as we begin this evening markup i'd like to commend the fine work of both the financial services subcommittee the energy and water subcommittee the members and staff of those subcommittees have worked very hard putting these bills together and they deserve our appreciation both of these bills profession in the best long standing bipartisan traditions of the committee each bill may not be perfect the decisions represented in each major were made  through a fair and open process we are here tonight to continue that fair and open process members on both sides will have the opportunity to offer a variety and mix of an amendment and an attempt to improve these bills unfortunately if you are a member of the house and are not a member of the appropriations committee it's likely that you will not have any opportunity to amend this or any other spending bill on the house floor this year thus far each of the four appropriations bills that have passed the house were considered under a rule that strictly limited the rights of members on both sides to offer amendments to these bills the members know that i'm concerned that this dangerous precedent undermines not only our ability to compete to complete our work this year but also undermines the very future of this committee i want to publicly pledge to the chairman that i willing to help him complete this year's committee's business but we must now return to a fair and open process that allows every member of the house to have his or her voice heard i would respectfully remind the chairman in the short time i was chairman i bent over backwards to protest to protect the rights of all committee members including the rights of the minority i left for the fourth of july break that the agricultural procreation bill would be considered under an open rule the outcome of this effort would largely your term and the rule on spending bills going forward in other words back to regular order by all accounts it appears we were finally going to return to open rules and regular order beginning tomorrow but that is apparently not the case i would ask chairman o b to please correct me if i'm wrong but it appears that in spite of the best efforts intentions of leadership on both sides to return to a fair and open process the chairman himself is opposed to returning to open rules on future spending bills going forward i believe the germans opposition to an open sore process will be the single greatest impediment to completing the committee's work this year i believe it's in our best interest to complete our committee's work this year and avoid yet another trainwreck with that m for the last three years we have had this issue facing us and the issue is how we get our work done in a timely fashion we have twelve bills that we have to pass after having wrestled with the stimulus package and after having wrestled with the supplemental appropriation bill we also had to wait until the budget committee finished its work before  and yet we were able to have open rules and divided thirty one legislative days over two hundred hours to appropriations bills and they all passed individually i can't help but scratch my head and wonder how that up having members with great talent democrats and republicans having no voice in the process because appropriations is now being run by a couple of people in the house it's just not acceptable for that to be the case and mr chairman i yield back   and prosecutors anti competitive behavior among other things we also strengthen some of the inspector general offices that are making sure regulatory and financial agencies are doing what they're supposed to do for hundred thirty six million more than last year appropriation should be sufficient to twenty billion dollars lending to small business is critically important for business owners who may have seen other sources of financing assistance another priority address in this bill is meeting our responsibility for the nation's capital city and its residents for which we provided seven hundred million dollars among other things the measure continu s to improve education in both public and charter schools in the district of columbia the president's proposal for a limited continuation of the school voucher program for those already in the program it also redirected to more effective drug programs grants for high intensity drug trafficking areas which receive an increase of fourteen million last year and drug free communities and grants which receive an increase of not have sufficient funding to fully implement for comply with the help america vote act many states and local governments have had to scale back their plans for upgrades and implementation the national conference of s legislatures the national association of secretaries of the national association of election officials and the national association of counties have all written in support of further funding for states under  in fact they're asking for more funds and we're able to give them creative several new federal requirements that they must meet rather than giving them an unfunded mandate we try to make funding available to help ensure that going to force if you're voting technology in the future i would also noticed several administrative contributed to the pace in which states are drawing down to two hundred two thousand and eight and two thousand and nine grants many state legislatures are simply not in session at the time became available because there was a five percent match requirement for these funds this meant most states could not appropriate that amount in order to receive payments in mr bishop now mr jackson  were trapped in failing schools without any option to move to another they wanted choices together we worked this opportunity scholarship program and frankly it worked well it deserves to be funded in the future and beyond to get to the point my man who would honor the district's vision and and the dreams of hundreds of parents to continue this program and strike the language in this bill that limits eligibility of students currently in this program so that all students eligible under the authorizing bill could participate while we're all supportive of the district public school system we recognize the progress  under former mayor anthony williams and the current mayor adrian fenty and his excellent choice of michelle rhee to run the schools we've had a three sector approach which includes public schools supporting the best public schools possible a very vigorous charter school program both public and private and that's been enormously successful i believe thirty nine such public and private charter schools  and yes the opportunity scholarship program which all three provide students and parents with options and choices for their children i have in fact here a letter dated provided scholarships for over three thousand disadvantaged children to attend to private or parochial schools of their choice during the past school year over seventeen hundred students are attending forty nine nonpublic schools the average income for these families is under twenty three thousand dollars a year demand remains high to enroll in the public and private private or parochial education especially in our nation's capital we wish it were but it doesn't exist and in my view we have an obligation to act on their behalf inaction is not an option washington children need our continued support this committee should listen to the voices of parents and students i surely have when i was chairman and i continue to hear from them and they like the program they see how those their brothers and sisters on they wouldn't be able to follow them i mean that's and so i ask for your support at least  co sponsors that sets up a bipartisan commission to put every spending program and tax policy on the on the table i would urge the members to support it i know some will argue  this is really the responsibility of the ways and means committee but the ways and means committee really dealing with it it's like if you had a friend who was choking to death and then resolve this problem and have a renaissance in this nation of creating jobs in manufacturing and more money than science and physics and chemistry and biology and also more disagree however for a couple of reasons first of all the commission is currently structured would require three quarters majority vote of the commissioners and it would be difficult to find this type of broad consensus on highly controversial issues visited the bureau of the public debt and was surprised when i was told by the commissioner i was the first member of congress to ever visit the bureau of the public this is the office of the united states treasury that is responsible for raising forty six cents of every dollar that we spend out of this committee looking over their operations i learned that today the united states just since january first has borrowed four trillion dollars in rolling over short term debt and adding new debt that at the current spending rate of this congress we are borrowing one hundred sixty billion dollars a week  and today we attempted to borrow thirty billion dollars and that option did not go well sending interest rates higher and the stock market lower i also learned that we used to have forty five major lenders to the u s government and now that's down to just sixteen and as we flood the world with us paper china russia brazil dealerships were going to be shuttered over thirty three thousand dealerships the national association of dealers estimates sixty people work at each dealership two hundred three thousand people out of work said we had nothing to do what we did we didn't tell him what to do but in your package you'll find testimony from mr blum ron bloom of the president's task force that they rejected the plan because they weren't aggressive enough and yes that included they weren't aggressive enough in closing dealers the car companies  is an article saying that the task force wanted to decide how much spend on advertising during the bank so they have a strange business model of they want to sell more cars with less stores and no advertising and last testimony before the judicia legislative action that the ability to enforce the controlled substances act would strike a severe blow to this collaborative effort to send a message of toleration to our youth and result in more users increasing health costs and more avoidable threat to users that it has no medical value that can't be met more effectively by legal drugs and that marijuana users are far more likely to use other drugs like cocaine and heroin that marijuana determine whether it's federal dollars or public dollars that are going towards funding these abortions so that's one reason to vote for this amendment we know that before the  to protect it throughout a normal life so for me that's when it begins but in this case it would allow any point in the pregnancy for an abortion to occur now many of you have said and i've heard the president say that he has a goal of reducing the four percent of this legislation abortions will go up if you vote against this legislation and i think if you step back and understand what you're really talking about here is people who are financially challenged single parent with an abortion if you put that scenario in place look at some of the great minds we have today that could have been taken from us because somebody would was willing to pay the bill we may not have those creative minds with people like clarence thomas like rockabye parent households so i think what question you have to ask yourself what are you willing to people i have no interest in being the mayor i have no interest in being the governor of the territory i only have an interest in respecting democracy and respecting freedom everywhere i understand is a challenge anybody's reading ability little bitty type it's like a reading test but extraordinarily important and frank walsh amendment and this amendment have a lot in common this amendment simply says it for every dollar responded to the taxpayers members of the committee that i've given you is one that i carry around my pocket and you have to constituents anybody that comes in to see me that that wants to add to the federal debt or deficit i give this to them because it is a summary on one page of the total fiscal exposures of the u taxpayers which now is sixty trillion dollars that's sixty thousand billion dollars and mr wolf is exactly right we don't have much time to deal with this and the process we have is not working and i hope that at every opportunity on every piece of legislation we get that we would have to take a chance take the opportunity to reduce the deficit and this amendment is very straightforward and would simply reduce the  responsible as possible in the first six months of this year this congress has spent more money than any congress in history the budget that was passed earlier this year created more debt over the next twelve years t that headline tomorrow is that the democrats health care bill has a price tag one point five trillion dollars it's unsustainable we are on a path to economic collapse if we don't make every effort at every opportunity every dollar we can and to cut spending and to cut the deficit dollars have been responded to the treasury because they've already achieved their intended purpose they've already done appreciate your concern i'd be pleased to work with you to amend this act so that the agency can use their expertise of our scientists and health professionals in advance of safety for american consumers and especially for our children the difficulty as i've done a fairly informal survey throughout the nation with herbert hoover and continued under franklin delano roosevelt we know that from what treasury secretary henry morgenthau said in one thousand nine hundred ninety said we have tried spending money we are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work that's a classic definition of inflation we're moving towards an inflation strategy to pay back dollars and inflation is not good for seniors it is not good for the poor and it's not good for our economy so  got to stop the debt second we ought to move away from this inflation strategy that the federal reserve is working to if we will reduce our debt and stabilize the dollar have a monetary policy that you can understand  kennedy is mr kennedy no miss kilpatrick let's go patrick no mr kingston mr kingston i thank you mr kirk mr kirk mr laid them relate them the president signed executive order thirteen for not to close guantanamo in january more than four months later there is still no evidence of a plan to carry out this order and no consultation whatsoever with the congress yet even in the absence of any plan the administration seems to have to move detainees all while the withholding information from the congress and the public illustrating that point a suspect did water of the one nine hundred ninety eight embassy bombings in africa arrived in new york for a high threat trial last month the government to pull our announced that it would accept some of the  press accounts linked to a two hundred million dollar assistance package the wigger detainees are affiliated with a listed terrorist group and received weapons training camps in afghanistan run by the leader affiliated with al qaida also last month the department of justice announced that for the detainees had been resettled in bermuda a waiver country the congress and the american people found out about these actions and efforts asked after the fact and there have been more three detainees have already been transferred to saudi arabia one to chad and one to iraq and there have been rumors about possible deals with yemen and all the all this has been done without the assessment of the risk to the american people at home and abroad or an america including nine eleven the u s s cole bombings and the embassy bombings in africa director muller of the f b i testified to congress recently that bringing detainees of u s soil poses risks to national security including providing financing radicalizing others and undertaking attacks in the united states additionally the department of defense has reported at least fourteen percent of the former guantanamo detainees have returned to the middle east and are involved in terrorist activities the administration is ignoring or disregarding these risks and we think stonewalling congress we need to stop the administration from rushing to transfer our resettle any more detainees at the expense of increased risk to americans simply to fulfill a campaign promise that i think maybe the administration now which is it never made so with all of that mr chairman i urge the adoption this amendment which would back but i'll be very brief undecided writes in opposition to the gentleman's amendment we're all concerned about the issue of the transitional way from get and the need to find a solution for where to put the prisoners currently held thi rodriguez no mr rogers oppose it and hope that we can all do it briefly if you look at the forty the president of the constitution is actually very brief he's the commander in chief he or she is a commander in chief of the sincerity how many of the cars are created by authority of congress how many of these ours does the president have authority to create and up the answer is either one or none of these twenty the energy and water development and national security this bill continued support for all areas of energy makes major investments in critical infrastructure advantages our nonproliferation efforts and continued support to securely maintain our nation's nuclear this is a committee subcommittee is where in a bipartisan effort and we have continued that tradition i want to thank chairman ovi and ranking member lois for their leadership and most importantly i would like to specifically  in this bill are at their core of our nation's economic prosperity and national security especially the energy portion and the historic responsibility for our nuclear stockpile our bill was preceded by the department of energy has nearly one in one half times more money to manage this year even before we consider this an annual appropriations bill so our bill cannot be viewed in the traditional appropriations manner  increases the budget request by over four hundred million for the army corps of engineers enabling us to address water needs across the country army corps projects touch virtually every congressional district and i know mr pas increases research and development for both were new level energy and nuclear power while supporting an issue and other clean technologies such as geothermal solar wind power and i'm exceptionally places that are decision to terminate the repository the hour may be late but the issues in front of us are important this bill before us does contain the administration significant cuts of the brogue ram and for that i'm deeply concerned however our bill directs seventy million dollars to ensure the questions raised during the license application process can be answered in a required funding for the blue ribbon panel which i assume many of you have heard about is only available for a view which includes all alternatives including yucca mountain i think this is the only way to review the only way the review could possibly be credible after spending over eleven billion dollars on the we still have tons of ways to dispose of a few options i also would have preferred much more support for nuclear power in the united states and greater ability of nuclear loan guarantees given what the chinese and other nations are doing to build quite aggressively new nuclear power plants we could produce much more of our own energy electricity ourselves if the administration were more supportive we also improved upon the weapons activity requests not to promote more nuclear weapons but to further reduce our weapons stockpile with the president or russia available to deliver market ready innovative clean energy technology that will have a positive impact on our economy however we don't for some time that the limitations we in congress placed on how much could guaranteed for a specific technology were imperfect at best would provide the secretary of energy with the discretion to adjust the caps needed to accommodate the demand it's really best to let the subject experts decide how many  think what we're getting is dr chu the secretary of energy that the flexibility if there is some extra loan guarantee money to apply it to other parts of the energy sector my preference would be nucular we're not members makes fully enclosed vehicles that are capable of carrying two adults to get at least seventy five miles per gallon eligible for the department of energy advanced technology vehicles manufacturing incentive program so that they can compete on an even playing field with the big three automakers advance car concepts that have only three wheels are not currently eligible for the deal we have vans technology vehicles manufacturing incentive program because of an antiquated statutory definition of the word light duty vehicle program provides loans to car manufacturers for up to thirty percent of the costs of reequipping expanding or establishing manufacturing facilities in the u s for advanced technology vehicles or components or for engineering integration performed in the u s three wheeled cars are more aerodynamic and therefore more fuel efficient they are fundamentally safe as traditional cars member does not change the status of these vehicles for any other purposes it merely makes them eligible for the loan program this is based going through a very difficult time along with their constituents i brought to cement thousands and thousands of people every day are lining up at food banks food banks are running out of food right here in  united states it's been up on the news i'm sure many of you saying this is something that we need to do something about my amendment addresses the ongoing water crisis in california and the urgent need for this committee to be called into action on this issue but a town hall meeting last week interior secretary salazar said when a community is suffering the way this community is suffering all parties must come together and work in good faith to find a solution i do commend the department of interior they've taken some good steps to try to help things that are trying to be done to help fix this problem in december of two loss of nearly one third of the water supply five million california water rates are skyrocketing in los angeles san diego and throughout southern california as a result mandatory water rationing may be required in the state of california in a state unfortunately our committee is unable to act the members from our state are left with no other option other than what other means necessary to help our state in this time of crisis we're talking about any other state we're talking about the automobile case we would be a legislative a member of overturning the endangered species act and negating a biological opinion which is critical to the preservation of  a times article that we can picture of the tomato growers hundreds and hundreds of acres out of production period because they have they can't turn on the pumps to deliver water to all those acres i mean i really am concerned about the smell i really am but in turn when you've got forty thousand unemployed people in the fresno region most of them hispanic because the pumps haven't been turned on and the same  time the reality of people all of our state in the country having radical adjustment upwards of the price of their food because of this you destroyed that industry i mean it's almost laughable there was an occasion in mexico some years ago where because  similar crises there was a waiver for a period of time and we're suggesting there right now you're about to destroy that agriculture industry now when you put unemployed people of hispanic descent in fresno on the one hand and people in los angeles on the other one other hand who in just a few years because of this kind of dumb water policy dictated by the courts in this case you're going to find people in los angeles not just paying higher prices for food but in about a year year and a half their water prices are going to double and beyond that there's going to be water rationing in los angeles county i can tell you when that occurs and it occurs because of a lack of action in this committee whoever is responsible for at the highest level the leadership on your side of the aisle even those from california are going to hear from those folks this is a critical issue and you're to destroy this industry unless this amendment  appointed by the secretary of the interior to review this whole thing that's they call it under the endangered species act i don't think we should start getting in the business of overturning the endangered species act in this committee but we haven't had hearings we haven't looked at this this is this is not been a subject not the jurisdiction of this committee it's the jurisdiction of the authorizing committee chairman are you i mean god and back in the price of food and all of california as well as a country in turn over time those same policies are going to wrap radically impact water availability in southern california so that's what i object to the i think we should  important statute i don't think we should get in the business of overriding if we resist that all in our committee i don't think we should do if you're in the full commit going home in august until they're passed and the fact is if amendments like this passed we are going to have the votes on the floor to pass a bill because the authorizing committees who have jurisdiction brought up you're going to have people on the committee voting against the bill we don't have that kind of margin to spare the second point i would simply make is this you know anybody in this room tell me whether you agree or the fact is it's all nice to have all of these were put up and many of them may be perfectly legitimate but they're in the wrong place we don't have the jurisdiction we don't have the expertise and we don't have the i don't want to tell forty thousand unemployed people in the central valley that we can't take the time to do anything because we've got an august recess coming up and we can't take the time on the floor and this might jeopardize  we need to address it now they've been trying to do it for several months have the courage to stand up and vote for this amendment and get on the floor and get it done and address the problem that exists in the central valley  recognizing real problems is that a polarizing in all the time and having people pushing the wall i hope we have the courage to address this problem we need to do it that's why we're elected secretary of energy and labor will determine the jobs that were created as a result of that act as we know jobs are created or not created every six months unemployment statistics is not just the first six months of whatever we may eventually pass i think it's something that's worthy of consideration support we ought to know memo on the on the stimulus package he wants to judge as a failure a package which has been in place for only four months which is supposed to deliver the goods over a thirty month period construction to begin on but the budget request for the coming years for one million dollars current fiscal years forty two million dollars to get it all ready to build only one million dollars there is money in the stimulus that this problem concrete growth it has to close by two thousand and fourteen if we don't finish replacing it it will have to close it has a six to one cost benefit analysis the highest of the waterway trust fund project in america there's national security implications with oakridge right up the river nuclear plants that are going to have to be decommissioned own and the project going to take the money from sorry i'm sorry is a really poorly run project this committee needs to know about its own state nobody really in the congress will take ownership of it but it was supposed to be finished two years ago at a cost of seven hundred seventy million dollars the corps will now project that it will be finished in the year twenty twenty at a cost of two billion dollars it is the equivalent of the big big sorry mr over within the corps of engineers responsibilit it has one hundred million dollars in this budget are project i'm asking that we move fourteen million dollars from that project to this project so that we can come in with the construction that this committee has authorize has appropriated and that we authorized we're ready to go now i would ask the chairman and the ranking member stand back on this understand the opposition because they put a great building gether but i gotta tell you this has to be done and you ought to reward the good projects and not keep rewarding the bad ones and i've also done the research on homesteads and if we do this there's no penalty there's no trigger for renegotiating their annual  river waiting another year for us to fund in the waterway trust fund also this is a fifty fifty mag there are projects within the corps that we're not matching work is one hundred appropriate it's not being matched let's just raised a point that i was raised at the very end of the meeting and probably better do it right now i think many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle are disgusted with many i'm very concerned about the future future of the greatest committee in the of experience essentially losing spine over going forward with their responsibility members of subcommittees cut out no conference mr want just suggested it's very very important each we have gotten far from regular order that i continue the house will not have the capability to return to the precedents and procedures of the house that have given true meaning the term representative democracy the reason that we have we have stuck to regular order as long as we have in this institution is to protect the rights of every member of participate and when we lose we lose the right to be called the greatest delivery deliberative body in the world that is a quote in two thousand