Ralph Regula

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, it is hard to hit a home run with 2 minutes. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the fiscal year 2001 Commerce- State-Justice and Judiciary appropriations bill. I certainly commend the gentleman from Kentucky (Chairman Rogers) and the ranking member, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Serrano) for bringing to the House a bill which was crafted under very tight budget constraints that governs the appropriations bills this year. The bill does continue most programs at current levels, and recognizes high priority areas. I especially would like to thank the chairman for continuing the important partnership that has developed between the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the Department of Commerce and the Jason Foundation for Education. This unique partnership continues to make available important research data collected by NOAA to over 3 million students who currently participate in the Jason Project. The focus of the Jason Project is to excite and engage elementary and secondary students in the sciences, and to encourage them to continue their education in the field of science. We have a lot of emphasis on that now. In addition to a yearly curriculum, students participate in annual, electronic, and interactive field trips led by preeminent explorer and scientist, Dr. Robert Ballard. This year the electronic school bus took students to the NASA Space Center in Houston and NOAA's Aquarius Underwater Laboratory in the Florida Keys. Students studied research techniques and equipment that are used in researching the two extremes, outer space and under water. One key to the success of the Jason Project is its teacher professional development program. This is a first-rate program which should be made available to as many students as possible. This is pioneering work in long-distance learning. As we move through the process, I would also like to work with the chairman to find some additional funding for the United States trade ambassador to enhance efforts to ensure compliance with trade agreements. I think this is of particular importance with the recent vote in the House to grant China permanent normal trade relations. We must be sure that China meets its commitments under the U.S.-China bilateral agreement to enter the World Trade Organization.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, WTO needs reform, not withdrawal. We do have a stake in ensuring the effectiveness of WTO because it has helped to eliminate trade barriers and improve market access for U.S. goods and services in foreign markets, which translates into jobs. But this does not mean there is not room for improvement within the WTO. Several areas for improvement come to mind. First, we must ensure that the WTO dispute settlement system is used to work out genuine trade disputes and does not become a forum for other nations to challenge U.S. trade laws. It is my understanding that Japan has established a government agency specifically for the purpose of pursuing WTO litigation against the United States, signaling a willingness to continue to challenge U.S. trade laws. Secondly, we must counter the disturbing trend of other nations challenging U.S. trade laws. Our laws are consistent with WTO rules, and not even the most productive U.S. industry can or should have to compete against dumped or subsidized imports. Thirdly, there must be greater transparency in the dispute settlement process. The dispute settlement panel proceedings are conducted in almost complete secrecy. We must open up the closed-door atmosphere that is present today at the WTO. Finally, dispute settlement panels are now made up primarily of diplomats, bureaucrats and academics who may not be trained to serve in a judicial capacity. Yet they are sitting on panels that are reviewing laws passed by legislatures and agreements negotiated between governments. It seems appropriate that panels should include more judicially-trained experts to ensure due process for the parties involved. Rather than withdrawing from the system we have in place, I think we need to work to improve it so that we have a rules-based trading system that benefits U.S. industry, U.S. jobs, and the American public generally. I hope that in the process, we will get action on some of these reforms that are sorely needed in terms of our membership in WTO. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to House Joint Resolution 90, the proposal to withdraw from the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO represents the current system of rules and regulations that govern trade between most nations. We do have a stake in ensuring the effectiveness of the WTO because it has helped to eliminate trade barriers and improve market access for U.S. goods and services in foreign markets. But this does not mean that there isn't room for improvement within the WTO. Several areas for improvement come to mind. First, we must ensure that the WTO dispute settlement system is used to work out genuine trade disputes and does not become a forum for other nations to challenge U.S. trade laws. It is my understanding that Japan has established a government agency specifically for the purpose of pursuing WTO litigation against the United States, signaling a willingness to continue to challenge U.S. trade laws. A recent WTO case filed by Japan challenges the antidumping duties that resulted from the hot-rolled steel import case filed at the height of the 1998 steel import crisis. We must counter the disturbing trend of other nations challenging U.S. trade laws. The U.S. trade laws are consistent with the WTO rules and are necessary to ensure that domestic producers and manufacturers are able to compete on a level playing field. Not even the most productive U.S. industry can or should have to compete against dumped or subsidized imports. Second, there must be greater transparency in the dispute settlement process. The dispute settlement panel proceedings are conducted in almost complete secrecy. Only government delegations are allowed to attend oral arguments and there is no requirement that the panels consider written submissions from domestic interested parties. We must open up the closed-door atmosphere that is today present at the WTO. Finally, dispute settlement panels are now made up primarily of diplomats, bureaucrats and academics, who may not be trained to serve in a judicial capacity. Yet they are sitting on panels that are reviewing laws passed by legislatures and agreements negotiated between governments. It seems appropriate that panels should include more judicially trained-experts to ensure due process for the parties involved. Rather than withdrawing from the system we have in place, let's work to improve it so that we have a rules-based trading system that benefits U.S. industry and the American public.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, let me make the same offer. I hope we can work out the problems, because the Forest Service is very happy with it generally and a lot of good things have happened. They used to collect fees and send them to the Treasury. At least now they keep them and the people that pay them get the benefits of it. That is what we are trying to do. It is a demo program because we are trying to iron out the wrinkles. I know in the case of the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio), we did have some success where he had multiple forests. That part we have been able to work out. Perhaps we can find some solution to the gentlewoman's problems.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I am prepared to accept this amendment. We are fully familiar with it.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentlewoman yield?

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, the gentleman and I have had a discussion on this, and I think the gentleman has a good point. And what I would like to suggest is that we meet with the Forest Service and try to achieve a solution that is workable that respects the rights of your constituents. The program is the demonstration program. As my colleagues know, the President has requested that it be made permanent. It would cost the Forest Service something like $25 million a year, that goes in to trails and signage and a lot of very positive things that are important. If the gentleman would be willing to withdraw, I will commit to working with him and the Forest Service to try to find a reasonable solution to the problem.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. REGULA. I thank my colleague for bringing the Stone Lakes situation to my attention. I am very concerned over the actions taken by the Service and the disregard of congressional intent and of the commitments made to the gentleman by the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. The committee held a hearing this year to address the multiple sources of funds used by the Service to establish refuges and acquire land. At the request of the committee, the General Accounting Office looked at this issue. At the hearing, the GAO reported several facts that are cause for alarm and relate to the gentleman's problem. Let me share a few of the GAO's findings with the gentleman. One, the Fish and Wildlife Service established 23 new refuges in the 5 years from 1994 through 1998. Fifteen of those refuges were established with nonappropriated funds, donations and exchanges. Congressional approval, or even notification, is not required to establish a refuge with nonappropriated funds. After establishing refuges with donated funds, the Service routinely adds more land to those refuges with appropriated funds. The Service has authority to acquire land for many different habitat and endangered species preservation purposes. As a result, just about any piece of undeveloped land appears to be a potential target for land acquisition by the Service. The Service has many different sources for Federal land acquisition, appropriated funds through the Land and Water Conservation Fund and the North American Wetlands Conservation Fund, nonappropriated funds through the Migratory Bird Fund, and donations and land exchanges. To complete the land acquisition for all the current and planned refuges will require about $4 billion. The Service continues to create new refuges and expand existing refuges. Six new refuges were created in 1999.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I can understand the concern that the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) has. We have the same concerns in the Midwest. We have the same concerns as a lot of places. Should build reserves for diesel fuel, for jet fuel, for ethanol, for all forms of energy? We have the SPR. This amendment proposes to take $10 million out of SPR. We cannot just do that arbitrarily. It has to be made up some way. The money is to operate SPR, and we cannot cripple it or that reserve will not be available if needed in the period of critical defense needs, which is the main objective. We had requests to do all kinds of programs similar to this. Now, I would point out that heating oil has a very short shelf life. So to maintain a reserve would mean it has to be turned over in a short time, something like every 3 months. That is a very expensive proposition. It means frequent government sales or exchanges. It will take a couple million barrels to set up the reserve, which will, of course, create a heating shortfall immediately. These things ought to go to the authorizing committee to begin with and hold some hearings. I think what we are reflecting here is the fact that we do not have a national energy policy. I was here in the 1970s when we had critical shortages. Everybody said we have got to set up a policy. Then the shortage went away, and there is no policy. I think what the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is addressing is the absence of a national energy strategy. I would suggest that he take his case to the administration because we need leadership from them on an overall policy. We cannot pick one area of the country. It is interesting to note that in the six New England States there is not one refinery because they will not let them build a refinery. Now, it is hard to produce heating oil without a refinery. And one of the problems is that their area is impacted by the environmentalists who have made it impossible to build a refinery in New England. How many refineries does the gentleman have in New England? They are shaking their heads. I do not think they have any. And they have had some difficulty getting gas pipelines up there, too. All I am saying is that they ought to have a policy in New England or other parts of the country that need help. Therefore, we need a national energy policy. But to try to address one instance is not going to be a long-term solution. I understand it is proposed that this heating oil reserve be put in New York Harbor. Why not put it in New England? I think we ought to build the facilities where the need is.

Mr. REGULA. For weatherization, yes.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Sanders amendment. Let me say that we have tried to strike a carefully balanced allocation of funds in the fossil fuel account. We have recognized that fossil fuels cover a lot of areas. What the gentleman is attempting to do is just rearrange the chairs on the deck in what he would consider to be a more efficient way. But I would point out, and we have this experience, we only need to drive down the street and look at gasoline prices to recognize that we need to have research into making automobiles more fuel efficient, into burning our fuel in a more efficient way also. We are now up to importing 52 percent of our oil, and predictions are that it will rise to 64 percent by 2020. Members can imagine how subjected we will be to OPEC pricing and to the price of fuel. Of course, that reflects then in the price of consumer goods. This country is so dependent on energy, and every dimension of our industrial economy is tied to energy use. Our lifestyle is tied to energy. What we have tried to do in this bill, in the allocation of the fossil research money, is to ensure we get the best possible use of the resources. This is an interesting statistic: One-third of the world's population, 2 billion people, do not even have access to electricity. Of course, that again is going to cause a tripling of consumption over the next 50 years as the lesser developed nations try to expand their economy. It is a market for our clean coal technology, and it will be a market for other technologies that will be developed under the fossil program. As has been pointed out by a speaker earlier, we have more coal in this country than the rest of the world has of recoverable oil in terms of Btus. We need to conserve our natural gas, but we also need to have the development of technology that will cause the production of natural gas to be more efficient. That is part of the fossil research. We can get gas from deeper and more complex formations. We can get a better extraction, because we need all these energy sources. We need coal, we need gas, we need petroleum simply because, as a Nation, if we just look at the statistics and project our energy needs over the next say 40 or 50 years, they are going to be enormous. We are the people who are laying the foundation for an adequate and efficiently produced source of energy. Whether our children and grandchildren will enjoy the same quality of life that we have, which is tied to energy consumption, clearly is being determined by the way we use these resources. What we have tried to do on the committee, because it is our responsibility, working with the minority Member and myself and the other members of the Committee, is to say, this is the best we can do to allocate the resources in terms of energy production. In weatherization, as the gentleman knows, we have increased it from $135 million to $139 million. That is a commitment on our part because most of our funding was level, but we felt that the weatherization program deserved some additional funding. All these programs are important. I think that tonight to just simply rearrange all of these ways in which we have tried to address energy need is not the way to go. The committee, working with the Department of Energy, has exercised what we consider to be our best judgment of the use of our Nation's resources to provide the energy needs of tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and to ensure that future generations will have the same opportunities that we have had, because they are tied very dramatically to energy. I think that the result of this amendment will be to decrease the domestic energy supply availability. I hope that the committee, the Members of the full committee and the House will support the judgment of the Committee on the Interior.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman continue to yield?

Mr. REGULA. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. REGULA. We will certainly be mindful of this program and give it every consideration as we move forward in the legislative process.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that all debate on this amendment and all amendments thereto close in 10 minutes and that the time be equally divided.

Mr. REGULA. There is a conference on the supplemental next week, and I think it will be addressed. But again, this is important to this Nation's future.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment. Mr. Chairman, the point was made that the industry should make their own expenditures, and I want to point out to the Members that for every dollar of Federal money in the Clean Coal Technology program, there are two dollars of private money. This has been a partnership, but it has been a partnership where industry has carried the heavy end of it, and we have had some real successes. I wish I could take every Member to Tampa, Florida, to visit the plant that was built under this Clean Coal Technology program. It is a greenfield plant. The efficiency is probably almost double that of the normal plant, and the emissions are very negligible. They capture every part of a lump of coal, the sulfur, the various other components. As I said, I was there. They are getting everything but the squeal out of that lump of coal, and they are doing it under a very efficient system. So it does work. It is an important program, because as we talk about the continued effort to clean up our air, to clean up our water, we need to have a clean coal program on stream. Let me point out that whatever else we may think about it, we are going to be using coal for the foreseeable future as a major source of power generation. Our committees invested a lot of money in boiler technology, in addition, to the clean coal technology, because we have a plentiful supply of coal. Perhaps in actual BTUs, the coal supply of the United States is the equivalent of most of the known oil in the world today. If we are to have energy independence, if we are to have electricity to fuel a growing economy, we need to use coal and to use coal in a clean, environmentally safe way. It requires clean coal technology. Many of these projects are under way. I do not think it is an appropriate time to take out the money or to make it difficult for the Energy Department to continue on the Clean Coal Program. A few weeks ago or a few days ago, we voted to bring China into the WTO. One of the compelling reasons was that China could grow the economy and become a market for United States products. China alone plans to build eight to 10 power plants a year, a year, eight to 10 a year for the next 20 years. That is 160 power plants. 75 percent of those will burn coal, because this is the fuel that they have. If my colleagues are concerned about the environment, I think it is essential that we develop this technology. We will have a market for it in China, and not only will we have a market in the process of cleaning up the air in China, this, of course, adds to the cleaning of air in our global environment. For those who talk about Kyoto and the Kyoto Protocol, the premise is that any impact on the environment of air emissions, wherever it occurs in the world, has a deleterious impact on all of us. If we can use this technology, sell it to China, persuade them to use it in the generation of power as they expand their economy, we will be doing ourselves a favor, not only economically, but in terms of the environment. For all of these reasons, I urge Members to vote no on this amendment. I do not think it is an appropriate time to give up on the technology that has such an enormously bright future.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. REGULA. I yield to the gentleman from Vermont.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield further, I think this is a useful debate, and that is, of course, as the projects go on stream and succeed, they do pay back the investment of the United States government. So it becomes a kind of seed money type that will allow them to sell the bonds to make these projects work. My concern is that we are going to have an enormous demand for power as the economy of this country expands, and I think coal is going to be the fuel of choice simply because there is so much of it. We ought to figure out how to get it done in an energy-friendly way.

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, it may be that as the home heating oil shortage continues New York State will use that capacity for themselves. And there may be other States, Pennsylvania. But I think if we are going to create these kind of facilities, we ought to put them where the people are. But I daresay that they will not get any cooperation from their area in building facilities in Vermont or New Hampshire or Connecticut.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 4578, and that I may include tabular and extraneous material.

Mr. REGULA

Mr. REGULA. Madam Speaker, I just want to say to all of the Members, the goal of the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks) and myself is to get this bill finished in a timely manner today, by 6:00 or before, because I know that many of the Members have plane reservations. We can accomplish that if everybody will cooperate. We will have to get time limits on some of the amendments, and perhaps we can address some of them with a colloquy. We will work together to accomplish the goal to finish this bill in a timely fashion.