Lynn Westmoreland

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I think the American people have got to be wondering, from maybe seeing some of the news reports today or yesterday, why we are closing some of these open air attractions to the American people that are coming to Washington. The World War II Memorial is open every day, all day long, 24/7, 365. Now it's got barriers up. And because some Members of our side of the aisle went down there yesterday to allow some of the same people that landed on the beach of Normandy to go in and to see their memorial, today they were back putting up wire against those barriers. If you go down Rock Creek Parkway, where many people in D.C. come to exercise, to ride their bikes, to walk their dogs, every mile or so there's six or seven parking spots where people can park their car, get out, exercise, walk. They've got barricades in front of them. Are we nuts? They've got barricades where people can't even park to go ride. This is amazing, and I hope that whoever has given these orders will come forward and give the American people reasons why they cannot enjoy things open.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 386, I mistakely voted ``no''/meant to vote ``yes.'' Announcement by the Acting Chair

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I come before you today to recognize a tremendous milestone for Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia: The completion of their one millionth car built in West Point, Georgia. This is a huge achievement for Kia Motors North America and for Georgia, as West Point is the first Kia automobile manufacturing facility on our continent. Beginning in November of 2009, Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia has been rolling out cars and keeping over 11,000 Georgians employed. Using on-site and local suppliers, they've helped to grow the Third District's economy with quality manufacturing, excellent jobs, and a deep commitment to improving our community. Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia's continued success led to a $100 million expansion in early 2012, increasing their annual capacity to 360,000 vehicles. In fact, the best-selling vehicle in the U.S., the Optima, is built in West Point, Georgia. One million cars in four years is a huge success for Kia and for Georgia. Kia's achievements showcase how great Georgia is for manufacturing and business, and I thank them for their commitment to improving our district's economy. I am honored that Kia Motors Manufacturing Georgia calls the Third District home and look forward to sharing many more milestones with them in the future.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 183. I had to return to Georgia due to the death of a longtime friend, and to attend the wake/funeral. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 179, I had to return to Georgia due to the death of a long time friend, and to attend the wake/funeral. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Chairman, this kind of reminds me of a story about a World War I Navy veteran that went back home to Ware County where he loved to coon hunt. And this gentleman, after having being injured, got a wooden peg leg. One day, he took his boys out. They were all around the campfire. It was kind of cool that night. They were waiting for the dogs to tree one. So he got a little bit close to the fire, and it burned about 8 inches off of his wooden peg. So all of a sudden, the hounds start baying, and he gets up and starts running. He ran about 20 yards and turned around and said, ``Watch out, boys. There's a hole every other step.'' There's some holes in what this amendment is trying to do. First of all, you've got to remember that this bill was just passed a year ago, and it was the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform bill, where we're trying to reform the flood insurance program. Let me remind people that 406 Members voted in favor of this, and every Member that I see down here that is talking to try to relieve this voted for the bill. Everybody in the Louisiana delegation, everybody in the Mississippi delegation, everybody in the New York delegation--with the exception of one--and everybody in the New Jersey delegation voted for it. This bill was passed by a unanimous vote, bipartisan, because everybody realized, especially after the effects of Katrina and others, where, in 2005, before Katrina, they had a credit card limit of $1.5 billion, after Katrina, we raised that credit card limit to $20 billion. After Sandy, we raised the credit limit another $10 billion. So right now we've got $30 billion on our credit card. And you know what? In 2017, that has to go back to $1 billion. If you look at the amount of money that we've had to borrow to pay for this--and I voted for the $9.7 billion because it's an obligation that I think that we had to the people that had flood insurance. That was an obligation that we have. But the way most insurance works is that if you are at a higher risk, you pay a higher premium. If, for some reason, my car keeps running into things accidentally, my car insurance is probably going to go up. And anybody that has extenuating circumstances, whether you're in a fire zone or whatever it is, your insurance rates are based on that. The difference is, unfortunately, that the government fashioned, the government-run flood insurance program does not require homeowners in flood-prone areas to pay for their fair share. In fact, premiums in flood-prone areas are so low that FEMA has needed a bailout, as I mentioned, three times in the last 8 years. Due to FEMA's failures last year, Congress passed a bipartisan Biggert-Waters bill of insurance reform. It was supported, as I mentioned, by these delegations. This landmark 5-year authorization is something that even people here said, We need to do this. In fact, I will quote: It is imperative that Congress act as quickly as possible to pass a 5-year extension of flood insurance so that policyholders can have some assurance moving forward. This is by one of the authors of the amendment. Section 207 does something that no other flood bill has done before. It says that homeowners in flood zones must pay an amount that accurately reflects their risk of flooding. Notably, Congress recognized this section may place a burden on some homeowners in flood- prone areas. So, to address this concern, section 207 specifically stated that the rate increase must be phased in over 5 years, not to exceed a 20 percent increase each year. The outcome is commonsense reforms that are supported by Republicans and Democrats, alike, that balance concerns of homeowners and taxpayers. Now, I'm no supporter of the government-mandated flood insurance, but these are bipartisan reforms that you don't often see passed in Washington. Let's don't back up. Let's keep going forward. The Biggert- Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act was designed to get FEMA out of this constant bailout, but to be fair to people who experienced frequent flooding. Importantly, these bipartisan reforms were enacted less than a year ago in the Financial Services Committee. We have not even held a hearing on the implementation. This does not need to be in an appropriations bill. It needs to go back to Financial Services and let us look at it. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for yielding. And let me just say that, you know, FEMA--this does not go into effect this year. In fact, the Louisiana FEMA has been told not to give out these rates because they don't know, they've been trying to do a flood map for 30 years. Now, if we think a 1-year extension is going to help them, we're misleading ourselves. And, in fact, from my legislative experience, when you extend it for 1 year, then you're asked to extend it again. Look at the student loans. We extended it for 1 year, now they want to extend it for 2 more. It's a constant extension. My experience has been most court cases are settled on the courthouse steps when the pressure is put on both people to settle. I think that this is bringing to a head the fact that FEMA needs to get their act together, along with the Corps, and get these flood maps done. By us giving them another year extension, it's not going to do anything but delay us getting these updated maps for another year. I promise you, that's the way government works. So we need to understand that, on the one hand, we're saying, well, FEMA has given out all these new rates. It's going to go to 20,000 bucks or whatever it is. But on the same hand we're saying hey, they don't have the capability of doing a flood map. You can't have it both ways. You know, either FEMA can do it or they can't do it. But we need to do this through the Financial Services Committee, where the ranking member, the gentlelady from California, was a big part of what we did in the Biggert-Waters bill. And so why don't we take it and go back through Financial Services, where this bill came from, rather than trying to do it through an appropriations bill? That's the reason this process is so messed up here that we try to do things like this. So, my concern is that this is the wrong place to try to amend this bill. We need to have hearings. We need to have oversight of FEMA and find out how the implementation of this bill is going, and put the pressure on FEMA and the Corps to finally get these maps straightened out. But for somebody to have a home that's 7 feet below flood level and pay $329 a year in a premium doesn't make sense. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I do appreciate the gentleman yielding. FEMA has already stated that their staff in Louisiana were wrong to provide these estimates based on inaccurate and incomplete information. They have already said that. In reality, no one knows--not FEMA, not any of my colleagues--how much folks in those flood zones will pay for premiums under section 207. It's still being evaluated. Flood maps change after every flood, and they're going to continue to do it because of development and more impervious surface and other things that cause flooding to create in different areas. There is an appeal process that you can go through; but the best place to do this is where it originated, which is in the Financial Services Committee, not as an amendment on an appropriations bill. How many hearings have been held on this amendment? None. We're always talking about regular order. That's our cry, Regular order. Why don't we go through the regular process, go through the same committee that this bill originated out of and see if there's not some oversight that we can offer to FEMA to make sure that these people are not hit with these high premiums and that everybody gets on the same page and we understand that if these improvements have been made by cities and counties or homeowners, that they need to be taken into consideration. But this is not the way to do it. We talk about unintended consequences. I think this bill was 75 pages long. I can read section 207 if you want me to, but it's pretty plain in what it says. There are no unintended consequences to this. This is exactly what it said. If you want to talk about revisiting unintended consequences, let's look at the 2,800-page Affordable Care Act. We can look at some unintended consequences then. But this is plain and simple. This isn't asking to create another agency or board or commission; this is trying to make FEMA and the Corps do their job on this mapping. This is the wrong place, it's the wrong time, it's the wrong bill to do this. I would work in a joint effort with these people to try to bring some resolution to this problem. But you've got to remember that these fees do not come into effect this year, and nobody knows what they're going to be. You know, the Congress is either at stop or knee-jerk reaction. This is something that needs to be carefully thought out. It needs to go through the subcommittee, the committee process. The chairman has promised that he is going to review this and look at the implementation of it. If we believe in regular order, let's give the system time to work, and let's put it in the committee where the work was originally done. With that, I just hope that it will be a ``no'' vote on this, that it can go back to the committee that Ms. Waters and others have put in a bill. Let's go back, let's review it, let's look at it, let's bring FEMA in, and let's do some oversight--which is our responsibility in the Financial Services Committee, not the Appropriations Committee.

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

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I'd like to address Mr. Runyan's amendment with the flood insurance. We've had great discussion on this tonight about the flood insurance and how appropriate it is to come through an appropriations bill rather than going through regular order and going through the committee of origination, which is the Financial Services Committee. So I don't want to take up any more time. We have been through this and through this and through this. With all respect to the gentleman from New Jersey, I just don't know that it's proper to do something specific for just two States when there's 5.5 million people in other States that have flood insurance that are involved in this. We can give the committee of authority the ability to address the FEMA situation. With that, I ask for a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, it was 3 years ago when President Obama and congressional Democrats pushed through their government takeover of health care. In those 3 short years, the law has already cost the American people over $2 trillion and has raised taxes another $1 trillion--and the law isn't even fully enacted yet. And what do we have to show for it? Higher government spending, higher taxes, higher deficits, higher health insurance premiums, and a lower quality of health care. Companies all over the country are being forced to cut costs by laying off current employees or cutting their hours, putting on hold hiring new employees, and halting expansion. That is bad for American workers and bad for our economy. House Republicans are committed to defunding, delaying, and dismembering ObamaCare and will continue to fight for the American people to get rid of this terrible law and replace it with real reforms that will make our health care stronger. As one senior Democratic Senator said, ObamaCare is a ``train wreck.''

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 10 a.m. on Monday, March 25, 2013.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Mr. Speaker, I'm joined by some of our colleagues tonight here to talk about the sequester. We've heard a lot about it in the last, I guess, 10 or 12 1-minute speeches about the sequester and how bad it is and how it's going to wreck our economy. We know that it is going to affect some people's lives, and we hate that. We much preferred a different way to do the cuts. We actually have passed two bills to address the cuts in the sequester that better address the needs of this country and our spending habits and didn't affect the many thousands of people that will either have to go to part-time work or no work due to these cuts. It's been over 300 days since we passed the first bill out of this House; yet the Senate did not take it up. And so 2 months later we passed another one that the Senate has not taken up. The President, over the past 3 weeks or so, has traveled a little over 5,000 miles, going down to North Carolina, to Georgia, to West Palm Beach, to Ohio, to Virginia, talking about the problems. Yet even though he's traveled that many miles, it's only 1.7 miles from the White House over to the Senate. So he could have cut down on all those trips of the rhetoric and the campaign-type attitude that he's put towards governing just by traveling 1.7 miles down to the Senate Chamber and sitting down with the majority leader over there and the rest of his party and saying, look, we need to offer something back because we believe in regular order. We think the best business that we can have and we think that our Founders and the way our Constitution is set up, that we work under regular orders. If the House passes a bill, we send it to the Senate. If the Senate doesn't agree with it, then they can either put their own bill, send it back over to us and we'll go to conference, or they can amend our bill and send it back. And then if we can't agree with that, we'll go to conference. But that's not the way things have been operating over here. It's been a failure, in my opinion, on the majority leader's part in the Senate that he just refuses to take them up. We're not going to do it. We're not going to debate it. It's either my way or the highway. I think the American people deserve better than that. I'm going to give Mr. Gohmert a few minutes, if he would like to take the time, before he has to make one of his dignified appearances, so I'll yield to him.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to now introduce somebody from New York. I believe he was the executive for Monroe County for 4 years. He took a county that was going bankrupt, or fixing to go bankrupt, and turned it around, $125 million, I believe, in the rainy day, so to speak, fund. So he's got knowledge on how to do it. He's also been a very successful businessman. I think that all these agency and department heads that we have, if you can't manage to cut about 2.4 percent of your budget, you need to take a look if you're really capable of managing people and managing a department of that size. So I would ask the gentleman from New York, one of our freshmen, a businessman, a great guy, Mr. Collins, to come up and try to enlighten us a little bit on what steps he took of running a government, actually turning it around and made it to where the citizens got something from the taxes that they were paying.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the gentleman for participating. Next I want to introduce another one of our bright young freshmen, the gentleman from California (Mr. Valadao) of the 21st District, a dairy farmer, the son of Portuguese immigrants that has come here. He is a veteran legislator that has been with the California Assembly. We're excited about having him. He also represents a district that has been really hurt by some of the regulations and the environmental requirements that this administration has pushed. Where he lives and where he farms, his neighbors have lost a great number of jobs due to the fact that we can't provide them any water that we promised them probably 40 or 50 years ago that had been coming to them and they really had the basket of the fruit and vegetables that we eat every day. I yield to the gentleman from California.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the gentleman for being here. Next I want to allow one of my fellow Georgians some time to speak, who is another veteran legislator that came out of Georgia, who I've served with in the Georgia House, somebody from south Georgia who understands what it's about when you have to work hard and farm. He's a private business owner, an insurance agent, and a good friend. I yield to the gentleman from Tifton, Georgia (Mr. Scott).

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman. Now I want to introduce another one of our freshmen, somebody that comes to us from Florida's Third Congressional District, a veterinarian. He is actually a small business guy. I think he's been in that business for about 30 years. He also understands the effect that this sequester will have on our military because his oldest daughter, Katie, is an active Member of the United States Coast Guard. So I hope that the gentleman will express some of those things that he feels about these cuts that are coming to our military. With that, I yield to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Yoho).

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for being here and giving us those great comments. Now I want to introduce another friend, our policy chairman in our Republican Conference, somebody that comes from the great State of Oklahoma, somebody that has great experience in managing people. I think he ran a youth camp, the largest youth camp in the United States, if not the world. I'm afraid to even tell you how many people. I'll let him do that. But I would like to recognize the gentleman from Oklahoma, our policy chair, Mr. Lankford.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. We borrow about $4 billion a day. We spend roughly $10 billion and borrow about $4 billion. So this energy tax would just keep us from borrowing for 1 day.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for bringing up that point because I think a lot of people may not realize that we're talking about $85 billion here. As the gentleman stated, you know, we spend $10 billion a day. So, I mean, this is 8\1/2\ days that we're saving. My son-in-law was a DA, assistant DA, and I remember a couple of years ago, he was furloughed for 14 days, which is almost twice as much as we're talking about here. He didn't have to put his children in an orphanage or go hungry or anything else. They managed their bills. That's all we're saying. While we've all heard the sky is falling, I think it is something that we can deal with, especially if we have competent heads of these agencies. So, you know, just looking at some of the other money that we're spending, $268 million in executive branch conferences, whether it's for the Department of Defense, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, $268 million just for the conferences, I think we can cut those conferences out for a year. Or maybe cut them down, maybe not be quite as expensive or elaborate as they are. You know, when I came to Congress, I came from a building, a construction background. I considered myself somebody capable of looking at a set of plans and giving an estimate of what it was going to cost and having a vision of what it was going to look like. I remember one time I had a customer come in who wanted a roof designed a certain way, and I tried to tell them it wasn't going to work. They had seen it somewhere else and had gotten somebody to draw it. The one thing I did learn in the building business is that somebody can draw something, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you can build what they draw. And so I tried to explain to them, I said, This isn't going to work; it's going to cause problems; it's going to look bad. But they still wanted to do it. Their house, I did it. The next thing I know, they come up complaining about it. And I said, Look, this was your idea; I did exactly what you said. And they didn't like it, but it was something that they had to live with or pay to get it changed. The same thing has happened here with this administration. You know, this was their idea. This was something that they wanted to do. I think a lot of people said, No, this is a bad idea; we don't want to do this. But yet they were so desperate to come up with something to cut the spending of this country that they agreed to it. And now all of a sudden, the originator of the idea doesn't like it. And he says, Oh, no. But rather than sitting down and talking to the people that could make a difference and make a change, he decided to go out and travel the country to talk to people who couldn't. And it's turned out it's going to be a bad outcome, but it is the only outcome that could come from the plan that was drawn. Now, let me say this again about the spending. When you think about the fact that we spend $10 billion a day--think about that, $10 billion a day. And we borrow about half of it. About 42 percent of it we borrow from somebody else. And keep this in mind: the Federal Reserve buys, in combination with different things, they buy about $85 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities every month--$85 billion every month. They print the money to do that. So we've got bigger fish to fry. As several people have said today, we've got to get serious about this. I'm accountable to 700,000 people--just like every Member of this body is--at home, but I'm also accountable to my children and my grandchildren and their children. And I want one day, when they sit in my lap or come up to me and say, Papa, couldn't you do something about this? I want to be able to tell them, I tried, baby. I tried to do it. We all tried to do it, but nobody wanted to cut. Nobody wanted to save. We just kept putting it on your charge card. And so while this $85 billion is going to be tough, it's going to be hard, it's going to hurt some families, it's going to cause some people to go to part-time employment rather than regular employment, but you know what, it's $85 billion that's not going to go onto our children's credit cards. I think that's what we've got to remember. We keep kicking the can down the road. People my age and in my generation, we may not ever have to pay the tab for this, but my children, and for sure my grandchildren and my great grandchildren, are going to end up paying this tab. So we're not really doing that much other than shifting it from our responsibility and our burdens to the next generation and the next generation's burdens. I see another one of our bright freshmen. Mr. Speaker, anybody out there who has been watching, they understand that we have a bright freshman class. This gentleman is from Illinois, Mr. Rodney Davis. And so, Mr. Davis, I'm glad to yield you time.

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I thank the gentleman for those words. I'll close by saying this. This job is not easy. It's not exactly what everybody might think it is, but it's something that we don't need to squander. It's an opportunity that everybody in this House has been given that probably less than 12,000 people have ever had since this country has been founded. We don't need to squander this opportunity. And we need to honor those that have come before us, that have fought and died, the men and women right now that are in Afghanistan and other parts of the world that are putting their lives on the line and in danger every day, not for us to be running up the debt on them. We've got less than 1 percent of the people in this country that protect the rest of us. And so, you know, why are we trying to do them harm? We're trying to fix that, and I want them to know that, that we are trying to fix that, and we're going to try to fix it in the CR. And for the young voters out there, I want y'all to know that this is not something that we're purposely doing to hurt you or your family. This is something that we're doing for your children, or trying to do for your children. All we're asking is that you might encourage others to join us in this fight, to try to save this country from going down the road of debt and bankruptcy that we're headed on, and instead turn it around to the bright future that we all want to have for this country and for a better Republic, and something that will bring us back to the forefront, to be held in the same esteem that we've always been held in by the other countries in this world, not somebody that's continuing to dig a hole of debt for our future. I yield back the balance of my time. Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 2 p.m. on Friday, January 25, 2013, and when the House adjourns on that day, it adjourn to meet at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29, 2013.

Mr. WESTMORELAND

Mr. WESTMORELAND. I want to thank the chairman for recognizing me. I just want to say that I support this bill not because I support the increased borrowing that we are doing for our flood insurance program of $9.7 billion, but it is a contractual agreement that we owe to these policyholders to pay these claims. It's not their fault that we in the government are not good managers of our money. In 1968, when this policy and this program was put into place, it had a borrowing authority of $1.5 billion. It wasn't until Katrina that we raised that borrowing authority up to $20 billion. We still owe $20 billion. We're now raising that borrowing authority to $30 billion. In 2017, which is 4\1/2\ years away, the borrowing authority goes back to $1.5 billion. Now I'm sure we'll address that at 11:59 on September 30 of 2017. But I'd like to ask both sides, on both sides of the aisle, let's start working on that now. This cost to the government is $17,063 for every policyholder who has flood insurance. The average premium is about $600. We have paid people 10 and 20 and 30 times for claims that live in the same house in the same floodplain. I had an amendment to the flood insurance bill that said if you had two claims due to flood and you did not take the payout, then you would have to pay a rate-based premium. It didn't pass. We've got to get into reality what this flood insurance program is for. It's mandatory. If you have a government-backed loan and you live in a floodplain that's likely to flood in 100 years, you have to have the insurance.