David Price

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Yes, I would be glad to yield.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Well, you're asking your colleagues here tonight, before the entire Nation, to stigmatize these organizations, to slay these organizations. You have information, you're claiming, about these organizations that would warrant this kind of treatment, this kind of blackballing of these organizations with respect to any ability to compete legitimately for governmental funds. Don't you think you should have brought with you to the floor documentation of the problems with these organizations that would warrant this kind of treatment? Let me ask you about the Agape Broadcast Foundation. What kind of information do you have about the Agape Foundation?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. But you are singling out that foundation. You are singling out that foundation.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. How about the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement? Does the gentleman have documentation of why that organization should be included here tonight?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Reclaiming my time, I guess this would appear to be some kind of guilt by association, but I'm not sure it even rises to that level. Do we know about the associations of these organizations that would warrant their being tarred by this treatment here tonight? Wouldn't the gentleman have the respect for his colleagues to bring to the floor the documentation that leads him to smear these organizations and include them on this extraordinary amendment? You're expecting us to vote on this. What about the Affiliated Media Foundation Movement? Does the gentleman have information about that organization?

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I'm not going to prolong this, but I do want to plead with my colleagues. This is something that this body simply, simply should not be a party to. Bringing in three pages-plus of organizations that many of us, most of us, have never heard of, have no knowledge of. They may be on somebody's list somewhere. We have no knowledge of the basis for inclusion on that list. There may have been media reports about them. Whatever there is that would back up this kind of list, at a minimum it should be provided to us tonight. Anyone offering an amendment of this sort ought to provide the basic documentation for the kind of stigmatizing, the kind of exclusion that is being proposed here of these organizations from any ability to compete for funding in this bill. I hope it's obvious--I hope it's obvious to everybody here, no matter what their political persuasion, that this is simply unacceptable and must be rejected. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I wish to join the chairman of our subcommittee in opposing this amendment--not because there are any funds in this bill for these advanced imaging machines, this particular technology. There is no funding in this bill for this purpose, but on principle, this amendment is objectionable. It could be very damaging. I won't dwell on the privacy safeguards. I think they've been debated in this body before, and we're well aware that privacy safeguards surrounding the use of this equipment are extensive--the face is blurred, there is no storage of the images, the operator of the machine is off the premises. And as the chairman just said, the technology is constantly being improved to protect privacy further. But the point also needs to be made that an amendment like this, if it were implemented--not just with respect to the current year funding, but with ongoing acquisition of these machines--this amendment would reduce our ability to find non-metallic explosives and weapons or bombs carried on a person's body. That's the fact of the matter. These advanced imaging machines are better able to detect a wide variety of threats that metal detectors simply cannot pick up. So adopting this amendment would put our citizens at risk. It's a step backwards in our security provisions and it should be rejected. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Once again, I want to join the chairman in urging rejection of this amendment. The reasoning that I applied to the previous amendment applies with equal force to this amendment. We're talking here about the need in our airports to employ the best and latest possible technology to save lives, and we're not doing this without knowledge of emerging threats. And the ability of different technologies to pick up more sophisticated threats, more difficult threats to detect, that's what these machines are all about. It's most unwise, I think, most irresponsible on the floor of this House to make judgements about this that actually could compromise our security in very, very serious ways. I urge rejection of this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise to oppose this amendment. I want to deal just for a moment, though, with some of the accusations that have surrounded this proposal and others like it. In fact, the House Oversight Committee conducted an investigation concerning allegations that Homeland Security improperly politicized the Freedom of Information Act process by allowing political appointees to review documents before they were released to the public. The committee's lengthy investigation and a corresponding review by the inspector general found no evidence that the documents were edited, prior to release, for political reasons. According to the IG, ``During our review, we learned that the Office of the Secretary was involved in examining several hundred FOIA requests prior to disclosure. This process was created so the Department would be aware of certain FOIA requests that it deemed to be significant. After reviewing information and interviewing FOIA experts, we determined that the significant request review process of DHS did not prohibit the eventual release of information.'' Now, to be clear, both the IG and the committee found the process to be inefficient and cumbersome. But I understand from the committee that it has since been modified to address these concerns. Now, on the amendment, I think it's a bad idea and perhaps counterproductive. It could lead to the exact opposite of the gentleman's intended result. Let me explain what I mean. In some cases, political review and decision-making will allow the Department to be more proactive in disclosing information to the public. Under this amendment, the head of the agency or another political appointee could not override an arbitrary decision by a bureaucrat to withhold documents that should be released. That bureaucrat could be protecting himself and his colleagues or those documents should be released. There could be a perverse result, I think, if this amendment were adopted. And at least under the reading of our oversight committee colleagues, the amendment might prevent the agency from faithfully carrying out its responsibility to comply with FOIA requests. That's because, technically, the agency head is in charge of ensuring the process is completed. If they're taken out of the mix, it really calls into question who's accountable and whether the FOIA process would operate as intended. So we better be careful in treading on this ground. We could have exactly the opposite results from what is intended. And for that reason, I oppose this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, our chairman has expressed very well the reasons for opposing this amendment. It simply would weaken our security dangerously. And we are talking here not just about first responders and firefighters, we are also talking about frontline DHS personnel in a number of our agencies. I join him in urging rejection of this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. It is premature; there has not yet been a completed election for union representation at TSA. Moreover, it is unwise. The TSA administrator has made a modest and limited proposal to allow limited collective bargaining for transportation security officers. I think that is in the best interests of TSA, and it has been restricted to nonsecurity issues. So it is a wise proposal and a modest one, and we should allow it to go forward. I yield to our colleague, the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Thompson) who is the ranking member of the authorizing committee on Homeland Security.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, Congress has the power to enact this legislation pursuant to the following: Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides Congress with the authority to ``make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper'' to provide for the ``general Welfare'' of Americans. In the Department of Education Organization Act (P.L. 96-88), Congress declared that ``the establishment of a Department of Education is in the public interest, will promote the general welfare of the United States, will help ensure that education issues receive proper treatment at the Federal level, and will enable the Federal Government to coordinate its education activities more effectively.'' The Department of Education's mission is to ``promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.''

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in reluctant opposition to this measure. I do so with a keen awareness that it reflects a bipartisan agreement reached to avert a government shutdown, and I commend the President and congressional leadership for negotiating a deal that avoided the most extreme aspects of H.R. 1, the Republican continuing resolution passed by the House in February. I also commend Chairman Rogers and the Appropriations Committee majority staff for soliciting input from the minority as they finalized the details of this proposal. But ultimately, I must judge this bill on its merits and not by the process that produced it. And I cannot in good conscience support a measure that will threaten our fragile economic recovery and undermine key investments in our future, while doing little to address our long- term fiscal challenges and requiring little in the way of shared sacrifice. It is simply not enough to observe that this bill could have been much worse. As the Ranking Member of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, I have concerns about the cuts the bill would impose on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), but this is not the primary reason for my opposition. This area of the budget was spared the sort of drastic reductions the bill makes to investments in infrastructure, innovation and the health and well-being of the American people. I commend our Subcommittee Chairman, Robert Aderholt, for protecting the core operational functions of the Department--from Customs and Border Protection personnel to transportation security investments to the Coast Guard. Chairman Aderholt was not operating without constraints, of course. Overall funding for DHS will drop by two percent from last year's funding level, and the majority's decision to increase the Disaster Relief Fund by $1 billion to cover a shortfall that has traditionally been met through emergency supplemental appropriations only exacerbates this reduced allocation. Unfortunately, state and local first responder grants received the brunt of this blow, taking a 25 percent reduction overall. Not only does this adversely impact the efforts of communities across the country to keep their people safe by preparing for natural disasters and terrorist attacks, but it does so at a time when state and local budgets are already contracting, making federal assistance all the more vital. The bill also reverses course on a decision to fund the processing of asylum seekers and refugees out of general funds, rather than asking other immigrant petitioners to pay fees to fund a service they don't receive. A reduced allocation for the National Protection and Programs Directorate is likely to delay the critical effort to secure government cyberspace, and a cut to the flood hazard mapping program will make it difficult for FEMA to meet its legal obligation to update our nation's flood maps every five years. The bill does avoid significant cuts to most of the core DHS components, including the Coast Guard, TSA, ICE, Secret Service, and Customs and Border Protection. Importantly, the bill maintains level funding for firefighter equipment and staffing grants, which are critical to mitigate the impacts of widespread local budget cuts to public safety personnel. And because of the dire fiscal straits that local fire chiefs are facing, the bill maintains flexibility Congress has given FEMA in recent years to waive certain restrictions on SAFER grants that are difficult for most fire departments to achieve right now. Specifically, the bill waives the requirement that SAFER grants be used to increase the number of firefighters on staff, thus allowing these grants to be used to rehire laid off firefighters and to retain firefighters who face the prospect of being laid off. In discussions over these provisions, negotiators realized that allowing these grants to be used for retention was clearly one of the most important measures that should be maintained for fiscal year 2011 SAFER grants. Second, the bill waives local cost-share requirements, which vary from 10 percent of a firefighter's salary in the first year to 70 percent in the fourth year of the personnel grant. Third, the bill waives a provision in the SAFER authorizing statute prohibiting the grants from being used to supplant state or local funds. While I believe a more comprehensive set of waivers would have served the program well, in the judgment of the bill's negotiators, provisions allowing for the rehiring and retention of firefighters, the waiver of cost-share requirements, and the supplanting of local funds simply had to be maintained for the current fiscal year. Unfortunately, these homeland security provisions offer little consolation when we turn to other areas of the bill. The strength and security of our country are about much more than how much we spend on weapons systems or how thoroughly we police the border. They are about the investments we make in our people--in our nation's ability to recover from the current economic downturn, compete in the global economy, and build a future of greater prosperity for our children and grandchildren. The bill before us risks pulling the rug out from under the current recovery and compromising our future competitiveness. To be sure, it could have been worse. Some of the most reckless cuts included in H.R. 1--such as a 17 percent cut to Pell Grants, a $1.6 billion cut to NIH, and an $800 million cut to the National Science Foundation--have been avoided, while the measure contains modest increases for programs such as Head Start and homeless assistance grants. Most of the extreme, ideologically driven policy riders being pushed by my Republican colleagues have been dropped. But the bill still cuts nutrition assistance to Women, Infants and Children (WIC) by over $500 million, Community Health Centers by $600 million, and public housing programs by $700 million--leading to more hungry children, reduced access to health care, and fewer families with a roof over their heads at a time when many are still struggling to make ends meet. It cuts Career Education programs, Dislocated Worker Assistance programs, and a range of highway and infrastructure projects -- making it harder for out-of-work Americans to find jobs at a time when our economic recovery is still fragile. And it includes drastic cuts to high-speed rail ($2.9 billion), the EPA ($1.6 billion), energy efficiency and renewable energy research ($438 million), and other key investments in our long-term economic competitiveness. The federal budget is a statement of our priorities and values. These cuts will slow economic growth, as economists across the spectrum have warned, and cost hundreds of thousands of jobs. They will inflict pain on the most vulnerable and restrict opportunities for the middle class. Make no mistake: in order to preserve our economy competitiveness in the future, we must also put our country back on a path toward fiscal balance. As a veteran of the balanced budget agreements of the 1990s, I take a backseat to no one in my conviction that we must rein in our current deficits and put our long-term obligations on a more sustainable trajectory. And while some may claim that this bill is a necessary first step on this path, this view ignores the fact that by threatening the recovery, this bill could perversely exacerbate our fiscal troubles, all the while failing to address the real budget crisis--the massive imbalance in projected revenues and government obligations in the long-term. Addressing this much more vexing challenge will require making targeted reductions in spending, but it should phase these adjustments in at a pace that does not jeopardize the fragile economic recovery. I have supported a series of measures in recent months that included real cuts to programs I care about. I helped draft an omnibus bill last fall that would have cut over $20 billion below the President's request, and when that wasn't enough to satisfy my Republican colleagues, I helped draft a yearlong Continuing Resolution (CR) that would have cut nearly $40 billion below the request (and $10 billion below last year's enacted level). Senate Republicans blocked both measures, choosing instead to threaten a March government shutdown. In recent weeks I supported three short-term continuing resolutions to give leaders time to negotiate our way out of this mess. These bills cut another $12 billion off of last year's level. But we will never balance the budget through cuts to domestic discretionary spending alone. What is needed is a comprehensive approach that includes reforms to entitlements and revenue, as well as targeted spending cuts--the kind of serious approach outlined by President Obama yesterday--instead of focusing myopically on just 12 percent of the budget, as the bill before us does. Twelve percent of the budget--programs that invest in our people and our future--is not 100 percent of the problem. A real budget solution requires shared sacrifice from all Americans, instead of seeking to balance the budget on the backs of lower- and middle-income Americans while cutting taxes for the wealthy. And so I cannot in good conscience support a measure that would threaten our economic recovery and undermine our long-term competitiveness while doing next to nothing to address our long-term fiscal challenges. This bill may have been a necessary step to avert the irresponsible shutdown of the government, but that does not make it a step in the right direction. I urge my colleagues to oppose this measure.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, I rise in opposition to this continuing resolution. All of us know we are having this debate at a challenging and tense time. We are facing an entirely unnecessary government shutdown, a shutdown that has already been disruptive to critical governmental functions and to our communities, and which may become radically more so. But we all know--everyone in this Chamber knows--this could have been avoided. This is a politically generated crisis. In December, this House had the opportunity to pass an omnibus appropriations bill--12 subcommittee bills, each written with bipartisan cooperation, with substantial savings relative to the President's budget request--and Republicans in the Senate refused to even consider that omnibus bill. So, failing that, we asked, What about a yearlong continuing resolution with even more savings? Again, Republicans in the Senate said they would filibuster such a bill, so here we are. What our friends on the other side of the aisle opted for instead was a potential March shutdown that they thought they could use to leverage the tea party agenda. Now, I and many others on this side of the aisle have been willing in recent weeks to vote for two short-term continuing resolutions to give the process of negotiation more time. We accepted additional cuts, cuts that avoided real damage to the recovering economy or to critical investments. Unfortunately, the resolution before us today breaks with that pattern. It attempts to hold the House and the country hostage to an extreme ideological position to which the Republican Conference has, unfortunately, caved in. This resolution proposes $12 billion in unacceptable and damaging cuts, cuts that would threaten this fragile recovery, destroy jobs, and pull back critical national investments. It takes, for example, $200 million from the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children. It takes $150 million from Federal law enforcement. It would take over $200 million from the Department of Energy's environmental cleanup programs. In the homeland security area, with which I am most familiar because of the subcommittee I chaired and on which I now serve as ranking member, it would reduce FEMA's State and local grants by 20 percent, below 2010 levels. Both the State homeland security grants and the urban area security grants would go to historically low levels. The continuing resolution would decimate the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It would radically cut the Clean Water and Drinking Water Revolving Funds. It cuts the Centers of Excellence for veteran students. It cuts school improvement investments by $148 million, including efforts to improve education for returning veterans. It cuts hundreds of millions from the Centers for Disease Control. It would cut $1.5 billion from a critical national investment--high-speed rail. It would cut public housing operating funds drastically.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Madam Speaker, these cuts are economic folly. They have the potential to damage this fragile recovery and to compromise critical national investments. Republicans may be willing to risk a governmental shutdown to appease extremist elements, but we cannot allow our country to be held hostage to their radical agenda. Pass a clean Continuing Resolution and continue the discussions. But do not deliver this body blow to our economy.

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina

Mr. PRICE of North Carolina. Mr. Chair. I rise in opposition to H.R. 910. While cynically called the Energy Tax Prevention Act by its sponsors, the bill could more aptly be named the ``Dirty Air Act''. This legislation would overturn EPA's scientific finding that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, which stemmed from a landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision, and prevent the EPA from using the Clean Air Act--now or in the future--to limit greenhouse gas pollution from power plants and other industrial sources. This reckless and misguided attack on our environment and public health will allow more pollution into the air we breathe and threaten the health of Americans across the country. Supporters of the bill claim that setting standards for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act will cost jobs and undermine the competitiveness of America's manufacturers. But the argument that clean air somehow poses a hazard to the economy is as ridiculous now as it was in the 1970s, when the major polluters used it to try and stop enactment of landmark environmental laws. Rolling back the EPA's authority to limit pollution--whether it be carbon or lead--won't create a single job. It will simply undo 40 years of progress toward a cleaner environment and better public health. In fact, the very provisions of the Clean Air Act that this bill attacks have a forty-year track record of delivering cleaner air and improved health, along with the benefits of enormous growth in the economy. In its first 20 years, the Clean Air Act prevented an estimated 200,000 premature deaths. Some 1.7 million tons of toxic emissions have been removed from our air each year since 1990. Innovations spurred by the Act have made our cars up to 95 percent cleaner today than they were in the past. EPA economists estimate that the total benefits of the Clean Air Act amount to 30 times its costs. Passage of this bill would also mark the first time in history that Congress has approved legislation to overrule an objective scientific finding. Congress enacted the Clean Air Act precisely to require the EPA to make science-based decisions about the threats to health and welfare presented by air pollution instead of allowing such decisions to be driven by political ideology or special interests. And that is exactly what EPA's scientists have done: under both the Bush and Obama administrations, objective scientific studies have found that greenhouse gases pose a real and indisputable threat. Recently, more than 2,500 scientists--from all 50 states--sent a letter to Congress calling on Members to support EPA's updated carbon pollution standards under the Clean Air Act, noting that the ``science- based law has prevented 400,000 premature deaths and hundreds of millions of cases of respiratory and cardiovascular disease during the 40 years since it was first passed--all without diminishing economic growth.'' Rather than heeding the science and letting the EPA and the states do their job to protect public health and our environment, this bill would give the nation's biggest polluters a free pass to keep polluting and place the health of our nation--particularly our children, elderly citizens and other vulnerable populations--at risk. A vote for this bill is a vote against the commonsense Clean Air Act provisions that keep our air clean and protect our public health. I urge my colleagues to support science and the Clean Air Act and oppose H.R. 910.