Louise Slaughter

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, how much time do we have remaining?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 6 minutes to the gentlewoman who chairs the Ethics Committee, the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Go ahead and use it any way you like.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I have none. I am ready to close.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume to enter into the Record a very important piece of information which has just come my way. Printed in the New York Times this morning: ``Internal memorandums circulated in the Alaskan division of the Federal Fish and Wildlife Service appear to require government biologists or other employees traveling in countries around the Arctic not to discuss climate change, polar bears or sea ice if they are not designated to do so. ``In December, the Bush administration, facing a deadline under a suit by environmental groups, proposed listing polar bears throughout their range as threatened under the Endangered Species Act because the warming climate is causing a summertime retreat of sea ice that the bears use for seal hunting. ``It remains unclear whether such a listing will be issued. Over the past week, biologists and wildlife officials received a cover note and two sample memorandums to be used as a guide in preparing travel requests. Under the heading `Foreign Travel--New Requirement--Please Review and Comply, Importance: High,' the cover note said.'' `` `Please be advised that all foreign travel requests and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who'll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.' ``The sample memorandums, described as to be used in written travel requests, indicate that the employees seeking permission to travel `understands the administration's position on climate change, polar bears, and sea ice will not be speaking on or responding to these issues.' ``Electronic copies of the memorandums and cover note were forwarded to The New York Times by Deborah Williams, an environmental campaigner in Alaska and a former Interior Department official in the Clinton administration. `` `This sure sounds like a Soviet-style directive to me,' Ms. Williams said. ``Limits on government scientists' freedom to speak freely about climate change became a heated issue last year after news report showed that political appointees at NASA had canceled journalists' interview requests with climate scientists and discouraged news releases on global warming.'' Mr. Speaker, if there was ever a time for this Congress to take up global warming, and if there was ever a question that it was not the position of this administration to ignore it, I hope this puts it to rest. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, let me take 30 seconds to say to my good friend, Mr. Dreier, that while he has made much of the fact that a bipartisan group went before the committee to beg for money, that it was turned down by a bipartisan pair, the Chair and the ranking member of that committee, perhaps he should take up his complaint with Mr. Ehlers who was the Republican ranking member on that committee. Now I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 219 provides for consideration of House Resolution 202, the 110th Congress committee funding resolution. The rule provides for 1 hour of general debate in the House, equally divided and controlled by the Chair and ranking minority member of the Committee on House Administration. The rule makes in order the committee funding substitute adopted by the Committee on House Administration. It also provides for a new Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, the text of which is printed in the Rules report accompanying the rule. The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the resolution and provides that the resolution, as amended, shall be considered as read. Mr. Speaker, the rule before us would allow for the consideration of a bipartisan committee funding resolution. It was reported out of the House Administration Committee with the support of both Chairwoman Millender-McDonald and Ranking Member Ehlers. I want to take a moment to say how pleased I am with the way in which this bill embodies the spirit of fiscal responsibility that is so often advocated by this body. The financial pressures on our government are immense. Recent years have left us with an unprecedented amount of foreign debt. At the same time, my fellow Democrats and I are struggling to ensure the safety of tens and hundreds of thousands of troops abroad, while refusing to shortchange vital domestic programs here at home. The resolution reflects that reality. While not all committees have received the budget increases they hoped for, this funding resolution provides a bipartisan approach to ensuring that they can fulfill their duties and obligations without asking Congress to spend money we don't have. It includes only a 2.4 percent increase in funding from last year, one of the smallest increases in committee funding in the last 12 years. As vital as it is to start bringing home some fiscal sanity back to Washington, there is another reason why the legislation is significant. As a result of actions taken by the Rules Committee yesterday, it now contains a provision that represents a profound departure from the approach that recent Republican Congresses have taken toward one of the most pivotal issues of our time, global warming. Global warming is not merely an environmental issue. It is also a social issue and an economic one. It affects all nations and all peoples, and its consequences, if left unchecked, could produce truly dramatic changes to human society the world over. For decades, evidence has mounted that our planet's temperature is rising, and that evidence has become so universally recognized that it is no longer in dispute. President Bush himself even used the phrase ``climate change'' in his State of the Union Address this year, the first time he has acknowledged it. But the question raised today by some is a different one: Is global warming caused by human activity? Or is it merely a natural phenomenon akin to the last ice age, something that we have to adapt to but we cannot affect? Efforts to break the link in the public imagination between human activity and climate change are still ongoing. Doubt is still being seeded in the public mind. Sometimes these efforts are blunt. Despite the President's recent admission, his administration has also been accused of rewriting sections of impartial Federal scientific reports that tie human activity to global warming. Other times, the efforts are more subtle. We hear all the time Members of this body express their desire to, as they put it, ``get to the bottom'' of the problem of climate change so that we may come to understand its true cause. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues and I on the Democratic side of the aisle do not share this degree of doubt, nor do we seek to disseminate it. We have been convinced by numerous internationally recognized scientific studies, by years of careful analysis and by endless measurements taken around the world. We have been convinced, as have people the world over, by the overwhelming weight of available, impartial and scientific evidence. We have been convinced of a simple idea, that human beings are altering the planet's environment. And, as such, we have committed ourselves to being the party of personal, environmental responsibility. We have pledged to confront this great challenge before it is beyond our grasp, beyond our ability to change even if we wanted to. We have promised a strong path of action, and this bill represents the first steps along that path taken by this Congress in years, if not ever. The resolution will create a fully funded select committee whose sole purpose will be to focus on global warming. The committee will have 15 members, nine from the majority and six from the minority. It will serve as a much-needed congressional forum for hearings, investigations and discussion, and will have the chance to make recommendations concerning climate change. Simply put, people all the world over can breathe easier because the resolution will institutionalize the commitment of the House of Representatives to confronting global warming. Mr. Speaker, I also want to take a moment to address one of the criticisms of this rule that is likely to be voiced by the minority. We may be told that a hearing and markup process for the select committee did not take place before the rule was authored. But a question like this one, the question of whether or not we should address global warming, has had an ongoing public hearing for a generation. Numerous arguments on both sides of the question have been made. And at the end of it all, the overwhelming consensus, both among the public and among internationally recognized climate scientists, is that global warming is real; it is human influenced; and it is our responsibility to control. The creation of this select committee is a response to that international public hearing. Democrats have called for the need to fight climate change for years, and today we have the chance to turn that call into action, and we don't intend to waste it. Mr. Speaker, we can't forget that, in 1997, the Republican-controlled Senate rejected the Kyoto Protocol, a path-breaking international effort to control global warming. And we must not forget that, back in 2001, one of the administration's first acts of international significance was the dramatic rejection of that same set of principles. It is time for this House to join the vast majority of the world community that recognizes the threat global warming poses and the role that our Nation plays in it. It is time for us to be leaders on this issue and to take responsibility for our actions. I urge the passage of this rule and of the resolution. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. (Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I thank the gentlelady for yielding to me. Mr. Speaker, this week on the floor, the House will provide our Nation with a clear, unambiguous answer to the most important question facing the country: Will this body side with the President's approach to the war in Iraq, or will we demand change? Since Tuesday we have been debating President Bush's plan to escalate the war in Iraq. It is a debate that was long overdue and one which the American people and our troops risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan deserve. The simple reality is that two-thirds of the American public, including myself, do not trust the President's judgment when it comes to the war. It is a conflict that has been defined by mismanagement and misinformation since it began, and the results have been devastating for the Iraqi people and for our men and women in uniform. We know that top administration officials, men like Douglas Feith, abused the public trust and misused the work of the intelligence community when making the case for the war. Since then, every piece of evidence suggests that the strategy employed by this administration has failed in Iraq. Sectarian strife in Iraq has not abated, with routine bombings that kill dozens of civilians daily. The unemployment rate in Iraq is as high as 25 percent and 40 percent. Baghdad has only a few hours of electricity per day. Our troops have continued to pay the price of being caught in the middle of another nation's civil war. 84 troops were killed last month, 48 more have been killed already this month. At the same time, Mr. Speaker, corruption, fraud and lack of oversight have haunted every aspect of our involvement in Iraq. Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, has uncovered $10 billion in reconstruction funding that simply disappeared once it was sent overseas. Projects critical to the rebuilding and stabilization of Iraq society have been handed out to private firms, using no-bid contracts, firms that failed to live up to their responsibilities. To cite one example, the construction of a new Baghdad police college to train Iraqi security officers, a $75 million project of vital importance to stability, was completely undermined by a private construction company. The work was so shoddy that the classrooms it built posed a health risk to the students and had to be abandoned. That same fraud and lack of oversight for years have posed mortal risk to our soldiers. In January of 2006, we learned that 80 percent of the U.S. Marines who had died of upper body wounds in Iraq would have lived if they had had the proper armor. A Pentagon report released last month stated once again that our troops have been sent into battle time and time again without proper armor equipment, a reality which still exists today. This simply hasn't been a case of going to war with the army you have, as Mr. Rumsfeld said. We have faced these shortages in part because the Pentagon contracts were given to companies who weren't up to the job and couldn't meet the demands of the conflict. A legitimate question might be, are we funding the troops or are we funding crooked contractors and Iraqi government officials? Hundreds of dollars have simply disappeared. These are borrowed dollars, ladies and gentlemen, mainly from China. My friends on the other side of the aisle made two arguments against the resolution. They have told us that to condemn the President's surge means that this Congress is giving up in Iraq, and they told us that we cannot support the troops without supporting their mission. Our troops have done their job in Iraq and they have risked their lives countless times, but now they are being asked to do something that no army can do, find a military solution to a political problem. If the mission we have given our brave soldiers is the wrong one, and the past 4 years prove that it is, why would we help our enemies by refusing to change course? If that mission is the wrong one, how is supporting the mission that is wrong supporting the troops? If the mission is the wrong one, then how is demanding a change giving up? Giving up means just the opposite, it means insisting on a continuing failing strategy. This escalation of the war is the same failed strategy, all it will do is put more and more of our young men and women in harm's way. That reality has led it to be opposed by a bipartisan majority in this House. A Republican Representative recently said, ``This is not a fresh approach, it is just more of the same.'' The plan has been publicly opposed by numerous high-ranking generals, such as General John Abizaid, General Colin Powell and General James T. Conway, the Commandant of the Marine Corps. He recently said that the Joint Chiefs ``do not believe that just adding numbers for the sake of adding numbers, just thickening the mix, is the necessary way to go.'' We need to stop this escalation and change what we are doing in Iraq. We need to promote a political solution and a diplomatic solution to the problems. I urge the passage of this resolution.

Ms. SLAUGHTER

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. McGovern).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Matsui).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Vermont (Mr. Welch).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Castor).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Ms. Sutton).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Patrick J. Murphy).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Walz).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Yes. Mr. Sestak will be my final speaker.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Do you have any further speakers?

Ms. SLAUGHTER. All right. Why don't you go ahead then and we will have our speaker after you.

Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield the remainder of our time to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Sestak).

Ms. SLAUGHTER. I have only got the one speaker. My understanding is if you want to close, you need to do it now.