David Schweikert

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Massie), my buddy who actually went to MIT and knows something on the subject.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, as I approach the mike here, I want to make it clear that my friend on the other side, who is speaking for this amendment, has been very kind to me and my office, but the amendment ultimately doesn't do what we just heard. Let's walk through the sentence. ``Any peer-reviewed.'' It doesn't say ``highest and best.'' Okay. Let's walk through the next portion of this. Peer review, if you actually look at the methodology and the mechanics, is the study plausible, credible? They don't get the underlying data set. Do we all remember our Statistics 101 class? The multiple parts of an equation that the sample sets are where so many of the difficulties actually are; yet we are going to rely on peer review, for peer reviewers that never see the underlying data. The fact of the matter is if any of you have Web access right now, there is Web site after Web site after Web site right now talking about the retraction of peer-reviewed articles. You are willing to hand hundreds of billions of dollars of potential costs and regulations, you are willing to hand the health of Americans over and not be willing to trust transparency where there is an egalitarian nature, where my university, your university, a researcher here, a researcher maybe on the other side of the world, someone that just happens to be darn good at math, and has some other data sets out there and matches it, but they are excluded because they don't meet the definition of the official science, official reviewers, and even the official reviewers never see the underlying data. This amendment does not say the finest and the best and the most highest standard of review. It says, ``any peer-reviewed.'' With that, Mr. Chairman, I request my brothers and sisters here in this building to vote ``no'' on this amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for having two Members from Arizona up here. I am prepared to accept the amendment as the sponsor of the bill.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time. Have you ever had a moment at which you are approaching the microphone--and you have got to accept that we are all passionate about our views--and you have heard some things that, shall we say, start to get your blood pressure moving a bit, but let me see if I can do this without being hyperbolic and then walk through some of the realities of the information that is laid out in front of me right here. First, I do want to respond to something that Ranking Member Johnson said. I want to first caveat that she has always been very kind to me, but we have the confirmation from the EPA, itself--and we will put the documents into the Record--that they are perfectly capable of blinding anything that is confidential, anything that is personal. I mean, we have the comments from Administrator McCarthy on March 7 walking us through that they can do this, and they didn't see it as a real problem. Let me walk through something else that I am finding sort of absurd, and I am having a little trouble finding the best way to articulate this. We spent about an hour in our office sort of just searching the Internet on this subject. If you go back about a decade ago, a number of our friends on the left were demanding something almost identical to this. So what is different? It wouldn't happen to be a different philosophy, a different President, a different party in the White House, would it? Let me back up and say: Why do I embrace this Secret Science bill, H.R. 4012? I genuinely, in every fiber of my being, believe that we will get better policy, better design, more creative ideas because, whether you are on the left, the right, or are just an active addition, you do not know whether the EPA rule sets are optimal. You may believe they are, but we are doing it on faith. Peer review is wonderful except for the fact that the peer reviewers don't see the underlying data. The beauty of this piece of legislation is that neither you nor I right now knows, in the absolute collective analysis, whether the EPA is even going far enough or whether it is going too far or whether there is another approach that would be dramatically more efficient. What happens when that researcher gets his hands on a linear data set and matches it up with something else that no one had thought of putting in there and, all of a sudden, discovers the noise in the data that there are opportunities to do it better, faster, more efficiently, to save lives, or to maybe even do it cheaper? You will not know that until the cabal that right now has the franchise on the information, on the brokerage of the data, is broken up. What is so stunningly disheartening here is that much of this concept, if you go back and look at the speeches from the President in 2007 and 2008, and at memos from the President 18 months ago, from OMB, demanding this, saying this was the wave of the future if you embrace science--but not the science of an elite few. The fact of the matter is our Nation--our country--and our world is made up of really smart people who have the right and the ability to give us input to do this better. I beg of my fellow Members here to stop being afraid of true transparency. Stop defending the incumbent class that thinks it has the only legitimate scientists who have the right to put forward what our future looks like. I may be behind this microphone in a couple of years from now if this bill passes, saying: I never knew we weren't going far enough. You may be behind that microphone over there, saying: The crowd analysis of the data says there was a dramatically better way. But we need to pass this bill to have that opportunity. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time. The Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, March 7, 2014. Hon. Lamar Smith, Chairman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, House of Representatives, Washington, DC. Dear Mr. Chairman: Thank you for your letter of February 14, 2014, regarding the United States Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) response to a subpoena duces tecum (subpoena) from the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology (Committee). As you note in your letter, during and immediately after my November 14, 2013, appearance before your Committee, we agreed to additional dialogue regarding the EPA's response to the subpoena. I understand that our staffs have had several discussions since that date, and made significant progress toward a common understanding of this matter. I want to thank you and your staff for your willingness to engage in these discussions, as I believe they have been both productive and constructive. Your subpoena sought data from the American Cancer Society and Harvard Six Cities cohorts, as well as analyses and re- analyses of that data. In particular, the subpoena sought data from studies that utilized data from the American Cancer Society and Harvard Six Cities cohorts. Once the EPA received the subpoena, we conducted a diligent search for data, as well as analyses and re-analyses of that data that were already in our possession, custody, or control that would be responsive to the subpoena. In addition, we considered what data, as well as analyses and re-analyses of that data, were not in our possession, custody, or control on the date we received the subpoena, but that may still be within the scope of the Committee's subpoena. For data, as well as analyses and re-analyses of that data, that were not in the EPA's possession, custody, or control but that could still be considered within the scope of the subpoena, the EPA sought to identify a legal authority for the agency to obtain that information so that it could be provided to the Committee. In this case, the Shelby Amendment (Public Law 105-277) provides the EPA with the authority to obtain certain research data that was not in the agency's possession, custody, or control on the date we received the subpoena, and the EPA utilized that authority to obtain that data. The actions taken in response to the subpoena are detailed in an enclosure (Enclosure 1) to this letter, and included multiple interactions with the third party owners of the research data in an effort to obtain that data. Once the agency successfully obtained the research data, we undertook a review of this data to determine whether the release of the data would raise privacy concerns. The agency sought the assistance of the Centers for Disease Control in this inquiry as well, in an effort to ensure the privacy of the subjects of the data was not compromised. Through its efforts, the EPA located within its possession, custody, or control, or obtained through its authority, the data for five studies listed in the subpoena. Any other data, as well as analyses and re-analyses of that data, that may be within the scope of the subpoena, whether specifically listed in the subpoena or not, are not (and were not) in the possession, custody, or control of the EPA, nor are they within the authority to obtain data that the agency identified. However, the issuance of the subpoena does not provide the agency with any additional authority to obtain data, as well as analyses and re-analyses of that data, that we otherwise do not have the authority to obtain. All responsive data, as well as analyses and re-analyses of that data, located or obtained during our efforts to respond to the subpoena have been provided to the Committee. The EPA provided that data to the Committee through letters sent prior to our receipt of the subpoena, and then our letters responding to the subpoena of August 19, 2013, September 16, 2013, and September 30, 2013. The EPA provided the Committee with the data for these five studies in exactly the same format the data were provided to us. Importantly, the agency was able to work through the various privacy concerns so that we would not need to de-identify any of the data. As of the EPA's letter of September 30, 2013, the agency has provided the Committee with all of the data covered by the subpoena that the agency has obtained or has the authority to obtain under the Shelby Amendment. Additionally, the EPA has not withheld any data in our possession that is responsive to the subpoena. Thus, the EPA has completed its response to the subpoena. The EPA acknowledges, however, that the data provided are not sufficient in themselves to replicate the analyses in the epidemiological studies, nor would they allow for the one to one mapping of each pollutant and ecological variable to each subject. For the reasons explained in our previous letters on this topic, these acknowledgements do not call into question the EPA's reliance on these studies for regulatory actions. Your February 14, 2014, letter also requests the grant agreements related to the studies covered by the subpoena, and those documents are being provided with this letter. These EPA grant agreements span from 1998 to 2006 and contain a variety of data access provisions. Despite that variation, the EPA has reviewed each of the agreements and determined that each grant agreement contained data access provisions that are consistent with the EPA grant regulations at the time of the award. The EPA's current practice is to incorporate into our grant agreements a reference to the agency's regulations regarding access to research data funded by the grant. Thank you again for the opportunity to explain the actions the EPA took in responding to your subpoena. Sincerely, Gina McCarthy.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire into the time remaining?

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith), chairman of the Science, Space, and Technology Committee.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, at the end of my opening remarks, I will enter into the Record an exchange of letters between the chairmen of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology and the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I continue to be stunned at some of the hyperbolic language that seems to be moving around this piece of legislation. Transparency, it is an incredibly powerful concept and a fairly simple one in this aspect: if you are going to make public policy, do it by public data and public data for the concept of refinement and creation of public policy. Is there anyone in this body when we all ran for office that did not commit to transparency? Well, H.R. 4012 is part of that commitment. If you have faith in our higher learning institutions, if you have faith in the American people, this data belongs to them. Partially, one side belief I have is, as the crowd has the opportunity to analyze and collect and look at data, whether they be from the right, the left, or just academic, we will end up with finer- crafted solutions. How would any of us know if the EPA has set optimal rule sets? Well, one of the ways you discover this is by having lots of voices in the mix. This bill keeps that commitment, and I have no idea why my brothers and sisters on the left seem to be trying to shut down that commitment to transparency. With that, Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time. House of Representatives, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Washington, DC, August 22, 2014. Hon. Lamar Smith, Chairman, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC. Dear Chairman Smith: I write concerning H.R. 4012, the ``Secret Science Reform Act of 2014.'' As you are aware, the bill was referred to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, but the Committee on Energy and Commerce has a jurisdictional interest in the bill and has requested a sequential referral. Given the implications of H.R. 4012 for agencies within its jurisdiction, the Committee on Energy and Commerce remains committed to working on scientific transparency. However, because of our mutual interest in having this important legislation considered by the House before the end of the 113th Congress, I will not insist on a sequential referral of H.R. 4012. I do so with the understanding that, by foregoing such a referral, the Committee on Energy and Commerce does not waive any jurisdictional claim on this or similar matters, and the Committee reserves the right to seek the appointment of conferees. I would appreciate your response to this letter confirming this understanding, and ask that a copy of our exchange of letters on this matter be included in the Congressional Record during consideration of H.R. 4012 on the House floor. Sincerely, Fred Upton, Chairman.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hultgren).

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Weber).

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Johnson).

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire on the time remaining?

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam).

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. On this particular occasion, on this motion to recommit, this MTR, it does win a point on creativity. But if we actually just heard part of it, you are telling me that the EPA, when they respond to a spill, they are showing up embracing secret information on how they are responding. It is absurd. Maybe even the motion may be well-meaning, but when you start using definitions of ``emergency,'' ``community,'' ``including'' with a long dash, we all know where that leads, and it leads both to chaos, inefficiency, and actually doesn't make a lot of drafting sense. So let's actually move on to what we are really here about: the underlying bill. I have been shocked at sort of the crazy hyperbole that we have heard today about the secret science bill. This bill is actually very simple. All it does is provide transparency substantially as President Obama campaigned on. Walk through the mechanics. We were having a little debate in our office whether I should hold these up. This here is a stack of letters, memos, demands from folks on the left. It just happened to be there was a Republican President, and even some of these when they were in the majority here, demanding disclosure of the underlying data from the EPA. There is even part of here where the former then-chairman was demanding the data and saying if he didn't get it he was going after contempt. So what has changed? Seriously, what has changed here with the left on transparency? Is it just the fact that we now have a Democrat in the White House? So let's actually walk through what we have all campaigned on in here. Is there a Member here that, when you got in front of your constituents, did not promise more transparency in government? That is what this is about. If you are going to create rule sets that affect every American's life, their health, their economic future, don't they have the right to see the underlying data? And think of the arrogance that is going on right here. If you believe that the EPA is the sole keeper of all great knowledge, that their cabal is the only one qualified to be creative, to understand is there a better way, a more efficient way, a healthier way, then vote against the bill. But if you believe in the American people, if you believe in our institution, if you believe there is amazing knowledge all over this country and all over this world, this is the transparency that makes us healthier, that makes us more efficient, that makes decisionmaking coming out of the EPA much more rational. This is what we all campaigned on. This is what we promised. Let's go vote for it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I wish to withdraw my reservation, and I rise in opposition to the motion.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on H.R. 4012.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 756, I call up the bill (H.R. 1422) to amend the Environmental Research, Development, and Demonstration Authorization Act of 1978 to provide for Scientific Advisory Board member qualifications, public participation, and for other purposes, and ask for its immediate consideration in the House.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Members of Congress have been asking for greater transparency from the EPA's Science Advisory Board for years, and the EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act, we believe, addresses those concerns. Currently, the board is made up of 52 members appointed by the Administrator of the EPA to serve 3-year terms. The large majority of these members are affiliated with academic institutions, while private industry and other interested parties are unrepresented. The only State governments represented are California and Vermont, while tribal and local governments have no representation on the board. Under H.R. 1422, at least 10 percent of the board members will be from States, local governments, or tribal entities. The bill reinforces peer-review requirements and reduces conflicts of interest while providing opportunity for disinterested panelists to make their views known. The EPA Science Advisory Board Reform Act promises fairness, transparency, and independence to ensure unbiased advice is given to the EPA. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Stewart), and I ask unanimous consent that he be permitted to control the time.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous materials on the bill, H.R. 1422.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Nunes for doing this. Thank you for the bipartisan support from everyone, and particularly in the Ways and Means Committee. This is one of those sort of semijoyous moments where we actually get to do something that is good legislation and good policy, and sometimes you desperately wish around here we had more of this. Being from Arizona, I have 22 tribes in my State. As a much younger man in the legislature, I actually chaired the Indian Affairs Committee in my State legislature, and we spent years working with our communities to become self-sufficient, to maximum their sovereignty and respect it. So many of my tribes in Arizona now are actually engaging in activities to bolster their population, to provide them the basic benefits that you and I would receive from our city council, from our county, from our State. The clarification this provides just puts them on equal footings with what happens in our other communities and for those who live off reservation. That is why this is such good legislation. It is rational, it makes sense, and continues to incentivize the right direction, the right sovereignty, the right approach for our Native American people in this country. With that, Mr. Nunes, thank you for doing this.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, one of my reasons for coming and taking some of this time this evening was around a frustration I have had, and I think this may be for a lot of us who are from a border State, who have been watching both the press and a lot of our brothers and sisters around this place speechify about immigration, about the border crisis, and what is happening. If you are actually from Arizona, this isn't a new issue for us. We have been bathing and living this for decades now. I had that moment this last week, Mr. Speaker, where I realized maybe the awareness in this body is starting to change to understand the impact of a porous border and what it means to communities. When I had one of my friends here from the Midwest come up to me and ask me a number of questions because he had held a townhall--and it was the first time he had had to face barrages of questions about immigration, about the unaccompanied minors, about the populations coming across the border, what were the potential threats, the disease, the drugs--then I realized maybe I have partially had a misunderstanding because, when I go home, the border is one of the key questions we talk about because of the effects it has had on my home State, in regards to education, incarceration, health care, and the amount of the burden that my citizens in Arizona, my taxpayers, have had to take on that ultimately were the responsibility of this Federal Government. I wanted to go through just a handful things, a couple of numbers that we have found, talk about some of the mechanics that may be coming at us tomorrow. I know many of us are going to have some different views on legislation, where it takes us, but I want to get some of the record straight here. Do you remember, over the last 3, 4 years, particularly before the 2012 Presidential race, we kept hearing how secure the border was? I remember my former Governor, Janet Napolitano, giving a speech telling us that the border is more secure today than ever before. Do you remember the rhetoric that the President was bathing in, in early 2012, allowing himself to be called the ``deporter in chief''? Well, Mr. Speaker, as we later found out--and we found out sort of when many of the Democrat base activists started believing it and started protesting the President, saying: How can our Democratic President be the deporter in chief? All of a sudden, the truth came out, and we found out that the Obama administration had manipulated the way they calculate the numbers. The previous administration, if you were a Mexican national--and this is for the southern border--if you had been arrested within a couple miles of the border, you were captured, taken back, and released back over the border, then that did not count in the deportation numbers. This President very conveniently apparently allowed them to redefine the math. There becomes one of our great frustrations. We have debates here on this floor, and we realized how manipulated so much of the math is, some of the underlying statistics that we will come down here and quote, and we are holding the data, and we realize that we have we got conned. We got played. Mr. Speaker, if you are going to build public policy, and I don't care if you are on the left or the right, you have to have an administration that is willing to play the data straight. If you are going to make public policy on public data, give us honest data. That becomes one of our great frustrations, Mr. Speaker, because I will even have my hometown newspaper quote numbers that we found out months ago weren't correct, were manipulated. They redefined the math. So just keep that in mind. Just something that came across my desk just before I was walking over here, one of my county sheriffs--and you have to understand, in Arizona, we have only 15 counties--our counties are big, but Arizona is a small State relative to the rest of the country. We are also the most urbanized State in the country, something that most people don't understand. Most of our population lives in Maricopa County and then the Tucson area. So think, Arizona is the most urbanized State because the Federal Government controls the vast majority of our land. It is also why you have these incredible opportunities of a porous border because you have distances where there is no civilization. Our Pinal County sheriff was on the radio, apparently, today and had a quote that we have had 123,000 illegals arrested in the Tucson sector. I am assuming that is over this last calendar year. I haven't been able to get a response on that one, but think about that. Right now, so much of the national attention is the discussion of what is happening along the Rio Grande, in Texas. Don't forget Arizona. Don't forget what is going on in our State for so many years. I had an economics professor years ago, that we had actually had this discussion of if you were ever to try to truly understand the math and how porous a border is, how would you build an economic model to truly understand it? He had this brilliant idea, and it still rings in the back of my head because, multiple times, we have had this discussion of if we were going to build a border enforcement bill before allowing anything else to move in this body, do you have the border State Governors be the ones to declare the border secure? Well, do you really want to put that type of political pressure on my Governor in Arizona, the Governor of New Mexico, small States where, let's face it, some of the activist groups with their budgets could manipulate our Governor's races, our elections? So what would be an honest economic method? My old professor had this one thing: look at the price of drugs on the street, look at the price of certain types of labor; but he liked the drug calculation because if illegal drugs that are being sourced in other parts of the world and the price stays stable or is actually going down on the streets across the country, particularly in communities like Phoenix, which is often a distribution center, you actually have an economic model to understand if the border is truly secure. Mr. Speaker, in conversations I have had with some law enforcement over the last year, apparently, a lot of the illegal drug prices on the streets in my community are stable or going down; but, yet, I had a President who is willing to stand behind microphones--I had the head of Homeland Security willing to stand behind microphones and declare the border more secure than ever, but the underlying fact is, now, we know we weren't being told the truth. On occasion, we will go home, and we will hold townhall meetings and discussion groups in the chambers, and some of the activist groups will come and sit down with us and say: Why won't you do this? Why won't you do that? Why won't you accept the Gang of Eight bill? Why won't you do this? You turn and say: How would you hand that type of policy, that type of legislation to this administration? Do you really trust them? Do you really trust the Obama administration to keep its word? Do you really trust the Obama administration not to play games with the math? Because we already have multiple occasions here where I can demonstrate to you the math has been played you with. So then I wanted to chase after something else that we came across. How many speeches here, how many discussions, how many press conferences, how many talking heads on evening cable have we seen over the last month saying, oh, the unaccompanied minor issue, well, was a surprise to all of us, we never expected this, if we had just known-- which is an amazing thing because I have a few documents here, and they are budget documents, and we all know what goes into starting to model and build budgets. Here is one. It is a newsletter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and it was talking about some of the Catholic services. They do wonderful work. They do it at some great prices. But this was a newsletter from last November, so November 2013. On that one, the Department of Homeland Security estimates more than 60,000 unaccompanied minors could enter the United States in 2014. It was out there in writing. Then we came across some other things that we found very interesting. Here is actually from 4-13, so over a year ago, a number of budget line items for the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services in regards to unaccompanied minors. The original 2014 budget request they had been working on earlier was going to be $494 million, and somehow on 4-13, so well over a year ago, they knew something was wrong and they added another $373 million to that budget line item. Yet earlier today, I watched a Member of the other side get behind a microphone and tell me how surprised they were. So let me pull what we voted for last January. Unaccompanied alien children, line item, and this was woven into the continuing resolution we did last January, so you know the numbers were worked up months before that. We went from the 2013 estimate, $376 million, to $868 million. That is what we pushed out of here in January. So back to that whole trust conversation, as we put forward policy in dealing with our crisis on our border, don't forget States like Arizona that have had to take this on for years and had to carry the burden of the cost as those here in the Federal Government, here in this bubble that is Washington, D.C., looked at a small State like Arizona and said: Stop making so much noise; you are bothering us. Stop telling us one thing in your speeches, but we can find documents that show your staff knew something very different. Tomorrow we will have a piece of legislation to step up and deal with parts of the border crisis. It is not a half a loaf. It is not a quarter of a loaf. It is not an eighth of a loaf. It is sort of the heel of the loaf. But for those of us in Arizona, I believe it does a handful of things that we have been demanding. I have a piece of legislation to put 10,000 National Guard troops on the border, and I had a little fun with a couple of Members who have been here for a long time. I had one Member who has been here for a long time, and she was just outraged that we would want to put that many troops on the border. So I said: But you supported this in 2006 and 2008 when we had Operation Jump Start, and I think at that time we put 7,000 National Guard troops on the border as auxiliary services to the Border Patrol. So think of that, 2006 to 2008, who controlled this body? It was the Democrats. We had a Republican President, and Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker here. And it is fascinating, now we are a few years later, that formula has flipped. We are proposing it, and the very people who supported it a few years ago now are just appalled. The duplicity around this place sometimes is stunning. One of the things that I support that will be voted on tomorrow, it is not just putting National Guard troops, if our Governor so will; there will be money behind it, the ability to pay for it. One more time asking States like Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, that if you are going to step up and take these responsibilities that belong to the Federal Government, you need to cover our costs. I don't think it is enough money that is in the bill, but remember, this is short term. What is going to run tomorrow is actually only between now and the end of the fiscal year, which is the end of September. Updating the 2008 language, we have heard a lot of discussion about this. The reality of it is we have a White House, Department of Homeland Security, I believe, that has already been manipulating the actual language. If you sit down and read it, it had to do with those who were being exploited and being brought across the border, trafficked. This is a little different mechanically than someone who goes out and hires a coyote or a family who takes their children and hires the services. But nevertheless, we have been told over and over, if we don't update the 2008 law, our hands are tied by so many of our law enforcement on the border. So we are going to do that. There are a couple of other mechanics here, but I want to make it perfectly clear for many of us--and hopefully I am speaking for many of my supporters and friends and family and my State--this isn't enough. It may be just the beginning. I do hope we get the chance to discuss the one issue here that continues to be a bit of friction. The President's deferred action, many of our friends on the left keep trying to tell us that that had nothing to do with what we are seeing at the border, but as we have already just walked through the documents, once the deferred action, referred to as DACA, had gone into effect, they knew the numbers were coming. They were calculating. We now have some charts that much of this crisis was being watched for months. It finally just became overwhelming. Illegal immigration--and legal immigration--work on incentives and disincentives. We have created incentives. This President has created incentives to break our laws, and until we step up with a number of policies that change those incentives, I believe we are partially chasing our tail here. We will do some good things. We need to step up the quality of our law enforcement and our border enforcement, but we also need an administration that we can trust, an administration that will tell us the truth, and an administration that will actually follow our laws. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. SCHWEIKERT

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Shimkus), I believe it is southeast Illinois. Celebrating the Lives of Alan Dixon and Kenny Gray

Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Thank you, Mr. Shimkus. Mr. Speaker, a couple of weeks ago, I came to the floor and did a bit of a presentation of some of the numbers we were seeing on what was actually happening in our debt, in our future economic growth, why we were so stagnant in today's economy, and the overhang that was, I believe, the very thing that was slowing down future economic growth. I had a number of phone calls and a number of emails and a few comments on Facebook asking for a little more definition, a little more presentation. So I thought I would come to the floor this evening, take some of this leadership hour, and walk through some of the numbers. I have to apologize to everyone right now, I am going to throw out a lot of math, a lot of numbers, but you are going to see a theme here of what is coming at us, and it is coming at us very, very fast. After we do this, I want to do a little talking about a piece of legislation that I have that has made it through committee, and I am hoping, over the next couple of months, we will come to the floor and what that piece of legislation, I believe, means to sort of transparency here in our government with the EPA and hopefully as just sort of the future of how we deal with data in this Federal Government. The chart alongside me--and I know there are lots of lines in it and it is hard to read, but it has a very, very, very simple theme--I am going to show variations of this on a couple of different boards. The red you see down at the bottom is what we call discretionary spending. That is what we substantially get to come down and vote on. That discretionary spending, if you look at the next decade on this chart, basically stays the same. So the military, the Park Service, the FBI, education, and these things that are programatic that we come down and vote for on the discretionary side of the budget are pretty much staying even for the next 10 years. Do you see the blue lines? They are just slightly shy of doubling. They basically double over the next 10 years. That is mandatory spending. That is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest on the debt, veterans' benefits, and now ObamaCare, things that are built in by formula. And they grow and grow and grow and grow, and they consume everything in their path. That is what is going on here. When I do meetings back home in Arizona, in the district, you often get this question: Why do you all fight with each other? Why do you all fuss with each other? And my answer is: It is about the money. And you get this look. You must understand, we come to this floor and we are fighting over, fussing over, in many ways, a shrinking pot of resources, even though today we have actually the highest revenues this Federal Government has ever received. So where is the money going? It is going to that mandatory spending. We need to deal with the reality that the mandatory spending--the entitlements--are consuming our future. So that is what this chart is basically saying. We are going to the next chart. The reason I am going to put this one up is this is from 2013. So we actually know it has happened. It is a closed book. If you look at the blue areas, that is mandatory spending. You will see Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid. You will see other income. You have supplemental programs like food stamps, WIC, and some of those types of programs. You will see veterans' benefits down here. And about 6 percent of our budget last year--our money, our spending--went to interest. Thirty-two percent last year is what we, as Members of Congress, got to come down here and do policy on. Understand that in 9 budget years--and I am going to show you that pie chart in a moment. That is 32 percent. In 9 budget years, that goes from 32 percent of our spending and collapses down to 22 percent. That 22 percent has your military, the FBI, the education, health research. All those types of things are in that remaining portion of the pie. This was something that I picked up several months ago, and I was shocked it did not get more discussion here on the floor of the House or around here in Washington. Last September, we had the Chief of Staff of the United States Army in discussion before Congress talking about the future of the Army and what was actually going on. In his quote, he basically says that 46 percent of the Army spending today is personnel costs, like salaries, pensions, health care. By 2023, 9 years from now, it is going to be 80 percent. So get your head around this: 80 percent of the Army's spending in 9 years will be personnel costs. It will not be equipment. It will not be things that fly fast and go kaboom or make our soldiers safer. It will be personnel costs. In 9 years, 80 percent of that Army's budget will be personnel costs. You have got to understand the demographic bubble our country is in. The fact of the matter is these costs are consuming us. We can have a debate of, well, it's uncomfortable to talk about, it's not politically correct, when you talk about Medicare and Social Security you can get yourself unelected, but if you care about these programs, if you care about the social contract we as Members of Congress have with our constituents, you need to step up and understand the underlying math so you can save them--because it is math. Think about if I came to you and told you that 9 years from now, for a branch of our service, 80 percent of their money is not equipment, is not things that keep the soldiers safe, but it is just going to be salaries, health care, and retirement. You need to understand that the very thing we are discussing on our overall Federal budget is now also hitting Federal employees and our military. I am going to rotate to the next board. Remember, this one shows 32 percent of all of our spending was discretionary. This is 9 budget years from now, so it is 2024. Nine budget years from now, that discretionary portion falls to 22 percent of our spending. And this is still the military; this is still the FBI; it is still health research; it is still education. So what is happening here? Well, on the previous pie chart, interest was 6 percent of our budget, 6 percent of our spending. In 9 years, we predict it to be around 14 percent. That is assuming that we stay with historic norms on interest rates. If interest rates spike, if we have 1979, 1980, 1981, or 1982 all over again, our interest exposure consumes huge portions of what is left in the discretionary budget. You must understand what we have done with the explosion of our deficits in this country. We have actually made this country rather fragile to interest rate exposure, and something you need to understand is we now become more and more subject to the world's interest rate markets and our ability to constantly sell more and more of our debt. There was something I found sort of amusing, and I didn't bring the actual numbers with me, but 2 days ago this administration was announcing how happy they were with that the deficit numbers and where they were at. The problem was the deficit numbers weren't that different from last year, and they were substantially higher than they were predicting last September, one more time demonstrating here in Washington you can spin almost anything. And if you have a compliant press, complicit press--whatever you want to use--you can make it sound like happy talk. The numbers are not getting better. So in 9 budget years, 24 percent of our spending is going to be Social Security. On occasion, I will have someone on the left who will show up at one of our discussion groups, our working groups, or our town halls and demand a discussion about Social Security, saying Social Security is fully funded. They have all those IOUs in it. Here is the basic math on Social Security. Social Security is holding about $2.3 trillion of special Treasury notes from the Treasury Department. Obviously, the Treasury Department, if they were to pay those back--which they will--they have to go borrow the money, because they have already spent the money. That is the asset in Social Security. Understand, Social Security is sitting on about a $24 trillion unfunded liability. So they are holding about $2.3 trillion in special Treasury notes, and they have $24 trillion in unfunded liabilities. And this is where it ties in. We talked about this a couple of weeks ago. At the very beginning of the year, George Mason University did a study and put together some data of what would happen if you took the U.S. debt, the U.S. liabilities, and put them on GAAP accounting, just like your business, my business, just like everyone else where you are doing a large public statement and you would have to put them on GAAP accounting--what are your liabilities, what are your assets, and if you offset them. What would you guess the United States shortfall is? On occasion, I will hear many of my brothers and sisters even here in this body sort of quote the number that you can see at the bottom of the U.S. debt clock on the Web site as it is spinning, and they will say things like: Oh, it's a $120 trillion shortfall. The study at George Mason University came in at $205 trillion, which is our honest debt, our honest unfunded liabilities, if you actually use GAAP accounting. Go to the Internet now and take a look at what many predict, estimate, guess is the entire wealth of the world. You are going to find out what we owe, what we are going to owe, what we have promised is greater than the current wealth of the entire world--every asset in the world. I will make you the argument that even with the chaos we have right now through so many things in this country and so many things I actually hold this administration responsible for, the President's failure to step up and say, This is the systemic risk to my country, to your country, to our country, not dealing with the explosion of the future entitlements consumes our future. And it is in front of us. We knew baby boomers were going to turn 65 for how long? I remember sitting in a statistics class in 1981 where the professor was putting things up on the board and talking about how much money we would have to have set aside in assets as we started to move into the baby boom retirements. We are now into year three, and my understanding is a typical baby boomer will have put in around $100,000, $120,000 into Medicare in their lifetime, and they are going to take out $330,000. So they will put in about $110,000 and take out about $330,000. Now, multiply that shortfall times 76 million brothers and sisters. And we are into year three of it now. We have known this was coming. We have known this was coming for 65 years, but it was politically dangerous to talk about. It was uncomfortable. It is easier, as you watch the debates here on the floor, to talk about today's chaos, today's spending. Being able to cover these promises, these social entitlements, these social contracts into our future, if you love your kids, if you love your grandkids, if you love your great-grandkids that may not even be here yet, this is the question I beg of you to ask candidates who are running around this country: What are your plans to deal with the crushing future debt, the crushing future promises that we have made that there is no money for? There is this almost pathologic attitude around here of: We will get to it one day when we have a Senate that is willing to step up and do work. We will get to it one day when we have a President that is willing to be honest about the math. We will get to it one day. The problem is that every single day that ticks away, the math gets worse. A good example of that is 2 days ago, the Congressional Budget Office came out with their annual data. Remember, you have heard over and over on the media that things are getting better, the job situation is better, our numbers are getting better. Well, if they are getting better, how did the fiscal scenarios get worse? Go pull the Congressional Budget Office's numbers that they just put out. Our Congressional Budget Office does two scenarios. One is the standard and one is called an alternative. The standard is basically based on the concept of: this is the law as it is today. Here are the numbers that it projects. Of course, you have got to understand that the law as it is today has things in it like the common vernacular ``doc fix.'' We refer to it as the SGR. It is this concept that, in a dozen or so years, doctors are going to take 73 percent less money--73 percent less compensation--to see a Medicare patient. It is implausible. It is not going to happen. Yet here is how the scam works here in Washington. It is the current law that doctors are going to be compensated this much less over the next dozen years, so we are going to calculate that as savings all up and down our future budget projections, our future debt projections. We have things that are woven into those numbers that are fantasy. Go read the last three pages of the Medicare-Social Security actuarial report. The head actuary, whom I have never met but who I hear is just a standup person, basically says, ``Oh, by the way, these numbers are implausible,'' but they are based on current law. You will hear debates here on the floor, saying, ``No, the number is this. The number is this.'' The number often, if they are using the standard projections, is a fraud. Then there is the alternative scenario, which may overshoot a number on the negative side because it basically makes a projection of: What if GDP isn't what we hope it to be? which, as it has turned out over the last couple of years, is true. We will be blessed if we can break through that 2 percent this year because of what happened in the first quarter. The alternative scenario is that we hit 100 percent of debt to GDP in 14 years. How many of you remember what you were doing 14 years ago? To help you put it in sort of a perspective, when you get ready to take out that 30-year mortgage, understand that less than halfway through it your government, your country, is going to be at 100 percent debt to GDP. Theoretically, that is when your sovereign debt becomes much more risky, and this net interest figure potentially starts to explode on you because getting sovereign nations, getting individuals and getting investors from around the world to buy our sovereign debt becomes harder and harder because we start to look riskier and riskier. If you say, ``David, I don't want you to use the alternative number. I want you to use the standard number,'' okay. Add 8 years. Add 8 years so that, in 2036, we hit 100 percent of debt to GDP. We can fix this, and we can fix it in a way that is not terrifying. It will be a little uncomfortable, but you will save the future. If you are a person of the left and if there are programs you care so deeply about, those programs are on the discretionary side of this budget. If you are a person of the right or a person who cares a lot about the military, that is in this discretionary budget. Every time you talk about those programs, you need to stand behind that microphone and talk about mandatory spending--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest on the debt, veterans' benefits, and now ObamaCare--because they are all on autopilot, and they are consuming everything in their path. That is, hopefully, a little more detail of some of the numbers I put up a couple of weeks ago. We traditionally will put these slides up on our Facebook page and on our Web site so that you can analyze them. If you want all of this data and a lot more--I mean, a presentation could go on for hours--it is on the Congressional Budget Office's data sets. This is the issue of our time. It is that we have made as a government, as a people, lots and lots of promises, and we haven't built the mechanisms to pay for them. With that, I want to move on to one other little thing. Let's take these boards down. Now, as we get ready to talk about the ``Secret Science'' piece of legislation, I show you all of these debt projections and unfunded liability numbers, and I am actually more optimistic today than I have been at any time in my 3 years here in Congress. Why? If I had gone to anyone out there 10, 12 years ago and had said, ``Hey, in 2015, the United States is going to become a natural gas exporting country,'' you would have laughed at me. Ten or 12 years ago, you couldn't pick up the newspaper--you couldn't pick up The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, financial news--and not hear discussions here on the floor about this thing called ``peak oil.'' The world was running out of energy, do you remember? It wasn't that long ago. The world is running out of energy. Tomorrow, the next incremental barrel of oil and the next incremental unit of fossil fuels that we extract will be less than the day before. You all know the problem with that. It was absolutely wrong. As of today, we have more known fossil fuel supplies than any time in human history, and if we use this the right way, that is one of the legs on the stool that is going to support us as we stand up and start to meet these obligations that we have made. The second thing is much more ethereal, a little more difficult to talk about, and that is what is happening all around us. There is this hyperefficient economy that is breaking out. How many of you have ever ridden Uber? How many of you have ever done SideCar? How many of you have ever used that handheld computer you call a phone to buy something, to sell something, and to use it in a fashion to do something that is so hyperefficient that you couldn't have done it a couple of years ago? Please understand. The incumbents, as they are often referred to--and it is not competitive businesses. It is competitive businesses and incumbent tax systems. If you have a Web site that allows you to rent someone's townhouse for the week, that becomes a great transaction for you and for that person who owns the townhouse, but the municipality and the hotel are not happy. The municipality is not getting its bed tax, and the hotel with its capital expenditures is not happy, but the fact of the matter is that this is an economic transaction that is efficient. Over the next couple of years, I believe, in State legislatures, city councils, county councils, and here in Congress, we are going to see the fight over: Do we regulate the new alternatives you have as a citizen to engage in this hyperefficient economy? Do we regulate them out of existence? Do we create some concept of, well, we need them to have additional tort liability shields or we need to have them engage in this part of the tax scheme? A bit of economic chaos is normal. That is how you renew yourself. That is how you create the next generation of economic growth. We need to embrace it because, if we cannot reach escape velocity in the energy renaissance and in the economic renaissance, I do not know, mathematically, how we keep our promises to so many people in this country. A few months ago, I introduced a piece of legislation, and it has been through the Science Committee. We gave it the title of ``Secret Science.'' I am not sure if I am thrilled with the title, but it is a very, very simple concept. The concept underlying it is: Do you make public policy and not make the underlying public data available? It is a simple concept--public data for public policy. Should your government be keeping the data--the underlying data--secret and then create a bunch of rules and regulations on top of you? It is almost absurd to think we have to create a piece of legislation to get the EPA to take its data sets and make them public. There is this intense arrogance out there in the world right now, particularly at our agencies, of saying, ``David, you have got to understand. Only real scientists, researchers who we deem qualified should ever see this data. Well, you don't want the unwashed masses to have an opportunity to see how we are developing our science and our regulations.'' It is absurd. It almost borders on Orwellian as to what is going on in our bureaucracies today. They are going to create rule sets that cost hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars and that are going to affect how we live in future decades. Yet there is the arrogance of saying the young man who is a statistics major, the left-wing group, the right-wing research group, the industry group, the activist group-- just someone who is nutty enough to have a great stats package on his home computer, who wants to take the data sets and play with them and model them and see what is out in the tails and maybe match them up to other data sets that someone hadn't thought about--is not worthy. They are not worthy? Now, it is a personal fixation, but I actually believe that transparency is the ultimate regulator in our society. Could you imagine if we had gone into 2008 and if we had had transparency on that MBS, the mortgage-secured bonds, and had known what the impairment was and had known what was actually going on? Would you have had an implosion on a single day, or would you have had a couple of years of, hey, these are having trouble, these are having trouble; we need to mark down the prices? Transparency is the ultimate regulator, the ultimate vetter, but it is also the ultimate exposure to bad acts. This hit my desk last week. It is a TIME magazine. On the cover it says, ``Eat Butter. Scientists Labeled Fat the New Enemy. Why They Were Wrong.'' Now, how many times have you heard the people at your gym, your wife, or others saying, ``David, you need to be eating less saturated fats. You can't eat that butter. We need to go buy some of that artificial stuff''? Now I am looking at TIME magazine's saying, ``Hey, we screwed up on the data.'' How many times in our lives do we come here and say, ``We knew it except for the small problem that we got it wrong''? Remember, we all knew the world was running out of energy. ``Well, we got that wrong.'' We all knew eating butter was bad for you until we knew the data was different. There are dozens and dozens and dozens of examples like this around us, but we were so arrogant that we thought we understood the data. We thought we understood the methodology. We were so brilliant except for the fact that we weren't. We got it wrong over and over and over. The fact of the matter is--and go back to my energy example of a dozen years ago and beyond that--our military policy, our foreign policy, our environmental policy, our tax policy was all based on this concept that the world was running out of energy, except we weren't. How much of our health policy is based on things like this: ``David, you can't eat butter''? I saw a presentation a few years ago that the government was spending this astronomical amount of money to try to keep people from using salt. The researcher was presenting salt as only a problem for you if you have hypertension, but that is different than the folklore out there. How many things have we developed in our folklore that we make policy? That is why H.R. 4012--it is called the ``Secret Science'' bill--is, I believe, so needed. When the EPA takes data, whether it be from industry, whether it be from a research group, an activist group, a right, a left, an internal--any group--and when they use that data to make a policy, to make a rule, that underlying data belongs to all of us. It is public policy by public data, and we all as Americans deserve the right, if you are so inclined, if you so choose, to sit there, see it, touch it, calculate it, crunch it, compare it, understand it. Who knows? You may be the researcher who comes out, looks at the data, matches it up against other things, and tells me I can eat butter. I promise that in a couple of weeks, maybe a month, I am going to come back to this microphone, because I have collected an entire binder of example after example of what we were absolutely positive about-- what we absolutely knew--and we got wrong, and how so many of those things we made public policy on, and we got it wrong. My good friend from Iowa (Mr. King) has a couple of other things in sort of that same vein that he wants to share, and he may be the best person I have ever seen behind these microphones. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.