Nick Rahall

Mr. RAHALL

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

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, it is my honor to yield 1 minute to the gentlelady from California (Mrs. Capps), who has been so instrumental in development of this legislation and a valued member of our Natural Resources Committee.

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee), another member of our Natural Resources Committee. (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, I am very happy to yield 2\1/2\ minutes at this point to the gentleman from Maryland, Mr. Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the Subcommittee on the Coast Guard of our Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, a gentleman who has been so instrumental in helping to bring this legislation to the floor.

Mr. RAHALL. Just to clarify for my colleague from Washington, my ranking member, if his concern was about the taxpayer ending up paying for something that BP should be liable for under the gentleman from Louisiana's amendment, we do have a catch-all provision in the legislation that applies to not only the entire legislation, but would apply to the gentleman from Louisiana's amendment as well that says none of the funds that are authorized or made available by this act may be used to carry out any activity or pay any cost for removal or damages for which a responsible party, BP, is liable under the OPA.

Mr. RAHALL. Madam Chair, I yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), who has been so instrumental in this legislation as well on this issue.

Mr. RAHALL. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Boyd). (Mr. BOYD asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. RAHALL. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Farr).

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, the Republicans are at it again-- apologizing for Big Oil against the interests of the American people. The fact of the matter is that House Republicans were for a conservation fee before they were against it, and now they're coming to the floor today and accusing the majority of all of these huge tax increases, but they are opposed to the CLEAR Act. House Republicans voted for a $9 conservation fee in energy legislation sponsored by the former Republican Congressman, now Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal. That vote was on June 29, 2006. I have it here: 192 Republicans voted ``yes'' for a $9 conservation fee, and 155 Democrats voted against it. What is the difference between then and now? I'll tell you the difference. The Democrats' fee is smaller and Big Oil is richer. That is the difference. The House has passed similar conservation fees with Republican support four different times since 2007, and I could list them. The fact of the matter is the conservation fee will have no impact on the prices at the pump. As we all know, the prices at the pump are determined by the world market. The $2 per barrel fee will be paid for by Big Oil, not by the American consumer. So I respond by saying the Republicans' raising this conservation fee as a tax increase is simply not true. The Republicans will also say that we are proposing $30 billion in mandatory spending that is unrelated to the oil spill. We just heard my dear friend and ranking member say that. Not true. There they go again--apologizing for Big Oil. The fact is that the Land and Water Conservation Fund was visualized by Dwight Eisenhower, proposed by John Kennedy, signed into law by Lyndon Johnson, and is financed by royalties from offshore oil and gas drilling. The dollars raised from depleting one of our natural resources goes toward protecting another. The LWCS is a decades-old promise to the American people that, if we allow energy companies to deplete public resources off our shores, we will require them to dedicate that back in order to help our people and to help our coastlines. That's what this bill is all about. I urge support.

Mr. RAHALL. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RAHALL. I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Maryland, a valued member of our Natural Resources Committee, Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. RAHALL. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak).

Mr. RAHALL. I still have to object.

Mr. RAHALL. We are prepared to accept the gentleman from Delaware's amendment on this act and commend him for bringing it to us.

Mr. RAHALL. May I have the time on all sides, please, Mr. Chairman, and who has the right to close.

Mr. RAHALL

Mr. RAHALL. I will yield to the gentleman from Louisiana whose amendment just passed that does lift the moratorium when it comes to the protection and safety of our workers. His amendment passed with votes from votes from your side of the aisle. Mr. Melancon cares about the fishermen, the jobs of everyone along his coast, and I yield to him at this point.

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, what we have seen in the gulf is just plain wrong. We don't know what was the final cause of this explosion and this tragedy, but we know that something went wrong and we know that there are other scenarios that exist today where something may yet go wrong again. We hope not. We pray to God it does not. But the fact is we need new safety requirements, and we cannot lift any moratoria in any domestic production of energy without ensuring that the new safety requirements are met. In this pending legislation, we do that. We don't just trust what the industry gives the oil rig safety inspectors. We say you have to verify. The safety inspectors have to verify what previously had just been given to them by the industry to submit as a final safety report. So what we're doing in this legislation is not only providing ethics requirements for safety inspectors, proper training for safety inspectors, but we're also saying let's do a better job than we have in the past. And that's what this whole effort is about in the CLEAR Act. I would urge my colleagues to reject this moratoria MTR because of what we have already adopted again in a bipartisan fashion. We've adopted the gentleman from Louisiana's amendment to lift the moratorium as long as safety requirements are met. So if you support lifting the moratoria to protect oil workers' jobs, which everybody says they do, I hope that we'll do it and ensure that jobs are safe, and we do that by rejecting this MTR and passing this bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. RAHALL

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, I understand the typographical error made by somebody has been corrected in the supplemental report just filed and we are now on line for consideration of this bill. Today the House is considering H.R. 3534, the Consolidated Land, Energy, and Aquatic Resources Act of 2010, better known as the CLEAR Act. This legislation is aimed at shedding light on longstanding inadequacies in the management of our Federal oil and gas resources and to address the lessons learned in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon disaster. On the afternoon of January 29, 1969, an environmental nightmare began in Santa Barbara, California. A Union Oil platform stationed 6 miles off the coast suffered a blowout. For 11 days, oil workers struggled to cap the rupture. During that time, around 5,000 barrels of crude oil bubbled to the surface and was spread into an 800-square-mile slick by winds and swells. Incoming tides brought thick tar to beaches, marring 35 miles of coastline. At the time, it was the worst environmental disaster this country had experienced and heralded the beginning of the environmental movement, but that paled in comparison to the events in the aftermath of the tragic explosion that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico on the evening of April 20, 2010. The explosion of the Deepwater Horizon took the lives of 11 brave workers, unleashed up to 5 million barrels of oil over nearly 100 days, wreaking havoc on the gulf. It soiled over 600 miles of pristine gulf coast shoreline, and enforced the largest fishery closure in history. The souls of those 11 men cannot be recouped, but we, in part, can redeem them by taking action on this legislation. Prior to this incident, I led the Committee on Natural Resources in the vigorous oversight of America's flawed oil and gas program. We uncovered billions of dollars that were never paid to the American people, countless examples of agency regulators sleeping around with, instead of keeping an eye on, the oil and gas industry, and the flagrant mismanagement of America's public energy resources. We had amassed a mountain of evidence that something was wrong. The American people were being cheated. The environment was being degraded, and Big Oil was writing their own rules. As a result of a decade of investigations by the inspector general and the GAO, as well as holding countless oversight hearings held by my committee, we crafted a comprehensive package to completely overhaul and reform America's oil and gas leasing program. The CLEAR Act was introduced last September, and it seeks to make several important changes to current law in an effort to create greater efficiencies, transparency, and accountability in the development of our Federal energy resources. Since April 20, our Committee on Natural Resources has led congressional efforts to investigate this tragedy, which was clearly a game changer for the way we manage our public energy resources. Through the work of the Natural Resources Committee and other committees, it became obvious that additional reasonable reforms were necessary to protect and prevent against such a catastrophe in the future. While we may not know the exact cause of the incident at this time, we clearly know what contributed to it--a culture of cozy relationships that had regulators interviewing for jobs on the same rigs they were supposed to be inspecting, drilling plans that were rubber-stamped in a matter of minutes with only the most cursory environmental reviews, a ``trust but don't verify'' attitude towards safety standards, and an agency in charge that was spending too much time on the sidelines as the oil and gas industry wrote their own rules. The CLEAR Act addresses these issues. It directly responds to the Deepwater Horizon disaster while also looking forward and attempting to prevent the next catastrophe. It will create strong new safety standards for offshore drilling and the revolving door between government and industry. It will require real environmental reviews, hold BP accountable, help restore the gulf coast, and ensure that the American people get the best bang for their buck for the use of their resources. The CLEAR Act will dismantle and reorganize a dysfunctional Minerals Management Service so that conflicts of interest between leasing, policing, and review collecting are permanently abolished. It establishes a new training academy for Federal oil and gas inspectors who will be required to adhere to strict new ethical guidelines. Thanks to Chairman Oberstar and his Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, the bill before us today also ensures that oil companies are held fully accountable and that drilling rigs meet strict U.S. safety standards. Finally, the CLEAR Act fulfills a 45-year-old promise to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which was based on the premise that money obtained from the sale of the public's resources should be used to protect and conserve our natural, historical, and recreational resources. The bill establishes a new Ocean Restoration and Conservation Assistance Fund, known as ORCA, so that funds raised from drilling in our oceans will also go toward protecting and improving our oceans. We take so much from our oceans, Mr. Chairman, that it is about time we gave something back. We will, undoubtedly, hear horror stories today from the oil and gas industry about what they allege this bill will do to them. It happens every time, but this is sheer hyperventilation from an industry that has had its way with the public lands for 8 years. The industry should take a look at the spill in the gulf to see how an overly permissive attitude can turn into a real horror story for the entire industry and for the American people. The Deepwater Horizon explosion and the subsequent damage that has occurred over the past 102 days is, indeed, a game changer. It is time that we act to protect America's families, America's workers and businesses, to rebuild the gulf coast, to hold oil companies accountable, to work to ensure that a spill of this kind never happens again, and to secure our domestic energy resources. In this day and age, in this America, whether it is a coal mine in the congressional district that I am honored to represent or an oil rig deep in the Gulf of Mexico, there is no room for an environment where working men and women leave their homes in the morning and do not know if they will return in the evening. This is what this legislation is about. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RAHALL. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. RAHALL

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of the 20th Anniversary of the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which I deem to be one of the greatest civil rights laws ever passed by our Congress. Since the establishment of the Americans with Disabilities Act, more than 50 million Americans are able to more wholly enjoy their lives, thanks to the ongoing elimination of barriers on employment, public services, transportation, telecommunications and public accommodations. Prior to the passage of this Act, our disabled American citizens-- wounded warrior veterans, men, women and children--faced higher rates of poverty, lower graduation rates, significantly lower unemployment rates and were too often denied their right to fully participate in society. This Act made vital changes, prohibiting discriminating against qualified individuals with disabilities in the workplace; requiring state and local government entities to accommodate qualified individuals with disabilities; providing better access to many modes of public transportation; and requiring places of public accommodation to make their goods and services easily accessible to the disabled. While many great changes have been instituted since the passage of this act, there is still a lot of work to be done. In a nation as great as ours, it is a stunning reality that our disabled grandparents and parents, sons and daughters, and the wounded warriors who have so bravely served around the globe to preserve democracy and promote freedom, continue to struggle with inequalities that do not have to exist. I'm putting the Wounded Warrior Fellowship Program to work in our area to provide an employment opportunity for a wounded or disabled veteran living in southern West Virginia. There are 170,783 veterans in West Virginia--51,500 in our Congressional District alone--and that number is growing exponentially every day. These brave men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan face a 21 percent unemployment rate; add to that fact, the vulnerable position as a wounded or disabled soldier, and we know the challenges to secure a good paying job grow tremendously. It is our duty as leaders to support each and every one of our disabled Americans. While I salute this historic piece of legislation, I continue to work on a bipartisan basis, to help identify and address the remaining barriers against the disabled, which truly undermine America's goals and the ideals upon which our great country was founded.

Mr. RAHALL

Mr. RAHALL. Madam Speaker, we in West Virginia understand well the need for this ``Make it in America'' initiative. Even as we diversify, from broadband infrastructure to tourism marketing, we all know what the manufacturing center means for good paying jobs. The leap from a hard days work, producing the best products in the world, to a service- based industry is a far stretch--one that leaves our national security at risk. The House Democrats understand the need for a plan and action to increase American manufacturing and create new American jobs. When we ``Make It in America,'' we create jobs to lead the world economy. First and foremost, we must ensure that every nook and cranny of the federal government is geared towards American products, American companies and American workers. In 2007, the Defense Department alone allowed over 14,000 contracts for goods and services to go to foreign companies. That's $5.7 billion American tax dollars we waved goodbye to. We've got to shut the floodgates on the tidal wave of taxpayer's dollars flowing overseas, and shore up our contracts for goods and services bought by the federal government and provided by American workers. I'm a long time advocate for `Buy American' provisions in law, but a concentrated effort will sharpen the focus on a fair deal for our workers and small business and industries. A global economy doesn't mean a one way trade route for American capital. There's no question we can compete here at home, under fair rules applied to all competitors. Federal agencies should be partners, not competitors, with our workers. The first step towards this realignment is the National Manufacturing Strategy. We passed Congressman Lipinski's bill that calls for a National Manufacturing Strategy and will create the high-skill, high-wage jobs of the future-- promoting American competitiveness, innovation, and exports. The manufacturing sector generates two-thirds of our exports, and employs millions of Americans. This manufacturing strategy goes hand- in-hand with the newly formed Buy American Caucus, of which I am a member, by working to promote American jobs; reclaim American leadership in manufacturing; support small businesses; and close loopholes in current law to ensure that the federal government is purchasing American-made products. Our efforts have the potential to assist manufacturing businesses throughout southern West Virginia. We are proud of those manufacturers who continue to support the economy and workers, and are particularly proud of those in the Third District of West Virginia. We have to create a continued demand for American products and create a rebirth of our state and nation as the manufacturing world leader. That effort must start with buying American products here at home.

Mr. RAHALL

Mr. RAHALL. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and concur in the Senate amendment to the bill (H.R. 725) to protect Indian arts and crafts through the improvement of applicable criminal proceedings, and for other purposes.