Peter Welch

Mr. WELCH of Vermont

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Inslee). (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I urge a ``yes'' vote on the rule. The material previously referred to by Mr. Hastings of Washington is as follows: Amendment to H. Res. 1125 Offered by Mr. Hastings of Washington At the end of the resolution, add the following: Sec. 3. Notwithstanding any other provision of this resolution or the option of the previous question, it shall be in order to consider any amendment to the bill which the proponent asserts, if enacted, would have the effect of lowering the national average price per gallon of regular unleaded gasoline. Such amendments shall he considered as read, shall he debatable for thirty minutes equally divided and controlled by the proponent and an opponent, shall not be subject to amendment, and shall not be subject to a demand for division of the question in the House or in the Committee of the Whole. All points of order against such amendments are waived except those arising under clause 9 of rule XXI. For purposes of compliance with clause 9(a)(3) of rule XXI, a statement submitted for printing in the Congressional Record by the proponent of such amendment prior to its consideration shall have the same effect as a statement actually printed. Sec. 4. Within five legislative days the Speaker shall introduce a bill, the title of which is as follows: ``A bill to provide a common sense plan to help bring down skyrocketing gas prices.'' Such bill shall be referred to the appropriate committees of jurisdiction pursuant to clause 1 of rule X.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1125 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. For the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Hastings). All time yielded during the consideration of this rule is for debate only. I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I also ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 1125 provides for the consideration of H.R. 5819, the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Small Business Technology Transfer Program Reauthorization Act, under a structured rule. The rule provides for 1 hour of general debate, with 40 minutes controlled by the Committee on Small Business and 20 minutes controlled by the Committee on Science and Technology. The rule makes in order 17 amendments printed in the Rules Committee report. The amendments are each debatable for 10 minutes. The rule also provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions. Since its inception in 1982, SBIR has assisted small businesses to compete for Federal research and development awards. It does that by reserving a percentage of the Federal R&D funds for qualifying small firms which would not otherwise be able to compete in the Nation's R&D arena with larger companies. SBIR is a unique collaboration that allows Federal agencies to fund projects to meet specific agency needs while expanding opportunities for small businesses, including women and minority-owned businesses. SBIR has enhanced the role of innovative small businesses and higher education research institutions in federally funded research and development while fostering competition and productivity in economic growth. SBIR, Mr. Speaker, targets the entrepreneurial sector because that's where the innovators thrive. The risk and expense of conducting serious R&D efforts are often beyond the means of small businesses, so SBIR funds are a critical start-up in development stages, encourage the commercialization of technology, product or service, which in turn obviously helps the United States economy. And the results, by the way, speak for themselves. Not only are 85 percent of the businesses competing in SBIR small firms employing 20 or fewer persons, but the program has generated 50,000 patents over 25 years. SBIR has helped thousands of small businesses drive enhancements in our Nation's defense, new protections for our environment, and advances in health care. The National Research Council and the National Academies' report, in assessment of the Small Business Innovation Research Program, states, ``The SBIR program is sound in concept and effective in practice. The SBIR program has created a competitive entrepreneurial environment upon which small, independently owned businesses can compete to strengthen America's high technology economy. Many consider SBIR to be one of our most successful technology development programs.'' This rule allows for consideration of a welcomed reauthorization of the SBIR and STTR programs. Just very briefly, what it's going to do is increase the existing set-aside for SBIR to 3 percent, and for STTR to six-tenths of a percent, increase SBIR and STTR grant award levels, increase congressional oversight and evaluation of programs, make changes to shorten the application review periods, and create an outreach development program for underrepresented States, regions, types of businesses, and numbers in the workforce. With that, Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Wu), the Chair of the Subcommittee on Research.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 additional minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio).

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I recognize the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) for 3 minutes.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I yield 30 additional seconds to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I yield 1 additional minute to the gentleman from Massachusetts.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy).

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Stupak).

Mr. WELCH of Vermont

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. As a cosponsor, I strongly support this legislation. It was pretty shocking what we heard when this came up. Mr. Eric Prince of Blackwater was in before our committee, and the question was, how did your contracting go from $75 million to over $1 billion. And then in the course of it, what was your salary. He admitted to about $1 million in salary but then also disclosed there's about a 10 percent profit, which would mean, just by doing plain math, $100 million just in the bottom-line profit to the sole owner. We don't know exactly whether that's the case, but that's certainly the way it looks. Mr. Murphy's legislation will let the taxpayers know how much they are spending that goes to the bottom-line profit of an individual in this war when our soldiers are working so hard in such danger and getting so little pay for it. General Leave

Mr. WELCH of Vermont

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Chairman, I would like to engage the distinguished Chair of the Small Business Committee in a colloquy. First of all, I would like to thank you. Your committee has done extraordinary work throughout the year, probably produced more good legislation than any other. I want to thank you for working with me on this issue that is raised on this bill regarding the ability of small businesses to continue to use the SBIR program. Specifically, I want to thank you for agreeing to work with me to monitor agency actions to ensure that smaller firms are not represented in the agency's distribution of SBIR awards. Also, I want to say that I am pleased that you agree to work with me and in Congress and that this matter needs vigorous study, and we will work to ensure that a National Institute for Standards and Technology study, which I would like to place in the Record, is included in the conference.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Thank you.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, one of the fundamental responsibilities that this Congress has is to protect taxpayer dollars. That has become an enormous challenge, as many of the taxpayer dollars that are appropriated are paid to private contractors. The growth in contracting in the past 6 or 7 years has exploded. Procurement spending in 2000 was $213 billion. Procurement spending is when we enter into a contract with a private company to deliver goods or services. That amount exploded last year to $412 billion. Much of that is going to Iraq and Afghanistan. Much of this is being subject to waste, fraud and abuse. The Oversight Committee under Mr. Waxman and Mr. Davis has done vigorous oversight and identified in 2006 that there were 118 contracts valued at $745 billion that were found by government auditors to include a significant component of fraud, abuse and mismanagement. And, in fact, it got worse. In 2008, that report identified 187 contracts valued at $1.1 trillion, where they were plagued by waste, fraud and abuse. The bottom line is, will we, as a Congress, Republicans and Democrats, be vigilant in protecting taxpayer dollars? We have to do that, especially when there is documented evidence of rip-offs, wicked rip-offs that have occurred with taxpayer dollars in Afghanistan and in Iraq. There's two goals that we have. The first that we widely share is that every taxpayer dollar will be accounted for, and that the taxpayers who were working hard to support this government and our troops will see that their money is spent on proper things that are in the contract. We have to protect the taxpayer. The second is we've got to protect the troops. If we are spending money in Iraq and Afghanistan for the intended purpose of bringing our troops home and improving our national security, any dollar that's wasted that results in any additional injury, or one day prolonged in the conflicts, is a dollar that is improperly wasted. We cannot do that. So I believe that this loophole, however it got there, by mistake or by sleight of hand, however it got there, it's got to be closed. Obviously, if you have a regulation, as it was written, that says we will report fraud when it is a rip-off on a domestic contract, but we won't when it's on a foreign contract, we're sending a very unambiguous message. There's a green light to rip off taxpayers if the money is being spent abroad. That's not a defensible position. And that's why we're closing this loophole to make it absolutely clear that's unacceptable. Now I think it does make sense. What Congressman Davis proposed as a new way of proceeding is fine with me. And here's why. The bottom line is protecting the taxpayers and protecting our troops. And if we can accomplish that better by finding a way that has bipartisan support, we can all have more confidence that we'll be successful. So I'm glad to work with Chairman Davis in order to have this get done in a bipartisan way. I want to thank very much Chairman Waxman and the great work of my chairman of the subcommittee, Mr. Towns, for bringing this forward so quickly and so effectively.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 1103 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Madam Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Sessions). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate only. I yield myself such time as I may consume. I also ask unanimous consent that all Members be given 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks on House Resolution 1103.

Mr. WELCH of Vermont

Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I thank my colleague, the Member from Florida, and I also thank the chairman of the committee and the ranking member, Representative Miller and Representative McKeon. This whole question of the affordability of higher education we know is a crushing burden on middle class families. And it has been made much worse, as many of the speakers have pointed out, by the credit crisis, innocent victims caught up in the consequences of credit-gone- wild in the subprime mortgage. So I really appreciate, and I think all of us appreciate, the quick work of the committee to provide flexibility in financing that's going to be beneficial to working families across this country. One of the questions that has been on the mind of many of us, I think, on both sides of the aisle, however, is whether or not when we go to the well and ask taxpayers to put more money into student aid, as we've done and as we should do, and when we make loan eligibility more generous so families pinch themselves in order to take on additional debt and students take on additional debt, the question we're starting to ask is whether or not that becomes a way in which institutions of higher education simply increase tuition. And then at the end of the day, you find that the families are increasing their debt load. Their kids are going to school, but they're graduating with a mountain of debt that's equal to the mortgage on the house that many of us, when we first bought our home, is equal to. So Representative Castle had an idea, and I joined with him, to ask for the first time to get a study from the General Services Administration to see what connection exists between tuition going up as student aid, both grants and loans, increases. I am pleased that the committee has seen fit to support this amendment that Congressman Castle and I are offering because we have to do two things if we're going to make college affordable: One is, we've got to make grants and loans available to our students and the families. But two, we really have to ask the institutions of higher education to do something on the cost side. And that's the intent of this amendment, to start getting information that will be available to us to consider whether enough is being done on the cost side.