across the bottom of Lake Michigan in the past few years. Scientists say they are swallowing the base of the food chain and that jeopardizes everything above it, including the prized salmon that drive much of the Great Lakes' billion-dollar recreational fishery. Overseas freighters also brought to the Great Lakes the round goby, a bug-eyed fish that thrives on native species' fish eggs. Lake Michigan has lost more than 90% of its prey fish population since the arrival of invasive mussels, but the round goby is thriving, now accounting for about a fifth of the lake's prey fish. Gobies were first found in the Great Lakes in 1990 and in recent years began gobbling their way up Great Lakes tributaries, in some cases as far as 30 miles inland. The fish have been found in more than one-third of the Lake Michigan tributaries sampled. ``They are marching inland, and there is a lot of habitat for them,'' says Vander Zanden. Ballast water has also brought to the Great Lakes the spiny and fish hook water fleas, which are both hard for native fish to eat because of their namesake tails, and a rival when it comes to feasting on the microscopic critters at the bottom of the food chain. Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources has distributed more than $10 million to communities to fight aquatic invasive species since 2003. Regardless, the list of new invaders is likely to grow. The only protection the Great Lakes has at the moment from contaminated ballast water is a requirement that overseas ships bound for the Great Lakes flush their ballast tanks with mid-ocean saltwater to expel or kill any unwanted hitchhikers. It is a practice scientists say goes a long way--but not all the way--to reducing the risk of future invasions. In January, the Environmental Protection Agency released a report that spotlighted 30 organisms that have yet to invade the Great Lakes but are medium to high-risk candidates to do so. Twenty-five years ago, few in the Great Lakes region had even heard of a zebra mussel. The question now: What next is headed up the St. Lawrence Seaway? ``Until we control the ships, there will be lots of species nobody has ever heard of arriving on their doorsteps,'' says Anthony Ricciardi, an invasive species expert at Montreal's McGill University. Frustrations mount In 2008, organizers of the Pewaukee Triathlon had to cancel the swim portion of the event, which drew some 2,000 racers, because of plumes of blue-green algae. Nutrients flushed into the lake by heavy rains were a likely factor, but it didn't help that Pewaukee has also been infested with zebra mussels. On a busy Sunday over Labor Day weekend, Pewaukee Lake bait shop owner John Laimon estimated there were about 200 trailered boats on the lake ``coming from who knows where.'' It's not lost on him that Lake Michigan boat ramps are just a half-hour away. He is flabbergasted that two decades after zebra mussels were discovered in Lake Michigan, the government has failed to turn off the invasive species spigot. ``We're the ones paying for the mistakes at the federal level, and there is nothing in the wind that is going to stop that,'' he says. With little progress in Congress, the state of Wisconsin earlier this year tried to take matters into its own hands. It followed the leads of other Great Lakes states such as Michigan, Minnesota and New York and proposed its own ballast regulations that would require ships to install onboard treatment systems. Shipping industry advocates were not happy, particularly because Wisconsin's proposed standards, which mirror New York's, are much stricter than those of neighboring Minnesota. They urged the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to back off or adopt weaker regulations more in harmony with those of Minnesota, with which Wisconsin shares Duluth- Superior harbor. What's the point in stringently protecting just one side of a harbor, they asked. Conservationists agreed. But they urged Minnesota to get as tough as Wisconsin was considering. The shipping industry turned out in force at a public hearing on Wisconsin's proposal last spring, easily outnumbering those in favor of greater protections. ``In a time of national recession and a record state budget deficit, the last thing Wisconsin should do is impose a (ballast) permit that will: A) destroy jobs, B) reduce tax revenues and C) not result in any environmental benefits,'' said Andy Lisak, executive director of the Development Association that promotes business interests in Douglas County and the port city of Superior. The DNR has been sitting on its proposal ever since. And this has left bar-and-boat-launch owner Andy Cuppan ``terrified'' about what might be headed next down the interstate off-ramp and into his mussel-infested lake. He and his business partner recently bought the Boathouse Bar and Grill on the shore of Upper Nemahbin Lake, which is literally just feet from the rumbling westbound lanes of I- 94. Cuppan mentions that earlier this summer he dared to take a shoeless swim and suffered several stinging mussel cuts. More painful for him is the idea that not enough is being done to protect him from the big lake 30 miles to the east and from what's stewing in the water at ports across the globe. ``We can't do anything about what's here, but let's not let anything else in,'' he said. ``Our livelihoods are at stake.'' Of course this is just one guy, on one lake. The problem is Wisconsin has more than 15,000 of them.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Before you do that, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest, if the gentleman has questions, I would like to hear what they all are. When he has asked them all, then I will be happy to respond on my own time.

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for the time. Madam Speaker, what has occurred here is this: As the gentleman from Minnesota indicates, EPA had been developing a standard for oceangoing vessels for quite some time, but it was not until a very few weeks ago that it was discovered that, belatedly, under their proposed rule, they attempted also to apply that to the Great Lakes. When we discovered that, we reacted with alarm on both sides of the aisle. The gentlewoman from Michigan (Mrs. Miller), for instance, participated in a meeting with EPA, along with Mr. Oberstar, myself, Mr. Young from Alaska and several other people. Out of that came a decision to bring forward the proposal that we have in this bill today. That bill does two things. The bill simply exempts from the rule--it does not delay the rule in any way. In fact, the Canadian Government was opposed to the EPA rule--but what this provision does is to exempt the 13 steamers on the Great Lakes from that regulation, for one very good, simple reason--because if they use the kind of fuel that EPA wants them to use, they have a risk of blowing up, and we think that might be a bit of a problem for people on those ships. Secondly, the provision simply asks EPA to also consider when they deal with the question of the diesels on the Great Lakes, we ask EPA to simply do two things: We ask them to do an economic analysis to determine what the impact is on the Great Lakes region; and we ask them to provide, as they do in many other rules, for the possibility of a request for a waiver from the operators of those ships. Whether a waiver is granted is up to the EPA to determine. The other waiver we asked them to consider putting in the rule is a waiver which would apply if the fuel that EPA wants them to use is not available. That sounds to me to be a perfectly reasonable proposition. I think EPA thinks it is reasonable, which is why they have issued this statement: ``EPA welcomes public input on its Clear Air Act proposal to address emissions from large ships. The agency understands the unique technical and economic challenges that steamships would face if they were required to use lower sulfur fuel. The amendment announced today is consistent with one of several policy options the agency has been considering and would apply to only 13 U.S.-flagged ships, which account for less than one-half of 1 percent of the Nation's particulate matter emissions.'' So if someone wants to make a Federal case out of it, be my guest. But I would point out there are two other reasons for the committee action: number one, the EPA rule as it originally was being contemplated would have been a devastating blow to the Midwest. It could have wiped out steel production in the Midwest because it would raise prices on those tankers so high that that region would have been uncompetitive. The result could be that steel production would move from that region of the country and from Canada to China. If you do that, you wind up with much greater emissions, because under the rule if you operate a ship outside of 200 miles from our coast, you can use the old, dirty fuel. But if you ply the Great Lakes, you have to use the new fuel, because on the Great Lakes you are never further than 200 miles away from shore.

Mr. OBEY. I would also point out that if the result is to shift transit on the Great Lakes from ships to trucks or rail cars, you increase, you do not decrease, the emissions, because it takes a Great Lakes ship 18 tons of carbon dioxide to move 1,000 tons of cargo 1,000 miles. If that cargo were shifted to a rail car, it would emit 55 tons of carbon dioxide for the same job, and a truck would emit 190 tons. So I submit the committee solution is good for the environment, it is good for the jobs in the upper Midwest, it assists the economies of New York, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Indiana, and, in economic times like this, I make no apology whatsoever for doing that.

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, two points: First of all, we specifically worked with EPA to assure that there would be no delay in the rule. That is why we did not pursue a wholesale exemption for the Great Lakes, as we originally had requested EPA to consider. Secondly, I must say I welcome the gentleman from California's belated interest in the health of the Great Lakes. But I wonder, is this the same gentleman from California who, years ago, when chairing the appropriations subcommittee, brought to the floor a bill which contained some 17 riders to gut virtually every environmental protection you could find which, for instance, exempted the oil refinery industry from air toxic-emission standards, which would have allowed 1 million tons of hazardous waste from cement kilns to be exempted from air toxic requirements, which would have prohibited EPA from protecting any of the Nation's remaining wetlands and would have stopped all work on the Great Lakes Initiative, for which this bill provides $500 million?

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. Madam Speaker, I rise to regretfully inform my colleagues of the passing of our former colleague, Jay Johnson, who represented the Eighth District of Wisconsin with distinction from January of 1997 through January of 1999, and I would ask that the House observe a moment of silence in his honor.

Mr. OBEY

Mr. OBEY. I thank the gentleman for the time. Madam Speaker, from time to time, people in this House know that I quote my old favorite philosopher, Archie the Cockroach, and Archie said, or maybe it was Will Rogers--I've forgotten exactly which--but one of them noted that there is nothing more pitiful than the sight of a flock of politicians in full flight. They can look as panicked as a loon trying to take off from choppy lake water. And if you've ever watched one of those, it takes them a long time, they make a lot of ruckus, and they look like an unjointed turkey in the process. That's the way the Congress has looked, in my judgment, with respect to this Guantanamo Bay issue. Now, this country has a problem. After September 11 we picked up a lot of bad and dangerous characters and shipped a lot of them to Guantanamo. We also picked up, on the basis of bad information, some who didn't belong there. From what I can tell, it would appear like virtually every single person there now deserves to be there. But the problem is that the previous administration had no process by which to separate the merely criminal or the merely misguided from the truly evil. And as a result, thanks in part to the unrelated chaos of Abu Ghraib, the United States, which has rightly prided itself on being the principal advocate of due process and human rights in the world, has come to be seen by some these days as a pretty major apologist for torture and imprisonment without review or remedy. I don't think that's what America really stands for. President Obama has tried to deal with the fact that Guantanamo has become a major liability to this country in the court of world opinion and in some cases has become a recruiting ground for the very forces that we wish to contain. In the Presidential campaign, to their credit, both candidates called for closing Guantanamo because they recognized the damage being done to our influence and our security. President Obama won that election and announced his intention to close the facility. Admittedly, the administration did not demonstrate a high degree of skill in implementing that decision. They had a credible goal, but they clearly had not thought through how to get there. That's why this committee insisted in the 2009 supplemental that the administration present its analysis to the Congress before people who were imprisoned in Guantanamo could be shipped elsewhere and before any detainees could be brought to the U.S. or transferred to another country. Very frankly, the administration has received very little help from Capitol Hill in thinking through this problem. A number of Members have had legitimate concerns, but they could not come up with any reasonable set of criteria by which transfers could be effected. Now, this motion would have this body declare that no prisoners can be transferred anywhere in this country even for prosecution, which they so richly deserve. That means the detainees would have to be transferred to other countries or that Guantanamo would have to remain open as a permanent stain on our reputation for due process. I think we can do better than that. Has this country, this country that has even tried the worst criminals in the history of the world at Nuremberg, has this country experienced such a pitiful decline of modern thoughtful political leadership that we now have no capacity except to say lock them up forever, no questions asked, and no due process provided under any circumstances? We may want to lock them up. I'm sure we do. But we can do better in the way we do it. In America we do not provide due process for the benefit of criminals; we provide it for our own safety's sake. I don't know how many Members are familiar with the play ``A Man for All Seasons'' about Sir Thomas More, who was martyred by King Henry VIII. When More's son-in-law, Richard Roper, in that famous play, said that he would cut down every law in England to get at the devil, More replied, ``And where would you hide then, the laws all being flat? Yes, I give the devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.'' That's why it's important that we have a process that will allow us to lock up and throw away the key on everyone in Guantanamo who deserves it; but we cannot tell the world that just because this process is difficult, we are simply going to take the easy road and step over the valleys that make this Nation great. I refuse to believe, as the gentleman from North Carolina has already indicated, I refuse to believe that our law enforcement officials, our prison officials, and our Justice Department officials are not skilled enough and thoughtful enough to imprison these thugs in high-security facilities at minimal or no danger to our citizens and our communities. Our prisons keep us safe from the likes of Charles Manson; David Berkowitz, the ``Son of Sam'' killer; the World Trade Center bombers; and the Kenyan Embassy bombers, whom I detest because they killed several friends of mine. What we want to propose in conference will be built on the faith that we do have that capacity. Now, we can either let somebody else deal with our problems, or we can let them fester because we don't want to deal with them and make hard choices ourselves. That's unacceptable, and I think it's time that we face up to that. What will emerge from conference, I suspect, will be language that any reasonable person will be able to say is a good-faith, effective process by which we can keep Americans safe and still continue to stand for the due process principles that we have always stood for. I know these people are enemy combatants and they don't deserve it. But we don't make our decisions on the basis of what we think of defendants. We make our decisions on the basis of what we think of ourselves. And that's what makes us the greatest country in the world. And I do not want, as this motion would have us do, to depart from that high standard today. Again, I thank the gentleman for the time.