Denny Rehberg

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu).

Mr. REHBERG. Why would that be if it is my amendment?

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, there is a lot of talk about experts on this floor. I am a member of the National Cattlemen's Association not because I am a Member of the Congress but was because I am a cattle producer. Less than 3 years I was on the ranch, running 147 cows, seven bulls, 2,000 cashmere goats. In Montana we know where our product comes from, and we know where it goes. It may not be a safety issue until one needs it. Let me read this article again: ``In June, officials learned five bulls from a Canadian herd linked to the Alberta cow with the disease were sold to a Montana ranch in 1997.'' 1997. ``The paper trails created by the State's inspection process traced in less than 20 hours where the bulls had been and where they ended up.'' That is not bad. We know where they came from. We know where they went. And if we had not had that opportunity, it would have shut our borders down too. It would have been devastating to our industry. I am amazed that there would be any opposition from any party in this country to know where their cattle come from, where their meat comes from so that we have the ability to tell people where it has gone in case these kinds of situations occur. So one can say it is not a safety issue until such time as one needs to know where they came from and where they went. This provision within the farm bill does not even take place, it does not become implemented until September of 2004. That is plenty of time. And to the gentleman from Texas when he talks about the fact that it is a delay of 1 year, no. If they had wanted it to say only a delay for 1 year, the amendment in the subcommittee would have said that, and it does not. If they want to put that in, we can talk about that; but we are not at that point because what this does do is if they do not vote for my amendment, they in fact will stop, they will kill because nobody within the administration will spend any money on it because it says they cannot implement it. So there is no ability to spend money on it. Trade implications, yes, there are trade implications to this. But not to the extent that they are talking about. Again, I repeat, Japanese officials said that trade would be banned beginning September 1 if the United States cannot certify that exports contain no Canadian beef. How can we do that if we do not keep track of our country-of-origin labeling? Volunteerism, that is great; but that is smoke and mirrors. It is never going to happen because our retailers, our packing plants will not play with us little guys. I know because I felt the victim sitting back on my ranch with 147 calves wondering what my price was going to be. I was a price taker, not a price maker. Little guys like me do not make price. The big guys do, and an entire industry was created in Texas for the very purpose of taking advantage of importing cattle from foreign countries to mix with ours, to take advantage of our good products, entire industries. So there is no doubt there is another State standing here on the opposite side. There is no doubt that they would be parochial as I would be parochial, but do the Members know what? I live along the border, and we do in fact have the Northwest Compact. We do business back and forth. But all we are trying to do is create an opportunity to be proud of American beef, to give us the opportunity to take advantage of an opportunity to showcase what we do for the American consumer. We have had opposition against this all along the way, and it has not ended. And when our chairman of the subcommittee talks about appropriateness, the appropriate place to have killed this bill with this proposal would have been in the farm bill or introduced legislation, but not to take the funding out from underneath or the implementation because what they are in fact saying is we did not want it before, but we want to win it behind closed doors. And I have come to the conclusion, and I have been in this business a few years both as a State legislator and as a lieutenant governor, people support reform as long as it does not change anything. And that is what we are seeing here right now. Nobody wants to change anything because they are kind of comfortable with their position in the marketplace. I do not market. True, I do the best that I can on my little 147-cow operation, but I will tell the Members who does the marketing. It is the big guys. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson).

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, who controls the time as far as closing?

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

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for recognizing the differences between districts. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) is going to be speaking, and I want to highlight why essential air service is important to the State of Montana. The gentleman from New York had to come all of the way to the State of Montana to find his future wife, but our districts could not be more dissimilar. He represents 75 square miles with LaGuardia in the middle. My district spans the distance from Washington, D.C. to Chicago. Washington, D.C. to Chicago. We have eight communities. When I travel back to my district, it takes me 7 hours to get to my district by air. I jump in a car, and just to get to one of the communities to have a listening session on an Indian reservation, it takes me another 6 hours to drive. We need essential air. This country made a commitment in rail many years ago. It made a commitment in our interstate system many years ago, and it made a commitment to essential air service. I cannot think of a more appropriate name than essential air service. When I came to Congress, I said I want to know about other people's districts so I know what kinds of things they are confronted with. I can see the problem between islands that the gentleman from Hawaii spoke about. People cannot swim necessarily between islands. Do you want grandmother and grandpa driving 324 miles to get to the hospital? They have no alternatives. They cannot get on Amtrak; they cannot call a cab and ride 324 miles to see their doctor. We need essential air service. This committee and this Congress has made that recognition through this bill, and I hope Members will look favorably upon the bill; and I thank the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mica) for his hard work on this bill, and I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley) for taking his wife and moving her to New York.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. I thank the gentleman from Colorado.

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

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman from Colorado for yielding to me. I want to express my concerns about the potential impact of the Hefley-Gallegly amendment on the commercial firefighting industry. I am aware that action by the FAA has caused some surplus aircraft not to be certified as flightworthy. This action has raised concerns about the availability of firefighting resources in the approaching firefighting season. I am also aware that the U.S. Forest Service is addressing ways of examining the problem, but I believe in the short term it is unlikely. I ask if I can obtain the gentleman's assurance that in conference on this bill he will work with me to address my concerns about the potential negative impacts of this legislation on the commercial firefighting industry.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, today or tonight this body will get another chance to vote on the Jobs and Growth package. The benefits of this bill are so obvious, one has to wonder what is going on in the minds of anyone who still opposes it. From their arguments, the opponents in the press and in this building seem to be saying, ``Do not create jobs, do not trim taxes, do not stimulate the economy. Washington needs the money to spend on new programs and bigger government.'' On the other hand, maybe these tax relief antagonists are saying, ``We do not want a Jobs and Growth package because stimulating the employment and energizing the economy will not get us reelected'' . Then again, perhaps the jobs and growth opponents are saying ``Give the people our money? Oh, no, you don't. It is our money, not the people's money. Every dollar in tax relief is a dollar out of our hands. We cannot let that kind of power slip out of our control.'' The truth is, listening to the tortured arguments of those who still oppose this bill makes even the casual observer want to put a bag over his head just for tuning in. This is not rocket science. Simple economics tells us when we put more money in the hands of working families and small businesses, we get more spending, new jobs and a revived U.S. economy. It works.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, the last speaker talked a little bit about the need for this legislation as a result of last year's fires. I am insulted by that. It is almost as if the tree did not burn in your district, there was no disaster. It happened year after year after year in Montana. In 1988, I was surrounded by fires. It happens every year in the State of Montana. In the Year 2000, we burned 1 million acres. When are we going to wake up and say enough is enough? This legislation goes a long ways toward solving the problem. I remember 1988. I thought to myself, God, I hope now the legislature, the Congress, wakes up and understands that fire can be a tool if it is a prescribed burn, if it is a controlled fire. Grazing can be a tool. It not only controls the underbrush, but also controls weeds. We can have control within our forests, management controls within our forests. It does not have to be looked on as a bad thing. It is a good thing. It can keep our forests safe. To those preservationists who have tipped the scales of our justice system against doing the right thing, I tell them you are loving our forests to death. Do you like this? Because this is exactly the way the people of Montana feel with the forest fires coming in. I hope you will support this legislation.

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I feel like I have been watching the screenplay from Dumb and Dumber. We all admit that the last few years of managing our forests has been dumb. If we pass this substitute, we are even dumber than I thought we were. We are changing this bill from a healthy forest bill, by passing this substitute, to a healthy community bill. I am not against healthy communities, but I can tell my colleagues, from being in an area where we fight these fires, the communities are the first things that we come in to protect when the fire gets treated. We go in with bulldozers, and we clear it out. So they are probably the last ones that need our help because we always find the money when the fire is going on. What we need to understand is that dead and dying grass is every bit as bad as overgrazed grass. The dead and dying trees are every bit as bad as overlogging trees. I look up in the audience and I look out at America and I see people with hard hats and what do I think of? I think of heroes, because they use their capital, they use their labor, and they use their equipment to go in and cut down the trees. We tell them to. I look at the gentleman from Washington's (Mr. Inslee) picture of a tree. The Members cannot tell me whether that is a healthy tree or not sitting 2,000 or 3,000 miles away looking at a picture of it. A Congresswoman from the other side of the aisle graced us with her presence for about 30 seconds to come down and tell us she was watching this debate on TV. That is the problem. Too many bureaucrats are sitting in Washington, D.C., making a determination of what is a healthy forest without ever getting out on their hands and knees, we call it the buns-up kneeling position, and looking and counting bugs and looking at the grass and determining what the mineral cycle looks like and what the grass and the trees and the endangered species are actually doing. Let us pass something sensible. There is finally a piece of legislation that makes an effort to start removing the cancer of the dead and dying forests that are causing a problem within this country. We have an opportunity to finally show some leadership after so many years of a lack of leadership that has allowed this country to kill its forest with kindness. Pass this bill. Let us oppose this substitute.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I would like to know just exactly what are tax cuts for the rich? I hear it all of the time from critics of tax relief, so I looked into it and discovered that if we applied the sweeping logic of the antitax relief crowd, the term ``rich people'' would have to include everyone who makes more than $5,000 a year. It turns out everyone is rich, because I am here to tell Members H.R. 2 is tax relief for everyone. Our bill expands the 10 percent tax bracket beginning this year. Is that a tax cut for the rich? It increases the standard deduction for married couples filing joint returns beginning this year. Are all married couples rich? It provides $1,000 child tax credit beginning this year. Do only rich people have children? In fact, the House Jobs and Growth Tax Act will create an estimated 1.2 million jobs by the end of 2004. That translates into 2,700 jobs for Montanans this year, another 2,500 next year. It will also provide a tax break for small business and boost our struggling economy. So let us get this straight. What they are calling tax cuts for the rich is going to bring us new jobs; relief for the poorest Americans; help for married couples; help for small businesses, the backbone of our economy; an increase in the child credit; and an immediate jump- start to our economy. Call it what you like, it is good for Montana.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, one of the things I have noted since coming to Congress is that we have a tendency to boil these arguments down to money. How much money one has got in their portfolio, what their dividends look like at any given time. Sometimes we lose track of the fact that what really makes this country great is how we treat our most vulnerable, our children and our seniors. This is one of those issues, how we are treating people that do not have the ability to pay their heating bills. I find it interesting that there would be an argument against something like this. I say to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey), trust me, you will feel the heat if we authorize this money, but we do not appropriate this money. If that money is sitting there, it will be spent on heating assistance. The difficulty is, in this country, that we do not have the ability to pay as many people as we want to. This is a great amendment because it takes an energy bill that is necessary, that should have been passed many years ago, and applies some of the revenue to a need that exists in this country, and that is to help those less fortunate than others to pay their heating assistance. And I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Peterson) and the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania (Ms. Hart) for putting this amendment before us, and I hope that we can support it.

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for recognizing that not all of America is alike, like the proponents of this amendment think. Listen to me very carefully. My district represents the distance of Washington, D.C. to Chicago. Nobody represents more people in this Congress than I do, 904,000 people, after reapportionment. But we do not have subsidized mass transit like you do in Massachusetts. Oh, we have mass transit; that is two herd dogs in our truck instead of one. No, we do not have mass transit. What we have is a lot of people out on a lot of miles of highway, unsafe miles. I think of all the things we have to do in a State like Montana, travel 10 miles just to get to our post office, travel 20 miles maybe to get to school or to buy groceries, sometimes drive 100 miles to get to a hospital. No, this is a one-size-fits-all solution that I came to Washington, D.C. to fight. It is time that we look beyond the Potomac, that the sun does not rise and set just on this river out here. There is an expanse of America. We cannot have one-size-fits-all. I went out and tried to buy a truck the other day, and they are getting so light that I cannot put feed in the back because they could not assure me that the frame would not bend; 2,000 pounds of feed, and I cannot get it in the back of my pickup because they are making them so light to try to meet the CAFE standards. Vote against this amendment.

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, I was a staffer on the Committee on Resources 20 years ago when the distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) was making the same tired arguments. Here we are 20 years later, still without an energy policy. Over the course of those years, my colleague, the gentleman from Massachusetts, has yet to visit either ANWR. That is right, I said either ANWR. Why? Because there are really two ANWRs, the one the authors of this amendment like to talk about, and the one that is actually at issue when we talk about energy development. To illustrate this, I would like to highlight the testimony of the mayor of the borough that includes ANWR, testimony that my friend, the gentleman from Massachusetts, would have heard if he had taken the time to go up to Alaska last Saturday, as we did. Testifying as to the two ANWRs, the mayor said: ``The first ANWR is beautiful mountain scenery that seems to go on forever. It is a world of wildlife, a refuge from the noise and disruption of human community. You are here in the second ANWR. It is tundra, an old military site, and Eskimos who have lived and hunted and survived around here for thousands of years. You won't see this ANWR on Sierra Club posters. That is because it is not really a refuge, it is a land of many uses. ``This is Eskimo country. It has a thriving village whose residents work at local jobs and hunt for caribou, whales, and all the other animal species that have always sustained our people. The Sierra Club would probably be happier if they would stop hunting and fishing; but we would be happier if they would stop floating down all the rivers in ANWR disrupting the wildlife that we depend on. But we can all get along if we acknowledge two ANWRs and allow both to exist.'' Mr. Chairman, that is the issue here. There are two ANWRs, the one the environmentalists like to raise money on, and the one that is part of a balanced energy plan that we are debating here today. This amendment is intellectually dishonest. The sponsors speak of the first ANWR as justification for their amendment, yet ignore the fact that it really applies to the second ANWR. I would support it if it only applies to the first, but it does not. I urge defeat of this amendment and urge my colleagues to take the mayor's advice and consider both ANWRs when casting their vote.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Chairman, Montana is known as the Treasure State because of our natural beauty and the natural resources that we can provide for economic and energy independence; but Montanans, I have learned, do not care so much about energy portfolio, grids or Btus, and they sure as heck do not care so much about partisan politics; but they do care about, our seniors want to know that when they move up the little knob on their thermostats that they will have heat. Our mothers and fathers want to know that when they turn their ignition their cars will start so they can take their children to school, and our small businessmen and--women want to know when they try and open up in the morning, when they flip that switch, there is electricity. It is interesting for me to hear the opponents of this bill who have been in this Congress for 20, 30, 40, and almost 50 years talking about solving the problem. When is the bill perfect? Where has been the solution for the last 20 or 30 years? We are waiting for it. I remember as a young man standing in line to buy gasoline in 1979, and we talked about the energy independence of this country. When is the time? It is now. It is time to solve it now. This is a well-designed plan, a well-thought-out energy policy that may not be perfect in the long run, but is a vision to build America's future. The worst thing that we can do is create an energy debt for our next generation. I look all over this Capitol, and I see young men and women who someday may not have the opportunity to drill one more well, dig one more shovel full of coal. If we do not have a plan in place, where we can have used some of the new technologies to invent our way out of this problem, if we do not have a policy in place that has loans and grants to give to the young minds in the scientific community to invent our way out of this problem, if we do not have the technology and the infrastructure in place to take advantage of all of the exciting things with geothermal and such, we have done a real disservice. We have created an energy debt far more serious than a financial debt that we are creating. Let us not create an energy debt. Let us not wait another 20, 30, 40 years. Let us solve the problem now. Vote for this bill.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Madam Speaker, some of Saddam Hussein's paramilitary monsters hanged a teenage girl last week for waving at coalition troops. In the same week, Iraqi military, pretending to surrender, fired upon our people who had offered them safety. This week we learned Saddam's desperate soldiers have taken to shielding themselves with women and children when confronting our advancing troops. His paramilitary forces rule by terror, lodging military stockpiles in schools and hospitals, firing at villagers who try to flee, and exterminating townspeople who refuse to fight for Saddam's terrorist state. Perhaps the signature statement of the abhorrent and despicable nature of the enemy is its treatment of our young people in uniform taken captive. Some have been humiliated and paraded in front of television cameras. Others, we now know, were brutally executed or, should I say murdered, by Iraqi soldiers. Can there be any doubt about the vile and inhumane character of Saddam's dying regime? As President Bush has correctly noted, ``Given the nature of this regime, we expect such war crimes, but we will not excuse them.'' Our brave men and women in uniform deserve our support, both for what they are doing and for why they are there.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah for yielding to me on an issue that is so very important. There is an old Chinese proverb that says, the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. Just think back to 1979 when we were standing in line to buy gasoline, and some of us from energy-producing States said, what happened? Will this ever happen again? It happened again in the 1980s. We continually find that energy prices are going up. We find that OPEC ministers are holding us hostage, and yet this Congress and this country does not have an energy policy. Oh, it may not be the most sexy of issues, because every time the gasoline price in this country goes down, people go, whew, we solved the problem; now we do not have to deal with it. But we do. Because there is one thing that will create a problem more than any other problem in this world in the future, and it is not the national debt that we talk about, and that is very serious; the national debt can either be solved through increasing revenue or decreasing expenditures. No, the most serious problem this Nation faces is an energy shortage. One day we will not have an opportunity to drill one more well or dig one more shovel full of coal. If we have not done the things, if we have not put in place the environment to create the next generation of energy production, then we have done more damage to the next generation, far surpassing anything else that we could have done with our financial debt. Montana, my home State, is known as the Treasure State. Why? Because of the natural beauty, but also the natural resources that we can provide to the rest of this Nation under an energy policy. ``Oro y Plata'' is our motto: Gold and Silver. We have gold and silver, but beyond that, we have many of the things that this energy policy that we are discussing in this Congress have to offer. A couple of the ones that are most important to my State are clean coal and clean coal technology. The energy policy talks about the opportunities. Think about the native Americans in our country. We have reservations in Montana that need economic development. Just in the Crow reservation alone, they have the potential for 1 billion tons of coal, or the Cheyenne reservation, 1 billion tons of coal. One of the President's priorities was hydrogen fuel cell technology. We need electricity to put through the hydrogen fuel cells. How can it be created in America? Through coal. I traveled to Iceland last year. I watched them want to become the first nation to be entirely fossil-fuel free. How do they create the electricity for their hydrogen fuel cell technology? They use water, hydro, their dams. We certainly cannot do that. We need a source, whether it is natural gas or coal. Montana can fit into that, but we cannot without the incentives that are created in this energy policy. We need this bill. Marginal well tax credit. Mr. Speaker, in Montana alone, we have 2,700 shut-in marginal wells. Why? Because they cannot afford to open them because the price of oil is so unstable that they do not know that if they open it, they will have to shut it down immediately or they will lose them. We are not talking about the major oil companies here. We are talking about independents; we are talking about Montanans, individuals who pay their income taxes that need the help. Within the energy policy there is a tax credit for marginally producing wells. It could replace as many as 140,000 barrels of oil a day, oil that we will not have to bring in from places like Iraq. Energy debt. That is what we are looking at in this country. I brought along a picture that I want to show my colleagues real quickly. This is my home State of Montana in the year 2000. These were the fires that burned a million acres of properties, a lot on Federal ground. Unfortunately, along with that, animals burned, pastures burned. We created an unhealthy environment and rather than doing that, we ought to do what other countries and, in some cases, States that are so far ahead of this Nation are doing. I took a delegation over to Sweden last year to look at biomass. They have cogeneration facilities where they put wood products through those generation facilities to create energy for schools and hospitals. It can be done in America. It is not being done to the extent that it could be, because we do not have an energy policy. When is America going to wake up? When are we going to say we are not going to let the opponents stop this plan because of one issue or another? And energy policy has a never-ending, expansive environment of creating an opportunity to become energy independent to fuel the economy and to fuel ourselves into the 21st century and beyond. Without it, we are creating an energy debt, and that is not fair to the next generation; and shame on us if we do not solve the problem. I thank the gentleman from Utah for his leadership in the Western Caucus and for giving me an opportunity to speak today.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, schools in rural districts face a barrage of problems unheard of in more populous areas. Country schools have continually had to confront the one-size-fits-all mentality of Washington, DC, when it comes to Federal education policy. For rural States like Montana, the sun always seems to set on the Potomac, where policymakers seem to ignore the rest of the map stretching 3,000 miles beyond that river. In my home State, our schools fight year after year to come up with enough funding to cover the federally mandated Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, IDEA. In just 5 years, the estimated Federal shortfall in IDEA funding has cost my State nearly $93 million, money that larger and wealthier school districts in more populous States can easily afford; but in Montana it is real money that comes out of funds for new teachers, computers, books and Internet access. Our families in western and rural States deserve the same access to quality education for their children that urban families have. That is why I, along with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Kind), the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne), and the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Peterson), have formed the bipartisan Rural Education Caucus. Together we have come together to devise solutions to the unique problems associated with the business of educating children in rural areas.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I have been disturbed by the headlines depicting extremists protesting the disarmament of Saddam Hussein even before it begins. I sadly read about a group of anarchists trashing a 9-11 memorial in California, tearing up dozens of American flags. In doing so, these people send a caustic message to our young men and women in uniform who, instead, need our support. I am proud of our troops. In my home State of Montana, our citizens admire these brave young people. Two weeks ago in Missoula, a large gathering of community leaders, families, and senior citizens gathered to show their support for the people in uniform who have volunteered to put their lives on the line for this country. Several days ago, a similar gathering in Kalispell turned out to show support for those who serve our country. Last weekend, more than 200 Montanans gathered in Billings, shouting ``USA'' and ``God Bless America.'' In each of these cases, Montanans gathered not to criticize our role in the Middle East, but to say, We love our country and we support our President. They gathered to tell our young men and women in uniform, We love you, we are proud of you, go with God, and may His grace surround you should you enter harm's way.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, nearly 2 years ago President Bush nominated Miguel Estrada to fill a vacancy in the United States Court of Appeals. During this time, the President's opponents have turned ``advise and consent'' into ``criticize and dissent.'' They have stalled nearly all of his judicial nominations and much of his domestic agenda as well. The President's opponents are purposely relegating important legislation to their ``criticize and dissent'' penalty box. This filibuster is not about Miguel Estrada. He is qualified to serve, and everybody knows that. No, sadly, this is a part of a larger plot to shut down our lawmaking process in an effort to score political points. With terrorists knocking at our door, gas and heating prices soaring, an economy in need of a jump-start, they want to tie up the vital business of America with a filibuster against Miguel Estrada. And it will not end with Miguel Estrada. They will continue to obstruct at every turn. Mr. Speaker, I urge opponents to allow Miguel Estrada a fair vote, return to the crucial work for which they were elected, and set free the legislative process they are holding hostage.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago the Americans got a taste of tax relief with a promise that one day they might see an end to the marriage penalty, an end to death tax, a reduction of tax rates, and an increase in child tax credits. With today's economy struggling and with the price of gasoline and heating oil going through the roof, Americans need more than promises, more than a mere taste of tax relief. Americans are looking for Congress to transform the temporary tax relief of 2001 into something permanent. Mr. Speaker, I have always believed that the best way to stimulate the economy is not with more government spending but with more people spending. You cannot improve the well-being of families by spending more on government programs and bureaucracies. You can by ending the marriage penalty, killing the death tax, increasing child credits and reducing burdensome tax rates. It is time to put tax dollars back into the hands of the people who need it most. Join me in supporting the President's economic stimulus package.

Mr. REHBERG

Mr. REHBERG. Mr. Speaker, I rise to call the attention of Members of the House to critical federal programs conducted at the Western Environmental Technology Office, or WETO, located in Butte, Montana. These programs involving the National Energy Technology Laboratory are funded under Energy and Water Development Appropriations. First, I want to commend Chairman Hobson and Ranking Member Visclosky, and the members of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, for their action to restore over $11 million in funds that were eliminated from the FY 2003 budget for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science and Technology, within the Environmental Management program. The Office of Science and Technology has a critical mission in providing cost effective technology to clean up contaminated federal property across the country, and it deserves the strong support of the Congress. I continue to be very concerned, however, about the likely adverse effects of proposed Office of Science and Technology cutbacks on our nation's ability to perform cost effective and timely remediation of the DOE's contaminated sites around the country. More specifically, I am concerned about the continuation of the important work of DOE's Western Environmental Technology Office. At the WETO facility, the National Energy Technology Laboratory provides critical support to DOE's Office of Science and Technology. Their activities help facilitate DOE's demonstration, evaluation and implementation of technologies that promise to provide much-needed solutions to the environmental cleanup challenges at various DOE sites. DOE's Research and Development contract for the Western Environmental Technology Office, originally awarded in FY 1997, has been extended through the end of FY 2004. That contract extension provided that DOE would fund WETO at the following levels: $6 million in FY 2002, $6 million in FY 2003, and $4 million in FY 2004. However, in FY 2002 WETO received only $5 million, $1 million short of the DOE's contractual obligation. It is critically important to preserve this commitment to WETO and continue funding on schedule at a rate that will account for last year's shortfall. I would add that the operations and activities of WETO are very important to the economy in Montana. Many professionals have chosen western Montana as their home while they serve our nation's challenge to clean up contaminated DOE sites. Mr. Speaker, I would submit to my colleagues that when the Department of Energy makes contracts for multi-year programs in such important areas as WETO, where the Department's Science and Technology Office is developing and implementing technologies to remediate contaminated federal sites, these agreements must be honored.