Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4275, introduced by Congresswoman Sue Kelly, would extend through October, 2015, the authority of the Disabled Veterans' Life Memorial Foundation to raise funds for a memorial in the District of Columbia to honor veterans who became disabled while serving in the Armed Forces of the United States. The organization has already secured a site from the National Park Service for this memorial. I urge adoption of the bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5861) to amend the National Historic Preservation Act, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5062) to designate as wilderness certain National Forest System land in the State of New Hampshire.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 5132) to direct the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a special resource study to determine the suitability and feasibility of including in the National Park System certain sites in Monroe County, Michigan, relating to the Battles of the River Raisin during the War of 1812, as amended.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I heartily support H.R. 4844. On election day in 2000, President Bush was ahead by 31,000 votes. Before the Secretary of State of New Mexico certified the election 23 days later, the last State to certify, that gap had been closed to just 5,000 votes, and the voting was about 80-20 the reverse direction. The estimate of fraud in that particular election was 7 percent in statewide fraud. One of the greatest frauds that is perpetrated in New Mexico is that voting workers, campaign workers, come in and read over the shoulder of the poll workers and find out names that have not been signed in. And magically, that is the next name that appears. That is the next person in line that comes up and signs his name, and it works over and over again through the day. It was against the law, and when candidates began to enforce the law, in 2004 the New Mexico legislature went in and cured the problem. They went in and said it is okay, it is okay for that worker to come in, look over the shoulder and find a blank line and sign in. In fact, in New Mexico it is against the law, it is against the law to check for photo ID or any kind of registration even if you know that the person is not the right person that is signing. So that is the reason that I think a bipartisan commission supported this bill. At the end of the day, the integrity of the election process is the confidence in the process. This is not about who gets elected. This is about making sure that each person gets one vote and one vote only. For those who would say call the district attorney, I would tell you when the college students signed in and called us at 8, saying someone had already voted in their place, I am here with my picture ID and they say I am already signed in and it was someone else, the district attorney says if you can't find a warm body signing the line at the time, then you have no case. The county clerk in the county where these problems occurred was convicted of four counts of felony fraud on election day; yet the Secretary of State would not pursue the case. I support this bill because it begins to restore some integrity to the election process. We on this side will not allow disenfranchisement. We will not allow votes to be suppressed, but we do need to clean up the mess that exists in many States. I thank the gentleman for bringing this bill to the floor.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and agree to the concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 456) providing for a correction to the enrollment of the bill, S. 203.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, this concurrent resolution directs the Clerk of the Senate to make a simple enrollment correction to S. 203, passed by the House of Representatives on Monday by an overwhelming vote of 323-39. I urge adoption of the resolution. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, you have heard the gentleman from Massachusetts speak against this amendment. He highlights his interest in preserving a phase-in period included in the underlying bill. I have the utmost respect for him, but I must disagree. At a time when the flood insurance program system is facing record borrowing and interest payments, we have the responsibilities to remove luxuries from the program. The final point we should make is simple. This amendment will result in an additional $335 million in premium payments to the flood insurance program. This will help preserve the financial stability of the program and reduce the burden on taxpayers. This is a good amendment, and I urge all my colleagues to vote ``yes.'' Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment to the Flood Insurance Reform and Modernization Act, H.R. 4973. Chairman Baker's bill make some great strides in helping insure the stability of our Nation's flood insurance system, yet, like most legislation, there is room for improvement. For that reason, I am offering an amendment that helps insure the National Flood Insurance Program has the resources it needs to cover all its costs. We have a duty to find savings wherever possible to make sure the National Flood Insurance Program has sufficient resources to cover all its costs by phasing out subsidies for pre-FIRM nonresidential properties, vacation and secondary homes. The committee has already agreed that these subsidies are a luxury we can no longer afford. I agree with the committee's premise that these subsidies should be eliminated. However, I believe that we can go further and eliminate these subsidies now. We should not wait another half decade to restore fiscal responsibility to the program. When the next flood strikes, how will we explain to those who have lost everything that help is tight because we are still subsidizing someone's vacation home? In the wake of the Katrina disaster, with the flood insurance program facing liabilities of between 23 and $25 billion, why should we continue to subsidize flood insurance for vacation homes? My amendment will inject $335 million into the flood insurance program next year. While the committee predicts that their phase-in saves $1.5 billion from 2007 to 2016, I respectfully submit that the Pearce amendment will save much more much sooner. While I respect my chairman's commitment to phasing out these subsidies, I believe we can and should, for the good of the program, eliminate them now. I hope my colleagues will join me supporting this amendment to eliminate those costly subsidies and help bring the NFIP back into sound fiscal condition. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, as I listen to the arguments of the other side, I would just note that the people in the Second District of New Mexico generally average under $30,000 a year net income; $70,000 would buy most homes in the Second District of New Mexico. To explain to those people why they are subsidizing vacation homes on coastlines, many times they are seeing on TV the same reports that I am seeing that someone with a 4 or $500,000 home gets to rebuild it multiple times. It is very difficult for me to explain that to my constituents. Just understand and appreciate the gentleman's argument that it could provide a severe economic impact. Frankly, to tax the lower income people of the rest of the country to avoid those impacts seems to me that we are making choices that are not ours to make. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. I want to thank the gentleman from Indiana for offering his amendment to H.R. 5631. Mr. Chocola has been a constant fighter against waste, fraud, and abuse, and today he offers an amendment that gives us sound responsible oversight, which is a critical part of our job here in Congress. He has done us a favor by bringing this program to our attention. The Defense Travel System was envisioned as an end-to-end E-travel system for DOD employees. Yet with the money spent, we could have, for the next 40 years, given Orbitz $1 million a month; plus, with the additional $50 million that we are putting in, we could pay them another $4 million a month just to use their computer system to do approximately the same thing. Or else, if we had decided for the 15 percent of the people who are actually using the system, we could have bought a fleet of $250 million personal jets and used $1 million a year to fuel those jets up and fly the people around. All the facts point to a system that is behind schedule, overbudget, and inoperably broken, costing taxpayers a lot of money. At times like this, Congress should help agencies stop digging themselves deeper holes. This amendment will stop funding this wasteful program and allow DOD to stop digging themselves into a deeper hole they should not be in and reconsider a better plan for scheduling, ticketing, and paying for travel. I urge my colleagues to support the gentleman's amendment.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, all of history--and indeed, all of life--is a series of choices. International relations--and our national security--are mostly about choices. The world chose to watch when Hitler published his blueprint for genocide in Mein Kampf. The world also chose to watch as Hitler took power on January 30, 1933; directing the boycott of Jewish businesses and opening the first concentration camp just 6 weeks later. The world continued to stand by and watch as Hitler breached the Treaty of Versailles while denying Jews their fundamental rights through the Nuremberg Race Laws. Then, on September 30, 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain hailed ``peace for our time'' after appeasing Hitler in Munich. Thirty-four years later, a terrorist massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics launched a new era of appeasement. The world met the terrorists' murderous ambitions with an invitation to the negotiating table. Within weeks of the Munich Massacre, the German government let three jailed terrorists go to secure the release of a hijacked Lufthansa jet. When terrorism first came to American soil with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, our government treated it as a police matter rather than what it was: an act of war. Then came the Khobar Towers bombing in 1996 and the U.S.S. Cole attack in 2000. America--and the world--chose to stand by and watch. 9/11 was the most visible manifestation of a war that had been raging between the terrorists and civil societies around the world for decades. But even as the terrorists plotted to kill us, we had refused to engage them until President Bush committed America to fighting the global War on Terror. The global War on Terror isn't just a struggle against al Qaeda. It's a war against a violent, evil ideology with which we can never compromise or achieve an armistice. We can't walk away from the fight and hope our enemy goes away. Any withdrawal--any retreat--in Iraq or elsewhere will be met with more attacks, more bloodshed. Except that the blood could once again run in our streets, in our neighborhoods. We will learn history's painful lessons at last? That's the choice this resolution poses today.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Iowa, and I appreciate his dealing with this subject. It is important right now, while we are talking about Mr. Zarqawi and his timely departure, that we consider why it has taken so long to find him. Under President Clinton, we began to see the budget cut for our intelligence services by up to 30 percent. But one of the most damaging things that happened during that time was that the intelligence services, under Presidential order, began to refuse to pay or refused to use the services of anyone who had a criminal background or anyone who had an association with unsavory elements. It was an attempt to bring purity into a system that frankly cannot work on purity. Many times people with information are insiders, and they are insiders because they are willing to cooperate with the officials. So what we did when we eliminated all intelligence sources with any crimes in their background, we eliminated in Iraq, for instance, all of the people who had fought with the Ba'athists, either willingly or unwillingly. Because we eliminated them, we eliminated any capability to really get information from them. So we dismantled in the 1990s, we began to dismantle our overseas operations, especially in North Africa, we said we do not need information anymore. I do not if the President looked at the falling of the Berlin Wall and assumed that the American threats were finished. But President Clinton severely hindered our capability to find information from human sources, and instead said we will accomplish all of our intelligence operations through electronic means. Well, electronic means do not tell you the heart and soul and plans of what people want to do. And so 9/11 had many indicators and in the period leading up to it, but we were not able to capitalize on those, because we did not know future plans. The entire operation that nabbed Mr. Zarqawi was, in fact, a very strong indicator that our intelligence system is beginning to work again. President Bush reinstated our security, our using of human intelligence in other countries. We began to search for information. And because of that, we began to reestablish intelligence that, in the end, began to tell us where Zarqawi was. Then we watched him for several days. We saw the places where he went, and a coordinated attack took out not only Mr. Zarqawi, we took out several of the people that he was with. But we hit 17 different sites on the same day. Now we did not damage or completely take out of all of those sites, we simply hit the sites, cleared everybody up and then we went in and captured all of the hard drives, the computers, all of the intelligence. Now the important thing about what our opponents are saying these days in the streets of America, that we should not be listening to any of the conversations of al-Qaeda on the telephone, is that in the aftermath of those 17 sites being captured, we have access to computer records, phone numbers, that tell us who the terrorists are talking to every day. And we do not have the time, if we want to get timely information, to go through the laborious process of filing all of the documents, building the case, taking them in, getting the warrants under the FISA provisions. Instead, the President has said, we are in a time of war. The Constitution says that the President can use means to monitor the enemy in times of war. And, in fact, we are doing that at this point. We have got good, well-meaning people in America who would dismantle that program and hinder our capability to even capture or kill more of the terrorist, but I think that President Bush is on the right track, and the fact that we cannot not only hit the leader of al-Qaeda, Mr. Zarqawi, but in addition to that, hit 17 different spots in the same day and take out other people and capture important hard drives, computer-generated information, is an exceptional thing. I have more comments, but I would yield back to the gentleman from Iowa for him to make his comments.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Iowa. I would remind the body that we had warning signs. Just because Mr. Zarqawi is no longer part of the conspiracy of al-Qaeda, the war of terrorism, just because of that, that does not mean this struggle is over. Again, the war on terror started in 1972 with the Munich Olympics. At that point, the world negotiators gave the terrorists center stage. They allowed them to come to the table. That was a mistake that we continued all of the way up through President Bush, almost 30 years of giving them credibility instead of trying to dismantle the operation. So I would remind our viewers that this is not going to be an easy task, even with this significant loss this week. And I would yield back to the gentleman from Iowa to close the discussion.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would make a short comment, Mr. Speaker, that we, in essence, have helped the message. Mr. Bin Laden and Mr. Zarqawi have been telling all of their peers that it is better to die for your beliefs, that you should go out and die for your beliefs. Please, go out and through yourself into the enemy, sacrifice your life. And so Mr. Bin Laden and Mr. Zarqawi, up to this point, have been unwilling to do that. They have been willing to preach it, but not to do it. So either unwilling or willingly, Mr. Zarqawi has been given over to his fate. So I would just say that we are beginning to see the dismantling of the leadership. I will tell you that the Civil War failed for the South because they could never keep enough generals in the field. The Union had more generals and more depth. And as the Confederacy began to lose generals, then the decisions that were made became not so sound, the military maneuvers, the military battlefields were not commanded with the same professionalism, and that is where the South began to really have its difficulties. I think we are going to see al-Qaeda have the same difficulties. I think we are going to continue until we ultimately tap Mr. Bin Laden, allow him to find his glory in this great struggle also.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, the urgency and that the last speaker said that we should save our assets, keep the money in the bank. I had a friend whose father was in his 80s. His father did not spend much money. His son went to his dad one day and said, Dad, you are putting every penny in the bank; why are you doing that? He said, I am going to save it until I am old. The son said, Dad, if you are not there yet, you better start spending your money. I don't know at what point the opponents of this legislation say that the price has to get to before we start spending out of our savings account. But if $70 a barrel doesn't compel you that we should dip into that savings account, I am not sure where you are going to be compelled. The fact is that we have the resources. We need to utilize the resources. We need to buy ourselves the time while we convert to these renewables that were incentivized in the energy bill last year. But the renewables are going to take 20 years to get to market. I am not sure when our opponents feel like we should dip into that savings account. I think it is today. Mr. Speaker, I support the bill.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, our friends on the other side of the aisle state that we should be discussing and using alternative energies. I agree. But where are they going to get them? The veterans in my district drive 305 miles one way from my hometown to the VA clinic. That is 305 miles. Where are they going to stop and fill up their car with this alternative energy that our friends are talking about today? Many of the spots in New Mexico have no primary provider, health care providers, and yet our opponents want to simply gloss over that fact and say we need wind energy. When is wind energy going to start fueling these cars? The truth of the American situation today is we drive cars. We have large, expansive spaces in many States, and the only source of gasoline is from petroleum. Now what we have today is a $3 price on gasoline. That is because we had choices in the past not to develop our refineries, number one; or, number two, not to increase the supply of petroleum products. We are paying $3 a gallon today because of our decisions. If we choose not to develop energy in this country, we are on the way to $4, $5 and $6 a gallon gasoline because our friends in the rest of the world are beginning to demand more. When I look at a chart of crude oil prices over a period of years, I can see when it is overlaid with the demand of the Chinese, the demand of the Chinese is increasing just about like the price of crude oil is increasing. There is no accident in that. The price of petroleum is where it is, not through the simplistic explanations of our friends. The price of petroleum is where it is because of the law of supply and demand. That law of supply and demand says when the supply is less, you will pay more, which is exactly what we are doing today. Vote for the bill, expand the drilling and give the American consumer a lower price for gasoline at the pump.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, it is interesting to listen to the discussion by the gentleman from Massachusetts describing himself as a referee. Now he was showing the American taxpayer held by their feet shaking the money out of their pockets. The truth is that this program is actually funded by revenue from taxes on oil and gas production, and that is it. So, first of all, the money for the program comes directly from oil and gas companies. But then the big beneficiary is, the money that is being poured into the pockets of the taxpayers, $15 million was used previously by universities to study coal bed methane gas. This last year, 2005, $327 million came into the budget from that $15 million dollar budget, and every year we are increasing the production of coal bed methane gas. The beneficiaries are not Texaco, Chevron. They are not ExxonMobil. The beneficiaries are MIT, Stanford, Penn State, and a whole plethora of other research institutions. This makes sense to lower the costs of energy to our American consumers. One party is in favor of that. The referee stands here trying to block the American people from having lower energy prices. That is a very simple fight to referee, my friend. Mr. Chairman, I oppose the amendment.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Yes, I would be happy to do public hearings. Since I have been chairman, just almost a year, I suspect we have done oversights or hearings on business plans and the numbers of visitors coming into parks. We have done two field hearings. We have done hearings on access for the handicapped. So we have done multiple, multiple oversight on subjects such as this. I would be happy to work with the gentleman.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I agree also with the gentleman from New York that the Circle Line contract set to expire on March 2007 should not be extended. I look forward to working with the gentleman from New York and the chairman and ranking member of the appropriations subcommittee to ensure that a new contract is in place as soon as possible and those responsible for the current delay are held to account for their actions. I also thank the gentleman for bringing this problem to my attention. With over 600 concession-related contracts in the National Park system, it is difficult for me and the subcommittee staff to always stay on top of these ongoing deadlines.

Mr. PEARCE. The Service did indeed extend the Circle Line contract from March 31, 2004, to March 2007 due to a number of factors stemming from the events of September 11, including the fact, as my colleague knows, that the statue was closed to the public from 9/11 through August 2004. During this time, Liberty Island underwent an extensive security and safety assessment that focused on a number of vulnerabilities such as the statue's 3/32 of an inch thick skin, and local park officials spent much more time focusing on those issues than preparing for a new contract prospectus. Obviously, they dropped the ball.

Mr. PEARCE. If the gentleman from New York will yield?