Peter Welch

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank you, Mr. Speaker. Members of the House, the default clock is ticking. We face a default on August 2 if we do not raise the debt ceiling. Raising the debt ceiling is always a difficult vote. It is difficult because we have to do something that's necessary but not popular. Now, the question of the debt ceiling is about paying obligations already incurred. It's not about giving this House of Representatives permission to spend more money. But what has happened with this debt ceiling debate is that it is being used as leverage by both sides to try to get its way on a long-term budget resolution, and the reality is that this country needs both. It needs, number one, to have a long-term resolution on its fiscal situation, but, number two--this is the immediate need--it has to pay its bills. America is a great country. It has always paid its bills, and the debt ceiling is about that and nothing more. Incidentally, those bills are ones that have been incurred by Congresses that many of us were never part of. And it's not a question of whether it's a bill that you would have supported incurring the expense for: the Iraq war, the Afghanistan war, the Medicare prescription part D, the two cuts in taxes during the Bush administration, all of which were on the credit card. I was against those, but those are obligations that we have and we must pay them. The risk of default is enormous. Every increase in the interest rate of 1 percent will cost the American taxpayers $160 billion. The default clock is ticking. Now, 2 weeks ago the majority brought to the floor a clean debt ceiling bill for the purpose of defeating it, and immediately upon bringing this bill to the floor and defeating it, with unanimous Republican opposition and many Democrats voting no, Members went back to their offices and called Wall Street and said, Just kidding. We will raise the debt ceiling but we wanted to send a signal. We are playing with fiscal fire here. You know, it's fine to negotiate, but negotiations cannot lead to default. Mr. Speaker, if we in this Congress, with the Republican majority now leading the way, fail to honor the Nation's obligations by making good on our responsibility to pay our bills, the bond market will work its will and we will lose our AAA credit rating, and we will do enormous damage to this economy. This is not about a Democrat or Republican speaking. Let me quote Chairman Bernanke and a few others who commented on the urgency of paying our bills. Chairman Bernanke just yesterday said that failure to raise the debt ceiling would create fundamental doubts about the creditworthiness of the United States and damage the special role that the dollar and the Treasury securities have in the global market. Now, I understand the desire to use the debt limit deadline to force some necessary and difficult fiscal policy adjustments, Mr. Bernanke said, but the debt limit is the wrong tool for that important job. A few other people commenting on this: JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon: A default would be a moral disaster. It will dwarf Lehman. Every single company with treasuries, every insurance fund, every requirement that--it will start snowballing, automatic, if you don't pay your debt. There will be default by rating agencies. All short-term financing will disappear. That's Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan. The Chamber of Commerce: Failure to raise the debt ceiling would create uncertainty and fear and threaten the credit rating of the United States. Moody's Rating Service on downgrading America's rating: Since the risk of continuing stalemate has grown, if progress in negotiations is not evident by the middle of July, such a rating action is likely. Fitch Rating Service: Failure to raise the debt ceiling in a timely manner would imply a crisis of governance that could imperil the U.S.'s AAA status. So we have two problems. We have a long-term problem that requires resolution, a long-term fiscal plan, but we have an immediate problem, and that is to protect the integrity of America's reputation for paying its bills. If we have a downgrade in our rating, it's going to affect the interest rates that we pay, and that's going to hurt folks in Republican districts. It's going to hurt folks in Democratic districts who have no power to do anything. We must raise our debt. We must pay our bills.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, this Congress and this country face two great fiscal challenges. One is long term, and one is urgent and immediate. Long term, we know we have to restore balance to our budget, and negotiations are under way in an effort to accomplish that. There are significant differences in approach. Do you follow the outlines of the Ryan budget, which basically cut taxes for very wealthy Americans in the hope that will create jobs and pay for that by slashing or ending Medicare? Or do you proceed along the outline in the Obama budget which essentially would put everything on the table, including the Pentagon and including revenues? But either way, the urgent and immediate responsibility is that we pay our bills. And either side that engages in a game of chicken with the obligation of this country to maintain its full faith and credit is playing with fiscal fire and using a loaded gun for a game of Russian roulette. That gun is pointed at the heart of the American economy. America pays its bills. We must do that and do whatever is required in order to maintain our reputation for doing so.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman. Mr. Speaker, I signed that letter, I led that letter, and I will tell you why I did. America faces two challenges. One is we must pay our bills. Whether those bills were incurred for a war that you supported or you opposed; whether those bills were incurred by a Congress you served in or you didn't; whether it was for a prescription drug program that you were for or against, a bill incurred, an obligation incurred, is an obligation that must be paid. That is the fundamental responsibility that I acknowledge as a citizen, that I acknowledge as an American, that I acknowledge as a Congressman. Second, this question of a long-term deficit reduction plan, we need it. You are right. We understand that. Where is it? You have the opportunity in this legislation to present your plan that will get us on a glide path to fiscal balance. It's not here, suggesting either you don't have a plan or the plan you want to present doesn't have the support of the American people. We are playing Russian roulette with a loaded gun in the American economy, and the deficit clock is ticking. This requires a substantial response. The approach taken, a suspension vote, trivializes both our short-term obligation to pay our bills and our long-term obligation to have a long-term deficit reduction plan. And the fact that this is done, being sponsored by folks who immediately say they are against what they proposed and then quietly making phone calls to Wall Street saying they are for what they just voted against, is what is Washington business as usual that people are tired of and is not solving our problem. The default clock is ticking.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman from Utah. Members of the Committee, a test of a great democracy is its capacity to make the grave decision to send its citizens to war. Such a decision was made after the attack on September 11 of 2001. It was a bipartisan decision. It was made for the right reasons at the right time and for the right result. Al Qaeda was in Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden planned and executed the 9/11 mission from Afghanistan. And we sent our soldiers to war. Vermont soldiers and soldiers from all around the country sacrificed bravely and served well. But an equally grave challenge and test for a democracy is whether once that machinery of war has been put in gear, when circumstances change as the national security requires, can that democracy amend its decision, amend its policy as conditions have changed? We are at that moment today. It is a bipartisan question that faces us all. And the amendment that Mr. Chaffetz and I offer suggests that the policy that we are now pursuing, nation building in Afghanistan, is no longer the policy that is either financially sustainable nor in our best national security interests. There are three reasons: number one, the threat of al Qaeda has diminished in Afghanistan; the threat of terrorism in the world has not. This is not a nation state-centered threat. It is dispersed and decentralized. Mr. Chaffetz and I say let us have a decentralized and dispersed response. The tactics that were so successful in eliminating Osama bin Laden, excellent and coordinated intelligence and excellent and fierce special forces, was successful. Mr. Chaffetz and I, in our amendment, believe it is time for America to move from nation-state building to counterterrorism. Second, the situation in Afghanistan with an unreliable partner, incredible corruption that has been going from bad to worse, does not allow our military or our taxpayers to have any confidence that that nation-building strategy can be successful. So we call upon Congress to face this grave national security question from the perspective of is it time to change.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chair, today I want to highlight a critical issue facing the Intelligence Community: increasing reliance on contractors. A 2010 Washington Post story reported that 30 percent of the workforce in our intelligence agencies is contractors. Furthermore, the Post estimated that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. I encourage my colleagues to read this eye opening article. These startling facts cause me great concern--we've learned the hard way time and time again what happens when we fail to monitor the work of federal contractors. The federal government has the responsibility to maintain its commitment to monitoring their use--with special attention made to the evolving nature of their work and the associated national security risks inherent to outsourcing these tasks. I look forward to working with the Select Committee on Intelligence to achieve this goal. [From the Washington Post, July 20, 2010] National Security, Inc. (By Dana Priest and William M. Arkin) In June, a stone carver from Manassas chiseled another perfect star into a marble wall at CIA headquarters, one of 22 for agency workers killed in the global war initiated by the 2001 terrorist attacks. The intent of the memorial is to publicly honor the courage of those who died in the line of duty, but it also conceals a deeper story about government in the post-9/11 era: Eight of the 22 were not CIA officers at all. They were private contractors. To ensure that the country's most sensitive duties are carried out only by people loyal above all to the nation's interest, federal rules say contractors may not perform what are called ``inherently government functions.'' But they do, all the time and in every intelligence and counterterrorism agency, according to a two-year investigation by The Washington Post. What started as a temporary fix in response to the terrorist attacks has turned into a dependency that calls into question whether the federal workforce includes too many people obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest--and whether the government is still in control of its most sensitive activities. In interviews last week, both Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and CIA Director Leon Panetta said they agreed with such concerns. The Post investigation uncovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America created since 9/11 that is hidden from public view, lacking in thorough oversight and so unwieldy that its effectiveness is impossible to determine. It is also a system in which contractors are playing an ever more important role. The Post estimates that out of 854,000 people with top-secret clearances, 265,000 are contractors. There is no better example of the government's dependency on them than at the CIA, the one place in government that exists to do things overseas that no other U.S. agency is allowed to do. Private contractors working for the CIA have recruited spies in Iraq, paid bribes for information in Afghanistan and protected CIA directors visiting world capitals. Contractors have helped snatch a suspected extremist off the streets of Italy, interrogated detainees once held at secret prisons abroad and watched over defectors holed up in the Washington suburbs. At Langley headquarters, they analyze terrorist networks. At the agency's training facility in Virginia, they are helping mold a new generation of American spies. Through the federal budget process, the George W. Bush administration and Congress made it much easier for the CIA and other agencies involved in counterterrorism to hire more contractors than civil servants. They did this to limit the size of the permanent workforce, to hire employees more quickly than the sluggish federal process allows and because they thought--wrongly, it turned out--that contractors would be less expensive. Nine years later, well into the Obama administration, the idea that contractors cost less has been repudiated, and the administration has made some progress toward its goal of reducing the number of hired hands by 7 percent over two years. Still, close to 30 percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies is contractors. ``For too long, we've depended on contractors to do the operational work that ought to be done'' by CIA employees, Panetta said. But replacing them ``doesn't happen overnight. When you've been dependent on contractors for so long, you have to build that expertise over time.'' A second concern of Panetta's: contracting with corporations, whose responsibility ``is to their shareholders, and that does present an inherent conflict.'' Or as Gates, who has been in and out of government his entire life, puts it: ``You want somebody who's really in it for a career because they're passionate about it and because they care about the country and not just because of the money.'' Contractors can offer more money--often twice as much--to experienced federal employees than the government is allowed to pay them. And because competition among firms for people with security clearances is so great, corporations offer such perks as BMWs and $15,000 signing bonuses, as Raytheon did in June for software developers with top-level clearances. The idea that the government would save money on a contract workforce ``is a false economy,'' said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official and now president of his own intelligence training academy. As companies raid federal agencies of talent, the government has been left with the youngest intelligence staffs ever while more experienced employees move into the private sector. This is true at the CIA, where employees from 114 firms account for roughly a third of the workforce, or about 10,000 positions. Many of them are temporary hires, often former military or intelligence agency employees who left government service to work less and earn more while drawing a federal pension. Across the government, such workers are used in every conceivable way. Contractors kill enemy fighters. They spy on foreign governments and eavesdrop on terrorist networks. They help craft war plans. They gather information on local factions in war zones. They are the historians, the architects, the recruiters in the nation's most secretive agencies. They staff watch centers across the Washington area. They are among the most trusted advisers to the four- star generals leading the nation's wars. So great is the government's appetite for private contractors with top-secret clearances that there are now more than 300 companies, often nicknamed ``body shops,'' that specialize in finding candidates, often for a fee that approaches $50,000 a person, according to those in the business. Making it more difficult to replace contractors with federal employees: The government doesn't know how many are on the federal payroll. Gates said he wants to reduce the number of defense contractors by about 13 percent, to pre-9/ 11 levels, but he's having a hard time even getting a basic head count. ``This is a terrible confession,'' he said. ``I can't get a number on how many contractors work for the Office of the Secretary of Defense,'' referring to the department's civilian leadership. The Post's estimate of 265,000 contractors doing top-secret work was vetted by several high-ranking intelligence officials who approved of The Post's methodology. The newspaper's Top Secret America database includes 1.931 companies that perform work at the top-secret level. More than a quarter of them--533--came into being after 2001, and others that already existed have expanded greatly. Most are thriving even as the rest of the United States struggles with bankruptcies, unemployment and foreclosures. The privatization of national security work has been made possible by a nine-year ``gusher'' of money, as Gates recently described national security spending since the 9/11 attacks. With so much money to spend, managers do not always worry about whether they are spending it effectively. ``Someone says, `Let's do another study,' and because no one shares information, everyone does their own study,'' said Elena Mastors, who headed a team studying the al-Qaeda leadership for the Defense Department. ``It's about how many studies you can orchestrate, how many people you can fly all over the place. Everybody's just on a spending spree. We don't need all these people doing all this stuff.'' Most of these contractors do work that is fundamental to an agency's core mission. As a result, the government has become dependent on them in a way few could have foreseen: wartime temps who have become a permanent cadre. Just last week, typing ``top secret'' into the search engine of a major jobs Web site showed 1,951 unfilled positions in the Washington area, and 19,759 nationwide: ``Target analyst,'' Reston. ``Critical infrastructure specialist,'' Washington, D.C. ``Joint expeditionary team member,'' Arlington. ``We could not perform our mission without them. They serve as our `reserves,' providing flexibility and expertise we can't acquire,'' said Ronald Sanders, who was chief of human capital for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence before retiring in February. ``Once they are on board, we treat them as if they're a part of the total force.'' The Post's investigation is based on government documents and contracts, job descriptions, property records, corporate and social networking Web sites, additional records, and hundreds of interviews with intelligence, military and corporate officials and former officials. Most requested anonymity either because they are prohibited from speaking publicly or because, they said, they feared retaliation at work for describing their concerns. The investigation focused on top-secret work because the amount classified at the secret level is too large to accurately track. A searchable database of government organizations and private companies was built entirely on public records. [For an explanation of the newspaper's decision making behind this project, please see the Editor's Note.] The national security industry sells the military and intelligence agencies more than just airplanes, ships and tanks. It sells contractors' brain power. They advise, brief and work everywhere, including 25 feet under the Pentagon in a bunker where they can be found alongside military personnel in battle fatigues monitoring potential crises worldwide. Late at night, when the wide corridors of the Pentagon are all but empty, the National Military Command Center hums with purpose. There's real-time access to the location of U.S. forces anywhere in the world, to granular satellite images or to the White House Situation Room. The purpose of all this is to be able to answer any question the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff might have. To be ready 24 hours a day, every day, takes five brigadier generals, a staff of colonels and senior noncommissioned officers--and a man wearing a pink contractor badge and a bright purple shirt and tie. Erik Saar's job title is ``knowledge engineer.'' In one of the most sensitive places in America, he is the only person in the room who knows how to bring data from far afield, fast. Saar and four teammates from a private company, SRA International, teach these top-ranked staff officers to think in Web 2.0. They are trying to push a tradition-bound culture to act differently, digitally. That sometimes means asking for help in a public online chat room or exchanging ideas on shared Web pages outside the military computer networks dubbed .mil--things much resisted within the Pentagon's self-sufficient culture. ``Our job is to change the perception of leaders who might drive change,'' Saar said. Since 9/11, contractors have made extraordinary contributions--and extraordinary blunders--that have changed history and clouded the public's view of the distinction between the actions of officers sworn on behalf of the United States and corporate employees with little more than a security badge and a gun. Contractor misdeeds in Iraq and Afghanistan have hurt U.S. credibility in those countries as well as in the Middle East. Abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, some of it done by contractors, helped ignite a call for vengeance against the United States that continues today. Security guards working for Blackwater added fuel to the five-year violent chaos in Iraq and became the symbol of an America run amok. Contractors in war zones, especially those who can fire weapons, blur ``the line between the legitimate and illegitimate use of force, which is just what our enemies want,'' Allison Stanger, a professor of international politics and economics at Middlebury College and the author of ``One Nation Under Contract,'' told the independent Commission on Wartime Contracting at a hearing in June. Misconduct happens, too. A defense contractor formerly called MZM paid bribes for CIA contracts, sending Randy ``Duke'' Cunningham, who was a California congressman on the intelligence committee, to prison. Guards employed in Afghanistan by ArmorGroup North America, a private security company, were caught on camera in a lewd-partying scandal. But contractors have also advanced the way the military fights. During the bloodiest months in Iraq, the founder of Berico Technologies, a former Army officer named Guy Filippelli, working with the National Security Agency. invented a technology that made finding the makers of roadside bombs easier and helped stanch the number of casualties from improvised explosives, according to NSA officials. Contractors have produced blueprints and equipment for the unmanned aerial war fought by drones, which have killed the largest number of senior al-Qaeda leaders and produced a flood of surveillance videos. A dozen firms created the transnational digital highway that carries the drones' real- time data on terrorist hide-outs from overseas to command posts throughout the United States. Private firms have become so thoroughly entwined with the government's most sensitive activities that without them important military and intelligence missions would have to cease or would be jeopardized. Some examples: *At the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the number of contractors equals the number of federal employees. The department depends on 318 companies for essential services and personnel, including 19 staffing firms that help DHS find and hire even more contractors. At the office that handles intelligence, six out of 10 employees are from private industry. *The National Security Agency, which conducts worldwide electronic surveillance, hires private firms to come up with most of its technological innovations. The NSA used to work with a small stable of firms; now it works with at least 484 and is actively recruiting more. *The National Reconnaissance Office cannot produce, launch or maintain its large satellite surveillance systems, which photograph countries such as China, North Korea and Iran, without the four major contractors it works with. *Every intelligence and military organization depends on contract linguists to communicate overseas, translate documents and make sense of electronic voice intercepts. The demand for native speakers is so great, and the amount of money the government is willing to pay for them is so huge, that 56 firms compete for this business. *Each of the 16 intelligence agencies depends on corporations to set up its computer networks, communicate with other agencies' networks, and fuse and mine disparate bits of information that might indicate a terrorist plot. More than 400 companies work exclusively in this area, building classified hardware and software systems. Hiring contractors was supposed to save the government money. But that has not turned out to be the case. A 2008 study published by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found that contractors made up 29 percent of the workforce in the intelligence agencies but cost the equivalent of 49 percent of their personnel budgets. Gates said that federal workers cost the government 25 percent less than contractors. The process of reducing the number of contractors has been slow, if the giant Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland is any example. There, 2,770 people work on the round-the- clock maritime watch floor tracking commercial vessels, or in science and engineering laboratories, or in one of four separate intelligence centers. But it is the employees of 70 information technology companies who keep the place operating. They store, process and analyze communications and intelligence transmitted to and from the entire U.S. naval fleet and commercial vessels worldwide. ``Could we keep this building running without contractors?'' said the captain in charge of information technology. ``No, I don't think we could keep up with it.'' Vice Adm. David J. ``Jack'' Dorsett, director of naval intelligence, said he could save millions each year by converting 20 percent of the contractor jobs at the Suitland complex to civil servant positions. He has gotten the go- ahead, but it's been a slow start. This year, his staff has converted one contractor job and eliminated another--out of 589. ``It's costing me an arm and a leg,'' Dorsett said. Washington's corridors of power stretch in a nearly straight geographical line from the Supreme Court to the Capitol to the White House. Keep going west, across the Potomac River, and the unofficial seats of power--the private, corporate ones--become visible, especially at night. There in the Virginia suburbs are the brightly illuminated company logos of Top Secret America: Northrop Grumman, SAIC, General Dynamics. Of the 1,931 companies identified by The Post that work on top-secret contracts, about 110 of them do roughly 90 percent of the work on the corporate side of the defense- intelligence-corporate world. To understand how these firms have come to dominate the post-9/11 era, there's no better place to start than the Herndon office of General Dynamics. One recent afternoon there, Ken Pohill was watching a series of unclassified images, the first of which showed a white truck moving across his computer monitor. The truck was in Afghanistan, and a video camera bolted to the belly of a U.S. surveillance plane was following it. Pohill could access a dozen images that might help an intelligence analyst figure out whether the truck driver was just a truck driver or part of a network making roadside bombs to kill American soldiers. To do this, he clicked his computer mouse. Up popped a picture of the truck driver's house, with notes about visitors. Another click. Up popped infrared video of the vehicle. Click: Analysis of an object thrown from the driver's side. Click: U-2 imagery. Click: A history of the truck's movement. Click: A Google Earth map of friendly forces. Click: A chat box with everyone else following the truck, too. Ten years ago, if Pohill had worked for General Dynamics, he probably would have had a job bending steel. Then, the company's center of gravity was the industrial port city of Groton, Conn., where men and women in wet galoshes churned out submarines, the thoroughbreds of naval warfare. Today, the firm's commercial core is made up of data tools such as the digital imagery library in Herndon and the secure BlackBerry-like device used by President Obama, both developed at a carpeted suburban office by employees in loafers and heels. The evolution of General Dynamics was based on one simple strategy: Follow the money. The company embraced the emerging intelligence-driven style of warfare. It developed small-target identification systems and equipment that could intercept an insurgent's cellphone and laptop communications. It found ways to sort the billions of data points collected by intelligence agencies into piles of information that a single person could analyze. It also began gobbling up smaller companies that could help it dominate the new intelligence landscape, just as its competitors were doing. Between 2001 and 2010, the company acquired 11 firms specializing in satellites, signals and geospatial intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, technology integration and imagery. On Sept. 11, 2001, General Dynamics was working with nine intelligence organizations. Now it has contracts with all 16. Its employees fill the halls of the NSA and DHS. The corporation was paid hundreds of millions of dollars to set up and manage DHS's new offices in 2003, including its National Operations Center, Office of Intelligence and Analysis and Office of Security. Its employees do everything from deciding which threats to investigate to answering phones. General Dynamics' bottom line reflects its successful transformation. It also reflects how much the U.S. government--the firm's largest customer by far--has paid the company beyond what it costs to do the work, which is, after all, the goal of every profit-making corporation. The company reported $31.9 billion in revenue in 2009, up from $10.4 billion in 2000. Its workforce has more than doubled in that time, from 43,300 to 91,700 employees, according to the company. Revenue from General Dynamics' intelligence- and information-related divisions, where the majority of its top- secret work is done, climbed to $10 billion in the second quarter of 2009, up from $2.4 billion in 2000, accounting for 34 percent of its overall revenue last year. The company's profitability is on display in its Falls Church headquarters. There's a soaring, art-filled lobby, bistro meals served on china enameled with the General Dynamics logo and an auditorium with seven rows of white leather-upholstered seats, each with its own microphone and laptop docking station. General Dynamics now has operations in every corner of the intelligence world. It helps counterintelligence operators and trains new analysts. It has a $600 million Air Force contract to intercept communications. It makes $1 billion a year keeping hackers out of U.S. computer networks and encrypting military communications. It even conducts information operations, the murky military art of trying to persuade foreigners to align their views with U.S. interests. ``The American intelligence community is an important market for our company,'' said General Dynamics spokesman Kendell Pease. ``Over time, we have tailored our organization to deliver affordable, best-of-breed products and services to meet those agencies' unique requirements.'' In September 2009, General Dynamics won a $10 million contract from the U.S. Special Operations Command's psychological operations unit to create Web sites to influence foreigners' views of U.S. policy. To do that, the company hired writers, editors and designers to produce a set of daily news sites tailored to five regions of the world. They appear as regular news Web sites, with names such as ``SETimes.com: The News and Views of Southeast Europe.'' The first indication that they are run on behalf of the military comes at the bottom of the home page with the word ``Disclaimer.'' Only by clicking on that do you learn that ``the Southeast European Times (SET) is a Web site sponsored by the United States European Command.'' What all of these contracts add up to: This year, General Dynamics' overall revenue was $7.8 billion in the first quarter, Jay L. Johnson, the company's chief executive and president, said at an earnings conference call in April. ``We've hit the deck running in the first quarter,'' he said, ``and we're on our way to another successful year.'' In the shadow of giants such as General Dynamics are 1,814 small to midsize companies that do top-secret work. About a third of them were established after Sept. 11, 2001, to take advantage of the huge flow of taxpayer money into the private sector. Many are led by former intelligence agency officials who know exactly whom to approach for work. Abraxas of Herndon, headed by a former CIA spy, quickly became a major CIA contractor after 9/11. Its staff even recruited midlevel managers during work hours from the CIA's cafeteria, former agency officers recall. Other small and medium-size firms sell niche technical expertise such as engineering for low-orbit satellites or long-dwell sensors. But the vast majority have not invented anything at all. Instead, they replicate what the government's workforce already does. A company called SGIS, founded soon after the 2001 attacks, was one of these. In June 2002, from the spare bedroom of his San Diego home, 30-year-old Hany Girgis put together an information technology team that won its first Defense Department contract four months later. By the end of the year, SGIS had opened a Tampa office close to the U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command, had turned a profit and had 30 employees. SGIS sold the government the services of people with specialized skills; expanding the types of teams it could put together was one key to its growth. Eventually it offered engineers, analysts and cyber-security specialists for military, space and intelligence agencies. By 2003, the company's revenue was $3.7 million. By then, SGIS had become a subcontractor for General Dynamics, working at the secret level. Satisfied with the partnership, General Dynamics helped SGIS receive a top-secret facility clearance, which opened the doors to more work. By 2006, its revenue had multiplied tenfold, to $30.6 million, and the company had hired employees who specialized in government contracting just to help it win more contracts. ``We knew that's where we wanted to play,'' Girgis said in a phone interview. ``There's always going to be a need to protect the homeland.'' Eight years after it began, SGIS was up to revenue of $101 million, 14 offices and 675 employees. Those with top-secret clearances worked for 11 government agencies, according to The Post's database. The company's marketing efforts had grown, too, both in size and sophistication. Its Web site, for example, showed an image of Navy sailors lined up on a battleship over the words ``Proud to serve'' and another image of a Navy helicopter flying near the Statue of Liberty over the words ``Preserving freedom.'' And if it seemed hard to distinguish SGIS's work from the government's, it's because they were doing so many of the same things. SGIS employees replaced military personnel at the Pentagon's 24/7 telecommunications center. SGIS employees conducted terrorist threat analysis. SGIS employees provided help-desk support for federal computer systems. Still, as alike as they seemed, there were crucial differences. For one, unlike in government, if an SGIS employee did a good job, he might walk into the parking lot one day and be surprised by co-workers clapping at his latest bonus: a leased, dark-blue Mercedes convertible. And he might say, as a video camera recorded him sliding into the soft leather driver's seat, ``Ahhhh . . . this is spectacular.'' And then there was what happened to SGIS last month, when it did the one thing the federal government can never do. It sold itself. The new owner is a Fairfax-based company called Salient Federal Solutions, created just last year. It is a management company and a private-equity firm with lots of Washington connections that, with the purchase of SGIS, it intends to parlay into contracts. ``We have an objective,'' says chief executive and President Brad Antle, ``to make $500 million in five years.'' Of all the different companies in Top Secret America, the most numerous by far are the information technology, or IT, firms. About 800 firms do nothing but IT. Some IT companies integrate the mishmash of computer systems within one agency; others build digital links between agencies; still others have created software and hardware that can mine and analyze vast quantities of data. The government is nearly totally dependent on these firms. Their close relationship was on display recently at the Defense Intelligence Agency's annual information technology conference in Phoenix. The agency expected the same IT firms angling for its business to pay for the entire five-day get- together, a DIA spokesman confirmed. And they did. General Dynamics spent $30,000 on the event. On a perfect spring night, it hosted a party at Chase Field, a 48,569-seat baseball stadium, reserved exclusively for the conference attendees. Government buyers and corporate sellers drank beer and ate hot dogs while the DIA director's morning keynote speech replayed on the gigantic scoreboard, digital baseballs bouncing along the bottom of the screen. Carahsoft Technology, a DIA contractor, invited guests to a casino night where intelligence officials and vendors ate, drank and bet phony money at craps tables run by professional dealers. The McAfee network security company, a Defense Department contractor, welcomed guests to a Margaritaville-themed social on the garden terrace of the hotel across the street from the convention site, where 250 firms paid thousands of dollars each to advertise their services and make their pitches to intelligence officials walking the exhibition hall. Government officials and company executives say these networking events are critical to building a strong relationship between the public and private sectors. ``If I make one contact each day, it's worth it,'' said Tom Conway, director of federal business development for McAfee. As for what a government agency gets out of it: ``Our goal is to be open and learn stuff,'' said Grant M. Schneider, the DIA's chief information officer and one of the conference's main draws. By going outside Washington, where many of the firms are headquartered, ``we get more synergy. . . . It's an interchange with industry.'' These types of gatherings happen every week. Many of them are closed to anyone without a top-secret clearance. At a U.S. Special Operations Command conference in Fayetteville, N.C., in April, vendors paid for access to some of the people who decide what services and gadgets to buy for troops. In mid-May, the national security industry held a black-tie evening funded by the same corporations seeking business from the defense, intelligence and congressional leaders seated at their tables. Such coziness worries other officials who believe the post- 9/11 defense-intelligence-corporate relationship has become, as one senior military intelligence officer described it, a ``self-licking ice cream cone.'' Another official, a longtime conservative staffer on the Senate Armed Services Committee, described it as ``a living, breathing organism'' impossible to control or curtail. ``How much money has been involved is just mind-boggling,'' he said. ``We've built such a vast instrument. What are you going to do with this thing? . . . It's turned into a jobs program.'' Even some of those gathered in Phoenix criticized the size and disjointedness of the intelligence community and its contracting base. ``Redundancy is the unacceptable norm,'' Lt. Gen. Richard P. Zahner, Army deputy chief of staff for intelligence, told the 2,000 attendees. ``Are we spending our resources effectively? . . . If we have not gotten our houses in order, someone will do it for us.'' On a day that also featured free back rubs, shoeshines, ice cream and fruit smoothies, another speaker, Kevin P. Meiners, a deputy undersecretary for intelligence, gave the audience what he called ``the secret sauce,'' the key to thriving even when the Defense Department budget eventually stabilizes and stops rising so rapidly. ``Overhead,'' Meiners told them--that's what's going to get cut first. Overhead used to mean paper clips and toner. Now it's information technology, IT, the very products and services sold by the businesspeople in the audience. ``You should describe what you do as a weapons system, not overhead,'' Meiners instructed. ``Overhead to them--I'm giving you the secret sauce here--is IT and people. . . . You have to foot-stomp hard that this is a war-fighting system that's helping save people's lives every day.'' After he finished, many of the government officials listening headed to the exhibit hall, where company salespeople waited in display booths. Peter Coddington, chief executive of InTTENSITY, a small firm whose software teaches computers to ``read'' documents, was ready for them. ``You have to differentiate yourself,'' he said as they fanned out into the aisles. Coddington had glass beer mugs and pens twirling atop paperweight pyramids to help persuade officials of the nation's largest military intelligence agency that he had something they needed. But first he needed them to stop walking so fast, to slow down long enough for him to start his pitch. His twirling pens seemed to do the job. ``It's like moths to fire,'' Coddington whispered. A DIA official with a tote bag approached. She spotted the pens, and her pace slowed. ``Want a pen?'' Coddington called. She hesitated. ``Ah . . . I have three children,'' she said. ``Want three pens?'' She stopped. In Top Secret America, every moment is an opportunity. ``We're a text extraction company . . . ,'' Coddington began, handing her the pens.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize an outstanding Vermonter, Dr. William Tonti of Essex Junction. On February 1, 2011 Dr. Tonti celebrated an astonishing milestone: He earned his 250th patent making him one of the most accomplished inventors in Vermont and the country. This impressive accomplishment is worthy of recognition by this Congress. Dr. Tonti is a graduate of Northwestern University where he earned his Bachelor's of Science in Electrical Engineering. He continued his education in Vermont, first earning an MBA from St. Michaels College and then a Master's of Science and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Vermont. In 1978, he began what would prove to be a distinguished career at IBM in Essex Junction, Vermont. Dr. Tonti's work focused on areas fundamental to the functioning of our society, including advanced DRAM semiconductors, nanotechnology, microprocessors and chip reliability. In addition to his professional accomplishments, Dr. Tonti has been an been an active community member and citizen. His commitment to IBM is only surpassed by his dedication and commitment to his wife, Debbie, and daughters, Janelle and Samantha. Dr. Tonti was recently named an IBM Master Inventor for Life, a great honor that IBM bestows to only a handful of its most innovative employees worldwide. This is a fitting recognition for a lifetime of impressive accomplishments and for a Vermonter of high character. As Vermont's Representative in this Congress, I ask that Dr. Tonti be recognized for his accomplishments and applauded for his contributions to the state of Vermont and this country.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman. Imagine what we could do for the American consumer at the pump if we stopped lobbing rhetorical grenades back and forth and decided to focus on the concrete things that it is within our power to do today that would lower the price at the pump. There's three things. One, why are we giving tax breaks to oil companies? You do have to wonder. A trillion dollars in profits. Nothing wrong with that. But do they really need to reach into the pocket of the American consumer and get $40 billion on top of that? That's number one. Number two, have the futures market be about protecting the consumer, not enriching the hedge fund Wall Street speculator. It is astonishing what's going on. And it's so bad that even Goldman Sachs acknowledges that at least $27 on the price of a $110 barrel of oil is about speculation. Why in the world do we allow that? Because every time you and I go to the pump, our constituents go to the pump, they're paying for Wall Street and they're paying for tax breaks to oil companies. The third thing we can do, and we can do it short-term, is go into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Two Republican Presidents and one Democratic President have done that with great effect--lowering the price 33 percent, 19 percent, and 9 percent. It gives immediate relief to the consumer at the pump. We can do this together if the agenda is about doing something for your constituent and mine and not just having this political food fight. End speculation, end the tax breaks, and go into that asset belonging to all of us, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and bring prices down immediately.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady. Does it mean that if you're doing research on biotechnology, that the tax credit is going to be restricted and dictated by a majority, whoever it happens to be, of this House of Representatives? The basic question for this Congress is whether we're going to allow the status quo to exist through the Hyde amendment where people can exercise their conscience on this important question, or are we going to have a dictation from this Congress that absolutely and completely prohibits people from making that choice themselves. The mutual respect that Mr. Hyde understood we needed in this country is really going to be frayed with this legislation. So I would urge Members to vote against this legislation. That's out of respect for the fact that there are sharply different views on this extraordinarily important question.

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady. Henry Hyde was one of the outstanding Members of the House of Representatives in the history of the House of Representatives. He believed intently in a pro-life position, and the remarks of colleagues who support this legislation are ones that I think Mr. Hyde would approve of. But he was also a master legislator, and he understood that other people have a different point of view than he has, and on the matter of abortion, something that is a matter of faith for many people, a matter of conscience for everyone, there are different points of view. The excellent job that Mr. Hyde did was to take direct taxpayer funding out of the equation. If there were going to be abortions, they were not going to be paid for by taxpayer dollars. This amendment takes it a radical step further. What it does is it says, if there is any tax credit that is part of a health care plan, then this legislation would prohibit a small business from offering that health care plan to its workers. Now, just think about the enormous burden that is being placed on hundreds, if not thousands, of small businesses in Vermont, on millions of small businesses in this country. Every one of those businesses, where it offers a comprehensive health care plan to their employees that may include abortion services, suddenly has to unravel those plans and deny that coverage to its workers. So what we have is an action by the sponsors of this legislation that would impose its will far beyond what Mr. Hyde ever did or sought to do on every small business in this country. By the way, there's another issue here, a precedent. If now we're starting to interfere with the use of tax credits, does this mean the next target is what kind of home you buy if you're going to get the use of a taxpayer deduction?

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Thank you. I want to talk a minute about Social Security. You have access to Social Security whether you live in Texas or you live in Vermont. It's a program that benefits every single citizen of this country. The underlying premise of Social Security is that we're all in it together. We all pay into the benefit program and we all benefit, whether you're rich or whether you're poor. We're all in it together. Our amendment acknowledges that this is a stronger and better country if all of us have access to affordable health care, whether you live in Texas or you live in Vermont. So, yes, it is true that in the Welch amendment we maintain that national commitment to all Americans being covered and all Americans benefiting by access to health care, which we know they need. But what it also does is say that in the implementation and in the delivery of health care, driving decisions and authority down to the local level will help us be successful. It will allow States to show that maybe they have the better way of achieving this goal of access to health care for every citizen in the country. So, yes, I say to the gentleman from Texas, we do embrace in my amendment the concept that every American should have access to affordable health care. But what we also do, I say to the gentleman from Texas, is acknowledge that States can experiment; that folks at the local level may have a better way to make decisions and actually to deliver care. And if they design a plan in Texas to do it one way and we design a plan to do it in Vermont another way, why not? Why not let the States figure out how to make good on this promise to America that every one of us can have access to the health care that we need. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman, this Congress and the last Congress are at odds about health care. It is a fundamental question of fundamental importance to the people of this country. The last Congress passed the Patient Protection and Affordability Act. The first act of this Congress, of the House of Representatives, was to repeal that act. We have got disagreement about what should be done. The House legislation is pending in the Senate, likely to go nowhere. This legislation before us today is a further effort to unravel the law that was passed by the House, the Senate, and signed by the President last year. Acknowledging that there is a serious debate within this body about the future direction of health care, this amendment would allow for the State health exchanges, where there have been applications by 13 States for early innovator grants, to go forward. It would exempt from the defunding $1.9 billion that would be then subject to appropriations up to that amount. It wouldn't guarantee it. It would be subject to appropriations. My preference, quite frankly, was to make that mandatory, as it was in the original bill, but that was not permitted under the rules in order to make this amendment in order. The advantage to doing this is it does, and I speak to my friend the gentleman from Texas, it allows the local States to be making decisions about how best to design their health care. Just to go through some of the recitation by the gentleman from Texas, the early innovator grants have been awarded to 11 States. Again, it allows them to decide what is the best design of these health exchanges. And these States include what we might call red States and blue States. It is Kansas and Wisconsin. It is Maryland and Massachusetts. It does include Vermont, my State, that has taken on responsibility to try to move forward to design a health care system that is good for business, good for consumers, and good for taxpayers. So the fundamental question here is: Do you think that States can be a laboratory of experimentation and policy? The States take action. They implement a plan according to the design in Boston if it is Massachusetts, or Hartford if it is Connecticut, or Tulsa if it is Oklahoma, or Montpelier if it is Vermont; and the folks in that State, where they have fundamental responsibility for the citizens of that State, will be making the decision. This allows us to be partners with the States where they take on this responsibility. They get some help from the Federal Government to implement these health benefit exchanges, and we are allowed, then, to basically get the benefit of the Federal system where States make decisions and the Federal Government is a partner. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH. How much time do I have remaining?

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. What is the problem is that the Pentagon is off the table, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan are still on the credit card and off the table. Whatever our positions are on some of these matters, including military, we will all stand up, we have to pay our way.

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Madam Chair, one of the great companies in this Nation, and a big company in Vermont, is International Business Machines. This year they are about to celebrate their 100th anniversary. I was speaking to some folks from IBM in my office a few days ago, and they told me the story of what happened to them in 1992. The world was turning upside down in the tech industry. Companies that wanted to survive had to make big decisions. They had 400,000 employees, and there was some question as to whether they were going to make payroll. They had to make changes. They did two things. They looked at every single element of their operation. They looked at every single line item in their spending. In every single place they could make a cut, tough as it was, they did. They made cuts. But they also said where do we have to be in 10 years, and what do we have to do to get there? As nerve-wracking as it was for those folks at IBM, they made decisions to invest money in acquisitions, in research and development, to meet a plan that required investment, that required spending at a time when they were doing every single thing they could to save every single nickel. Now IBM is stronger than ever, and it's going to celebrate its 100th anniversary. This country has to make similar decisions. We have to cut. There is not an argument here. I listened to Paul Ryan when he gave his opening statement, and he said we have to leave this country and its fiscal state better off for our kids and grandkids. He is right. There is no question about it. That means like companies that look at a balance sheet, we have to look every single place we can to save money. The criticism about many governmental programs you know is right, we know is right. Wherever we can find that waste, fraud, or abuse, let's get rid of it. That serves nobody, Republican or Democrat. But on the other hand, we have to make investments. There are places we in fact do have to spend money. And we have seen that in the history of our country. So judgments have to be made. My question about the Republican budget is basically the premise in the budget. It's not the goal. Mr. Ryan stated that well. He speaks for me when he says about that obligation to leave our kids better off. But there are two premises in the budget as I see it. One is that lower taxes are always better and will lead to growth. Sometimes that's true, but not always. We have to have revenues to pay for infrastructure, to pay for things like broadband deployment, to pay for the National Institute of Science, things that we might argue about where is the best priority, but we need revenues to do things like a company needs revenues to make investments. The second premise is that less spending is always better than more investment. Those, as I see it, are the two premises that are in the Ryan budget. And those are debatable. Now, the other aspect of the budget that in my view, Madam Chair, is lacking is what's off the table. It's not what's on the table. I don't agree with the Medicare proposal in the Ryan budget. But it's fair to put Medicare on the table for debate. We've got to make that more affordable.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman for yielding. America is in a very dangerous place on this budget, and it's not an unsolvable problem. We can get from where we are to where we need to be--and that is fiscal balance--if we put everything on the table and have a balanced approach. If, instead, we limit our consideration to essentially 12 percent of the budget, the so-called ``domestic discretionary''--things like low-income heating assistance, the Small Business Administration, scholarships for our kids wanting to go to college, scientific research--if we limit our attention to that 12 percent of the budget, even if we cut that entire 12 percent we would have trillion dollar deficits for as far as the eye can see. It won't work. There is a design defect here. We have aggravated it with the deal that was made to extend the tax cuts at the high end when we were here in our special session after the last election, that $750 billion that we have to borrow in order to pay for those tax cuts for the top 2 percent. We have to put everything on the table. It has to include the Pentagon, it has to include revenues, it has to include eliminating wasteful and unproductive, non-job-generating tax expenditures to mature and profitable industries like the oil industry. It has to include eliminating the ethanol subsidy, something that was promoted by the Member from Oklahoma (Mr. Sullivan). We put everything on the table. We can get from where we are to where we need to be. One thing we also cannot do is start playing budgetary hostage taking. There is looming ahead of us the question of whether we will raise the debt ceiling or use that as a leverage point, as some are suggesting. This is not a leverage point; it's a moral obligation. America was in fiscal balance in the 8 years of the Clinton administration. When he handed the keys over to the new President, Mr. Bush, there was a projected $5.7 trillion deficit.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Yes, thank you. I appreciate your historical perspective on it. There are really two things that I want to address. Number one: What are the policies that were part of getting us to that $11.5 trillion deficit? Number two: What do we need to do now in order to get to fiscal balance? The two policies were, one, a war of choice where the Pentagon in its activities was not subject to the same scrutiny of actually having to pay as you go, so the cost of the war in Iraq was $1 trillion. The war in Afghanistan, as you mentioned, started out as a mission to dislodge Osama bin Laden. It was transformed into nation-building. And no matter how necessary or debatable either of those events were, those wars were, you do have to pay for it. It's not as though because it's in the name of national security it can be exempt from fiscal responsibility. In fact, what's unusual is that this is the first time in the history of our country where we have been at war where we actually haven't asked for shared sacrifice by the taxpayers, but we've made the entire burden be borne by our military. So we've got to pay; and we didn't do it, as you pointed out. The second is the theory that's being advanced by many that if you cut taxes, it will create wealth and create jobs. In some places and some times and in some circumstances that will work. In fact, many standard economists say that in a recession, it's the time to cut taxes, not raise them. But the more that is focused on the middle class who are struggling--especially in a down economic time--to pay their bills, if they get a tax cut, they have discretionary income or they have income liberated, that money is going to go right back into the economy. But every tax cut does not generate jobs, and many tax cuts end up adding significantly to the deficit. The President Bush tax cut in 2001 and the President Bush tax cut in 2003 added $2.3 billion to the deficit. So you have a Pentagon that is not subject to pay-as-you-go and you have tax cuts that don't pay for themselves. Those are two major contributing factors to that $11.5 trillion deficit on the heels of a $5.6 trillion surplus. The debate we are having now in this House is enormously consequential to the future. Republicans won this last election, and a major argument they made is that we've got to get spending under control. They're right. I agree with that. We have to get to fiscal balance. The challenge is if we're going to get there, do we need a plan that repeats those two policies of the Bush administration, namely, keeping the Pentagon off the table and increasing tax cuts, particularly to the high end, but keeping off the table Pentagon savings, keeping off the table eliminating tax loopholes and keeping off the table the question of revenues? Democrats, in my view, have to be willing to come forward and say, look, the programs that we have been strong supporters of have to be re-examined, we have to reform them, we have to make them more efficient; and if they are not working, we have to acknowledge that and move on. We have to do our share. The President's proposal that would freeze domestic spending for 5 years is pretty dramatic, but many Democrats would be willing to support tough medicine as long as the plan had on the table other things that are major contributors to the fiscal situation we're in. That's, of course, revenues; that's, of course, the Pentagon; and that's, of course, tax loopholes in the tax system. We can get from where we are to where we need to be. We saw that in recent years when it happened under President Clinton. Again, as you pointed out, in those years, Tax Codes matter; but in the Clinton years when we had higher tax rates, we created 20 million jobs. In the Bush years when we had lower tax rates, we created 600,000 jobs. And also incomes were increasing. So this has to be reviewed by this body, in my view, as a practical problem for us to solve, not an ideological argument that every tax cut is going to be beneficial anymore than every spending program is going to be beneficial. You have to apply judgment to the situation at hand. The big challenge for us is restoring the fiscal balance.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Thank you, Mr. Dicks. There is something we have to acknowledge, whatever side of the issue we are going to vote on: we are playing with fire. A government shutdown is going to have two consequences: one, the obvious, and that is folks that depend on governmental services are going to be enormously inconvenienced. Contractors who are owed money from the Federal Government won't be paid. Our citizens are going to be adversely hurt. And folks who work honestly and hard every day for the Federal Government are going to be out of a job. That's significant. But what's really significant in the long term is that this is sending a signal to the world, not just America, that the American political process is fundamentally broken. If we are unable to reach an agreement on a 1-week continuing resolution to keep government going, what are the prospects for us when we face the challenge of a budget next year? What are the prospects for us when we face the challenge that looms ahead of us in May of raising the debt ceiling so that America can honor the obligation that it has to pay its bills? When the world begins to lose confidence that America's political process can function, it is going to have a very dramatic and negative impact on the economy. Interest rates are going to go up because the cost of borrowing will go up because the anxiety about whether America meets its obligations will increase. We are playing with fire here. The biggest problem I have with the proposals that have been made fiscally on the other side in my view is that they are designed to fail. It's not that there isn't a legitimate concern about spending and getting our fiscal house in order. You're right about that. We share that. But if we're going to get from here to there, you cannot attack 100 percent of the problem on 12 percent of the budget.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Mr. Speaker, today I stand before you to honor Bob Young, the retiring president of Central Vermont Public Service. In his time at CVPS, Bob led the company through a cultural, service and environmental transformation to the benefit of its customers and the Green Mountain State. He turned CVPS into a leaner, more responsive company that placed customer service, reliability and corporate citizenship as its cornerstones. When Bob assumed the presidency in 1995, CVPS faced a host of challenges, from utility restructuring to rate pressures to low employee morale. CVPS was often perceived as out of touch with Vermont values, and regulatory conflicts were common. Bob put an end, to `business as usual' and transformed CVPS into a world-class utility, recognized by Forbes as one of 100 most trustworthy companies in the U.S. Under Bob's leadership, CVPS won the Edison Electric Institute's Emergency Recovery Award three times. It is the nation's smallest utility to win it even once. Bob focused the company on reducing environmental impacts, improving wildlife habitats and creating the nation's first manure-to-energy customer choice program. The Department of Energy subsequently awarded CVPS the 2009 Utility Green Power Program of the Year. Bob made CVPS a model of corporate civic engagement, providing leadership on a host of community projects in Vermont, and organizing blood drives that have broken the New England record three years in a row. Bob will leave a lasting legacy when he retires on May 3, 2011. Please join me today in thanking Bob Young for his leadership and in wishing him and his wife, Vicky, the very best in the next phase of their lives.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam Speaker, I speak today to honor one of Vermont's outstanding civic and corporate leaders. Bob Young is retiring as president of Central Vermont Public Service Company, one of Vermont's largest and most respected companies. When Bob Young became president, that utility faced many challenges. He faced them directly: rising costs, transmission system upgrades, a customer base that wanted reliable power but green power. Bob Young succeeded in making CVPS an award-winning company. He focused on customer service and environmental concern and stewardship, proving that green power could be reliable and affordable. It was a team effort. His valued employees, his diligent board of directors and his shareholders, all were part of it. But the best part was wife, Vicky, who was not only at his side but oftentimes a step ahead. You served Vermont well, and on behalf of a grateful Vermont, Bob and Vicky, thank you for your service.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman. Madam Speaker, today's legislation is essentially about the very simple sounding act of abolishing the Clean Air Act. Why? How is it that we are going to do this? The authors in support of this legislation have come to the legislative conclusion that global warming is a hoax. Give him credit. Coming to that conclusion was a big lift. It flies in the face of the unanimous conclusion of American scientists, 97 percent, that global warming is real and it's manmade. And, you know, when you are going to get to that conclusion, you have to follow a long-established tradition we humans have, and that's the ability to disregard the obvious and the proven when that conflicts with what our ideology says we want. You know, Aristotle was the EPA of his day. He was attacked when he said that the Earth was round. The world at that time thought the world was flat, and people argued with Aristotle and about Aristotle for 1,500 years. Galileo became the EPA of his day when he said that the Earth revolved around the sun. He too was attacked for centuries for being ``wrong.'' Today we have unanimous, near unanimous, scientific conclusion that global warming exists, it's a threat to our planet, it's a threat to our health and, yet, as the folks who attacked Aristotle when he said the Earth was round, as the folks who attacked Galileo when he said the Earth revolved around the sun, the authors, in support of this legislation, deny the proven fact of global warming and wave it away by abolishing the Clean Air Act. This is the wrong step to be taking.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. John Adler was in the class just after me, and I got to know him well because the freshman and sophomore classes went through learning how to serve in this Congress together. I also got to know him because we happened to have our lockers in the same section of the gym. And I am stunned, as we all are. But what was so amazing to me, in my getting to know John Adler, was I learned about his Harvard education, the college and the law school. I had some assumptions about him that he had a much more prosperous early life than he did. He had to earn everything that he got. I also learned about the challenges that he faced. And what was clear to me, as it was to all of us who got to know him, is that he was a person who made a decision that whatever the challenge, he was going to face it with good humor, with optimism, with a sense of doing the work because it was worth doing in and of itself. I also remember many times asking him about his weekend; and what he always responded with was something about his family. It wasn't about the speech he gave; it wasn't about the press release or a story in the paper on TV. It was always, every single time, about his family. John Adler was a good friend. He will be missed. A wonderful, wonderful servant in Congress.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentlelady. The House passed H.R. 1 with the Republican majority. It can't get it through the Senate. They're frustrated. Their responsibility is to be direct with the people who supported their passage of H.R. 1, and being direct with those folks is telling them they have a problem in the Senate. The reason they have a problem in the Senate is because the Senate has a problem with the bill. Coming into this House of Representatives as a political gambit to pass a ``let's pretend'' bill: let's pretend if the House passes it, it becomes law, without Senate action; let's pretend that if the House passes it, it becomes law without the Senate or the President signing it. That is misleading and not being straight with the folks who supported H.R. 1. Tell them the truth. They have a problem with the Senate. Now, there's a reason they have a problem with the Senate. H.R. 1 is a bill designed to fail. It will not address the deficit. It will reduce spending in some areas. If you're low income and getting heating assistance, you will lose some money. If you're an oil company that's making $55 billion in tax breaks from people, you will continue to receive it. If you have the practice of putting our two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, on the credit card, that will continue. What H.R. 1 did was target low-income folks, middle class folks, and it left all the other aspects of the budget off the table that have to be on the table if we're going to get the fiscal balance. Number two, H.R. 1 was loaded with political hand grenades that were designed to make this thing blow up. And that's what's happening in the Senate: things like ending National Public Radio or Planned Parenthood; getting into a debate about choice and abortion. All of those are issues that are vitally important and legitimate to be debated. But why put them on a bill where the objective of the bill is to help bring us into fiscal balance? That's a self-conscious decision, it's a willful decision, and a decision that has implications. And you're seeing it played out in the United States Senate. H.R. 1 will not succeed in the challenge we face getting us the fiscal balance. And that is the problem that the majority in the House is having with that bill. Coming in here with a bill that's flatly, explicitly unconstitutional by its own language, not what the sponsors say the bill does, but what the bill says it does. Allowing the House by its unilateral action to pass legislation is unconstitutional, it has no merit, and it is simply a way of trying to avoid responsibility.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. I thank the gentleman. Madam Speaker, there is no stronger supporter of H.R. 1 than Mr. Gohmert from Texas, and he made a very simple, very elegant, very eloquent statement of principle about adhering to the Constitution. This legislation has to be interpreted by its own words, not by what people say is in it. What it explicitly says is that, if the House has not received a message from the Senate before April 6 stating that it has passed a measure providing for the appropriation for the departments and agencies of government for the remainder of the fiscal year--and this is the language of your legislation--the provisions of H.R. 1, as passed by law on February 19, 2011, are hereby enacted into law. That's absurd. It's a pretend bill that says, if the House acts and the Senate doesn't, our action becomes law. It's absurd. It says, if the House acts and if the Senate doesn't and if the President doesn't sign this piece of legislation, it's law. That's the document that you've presented to this body to vote on. Now, Mr. Gohmert took the higher road here. Instead of taking out his frustration with the United States Senate at the expense of the Constitution, he stood up for the Constitution. That's what each and every one of us has the opportunity to do. All of us have had frustration with the other body because they sit on bills and kill them. In the eyes of the beholder, it's a good or bad bill, but it does not entitle us to essentially pretend that the Constitution doesn't apply to the legislation that we have to consider. Also, if we have the political and practical problem of moving ahead on a piece of legislation in the House, is it right for us, in effect, to mislead the people who sent us here by suggesting that we're passing a law that has any impact when we know it has absolutely no impact? Is that a fair, appropriate or honorable thing for a Democrat or a Republican to do? I urge us to vote ``no'' on this legislation.

Mr. WELCH

Mr. WELCH. Madam Speaker, today, I intend to use my 5 minutes to talk about the budget crisis that is before Congress. We have to make a decision whether to continue the operations of government. That's the debate that is now under way with the continuing resolution, and we soon face the question of whether or not Congress will extend the debt limit. Now, let me start by acknowledging the obvious. America has to get its fiscal house in order. How we got here is debated, but certain things are indisputable. We have two wars that have been paid for on the credit card. We had tax cuts that went to the high-income Americans that are on the credit card. We recently extended them at the cost of $700 billion to the deficit. We had irresponsible behavior on the part of Wall Street that required rescuing the financial system in America so that Main Street could fight and survive another day. And then that led to a collapse in the economy and 10 percent unemployment that required governmental action in order to try the stabilize the economy. We have a long way to go in restoring the economy, but that has to be our first mission. The Republican proposal on how to address this budget in these continuing resolutions will fail. The reason it will fail is because it fails to do what must obviously be done if we're going to have long- term fiscal stability, and that is put everything on the table. The cuts that are proposed by the Republican majority, unwise as they are, cannot do the job. The total focus of the Republican effort in its budget plan to restore fiscal balance is to attack 12\1/2\ percent of the budget, the non-defense discretionary portion of the budget. It happens to be programs that are benefiting Americans in many cases, but leaving aside the debate about whether we should cut low-income heating assistance for the most vulnerable Americans or cut Pell scholarships that allow aspiring young people to enter the middle class, we could cut the entire non-defense discretionary portion of the budget and we could continue to have an annual deficit of $1 trillion. So, if we're going to get to budget balance and fiscal stability, which we can do, we have to put everything on the table, and that means tax expenditures. The tax breaks that have been written into the Tax Code over the years by Republicans and Democrats alike actually cost taxpayers more than the entire appropriations budget, and many of us are asking the question: Why is it that we are going to be continuing $5 billion in tax breaks to very profitable oil companies when oil is now selling at $106 a barrel? Why are we allowing that but at the same time cutting low-income heating assistance and turning down the thermostat of cold Vermonters and cold Americans? Why is it that hedge fund millionaires and billionaires literally pay a lower tax rate than their chauffeurs, their drivers, their cooks, their secretaries? We have got to put tax expenditures on the table. We have to put the defense budget on the table. How is it that America is spending over $700 billion a year? How is it that we are putting two wars on the credit card and not facing the fiscal responsibility to tell Americans how we are going to pay for that but are simply putting that burden on generations of Americans that will come after us? We have to reform health care. The first act of this Congress was to repeal the health care bill. And debate as we might about what's the best way forward on health care, no one can dispute that our first goal has to be to bring down the cost of health care; because whatever kind of system we have, if the cost is increasing two and three and four times the rate of inflation, job growth, and profits, it's not sustainable. And the health care bill that has been repealed by this Congress, this House of Representatives, that is going to add over $200 billion to the deficit over 10 years. So we have to put everything on the table. That's defense. That's tax expenditures. That's entitlements and how we can reform them so we can maintain benefits, not slash benefits. And Democrats have to be willing to come to the table on the traditional line items in the appropriations bill where we have to kick the tires and find ways to be responsible. If we do that by putting everything on the table, we have a chance to be successful and be on a path to fiscal stability and solvency. Refusing to put everything on the table guarantees failure.