Rob Woodall

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, how much time remains?

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself 15 seconds to say nothing can be further from the truth. There is a specific provision in this amendment that says you shall not disclose anything for which the disclosure would violate your commitments under Federal law. All we're asking is for whatever EPA saw, whatever the agency saw to make their decision. If it was good enough for the agency, shouldn't it be good enough for Congress as well? With that, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy).

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself the balance of my time to say that I think I speak for most of America that says I understand the government has to make decisions, but since the government is making those decisions on my behalf, shouldn't the government share with me the data that it uses to make those decisions? The gentleman says this is going to hold EPA to a higher standard than the other agencies. I would say to the gentleman, you can look forward to me being back with this same amendment for absolutely every agency. All we're saying is if you've seen the data, if you've utilized the data, if you believe this is sound enough science on which to base a regulation that is going to cost not $1, not $100, not $1,000, not $1 million, but more than $1 billion, isn't it worth sharing with the American people how you reached that conclusion? Mr. Chairman, the work that we do here, we should be proud enough of to share with absolutely anyone who asks. This is about transparency. And even if you don't support the underlying bill--I'm a strong supporter, but even if you don't--you should support in the context of transparency providing the underlying materials to the American public that went into this decisionmaking process. Mr. Chairman, this is a great step forward as a transparency tool for the American public to restore that faith in government that has been lost. I rise in strong support of the underlying bill and ask my colleagues to support the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume to talk about an amendment that recognizes that knowledge is power. So often today, we've talked about what we can do to make the government more accountable to the people. One of those things is entailed in the underlying bill that says, for these big rules that make a big difference, tell us what it is that you did. How did you come to this decision that this is the rule that you want to implement? My amendment goes one step further and asks for the underlying data on which that decision was made. We want to know what those calculations were. It's going to be a good step forward if we can get agencies to share with us their modeling, but one step further would be those calculations that went into the modeling and came out of the modeling. What about the underlying data, Mr. Chairman? How in the world can we be in a conversation with the American people as the Congress with the agencies if we don't have access to the underlying data? This is not a trade secret. This is not private information. This is the information that the agency uses to promulgate these rules that will then govern the entire United States of America. We simply say, if the disclosure of that data won't violate any laws, if it won't violate any trade secrets, if it's not going to be in violation of any applicable Federal laws, share that with America, post that on your Web page so that anyone who is interested in understanding how it is that these decisions that often go on behind closed doors, that often go on without the oversight of the public, not just what did you decide, but how did you decide it. It's very difficult, whether you're a Republican or whether you're a Democrat, to hold the considered experts at these agencies accountable if you can't see the underlying data that went into their calculations. It's a simple amendment that says please share that with us. We're not questioning your expertise. We simply want to be a part of that process. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my demand.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I ask that the gentlewoman's words be taken down.

Mr. WOODALL

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

Mr. WOODALL. I also want to thank the gentleman from California and the gentleman from Colorado for their enthusiasm about this important project. The amendment that my colleague from California is bringing forward is modest in scope. I'll say to my colleagues who want to see spending reduced, we're talking about the difference between an 81 percent cut, as is in the chairman's mark today, to a 74 percent cut, if we add this $20 million back in. It's a modest number, but it's an important number because the committee could only do what the committee could do. And I thank the gentleman from New Jersey, the chairman. I know he is committed to this research. I hate to hear folks describe the commitment to advancement, Mr. Chairman, the commitment to next-generation technologies as a Republican or a Democrat commitment. I think it's an American commitment. It's certainly a House commitment, and it's one that the chairman and the ranking member tried their best within their allocations to satisfy. What are you going to take the money away from, Mr. Chairman? Look at what we're dealing with in this appropriations bill. We're talking about nuclear security. We're talking about environmental cleanup. We're talking about uranium enrichment, decontamination, and decommissioning. The choices we have here are tough choices. And the amendment that's before us now, knowing that we want to put the money where it's going to do the most good, says let's take the money out of administration. That's not to say that there doesn't have to be administration. That's not to say phones don't have to be answered and electricity doesn't have to be turned on. But when you have to make tough choices, the one that the gentleman from California is asking us to make today is: Are we going to invest in the bureaucracy or are we going to invest in that opportunity to make tomorrow so much more different than today? If my colleagues haven't had a chance, look at those project teams like the one my colleague from Colorado mentioned and what they are researching. Mr. Chairman, I come from coal-burning country. And the work that ARPA-E is doing on carbon sequestration could change the debate about American energy independence forever. ARPA-E isn't working on what is going to happen tomorrow. They're working on what's going to happen in the next generation; what is it going to be that changes the debate forever. Those are the kinds of ideas that this $21 million will support. Mr. Chairman, it's the commitment to fundamental research, the commitment to game-changing ideas that is a bipartisan commitment. It's one that goes from coast-to-coast, from north to south, and on both sides of the aisle. Again, I'm grateful to the gentlelady from Ohio and the chairman from New Jersey for all they have done to try to support these accounts. It is my great hope that my colleagues here in the House will support the gentleman from California's amendment and we'll get this $20 million plus-up. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of this amendment. I would say to my friends on the Republican side of the aisle who have spoken, I agree with absolutely everything you have said. But as I look at the chairman, who I know has more of a love for this Nation and our national security than perhaps any other Member of this body, he and I both voted in favor of the Budget Control Act in August of 2011. Rightly or wrongly, we set the law of the land of how much we were going to spend on national defense. Today, we are talking about how much we are going to spend in Afghanistan. If we need to spend more money to improve National Guard readiness here at home, to deal with maintenance accounts here at home, we need to come together and change those budget caps; and I support doing that. But I am tired of living in a town where when you don't like the rules, you find a way around them. When the President doesn't like the law of the land, he just ignores it. If we don't like the defense budget caps, we just ignore it and fund it through OCO instead. We ought to give the Joint Chiefs of Staff every penny they're asking for to support our men and women in Afghanistan. If they come back and ask for more, we should give them every penny of that as well. But the law means something; these caps mean something. We should either change it or stick with it, Madam Chair.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, it's my great pleasure this morning to introduce my colleagues to Dr. Tom Elliott. Not only is he our guest chaplain today and the senior pastor at Cannon United Methodist Church in Snellville, in my district, he was also my youth minister growing up in Decatur, Georgia. For over 30 years, I've known Tom. He's here today with his wife, Kelly. He is surrounded in love by his daughter, Lucy, and his son, Thomas. He has a love of the Lord, and that's a love that he shares in the pulpit on Sunday morning, and a love that you can find expressed in music at coffeehouses around the district in his Wild at Heart band nights during the week. It's my great pleasure to have Tom with us today. I thank you for your service to our community, Tom, and I thank you for your service to the Lord.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend and colleague from Florida for yielding me the time. I hadn't anticipated coming down here today, Mr. Speaker. I came down to listen, but I hadn't anticipated coming down to speak. And I will say to my friend from Maryland his words struck me, because twice in his presentation he said, you know, I think it's especially cynical that we're using this process to bring forward two bills that in a bipartisan way we agree on. I would say to my friend with a heavy heart, Mr. Speaker, that I think it's especially cynical, since we both know these bills need to be passed, to describe what is happening here in any terms other than that which is exactly necessary in order to get these bills passed.

Mr. WOODALL. Let me get this off my chest, and I'd be happy to yield to my friend. I would be happy to yield when I'm done, because I have a copy of the rule here. And the gentleman was in the Rules Committee last night, and the gentleman knows this is what section 3 provides, that pending the adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget, we're going to move forward, pending the adoption. Now, my friend knows, Mr. Speaker, how hard it is to find that agreement. And the reason my friend knows is because I voted for the Budget Control Act in August of 2011, which put my friend and five other Members of the House, it was six House Members, six Senate Members, six Republicans, six Democrats, it put them in a room together for August, September, October, and November with the entire Federal budget over the next 100 years in front of them, allowing them to choose anything they wanted to to agree on to let us move forward as a nation. Do you know what, Mr. Speaker? Collectively they agreed on not one dollar. I don't fault my friend for that. I know my friend was working as hard as my friend could possibly work to find agreement. But finding agreement is hard. What we're talking about finding agreement with, Mr. Speaker, this comes from The Washington Post editorial page. It's entitled, ``The Democrats' complacent budget plan.'' It says: Partisan in tone and complacent in substance, the budget scores points against the Republicans and reassures the party's liberal base but deepens these Senators' commitment to an unsustainable policy agenda. This is what it is that we're trying to find agreement on. Now, my friend from Maryland knows, in fact, he may have even brought it to my attention yesterday, a letter directing the chairman of the Rules Committee, on which I sit, Mr. Speaker, from the chairman of the Budget Committee, also on which I sit, that's signed by Chairman Paul Ryan. It says this, over Paul Ryan's signature: I want to emphasize that this is a request for an interim measure while the Committee on the Budget continues to work towards an agreement with the Senate on a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year. And I would, with your permission, Mr. Speaker, I would ask my friend from Maryland, does he doubt the chairman's word when the chairman says this is an interim solution until we find agreement? I'd be happy to yield to my friend.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, the gentleman knows that Chairman Ryan has no control over the inside workings of the United States Senate, and Chairman Ryan did not block what was going on in the United States Senate. The United States Senators were blocking it. I would ask the gentleman again: Does the gentleman doubt the chairman's word? I understand that the gentleman is frustrated about process, and goodness knows, as someone who supports open rules, I'm frustrated with process, too. We have that in common. But notwithstanding that process, what I have here is a letter from a man which you and I both support--and ``support,'' I mean we believe in his integrity. And he tells us that he is working towards a solution and that what we're doing here today is just an interim step to get these bills that we all agree are so very important, we all agree are so very important, the interim step to get these moving down the process.

Mr. WOODALL. I would yield to ask the gentleman does he disagree with the commitment made by the chairman? And I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. WOODALL. Reclaiming my time, I would say to the gentleman that's just not the case.

Mr. WOODALL. I'm aware of the Appropriations Committee 302(b) allocations. And what I'm aware of, Mr. Speaker, is that we have to have those allocations to begin the process. The gentleman is talking about where we are going to finish the process on October 1. I'm trying to get it started today. The gentleman knows that we can't get started.

Mr. WOODALL. As my friend from Maryland knows, we keep tax revenues the same and the Senate increases taxes by almost $1 trillion.

Mr. WOODALL. As my friend knows from his time having to negotiate on the joint select, what we'll call the supercommittee, my friends at The Washington Post go on to say: In short, this document-- Talking about the budget passed by the Senate. --gives voters no reason to believe that Democrats have a viable plan for--or even a responsible public assessment of-- the country's long-term fiscal predicament. Now, I will say, Mr. Speaker, that gives me great concern about whether we will be able to reach agreement with the Senate. As my friend from Maryland knows, Mr. Speaker, the House budget reduces spending by trillions of dollars and the Senate budget increases spending even more. In many years, it spends more than even the President requested.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding. I want to quote what one of my Democratic colleagues quoted last night in the Rules Committee, and that's Federalist Paper No. 58, written by James Madison for the Independent Journal back on February 20, 1788. And he said this: This power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance, and for carrying into effect every just and salutary measure. Because that's the constitutional responsibility of this body, Mr. Speaker, to appropriate these dollars. This process of appropriations, this constitutional responsibility, cannot begin until we have some numbers against which to budget and appropriate. What my chairman on the Budget Committee has asked is that as an interim step, and an interim step only, we adopt these numbers today on bills about which we all agree. What is cynical, Mr. Speaker, is that these are things on which we all agree, and we're using this as a position to talk about other issues about which we disagree.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. I thank my friend from North Carolina for yielding me the time, and really appreciate her leadership on this issue. You know, Mr. Speaker, I tell the young people when I speak to them back home, I say, turn on C-SPAN. If you don't have cable, don't buy cable; go to your friend's house to watch it. But turn on C-SPAN, and every person who comes to the House floor is going to say whatever they're doing today, no matter what it is that they're doing, they're doing it for the young people. They're doing it for that next generation, so the next generation can have a better life. And I hear that from every single one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. We want to come down here and we want to defeat this rule today and we want to defeat this bill today, and we want to do it for the young people. Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm down here for the young people of my district too. The young people of my district say, Rob, what about our prosperity? What about our future? What about fiscal responsibility? Why are you and previous generations doing to us what you're doing? How can we have a guaranteed access to opportunity, not guaranteed success, but guaranteed access to opportunity, going forward? And the answer is, when we get out of the business of playing political games with every single issue, every single day, and we get back into the business of providing some certainty. Mr. Speaker, you remember how we got in this predicament today. We got in this predicament because when my friends on the left were in control and they began to deal with student loan rates, at the time they said a 6 percent rate would be good. At the time they said a 4.5 percent rate would be good. Now, suddenly, only a 3.4 percent can be good. With every single one of these changes, Mr. Speaker, there are economic consequences. We now know in America today student loan debt is greater than all credit card debt combined. It's an amazing burden that we're passing on to the next generation. We're not giving them opportunity; we are ensuring decades of servitude. This bill, Mr. Speaker, begins to realign marketplace rates with student loan rates, giving every student a tremendously subsidized Federal rate. And here's the thing, Mr. Speaker. You hear this debate. It's as if this very small portion of the marketplace, these 3.4 percent subsidized loans, are the ``end all, be all'' to every student in America. Not true. Not true. As my friends on the other side of the aisle know perfectly well but never say, more than 70 percent of all of our students take out both subsidized and unsubsidized loans. And as my friends on the left know perfectly well but never say, they leave those unsubsidized rates at 6.8 percent. The bill that Ms. Foxx has worked on so carefully with Chairman Kline brings those rates down to 4.5, maybe even 4.4. We'll see in that last week of Treasury markets in May. But we're tying the fiscal realities of this country to opportunities for our students. I encourage students, Mr. Speaker, look at your bills, look at your rates. Look at the subsidized and the unsubsidized. You will see what this bill will do for you. I rise in strong support, Mr. Speaker.

Mr. WOODALL

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, at this time it's my great pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), one of those Members on the Intelligence Committee my friend from Florida spoke of, a gentleman who serves us all.

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds to say I agree with my friend, that the private sector is often in the best position to get the work done that we're talking about in this bill. I would refer my colleague, Mr. Speaker, to the Intelligence Committee's Web site--it's intelligence.house.gov--where you can see the long list of those private sector actors who are supporting this bill here today, that long list of folks in the private sector responsible for the security of their firms, of the information that Americans have entrusted to them, asking this body to move forward with this bill today. There's no question, Mr. Speaker, when you're dealing with something of the magnitude of the national security threats posed by cyber warfare and the privacy protections that everyone in this body is committed to, that you're going to end up with conscientious men and women on both sides of this issue. But it is important to note that the private sector--which is being bombarded each and every day with threats from nation-state actors overseas--is asking, pleading with this body to move forward with this bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

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

Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 60 seconds again to say to my friend from Colorado that I know his concerns are heartfelt; but he knows, as I do, there's nothing that we can do in statute here today that would trump any of our civil liberties that are protected under the Constitution of the United States of America. The Constitution of the United States of America trumps all. What we're doing here today, Mr. Speaker, is responding to a very serious national security threat, and we're doing so in a way that can give Americans great comfort that their civil liberties are every bit as protected today as they were yesterday. In fact, Mr. Speaker, in that these nation-states are hacking into these accounts and accessing our personal information every single day, I would tell you that we will actually have our privacy more protected in the presence of a secure Internet than we do today, as nation-states are frequently eroding our cybersecurity border here in the United States of America. With that, I reserve the balance of my time.