Henry Waxman

Mr. WAXMAN

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

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time we have on each side.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, the last gentleman that spoke said everybody is for this. Well, everybody in Louisiana is clearly for it. The Senator from Louisiana has been a strong supporter of it, and the would-be replacement Senator is strongly for it. The Republican whip from Louisiana is strongly for it. The oil companies are strongly for it. But to say that those who oppose it are radical environmental extremists seems to me quite a stretch. There are a lot of very responsible people against this legislation, even some who support the pipeline, because they would argue this is not the way to make a decision: put a bill on the floor, to ignore all the comments, all the evaluations, all the considerations. The people in Nebraska are not going to be happy about that. Maybe in Louisiana, they will be, but other places would like to know that pipelines are safe and their aquifers for drinking water are not going to be jeopardized. At this time, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush), a distinguished member of our committee who is also the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Today, we are voting once again to grant special treatment to TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. This is the third time this Congress and the eighth time since Republicans took control of the House. Instead of helping families deal with pressing problems, we are helping Canadian tar sands producers and pipeline builders. We are spending our time trying to exempt a foreign company from the rules that every other company in America has to follow. This bill is not an energy policy. It is about a single pipeline that will allow Canadian tar sands to flow across our country for export to other countries. That is oil going through the United States but not to the United States. We don't need this oil. We have our own sources of oil, and we are using less oil because of our efficiency in new cars getting better mileage. This bill will not lower gasoline prices by a single penny. It may even raise them in some places. It will, at most, create just a few dozen permanent jobs. There will be some temporary jobs for construction. Once they are gone, they are gone. This bill is a regulatory earmark. It will waive applicable environmental review requirements and risk our farmlands and our water supplies. In fact, it even exempts the Keystone pipeline from paying into the oil spill fund that other oil companies have to contribute to. That means if there is a problem with that pipeline, well, there is no payment by Keystone XL to that fund to make those who are hurt whole. That means that if there is a spill, there won't be the money to clean it up. The Keystone XL tar sands pipeline is a terrible deal for America. We get all the risks while the oil companies reap the rewards. But even if you support it, this bill is a harmful and unnecessary piece of legislation. The State Department is carrying out their review of this highly controversial project. They have got millions of comments, and the Federal agencies are reviewing these comments. H.R. 5682 would approve the pipeline by fiat, lock out the public, eliminate the President's authority to balance competing interests, and stop Federal agencies from ensuring that if the project does go forward, we do it as safely as possible. Forget about those comments. We will just pass a bill and make it happen rather than consider all the other issues that would be appropriate to look at in approving or disproving this pipeline. I oppose this legislation for all these reasons. There is one more important reason why I oppose the bill. The tar sands pipeline will worsen climate change. Keystone XL would create a dependence on tar sands crude, reversing the carbon pollution reductions we have been working so hard to accomplish. According to some experts, building the Keystone XL pipeline will triple production of the tar sands. That is totally inconsistent with any future scenario for avoiding catastrophic climate. Just this week, the United States and China agreed to mutual pledges to fight climate change, and I commend President Obama and President Xi for that accomplishment. This is a really important development. For the last two decades, antagonisms between the United States and China have stymied efforts to reach a global climate agreement. Those days, we hope, are finally over. The U.S. and China are now both pledging strong joint action. The world has been waiting decades for the U.S. and China to reach an understanding on climate. Now that moment has finally arrived; yet instead of working on a real energy policy, one that would move us toward a new, low carbon energy future, instead of working on a clean energy future that would create lots of new jobs, real jobs, permanent jobs, and keep pace with China's clean energy investments, instead of trying to protect our irreplaceable environment and our drinking water supplies, Republicans have set their sights on passing a special law for a special interest. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this legislation. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize the Park Labrea News and Beverly Press. Park Labrea News and Beverly Press has been a local paper and critical presence in Miracle Mile, Hancock Park, Hollywood and West Hollywood since 1946. Park Labrea news and Beverly Press have a long and important history in our community. Residents of Park Labrea began distributing a newsletter throughout the apartment complex in 1946 and within a few months ``Parklabrea News'' was born. In 1948, Joseph Duplain took over the newsletter and converted it into a newspaper. In the 1950s, Nan Dayhoff became editor and ran the paper for the next twenty years, publishing twice a month. In the 1970s veteran TV newsman Charles ``Chuck'' Riley acquired the paper. In 1990, the newspaper was sold to the current publishers, Michael and Karen Villalpando. By June 1990, the Villalpandos had expanded the paper to a weekly installation that reaches more than 5,000 homes in neighborhoods in Los Angeles. In 1991, the circulation was expanded again and the name Beverly Press was added to the original Park Labrea News masthead. Michael and Karen Villalpando have been the publishers for the last twenty-five years and have transformed the paper from a 3,000 circulation, bi-weekly newspaper, to a 13,000 paid circulation newspaper, delivered weekly with the Los Angeles Times. The Villalpando's goal has been to provide the best local news coverage to the residents of Park Labrea, Hancock Park, Miracle Mile, the Fairfax District, Hollywood and West Hollywood. They have proved extremely successful in their goal. Local community members look forward to receiving the paper every Thursday and rely on it to get global news and community happenings. Michael and Karen Villalpando, through the Park Labrea News and Beverly Press, play a key role in sharing national, state, and local news within the community. I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking and recognizing Michael and Karen and the Park Labrea News and Beverly Press.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I won't take 25 minutes to rebut the statement that was just made. I yield myself 3 minutes. I am impressed by the statement we had from a man who is trying to educate, as he says, the American people in that Republicans worry about 11 million people not working. I don't know if that number is right or wrong, but we have got millions of people without jobs today. It is because the Congress is busy passing, over and over and over again, bills to benefit the oil companies and the energy industry, and not to help people get jobs. Now, they care so much about them, but they won't give them unemployment compensation. They care so much about them that they want to take away their food stamps. They care so much about them that they don't want to allow them to have a minimum living wage. They care so much about them that they want them to go to the lowest paying jobs they can possibly find, and if they can't find them, well, it must be their own fault. Harry Reid is the majority leader in the Senate. The Senate allows amendments to any bill--they don't have to be germane--but in the House of Representatives, no bill or amendment can be offered unless it is germane or permitted under the rule, and the Rules Committee is controlled by the Republican leadership in the House. If we would have been allowed to have voted on an immigration bill that passed overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis in the Senate, it would have passed the House, but we were denied that opportunity. If we had been allowed to vote on background checks on gun purchases so that we wouldn't find guns and assault weapons in the hands of the people who are a danger to their communities because of mental illness, or who have criminal records where they have already used guns for illegal purposes, that would have passed. Even a majority of the National Rifle Association supports that kind of measure. Let's not be so pious as we educate the American people to say, ``Oh, in the Senate, they can't even consider these things,'' because, in the House, we are denied every day an opportunity to talk about many things. Let me give you another example that is pertinent to this debate. The Energy and Commerce Committee has jurisdiction over the issue of climate change. We have not been able to get a single hearing that would bring in the scientists to tell us why they are concerned about climate change, to tell us all the pronouncements from consensus discussions among scientists internationally and here from the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences and others as to why they think this is a problem that we have got to deal with. If you don't even allow the scientists to talk, you are purposely encouraging your own ignorance and acting upon it. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time we have remaining?

Mr. WAXMAN. I yield myself 2 additional minutes. We said it is not fair to discriminate and deny, allow insurance companies to deny the chance for people with preexisting conditions to buy insurance. The Republicans said, Oh, yeah, we don't think that is a good idea, but they didn't have a plan to do anything about it. They were happy to let it continue. They wanted to say it was okay for insurance companies to put caps on the amount that the policies would pay. They wanted a system where people were priced out of insurance; if they couldn't afford it, well, that is just too bad. They deny the realities of what has been happening to millions of Americans, and now we have a health care law that is benefiting millions of Americans. This bill is not about health care, but they are denying these environmental problems and they are trying to keep Federal agencies from doing their job. Powerplants are the single largest uncontrolled source of carbon pollution in the United States. EPA has proposed critically important regulations to cut carbon pollution for powerplants in a balanced, cost-effective, commonsense way. These rules would cut smog, and they would stop deadly particulate pollution. They would save thousands of lives per year and avoid tens of billions of dollars in costs, but this bill eliminates EPA's authority to issue any rules. Nothing can happen. Mr. Speaker, powerplants aren't the only source of carbon pollution. Tar sands are another big source. They produce 17 percent more carbon pollution than conventional oil, yet this bill grants a regulatory earmark to the Canadian Keystone XL pipeline, effectively exempting it from all U.S. Federal permitting requirements, including ones that apply to every other major construction project in the United States.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 5 minutes. Mr. Speaker, this bill is not a new bill to be presented on the House floor. It is a compilation of bills that have already been proposed and passed, for the most part, on a partisan Republican basis. People have complained on the other side of the aisle that their bills didn't go anywhere. Well, they didn't go anywhere because they didn't have support in the other body, the U.S. Senate. The President of the United States said he would veto it. They can't pass a bill in the House with Republican votes and put it into law. So if you can't pass a law without working with the Democrats and reaching compromises, what Republicans think is the most effective thing to do is to say it over and over and over again. Let's not forget, we know that our Republican colleagues didn't like the Affordable Care Act, sometimes known as ObamaCare, so on this House floor we voted over 50 times to repeal it. The Republicans said we are going to repeal it and replace it. Well, we never heard what they are going to replace it with. They just wanted to repeal it. Well, they didn't repeal it when they passed the first vote, and they didn't repeal it when they passed the 50th vote. But they thought if they say it over and over and again and do it over and over again, they would get somewhere, I presume. When psychologists talk about this, they call it perseveration, saying the same thing over and over again. But I don't think this is a reasonable way to legislate. If they want to legislate and you don't have the power, you have to compromise. You have to talk with the President. You have to talk with the Senate majority. You have to talk with your own colleagues. But the Republicans don't want to talk to anybody except themselves over and over and over again. Let me give you an example. Since Republicans took control of the House less than 4 years ago, they have cast over 500 antienvironmental votes. They have voted over 500 times to weaken protection for public health and the environment, to let polluters off the hook, and even to deny science. Well, I presume they think that is a good idea. They have voted against clean renewable energy and energy efficiency. They have voted to give taxpayer dollars to oil companies. They have voted to allow more toxic mercury pollution in our air and more contaminants in our drinking water. I suppose they think that is a good idea, but others don't agree with them nor, I think, do the American people. They have voted repeatedly to deny the reality of climate change and block any action to cut carbon pollution. They don't want a cap-and- trade. They don't want a price on carbon. They don't want the EPA to regulate. What is their plan? Well, their plan is to deny the existence of climate change and pretend it is not doing any harm. We have kept track of these votes that we consider antienvironmental, and there were over 300 antienvironmental votes last Congress, and today Ranking Member DeFazio and I released another report that there were over 200 more antienvironment votes in this Congress. Now, Republicans like to complain about a mythical war on coal. It is a fantasy. But there is a war on the environment that is being waged on the floor of the House, and the bill before us today is proof of that. It contains dozens of antienvironment provisions. All of us want prosperity and security for America. We know, many of us, that climate change is harming us today through droughts and fires and floods and more, and we know that it will endanger our children's future if we don't act. Democrats, for the most part, have recognized the threat and we know that we can tackle it while, at the same time, growing jobs and our economy. How do we know this? Because that was the history of the Clean Air Act. Every time we strengthened the Clean Air Act, industry opponents said it would cost too much, it would weaken our economy, it would mean lost jobs, but when we acted, we found that our air is cleaner and our economy is stronger. Republicans take a much different approach. They refuse to admit that climate change is real because then, if they did, they would have to do something about it. Their policies embodied in this bill deny the problem and threaten our future. Remember the health care debate? We said it is not fair to discriminate against people.

Mr. WAXMAN. I yield myself an additional 1 minute. This bill creates a new process to rubberstamp every other pending and future tar sands pipeline. It even exempts these massive projects from the National Environmental Policy Act by limiting the NEPA review, which was adopted by Congress overwhelmingly on a bipartisan basis, to only a tiny sliver of the pipeline only where it crosses the border. There are many other anti-environmental provisions. This bill would allow the Department of Energy to veto the rules established by the EPA, even though they are not within the jurisdiction or the expertise of the Department of Energy. This all may make sense to the oil companies, and this may be a giveaway to the Koch Brothers, but I don't think Americans would agree that this is a good bill. Energy interests should not automatically trump everything else we care about, such as raising healthy children. Mr. Speaker, I hope my colleagues will vote against this bill. We have had it on the floor too many times, and I hope that we defeat it this time. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes. I am going to have more to say about this bill later, but I want to comment on the comments that were just made to us by the gentleman from Kentucky. He suggested that we don't need to do anything more about climate change because greenhouse gas emissions are falling in the United States. Well, that is not an accurate story because, while U.S. greenhouse gas emissions did fall in 2008 and 2009 during the economic recession, since that time our overall emissions have grown. Cumulatively, U.S. emissions grew, not fell, in 2010 and 2011, the most recent years for which data is available. But the fact of the matter is that if coal is being displaced by natural gas, it is not because of any regulation; it is because the market forces are moving in that direction. It is just cheaper. And why do we want to say that is wrong? Let the market work its will. But unless we regulate the emissions from powerplants that cause greenhouse gases to be spewed into the air, we are neglecting the major reason we have climate change in this country today. This bill would prevent the EPA from doing anything about the problem. Burning coal would be completely unregulated, and we would continue to add greenhouse gases to our atmosphere. I think that this is hiding their heads in the sand, denying that there is climate change, denying that we need to do anything about it, pretending like it is not a problem. This is a disservice to the American people and the future of our economy. Those businesses that develop the technologies for the future, which will be technologies that reduce carbon pollution, are going to be the place where the economies are going to be benefited, not those that deny the problem and do nothing about it. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. WAXMAN. I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gene Green). (Mr. GENE GREEN of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Moran).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire of the chairman how many more speakers he has?

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may consume to the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia (Ms. Norton), who ought to be here rightfully as a full voting Member of the House, in my opinion.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Tonko).

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Mrs. Capps), my colleague and good friend.

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time. I thank the gentlewoman from the District of Columbia. Mr. Speaker, as I understand what the gentlelady has said is that, if we had passed a transportation bill, that would have provided help for our infrastructure and provided jobs. We didn't vote for that bill even once. The gentlelady also said we should have done a paycheck fairness law. Well, we didn't have a chance to vote on that. The Speaker of the House or the majority leader of the House wouldn't allow it to be brought to the House floor. So many young people are struggling with student loans, and there have been proposals to deal with that, yet we were not allowed to even vote on a bill to deal with the student loan problem. We haven't tackled the real things that people care about, and, if they care about what is in this bill today, it has been passed by the House. Why aren't we moving on and using the time on the House floor for other worthwhile purposes? I think that is a question that the American people are going to have to think about as they go to the polls in another month, but we have had a 6-week recess. Now, we have been here for 2 whole weeks, and, now, we are going to take another recess until the election, and then we will come back for maybe another couple of weeks. It doesn't mean you have to work too hard in the Congress of the United States to get nothing done. We are getting nothing done, and the American people are losing out. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, there is an old saying, ``you get what you pay for.'' This is true in medicine as in many other fields, and it is why federal healthcare payment policies are so important. The Affordable Care Act made important reforms in this area. We established many new programs to move us away from a healthcare system that rewards volume over value, such as the Hospital Value Based Purchasing program, the Physician Value-Based Payment Modifier, the Medicare Shared Savings Program or ACOs, and the many new payment models being tested under the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). Although we have yet to pass final legislation, the bipartisan, bicameral Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR) physician payment reform policies we adopted in the House earlier this year would make valuable additional reforms. And the bill before us, the Improving Medicare Post-Acute Care Transformation Act of 2014, would take another crucial step toward the modernization of Medicare payments to healthcare providers. Post-acute care providers, such as nursing homes, long-term care hospitals, and home health agencies are the logical next providers to undergo payment and delivery system transformations. There is tremendous variation in healthcare spending across post-acute care settings. And there is only inconclusive evidence to support which patients should receive which services in which settings of care. Before we revamp how providers are paid in these settings, we must ensure we have the information we need to make informed decisions. Comprehensive and reliable quality and outcomes data must be collected and analyzed before we can implement payment reforms, such as equalized payments across settings or bundled payments. And that is exactly what this bill does. It gathers the data we need to compare quality across different post-acute care providers, improve hospital and post-acute care discharge planning, and understand how to appropriately account for socio-economic status in payment and quality performance. This information will help us improve the payment and delivery systems for post-acute care, thereby ensuring Medicare beneficiaries receive the right high-quality care, in the right setting, at the right time. I am pleased to see this important bipartisan effort to reform post- acute care move forward, which will lead to improved quality, improved outcomes, and lower healthcare costs. I urge my colleagues to vote for its swift passage.

Mr. WAXMAN

Mr. WAXMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise to support passage of the Designer Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2014. This legislation will amend the Controlled Substances Act, the CSA, to include 25 additional chemicals as anabolic steroids It also will make it easier for the Drug Enforcement Agency, DEA, to add additional chemicals to the CSA list of anabolic steroids. And it increases civil and criminal penalties for offenses pertaining to anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids have legitimate therapeutic uses, but they also can cause severe adverse effects when used inappropriately. I have been concerned for many years about the harms they have caused in young people and professional athletes, who take them to improve athletic and body building performance. One challenge our nation has faced in stopping steroid abuse is that chemists are continually finding ways to design new versions of these drugs that can escape detection or evade the law. This bill helps address this problem. It will give DEA new tools to control the abuse of designer steroids and will help get them off the market. I commend Chairman Joe Pitts and Ranking Member Frank Pallone for their sponsorship of this bipartisan legislation. I urge all members to support it.