Bill Posey

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chair, I apologize if I wasn't clear. This amendment does not stop companies from mentioning bona fide weather and environmental risks in their disclosures. If a company wants to weigh in on climate change, nothing in this amendment would prevent it from volunteering that information; but the reality is that companies are already required to disclose all material information. We shouldn't allow the disclosure system to continue to be used as a tool for special interests. Instead of forcing agendas on companies, the SEC should be focused on protecting investors, maintaining fair, orderly, and efficient markets, and facilitating capital formation. The SEC let Bernard Madoff run free for 10 years--a decade--while he evaporated $70 billion worth of people's life savings and hard-earned money. They were asleep at the switch. They were busy doing something else like this. Their job is to protect investors, and that is the intent of this amendment. I urge my colleagues to support the amendment. Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chair, may I inquire as to how much time I have left.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chair, with regard to the new SEC and the old SEC, I have been here a little less than 8 years, but I heard the new SEC Secretary say, well, there is really nothing to worry about and that half of the 38 employees who were culpable in allowing Madoff to run free are no longer with the agency. She couldn't tell us what happened to them, if they were with another Federal agency or if they retired on the public dime. That is just like saying a pedophile changed neighborhoods--problem solved. The fact is that we need to have the SEC focus on protecting investors. That is their main course. That is what they are supposed to do, and that is what the public expects them to do. That is what this amendment will allow them to do. Mr. Chair, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 2 in House Report 114-666 be modified by the form I have placed at the desk.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of a genuine opportunity for us to learn from the failures of former executive officials. This amendment will codify a practice of security, accountability, and good government, which is already a policy at many of our Federal agencies today. Quite simply, it will prohibit Federal employees from using private, unsecure email servers to conduct official government business in the future. This would ensure that the time and taxpayer money invested in the security of sensitive information will not be undermined by carelessness or misunderstandings. By passing this amendment, we will significantly improve the security of our government IT. It only takes one individual, one click of the mouse, on an insecure or unsecure system, to open the door to bad actors who seek to harm our Nation. By restricting the use of unsecure IT systems, we will empower Federal employees to hold each other accountable and take special care to conduct official business responsibly. I urge support of the amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, it is vital that the former Secretary of State's use of an unsecure email server does not send a message to other Federal employees that this is acceptable, that this manner of handling sensitive information and conducting government business is appropriate. We cannot let another top executive completely trample the trust of the American people and potentially endanger American lives by mishandling sensitive intelligence. This amendment is really simple. It is a responsible step towards protecting Federal IT systems and ensuring Americans of the transparency and security that they want and that they deserve. Mr. Chairman, I urge passage of the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the majority leader for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the historic U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. This legislation continues to lay the groundwork for a vibrant commercial space industry in the United States of America. I would like to thank the majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, and Chairman Lamar Smith for all their work on the legislation. I include in the Record several items. Spaceport America, Las Cruces, NM, November 16, 2015. Hon. Kevin McCarthy, Majority Leader, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Hon. Lamar Smith, Chair, House Committee on Science, Space & Technology, Washington, DC. Dear Majority Leader McCarthy and Chairman Smith: I am writing to offer Spaceport America's strong endorsement of H.R. 2262, as amended, the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act. This bill represents one of the most significant modernizations of commercial space policy and regulatory legislation since the original Commercial Space Launch (CSLA) was enacted in 1984. The CSLA was last updated in 2004, creating a regulatory framework for commercial human spaceffight that resulted in a wave of investment, innovation, jobs and economic growth for the U.S. This new legislation sets the stage for the continued growth and expansion of the space transportation industry, while enabling rapid advances in safety for spaceflight participants. It also promotes investments in new commercial space applications, promising future spaceflight capabilities that will benefit all Americans. This bill is a fair and equitable compromise that resulted from months of hard work and negotiations among Republicans and Democrats in the House and Senate to harmonize language from the House-passed SPACE Act of 2015 with provisions from S. 1297, the Senate's commercial space legislation. It reflects your shared vision for commercial spaceflight, while addressing issues raised by Democratic leaders during deliberations on the bill. Last week the Senate passed this compromise bill without a single objection, indicating broad support for this legislation across the political spectrum. In May, your original SPACE Act passed the House 284-133--a 68 percent margin that included 236 Republicans and 48 Democrats. Now that the Senate has unanimously supported this bipartisan compromise, we would hope that all 435 House Members could vote in the national interest to approve this historic legislation. Spaceport America applauds both of you for your leadership and vision in developing and shepherding this much-needed and comprehensive bill through the Congress. We thank you, your colleagues, and all of your staff for the many contributions and the perseverance in advancing this bipartisan legislation that will ensure America remains the leading force in the economic development of space. Sincerely, Christine Anderson, Chief Executive Officer.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, title IV of this bill includes language from H.R. 1508, the Space Resource Exploration and Utilization Act. I introduced this bipartisan, bicameral bill with my colleague from the State of Washington, Derek Kilmer, and with support from many members of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee. I appreciate the work and the research of Senators Patty Murray and Marco Rubio to introduce identical legislation in the U.S. Senate. H.R. 1508 provides legal clarity that if a company mines resources from an asteroid in outer space, it has the right of ownership to those resources. It does so consistent with U.S. international obligations. The right to explore and use outer space is found in article I of the Outer Space Treaty. Article VI of the Outer Space Treaty explicitly recognizes that nongovernmental entities, such as private corporations, may explore and use outer space, including the right to remove, take possession, and use in situ natural resources from celestial bodies. In drafting and negotiating title IV, there was a challenge in determining the best language to use to recognize this right. The term ``obtain'' was ultimately chosen because it was technically and politically neutral. It is our intention that only through actually physically recovering a resource does a company have the right of ownership of those resources. In short, Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitive Act is a critical piece of legislation to the future of our commercial space industry and space exploration efforts. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues again for their work on this bill, and I urge passage of this important legislation.

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1478) to provide for notice to, and input by, State insurance commissioners when requiring an insurance company to serve as a source of financial strength or when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation places a lien against an insurance company's assets, and for other purposes, as amended.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the bill.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague on the Financial Services Committee, Mr. Sherman, for all of his help and support on the Policyholder Protection Act as well as the chairman and ranking member of the committee for their support. I have devoted a great deal of time to insurance issues both as a State legislator in Florida and as a Member of Congress. For over 3 years, I have been pushing legislation to address problems that Dodd- Frank created for insurance companies and, more importantly, their policyholders. I credit former Congresswoman Judy Biggert for bringing these issues to light and for offering a positive solution focused on protecting consumers. After a lot of hard work, multiple hearings, drafts, redrafts, and so forth, we now have before us this bipartisan, commonsense legislation that will ensure that State regulators continue to have the tools they need to protect policyholders back home. Mr. Speaker, insurance policyholders shouldn't be on the hook for an affiliated company's failure or financial distress. But, unfortunately, that is an all-too-real scenario under the current law. Today, in certain circumstances, insurance assets--those set aside to pay out policyholders' claims--could be used as a source of strength to offset risky bets of an organization affiliated with the insurance company. This practice could threaten the solvency of an insurer and undermine its ability to keep promises it makes to its customers, customers who rely on their policies to protect their families' homes, their livelihoods, and their retirement. It is simply wrong to force middle class families to put their homeowner's or life insurance policies at risk because of bad bets that someone might have made on Wall Street. Therefore, our bill clarifies that State regulators can wall off these assets from contagion, regardless of how an insurance company is structured. The bottom line here is that insurance policies shouldn't be raided, period, and certainly not to bail out a financial institution that made poor decisions. Consumers deserve certainty that they will be protected, which is why our bill will also require the FDIC to notify State regulators and consult with them before taking a lien on insurance company assets. In the rare event that this action is being considered, this legislation requires that the FDIC first consider the impact that taking such a lien could have on policyholders. Taken together, these measures safeguard insurance assets and make certain that they continue to be used for their primary purpose, which is to pay out the claims of policyholders. The Policyholder Protection Act enjoys broad support from insurance regulators, State regulators, guaranty funds, consumers representatives, and the industry. Mr. Speaker, I am proud of our work on this commonsense consumer protection bill. I urge all of my colleagues to support it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Luetkemeyer), the chairman of the Housing and Insurance Subcommittee.

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

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today on matters of research and scientific integrity. To begin with, I am absolutely, resolutely provaccine. Advancements in medical immunization have saved countless lives and greatly benefited public health. That being said, it is troubling to me that, in a recent Senate hearing on childhood vaccinations, it was never mentioned that our government has paid out over $3 billion through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program for children who have been injured by vaccinations. Regardless of the subject matter, parents making decisions about their children's health deserve to have the best information available to them. They should be able to count on Federal agencies to tell them the truth. For these reasons, I bring the following matter to the House floor. In August 2014, Dr. William Thompson, a senior scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, worked with a whistleblower attorney to provide my office with documents related to a 2004 CDC study that examined the possibility of a relationship between the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine and autism. In a statement released in August 2014, Dr. Thompson stated: ``I regret that my coauthors and I omitted statistically significant information in our 2004 article published in the Journal of Pediatrics.'' Mr. Speaker, also quoting Dr. Thompson: My primary job duties while working in the immunization safety branch from 2000 to 2006 were to lead or colead three major vaccine safety studies. The MADDSP MMR-Autism Cases Control Study was being carried out in response to the Wakefield Lancet study that suggested an association between the MMR vaccine and an autism-like health outcome. There were several major concerns among scientists and consumer advocates outside the CDC in the fall of 2000 regarding the execution of the Verstraeten study. One of the important goals that was determined upfront in the spring of 2001 before any of these studies started was to have all three protocols vetted outside the CDC prior to the start of the analyses so that consumer advocates could not claim that we were presenting analyses that suited our own goals and biases. We hypothesized that if we found statistically significant effects at either 18- or 36-month thresholds, we would conclude that vaccinating children early with MMR vaccine could lead to autism-like characteristics or features. We all met and finalized the study protocol and analysis plan. The goal was to not deviate from the analysis plan to avoid the debacle that occurred with the Verstraeten Thimerosal study published in Pediatrics in 2003. At the September 5 meeting, we discussed in detail how to code race for both the sample and the birth certificate sample. At the bottom of table 7, it also shows that for the nonbirth certificate sample, the adjusted race effect statistical significance was huge. All the authors and I met and decided sometime between August and September 2002 not to report any race effects for the paper. Sometime soon after the meeting, where we decided to exclude reporting any race effects, the coauthors scheduled a meeting to destroy documents related to the study. The remaining four coauthors all met and brought a big garbage can into the meeting room and reviewed and went through all the hard copy documents that we had thought we should discard and put them in a huge garbage can. However, because I assumed it was illegal and would violate both FOIA and DOJ requests, I kept hard copies of all documents in my office, and I retained all associated computer files. I believe we intentionally withheld controversial findings from the final draft of the Pediatrics paper. Mr. Speaker, I believe it is our duty to ensure that the documents Dr. Thompson provided are not ignored; therefore, I will provide them to Members of Congress and the House committees upon request. Considering the nature of the whistleblower's documents, as well as the involvement of the CDC, a hearing and a thorough investigation is warranted. I ask, Mr. Speaker, I beg, I implore my colleagues on the Committee on Appropriations to please, please take such action.

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Speaker, small businesses are the backbone of our economy and have historically created the bulk of new jobs in America. Wherever and whenever efforts are undertaken to encourage small business development and entrepreneurship, we make our economy stronger and provide new opportunities to hard working Americans and their families. One such organization dedicated to this cause is the Brevard Small Business Assistance Council (BSBAC). Founded in 1985, BSBAC is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to promoting the growth of small businesses in Brevard County, Florida, by providing networking opportunities, learning and coordinating advocacy on issues that influence businesses in Brevard County. Some of its members include Brevard County's local governments and chambers of commerce, banks, legal offices, the federal government and many prime contractors for the Air Force and NASA. On August 1, 2015 the Brevard Small Business Assistance Council will achieve a great milestone in its life and celebrate its 30th Anniversary. I urge my colleagues to join me in congratulating BSBAC for their successful efforts over the past 30 years to support local business development, and salute their continued commitment to enhancing commercial and government procurement opportunities for Brevard County and Florida's small businesses.

Mr. POSEY

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, All Aboard Florida was presented as a private passenger rail project that would run from Miami to Orlando, and vice versa, along Florida's east coast. The project was initially sold to the public as the first privately funded and operated passenger train. However, that story soon changed, as All Aboard Florida decided to pursue a $1.6 billion loan from the Department of Transportation. Apparently, because the loan requires a strict Environmental Impact Statement to be completed, All Aboard Florida decided to also apply for $1.75 billion in tax-exempt private activity bonds from the Department of Transportation. The U.S. Department of Transportation has moved to green light this financing option, even though they have absolutely no statutory authority to do that, and the environmental impact study has yet to be completed. We don't even know if the project is safe or feasible yet. Furthermore, these trains will move through our small beach towns at speeds of up to 110 miles per hour, with virtually no--none, nada-- buffer separating it from our communities. All Aboard Florida envisions 32 trains running per day, on top of 20 freight trains. That is a lot of traffic. Given how close this track is to our adjacent roads and surrounding neighborhoods, obviously, there are serious safety concerns. Why should you ask taxpayers to be on the hook for this train? I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting my amendment to stop the Department of Transportation from funding this train. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, shame on me for asking the Department of Transportation to follow the law, respect the Constitution of the United States, and make economically sound decisions. This is not a partisan issue, in response to that allegation. In September, I wrote the GAO, along with my colleague from Florida, Representative Patrick Murphy, asking them to study the project to ensure taxpayer funds were not at risk. A recent independent economic analysis conducted by Dr. John Friedman concludes that, even under all optimistic assumptions, AAF will generate losses of more than $100 million and will be unable to service its debt burden. Dr. Friedman has a Ph.D in economics, is a distinguished Brown University professor and former Economic Council special assistant in the current Obama administration. The Department of Transportation has been unable to explain where they get their authority to authorize bonds for this project. That is because they don't have any authority. They say title 23 funding has been given to the project in the past, which could trigger the bond authority, but have been unable to state where title 23 funds were ever spent, on what projects, and when. This is just common sense. Now, it might not make some congressional sense to some people, but this is common sense and a simple ask that the Department of Transportation follow the law and not violate the law to help a special interest and put the taxpayers on the hook for $1.75 billion. I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting this amendment, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, exempt facility bonds are special tax-exempt financing instruments designed to help raise funds for important infrastructure projects like airports, waste management facilities, highways, and other transportation needs. In fact our current law, 26 U.S.C. Section 142, clearly lists 15 specific categories of projects that can receive financing through the use of exempt facility bonds. One area where the law restricts the ability of the Department of Transportation to authorize exempt facility bonds is to finance passenger rail, which it limits to high-speed rail that can reasonably attain the speed of 150 miles per hour between stops. Yet the Department of Transportation has decided to ignore the law and authorize bonds for projects that clearly do not qualify. Whatever views Members have on passenger rail, my amendment would simply ensure that the Department of Transportation follows the law in authorizing the use of tax-exempt bonds, and I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, with all due respect, there is nothing in this amendment that adds any restrictive impediments whatsoever. It only requires that the Department of Transportation follow the law when they allocate these funds. Although this is being called a private project, the taxpayers will be on the hook for over $1.7 billion--that is $1.7 billion. So I think it is important in the interests of protecting our taxpayers, certainly, that we make sure the Department of Transportation follows the law. If there weren't a propensity already demonstrated not to follow the law, then I would not have to bother with this amendment. But it is clear there are some intentions to violate the provisions of the law and do things that they are not authorized to do. That is why I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense amendment to bring accountability and protect taxpayers for $1.7 billion. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. POSEY. Mr. Chairman, the Railroad Rehabilitation & Improvement Financing program, or RRIF program, provides direct loans and loan guarantees to finance the development of railroad infrastructure. Under the program, the Federal Railroad Administration is authorized to provide direct loans and loan guarantees of up to $35 billion to finance development of railroad infrastructure. Since 2002, the Federal Railroad Administration has made 35 loans which demonstrate the importance of this program to our Nation's railroads. No doubt about that. However, only five of these loans have ever met or exceeded $100 million. Two of those were to Amtrak. In fact, prior to this year, the largest RRIF loan ever made was to Amtrak in 2011 for $562 million. My amendment ensures funds are spent responsibly on viable railroad projects and taxpayer risk is minimized by limiting loan amounts to $600 million. I urge my colleagues to support my fiscally responsible amendment. I reserve the balance of my time.