Peter Welch

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. I want to talk a little bit about the Clean Air Act, Mr. Chair. We have power plants that are coal-burning and emit toxins into the air. That's not in dispute. But the attack on any kind of regulation says that if there's any expense associated with providing health and safety to the people downwind of the polluting emitting power plants, they're on their own. They've got to breathe that air, and it's their problem. Now, I live in Vermont; and the coal-burning plants, the air all comes and falls in Vermont. The Clean Air Act has had tremendous success in actually cleaning up some of these power plants. Now, of course there's some expense associated with burning clean; but there's also, as you know, Mr. Chair, an enormous cost associated with burning dirty. It may be cheaper for the power plant owner, and it might even be cheaper for the electricity users of that power plant; but the costs associated with the health, the safety, the environmental impacts are simply off-loaded by the polluter on to the innocent members of society who are downwind of the mercury-spewing polluting plants. So, sure, we can have some debate about what should be the proper expense. But should we really have a debate that it is illegitimate for the Federal Government to take actions, regulatory and legislative, that protect the health and safety of innocent people? The law of physics has air-carrying pollutants going in the direction that nature sends it, and that means everybody downwind gets affected. It's really astonishing that in the legitimate effort to ask legitimate questions about whether a regulation is serving a useful purpose, whether the regulation achieves the intended goal, whether there's a way to achieve that goal at less expense, those are all fair questions. But to abolish the regulations altogether, to suggest that everybody who will be affected by mercury pollution has no remedy and cannot look to the Federal Government to provide them with some protection for their health, for the health of their children, that's extreme, and it's unacceptable, and it's expensive. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH. How much time do I have?

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman, this amendment makes needed changes to the economic analysis mandated by the underlying bill; but fundamentally this bill, itself, we believe, is an assault on the Clean Air Act, not really a bill that requires a study. The legislation began in committee as a bill to require a new study on the economic impacts of EPA rules to cut air pollution. At that point, the bill simply required a burdensome and redundant study of EPA rules and did not affect any of the rules it proposed to examine. It changed in committee. The Republican members amended it to indefinitely delay implementation of two very key rules to reduce power plant pollution, the Cross-State Air Pollution Rule and the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule. Now Mr. Whitfield has proposed amending the bill to further eliminate those rules altogether and prevent EPA from being able to clean up power plants in the future. Mr. Latta has offered an amendment to force EPA to listen to polluters' accountants rather than scientists when setting air quality standards. This bill is now a direct attack on the heart of the Clean Air Act. That act has saved thousands of lives. The bill still contains a study on the economic impact of EPA rules, although I'm not sure why it would do that. The Rush amendment, Mr. Chairman, would make the study required by this legislation a little less biased and a little more useful. The bill creates a new government bureaucracy to conduct a complicated study of EPA rules. It's not necessary. In addition, the bill ensures that the final study will be unbalanced and inherently biased. It's one thing to take a hard look at regulations. It's another thing to cook the outcome of that examination. The Rush amendment ensures that the committee will look at both the costs and the benefits of EPA rules. The bill's supporters originally presented this bill as a means to gather more facts on key EPA rules. As amended by the Republicans, it's increasingly clear that the facts really don't matter. I support the Rush amendment, but I remain staunchly opposed to final passage of the bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. We have two problems in this economy: One is, we have a long-term deficit that requires long-term solutions. Second, we have an immediate crisis of high unemployment. We have 23 million Americans who are out of work full time or out of work part time, people looking for full-time work that don't have it--23 million Americans. Why can't we focus on policies that are going to put people back to work? The President's jobs plan will help us to do that. What does it do? We start to invest in infrastructure. It is disgraceful that the roads and bridges of this country, that the water and sewer systems in your town and mine are ancient and antiquated. They need repair. They need rebuilding. That is not just money thrown out the door. That's investing in our future where generations are going to benefit from it. Part of the solution is rebuilding our schools. Who among us has not been to a school in our neighborhood or our district that is in desperate need of repair? And we have folks in the construction industry who aren't building houses because of the housing crisis but can be rebuilding these schools and can be retrofitting our homes. We have to focus on putting people back to work.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, the House this week will take up a bill called the TRAIN Act. The acronym stands for Transparency and Regulatory Analysis of Impacts on the Nation. It is quite a mouthful, but what it's going to do, very specifically, is delay the implementation of two very important Clean Air Act standards that protect human health and the environment. Now, we can have a lot of arguments about proper regulation, which ones are good and which ones are bad, but can we really argue about the necessity of taking appropriate action to protect the air we breathe? The Clean Air Act has been very successful in improving air quality around this country. Obviously, much more needs to be done. But the two provisions that are under attack by the so-called TRAIN Act are: One regulation that regulates cross-State air pollution. Now, if you live in one State and there is a coal-burning plant in another State, the law of air motion means that the pollution is going to follow the path that the air travels, and people in a State that are on the receiving end of polluted air ought to have some protection. This has a significant impact on health. It is not as though you can have appropriate regulatory safety without having the Federal Government have some role, since air does travel according to the law of physics, not according to an act of Congress. A second provision is the power plant emissions of mercury limitation. Mercury is a known carcinogen. It is extremely dangerous to our health, particularly that of infants. And the success that we've had in limiting mercury pollution has had dramatic impacts--positive impacts--on our health. Why? Why would we delay the implementation of a mercury regulation that is going to have significant and immediate benefit? There may be some cost to this; that's true. But what about the cost in lives? What about the cost in health care expenditures by allowing pollution to occur? When we do something and price it cheaply by ignoring what the external impacts of allowing something to be theoretically cheap, in the terms of lives lost, in terms of health care expenses incurred, we're not saving anybody money. We're making some money for the owners of the polluting entity, but we are not making money for society, and we are certainly not protecting it. We have to have careful regulation. We should always be willing to look at them to get rid of things that don't make sense and aren't getting the job done, but we also need proper regulation. And when it comes to health and safety, clean air and mercury, those are two provisions that should not be delayed. This legislation would do that. It's harmful to our health, and it will be harmful to our economy.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady for yielding. This bill is not about the offset. This bill is not about whether we're going to pay for emergency spending. We must and we will. What this bill is about is whether we're going to help 427 residents of Pittsfield, Vermont, who were in the wake of the wrath of Hurricane Irene. That flood came down and ripped their road to the north and ripped their road to the south, and the water went in the middle, taking out homes and taking out public buildings. That's the selectboard-- volunteers. It was that volunteer fire department--volunteers. They didn't have time to have an argument about offsets. They had to find out how they could get an excavator in there, and if they didn't have one, they had to borrow one. They had towns that weren't leveraging some disputes they might have had about whether they would turn back an excavator or earthmoving equipment to help them out. They did it. They had their school running the next day, not because they had a school that was functional--their kids couldn't even get out. They did one thing first, and that was to set up school on the green. They set it up on the green. Two days after this hurricane, the kids were going to school, and their parents were making them feel secure. They couldn't get to a passable road for several days. What did they do? They cut a path through the woods so that, for half a mile, kids could walk and get to transportation. Now, they're going to have a tab even if we help them, and they know they have to pay for it; but, you know, if your neighbor's house is on fire and if you've got a boundary line dispute, you can use the leverage of his urgent necessity to get that fire hose and hold off and get it on condition that he cave--or you can do the right thing. Every time this Congress has had an opportunity to come to the aid of your district or mine, we've stepped up. No Vermonter has ever complained to me that we used his tax dollars to help out in Texas, to help out in Ohio, to help out on the gulf coast; and we didn't make it conditional in getting our way--my offset, what might be Afghanistan, and yours might be some environmental program. We knew that was not the time to do it. We are in this together. This Congress has an obligation to the American people. I have an obligation to the folks in your district, as you do in mine, to do the right thing when an act of God requires for its remedy an act of Congress. Let us act, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, the scene to my right is a typical scene in Vermont. It's the result of the fury of Hurricane Irene. The damage to homeowners, to businesses, to the State infrastructure is immense. This scene inflicted itself on 47 districts represented by Members of this House of Representatives. The fury of Irene was indiscriminate in who was on the receiving end of a very bad storm. That was an act of God. The relief will come as a result of an act of Congress. Republicans represent Democrats in their districts; Democrats represent Republicans in our districts. We have a mutual responsibility to work together to get the tools back to those first responders, to those municipalities, to those volunteer firefighters who are doing the very hard work in each and every one of our districts to recover from Hurricane Irene. Mr. Speaker, we had a meeting this morning of a coalition to fight for relief for Hurricane Irene. We're going to get the funds back to our first responders, to our municipalities and States, to our families so that they can get the job done.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize 66 Vermont towns that are two hundred and fifty years young this year. Two and a half centuries ago, Vermont as we know it did not exist. Ownership of the territory that now makes up the state was disputed between the colonies of New Hampshire and New York. Authorities in both colonies granted charters for towns in the territory to speculators. Benning Wentworth, colonial Governor of New Hampshire, granted nearly 130 of these charters in the early 1760s. It is for this reason that so many of Vermont's towns are currently celebrating their Semiquincentennial anniversaries, with several more to follow in the coming years. It is from this unusual history that Vermont towns and those who inhabited them developed their spirit of independence, self reliance and community. That spirit was passed along to future generations and remains just as vibrant today as it was in the early 1760s. It is a heritage that has defined our state and one we are proud to celebrate. As Vermont's representative to this House, I rise today to recognize the following towns, whose contributions to Vermont began before our nation's founding and continue today as they celebrate their two hundred fiftieth anniversaries: Addison, Andover, Arlington, Barnard, Bennington, Brandon, Bridgewater, Bridport, Brunswick, Castleton, Cavendish, Chester, Clarendon, Cornwall, Danby, Dorset, Fairlee, Ferdinand, Glastenbury, Granby, Guildhall, Guilford, Hartford, Hartland, Killington, Leicester, Ludlow, Maidstone, Manchester, Marlboro, Middlebury, Mount Tabor, New Haven, Norwich, Panton, Pawlet, Peru, Pittsford, Plymouth, Pomfret, Poultney, Reading, Rupert, Rutland, Salisbury, Sandgate, Shaftsbury, Sharon, Shoreham, Shrewsbury, Somerset, Springfield, Stockbridge, Strafford, Stratton, Sunderland, Thetford, Tinmouth, Tunbridge, Wallingford, Weathersfield, Wells, Weybridge, Windsor, Winhall, and Woodstock.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman. What's going on here, Madam Speaker, is extraordinarily dangerous and it's completely unnecessary. We are using the full faith and credit of the United States, the reputation this country has had since its founding that we are a country who pays our bills, we are using that as political leverage to get our way on budget and tax issues. That's wrong. It's dangerous. Ronald Reagan, no stranger to fierce tax and budget battles, would never allow the linkage to be made that would jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States. We're a bigger and better country than to threaten that we won't pay our bills. This is wrong. We should raise the debt ceiling cleanly because that is what Americans do. We pay our bills. Second, the bill before us now is, as my friend from Kentucky said, making a bad bill worse. The process that Americans want is a balanced approach. Balance is revenues along with cuts. Democrats have to make concessions on cuts. We're prepared to do that. The President has led. But there have got to be revenues, particularly when we have got a Tax Code that is completely a mess. What we've seen is that in the Biden discussions, Mr. Cantor walked out when there were revenues on the table. The Speaker walked out on the President when revenues were still on the table. And now this bill is attempting to impose a constitutional amendment and has no chance of passing; and it, in effect, is a white flag of surrender to a small group in the Republican caucus who won't pass the bill that was brought to us before. We've got to work together. That means we've got to put everything on the table. We've got to maintain our credit rating by paying our bills, and we have to have a balanced approach to long-term fiscal stability that requires revenues as well as cuts.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady. Mr. Speaker, this is a bad situation. There are two failures: One is the process by which we got here, where we've abandoned a willingness to compromise when compromise is required; and second is to propose a plan that's not balanced with revenues as well as with spending cuts. I just want to go through the process. This institution is responsible for making decisions about taxing and spending. Those are contentious debates; always have been, always will be. But whenever we've made progress, there's been a recognition that the Republican argument, that we have to watch how we spend our money, has validity, and that the Democratic argument, that we have to have fairer taxes, has had merit. This is a one-sided approach. There were negotiations that were promising. In May, the Biden group began negotiations to avert a crisis. On May 16, the U.S. hit the debt ceiling, and Treasury moved money around to avert the August 2 deadline. June 23, the majority leader, Mr. Cantor, walked out because revenues were on the table. July 3, President Obama and Speaker Boehner meet to work out a ``grand bargain'' deal. It was very promising, $4 trillion in deficit reduction by combining revenues as well as cuts. President Obama, incidentally, put on the table things that were giving enormous heartburn to many Democrats, but he said, We have to compromise for the greater good. The Speaker indicates on July 9 that the ``grand bargain'' is unlikely due to differences on revenues, so he leaves. July 22, Mr. Boehner walks away from the debt talks, saying that we can't have revenue. So now we have the bill. The bill is defective in this fundamental respect: It is going to damage the economy; $1 trillion in cuts, increasing on a short-term basis the debt ceiling, followed by $1.8 trillion that will hurt Medicare and Social Security. This is going to be very harmful for the economy.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor a Vermont veteran on his 90th birthday, Anthony ``Sonny'' Bertone. A resident of Bennington, Vermont, Mr. Bertone served his country with bravery and honor in the United States Army during the Second World War. Mr. Bertone was assigned to Company ``C'' of the 634th Tank Destroyer Battalion, a Company that at many times was assigned to campaigns under General George S. Patton. Mr. Bertone fought in some of the most important campaigns throughout the war, including Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge. Mr. Bertone also fought to secure the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen, Germany and concluded his service in Czechoslovakia. Mr. Bertone was honorably discharged from the Army in 1945 and received the Croix De Guerre. Upon leaving the Army, Mr. Bertone went on to raise his family in New Jersey before moving to Vermont. As Vermont's Representative in this Congress, I ask that Mr. Bertone be recognized for his accomplishments and applauded for his service to the state of Vermont and the United States of America.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam Chair, I offer an amendment.

Mr. WELCH. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH. I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cohen).

Mr. WELCH. How much time do I have?

Mr. WELCH. Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Madam Chair, this amendment inserts an environmental finding that highlights the very significant environmental and health risks that are proposed that will occur as a result of this proposed pipeline. This pipeline is going to carry up to 900,000 barrels of tar sands oil every day, and it's going to carry them a distance of 2,000 miles. And whatever assurances are given about the safety of any mechanical and engineering system, we have too much regular experience that the best of intentions oftentimes fail. So there is risk, and we want that to be known as part of the findings. A University of Nebraska professor recently released the first independent assessment of the spills that could come from the Keystone XL pipeline. That study found that TransCanada has in fact greatly understated the risks of the pipeline. That study established that the pipeline could spill over 5 million gallon of tar sands oil into a major river, making water undrinkable for hundreds of miles. Also, the Keystone real-time leak detection system doesn't register spills that are less than 700,000 gallons per day. Cynthia Quarterman, the administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, has noted that the U.S. pipeline system was not designed with raw tar sands crude in mind. My amendment is very simple: if we're going to rush through--and that's what we're doing--the environmental permitting process for a project that has questionable benefits to our Nation, let's at least recognize the risks. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman. Madam Chair, I want to speak about an amendment Mr. Moran is about to offer. This is about the use of Styrofoam in our cafeterias. You may remember that in 2007, then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi established the Greening the Capitol program, and the goal was to make the U.S. House of Representatives a national leader in resource stewardship and sustainable business practices, and we made significant progress. One of the places where we made progress was we replaced the Styrofoam in the cafeteria and used recyclable dishware. We are now back to Styrofoam. McDonalds doesn't use Styrofoam. Years ago, McDonalds and other fast food restaurants replaced Styrofoam with recyclable paperboard containers. There is no reason we can't do that. There is no reason we shouldn't do it. Polystyrene is practically unrecyclable. Most polystyrene containers end up in landfills and incinerators. There are cancer-causing chemicals that are used during its manufacture. In 1986, the EPA report on solid waste named polystyrene manufacturing the fifth largest creator of hazardous waste. We should adopt the Moran amendment and do it the right way.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady. If there is a problem with the Dodd-Frank bill, it is that it was passed 2 years after, rather than 2 years before, the Wall Street meltdown. That was a catastrophe. It was so bad that one of the most conservative Presidents in the history of this country came to Congress with the Goldman Sachs Secretary of the Treasury asking Congress to authorize $750 billion to bail out Wall Street's collapse. That was an avoidable situation. The reason it collapsed is because of the fact that the only problem worse than no regulation or little regulation is no regulation at all. And that's what Wall Street had enjoyed. The heart of the crisis were these subprime mortgages that were loans to people who had no documentation, no ability to pay them back. They were sold and peddled not because there was even an expectation that they would be paid back, but they were sold to the mortgagees so that they could then be sold off to investors. This was the architecture of catastrophe. And the American economy is still reeling from it. The tradition of regulation in this country goes back to Teddy Roosevelt, the Republican ``trust buster,'' who understood that the public had to be protected, who understood that with proper regulation you set fair rules for business to operate that level the playing field for those good banks to do what's right, to do it in the light of day, to provide protection to consumers who are busy with their own lives and don't have time to go over all of the forms. This consumer protection agency is absolutely essential to providing fairness to consumers and security in their transactions, to protect them from unscrupulous activity that does and can occur, and it's important to our banks and our financial industry that want to play by the rules and do it the right way. This is very important legislation. We must defeat the, in effect, repeal and retraction of Dodd-Frank.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Three points: One, let's pay our bills. We always have; we always will; Two, let's have a long-term budget plan to stabilize our budget with a balanced approach--revenues as well as cuts, the Pentagon as well as reforming how we deliver health care; Three, let's make it in America.

Mr. WELCH. Well, let's talk about the balanced budget amendment. We in Vermont don't have a balanced budget amendment. We're the only State that doesn't have it. We have always managed to balance our budget. And we have done that when we have had Republican administrations and Democratic administrations. The balanced budget amendment in Congress I think has some hazards because the Federal Government at certain times is the one tool that the American people have to be countercyclical. If the economy is really going down and it requires the Federal Government to step up to try to maintain purchasing power, that is debatable; but it is the only tool that we have as citizens is the Federal Government to do that. I think what the balanced budget amendment suggests is that you can legislate away your future problems. You can come up with a fix that is going to guarantee you're not going to have to suffer through trying to figure out how to solve very difficult problems, either because it is a national security threat, it's a collapse in the economy like we had with the collapse of Wall Street. And by and large it's not any way for us to avoid making direct and difficult decisions where we balance our revenue needs and we balance our spending needs based on the circumstances, and that's the constant work of Congress. It requires the application of judgment, it requires cooperation, and it requires the ability to be flexible and responsive to the circumstances that exist. A balanced budget amendment is one size fits all that puts us in handcuffs in an effort to try to avoid getting out of balance.

Mr. WELCH. We are in a very serious situation now. We're what, 11 days away from perhaps, the first time in the history of this country, not paying our bills. And it's extraordinarily damaging what that will do to our economy. I mean, interest rates will go up. If we have a 1 percent increase in our debt service, that's going to mean $140 billion more in taxpayer expense to service the debt. And I don't care whether you have a Nancy Pelosi point of view that we could use that money better on infrastructure or an Eric Cantor point of view that you could use that for tax cuts, that's money out the door. That is squandered money. And the damage to the economy and to this asset, the AAA rating, is enormous, and that ripples through the economy and starts hurting people, individuals. If you have a mortgage, your mortgage rates can go up on an adjusted rate loan. If you want to buy a car, you have to borrow some money, your rates are going to go up. If you have put aside money for your kids to go to college, which is, as we all know, incredibly expensive, the markets are going to create an immense amount of turmoil, and the likelihood is you'll take a real hit on that. If your retirement savings, if you're about to retire and you've been saving all your life, that can get whacked. This is reckless and irresponsible. We have to pay our bills. Now it is true that we've got a long-term fiscal challenge that requires a long-term fiscal plan, but this first time in the history of our country literally holding hostage our obligation to pay our bills to getting your way on your design of how we should have a long-term fiscal plan, that's never been done before. You know, in all candor, both sides in the past have tended to grandstand when it comes to the debt ceiling. The custom has been around here that the party that's out of power and doesn't have the responsibility to get the debt ceiling passed so that we pay our bills grandstands about it, but neither side has ever actually held that debt ceiling and that obligation to pay our bills hostage. Ronald Reagan, who was not at all shy about engaging in tax fights and budget fights, raised the debt ceiling. He never would use the full faith and credit of this country to win his battles because he knew that would cause too much harm to the economy; it's putting a loaded gun at the head of the American economy. We have got to get back to the basics here. We've got to pay our bills. My hope is that then we would work together because we don't have to cut Medicare to get to fiscal solvency. We do have to reform the way we deliver health care to bring down the cost of health care, but if we have a balanced approach where we include revenues, we include the Pentagon, and we, as Democrats, look very hard at various spending programs and are willing to share in the effort to get ourselves onto fiscal solvency, we can do that. So we can make progress if we work together and just recognize the obvious: we've got to pay our bills, and we also have to work together to get a long-term fiscal plan.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman from Maryland. We face two immediate challenges. The first is, will we pay our bills? That's the whole issue of raising the debt limit. America pays its bills, it's as simple as that. If we owe veterans who served this country their benefits, they're going to get paid. If we went to a war and didn't pay for it and fund it when we went, we have to pay that bill when it becomes due. That is the question. And by the way, Republican iconic figure, Ronald Reagan, who was familiar with tax and budget fights, was the one who said he would never make the debt ceiling, America's full faith and credit, a hostage to a point of view, and did the right thing to pay those bills. The second issue that we face--and I acknowledge my Republican colleagues for their focus on this--is a long-term fiscal plan. The bill that we have brought before the floor, a balanced budget amendment, raises the question: Is it an effective tool, or is the better approach a balanced approach to revenues and to spending? The State of Vermont does not have a balanced budget amendment, yet in Vermont we pay our bills and we balance our budget. We do it, number one, by working together. And one of the points that the rating agencies have made is the apprehension here is not so much our ability to pay our bills, it's our ability to work together. Working together requires that we have a balance of cuts, look at that budget, where can we save money? But it also requires that we have a balance of revenues because part of the goal here--again, of a confident country--is to grow our economy. That requires investment in infrastructure, in education, in new industries. And if we are going to be successful, this cannot be just cuts. It has to be balanced with investments that will grow this economy, grow jobs, bring that unemployment rate down. We can do it together. I see the gentleman from South Carolina included in his approach cutting the Pentagon. That has to be on the table.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam Speaker, President Reagan is an iconic figure in the Republican Party and revered by many Democrats. He did fight to shrink government and he lowered taxes, but he also raised taxes eight times and he also fought against the absurd notion that America had an option when it came to paying our bills. When the debt ceiling had to be raised, he did it because he knew that was essential, that was our responsibility. We have got an argument on the other side today that paying our bills is optional. That is dangerous; that is absurd. There are two arguments the other side is making: One, that it's Obama's problem, despite the fact that they insisted on the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, going into nation building, tax cuts that we can't afford, Medicare prescription part D. But, second--this is what's really not on the level--every single person who voted for the Ryan budget voted for a budget that will raise the debt from $14.3 trillion to $23 trillion. And after voting for that budget, now we will vote against raising the debt ceiling that is required to implement the budget that you voted for.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chair, I have been sitting here listening to what, in fact, I think is a very interesting debate: what's the role that the taxpayer, through this body, should play in trying to steer an energy policy towards efficiency. There were a lot of contentious debates that we've had about energy policy, about climate change. One of the areas where I have found that we have frequently had some common ground is the notion that less is more. Whatever the source of energy that you use or favor, if a consumer is able to use less oil-- that's what we rely on in Vermont to heat our homes--or less electricity that's generated by nuclear, you can save money. And the efficiency title is one that gives us an opportunity to try to promote efficiency, where doing so has significant benefits. Last year, Mr. Chair, we passed in this House--it failed in the Senate--an energy efficiency bill that would have given homeowners an incentive to put some of their money into home retrofits, and the government would have matched that. So you would have had an all-in situation. And when you're retrofitting your home, you are using local contractors who have been hammered by the collapse in housing. They need work. It's work that is done locally in your district and mine. Ninety-five percent of the materials that are used in any kind of efficiency work in a commercial building or in home building are manufactured in America. So even without a debate about Make It in America, we would be getting the benefit of manufacturing in America. And obviously, it would then have an impact of saving the homeowner money. That particular bill would have saved about $10 million in energy bills over 10 years. So that's real savings for homeowners. The bill that is brought before the floor makes a decision to dramatically cut the efficiency title by about 27 percent, or $491 million. What my amendment would do is propose to restore that money and take that from the Nuclear Security Weapons Activities account which has $7.1 billion. So diverting the amount of money this amendment proposes would not wipe out that account in any way. I think all of us would like to find some places we can work together despite the very significant differences between us; and efficiency, I found in the last Congress, was one of those areas where we had some potential to do it. Then-Ranking Member Barton was supportive of some of these efforts. And the money in this title actually does end up promoting projects back in your district and mine. I will just give some examples. And these are small things. They are small things but important. In Burlington, Vermont, we had a program through this title that helped a community market install 136 solar panels on the roof of the city market that generated 31 kilowatts of power. I mean, that's not going to save the world, but it created jobs. It reduced their costs. And it was local, local people doing it. In Waterbury, a home for seniors was retrofitted and improved with insulation, better boiler controls and efficient lighting. Again, it's not rocket science, but it's real. It was real Vermonters doing the installation work. It was insulation that was manufactured in America. And it made those seniors warmer. It made their bill lower. That kind of thing can happen all around. In Lunenburg, Vermont, way up by the Canadian border, the 430-cow Auburn Star Farm got some loans and grants through a State energy program that was funded from this title. It allowed them to build a biodigester, and that digester will dispose of the waste from the dairy cows, produce biogas to generate electricity, and help the bottom line of that farm that is struggling with low milk prices and high costs. So the real question that is before us is: Do we want to promote energy efficiency at the local level in all the various ways people can come up with to save money when we know that in your district or mine, Republican, Democrat, or independent, we've got out-of-work contractors, we've got homeowners who want to save money, and we've got manufacturers who want to sell their goods? So I urge the body to consider favorably the amendment that is before you. I yield back the balance of my time.

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