we have some water in the house what purpose gentleman from maryland rise republican whip for dealing in on monday the house for me to twelve thirty p m good morning your own two feet ample lead study business with votes postponed until six thirty p m on tuesday that asked will meet at ten thirty a m morning on twelve p m for legislative business final list of suspension bills will be announced as is our practice of business by the close of business tomorrow we will consider legislation to address the housing crisis including bills reported out of the financial services committee regarding the federal housing administration and h r five eight one eight the neighborhood stabilization act of twenty away we also hope to consider the farm bill  incorporated there in some way an idea that is not as possible they would be considered separately i'm not conferred with mr frank the chairman so i can't definitively say that i'm not absolutely sure but the answer to question is possible seat the gentleman also mentioned we had a possibility or at least your hope that we consider the farm bill conference report i know there are some other conference reports out there the budget higher education consumer product safety  we've got eleven working days left before we take the district work period memorial day i wonder if the gentleman has a sense of the likelihood that any specific one of those might also be available during that period of time and i deal  if i had my druthers and i could make it happen all of them would be within the context of that eleven days to which you refer the chairman the budget committee is on the floor i know he's been working very very hard and i believe that we're close on the budget conference  may well be a possibility there may well be other conference reports available as well i cannot tell you now specifically that there are bills that i 'm absolutely sure it will be ready for that time frame but i do believe that there will be significant pieces ready i'm looking for a list so i can give it to you ok the d o d authorization bill of course will be considered on the week of the eighteenth i believe that's the week of the eighteenth and the supplemental is obviously on our radar screen and we hope to pass  supplemental before we leave as well i was hoping for next week that still is a possibility but i'm not sure that they will be in place they mistral be in our discussions not sure a major piece of legislation i want to see passed before we leave and a couple of questions about that first of all on the one you didn't mention the higher education conference i think the higher education the current bill well as in the best of all possible worlds the conference would be completed and we could pass the bill itself if that does not happen what kind of plan extension on the supplemental you mentioned mr o'bee is there now a possibility that the supplemental might be marked up in conference i know during the during committee rather i know during the five weeks now that we've talked about this sort of there's been a you dude announced a hope that we would have the supplemental on the floor either in the last week in april or you everything every time said are no later than the first week in may and so we're not there yet we get there next week you now would not anticipate that on the floor is one question the other is where are we on the question of whether the committee will mark that supplemental up or it will come to the floor in some other way and ideal i think  candidly still up in the air i know that's of concern to you understand that concern but i will tell you candidly i have still up in the air mr robey has been discussing with the senate how they think and we can best move forward as expeditiously as possible and so that we can try to achieve again as you know there is substantial discussion about what is in the supplemental the president as you know has indicated and mr nu has indicated that if anything above the dollars asked essentially for iraq and afghanistan are included for investment here in this country on various different items perhaps dealing  unemployment insurance perhaps dealing with energy credits so that we can ensure the expansion of alternative and apprises for alternative fuels those are all being discussed to see whether they are possibilities in terms of the passage and hopefully signature by the president we think that there are a number of items that are critically important to pass now that we think this is a this bill is appropriate for but we don't have agreement on that at this point time but the mr i was working today fully to morrow we had a number of meetings today trying to see if we can move that forward so i regret that i do not have more definitive benefits the supplemental under the rules we've been working with would be considered at least the wartime part of that mergence the spending and not under the pay go rules  the g i benefits that have been talked about both here and on the other side of the building i think last week you suggested that those were related  iraq afghanistan expenditures in a way that you thought that the majority might wave pay go in include those in the supplemental and i'm wondering if any of those other items that you discussed like unemployment insurance might also meet that criteria where if they were in the supplemental they wouldn't have to comply with the pay go provisions of the current rules of the house an ideal thank you gentlemen feeling as it relates to the  first item the g i bill there is a comprehensive g i bill as you know sponsored by mr webb is also i miss her so over here and others have legislation which tries to respond t critical needs that our veterans returning from afghanistan and iraq now have because they have substantially less generous benefits and therefore less opportunity to reintegrate themselves into t community and stabilize themselves and their families we believe that as a cost of the war i don't believe that under the current suggestion i'm not suggesting that in or out at this point i'm not suggesting there's anything in or out in terms of proposal but it is my belief that that would not require a waiver of the paygo given the the context in which it may be considered and what i mean by that to not be too esoteric is that we may respond to the need this coming year as opposed to a longer term and again would that would that apply  look at the as an economic provision to the bill to the unemployment insurance and other things as well where the gentleman you know i would as you know we came together and we agreed on the passage of a stimulus package we passed a stimulus package because we thought our economy was either about to go in recession or was in recession not at the time that we passed if it that's seems to be the case now and the stimulus package was designed to keep us out or to bring us out of  recession and to try to help our people who are at risk as you know we did that on an emergency basis the reason we did that on emergency basis we felt in terms of stimulating the economy we didn't want to stimulate and depressed at the same time so the answer question for instance on unemployment insurance that may well fall in that same category from our perspective i think the gentleman from for that adds i would suggest if that was the criteria that on the expired research and development credits or the expired deductibility of sales tax from income tax in those states that had that deduct ability for a few years ending on december the thirty first or even on the alternative minimum tax protection for people who don't pay that tax now seem to me they would meet that same criteria of having a negative economic impact as we let those research and development  credits expire or as we no longer allow people in florida texas and other states to deduct their sales tax before they pay their income tax or if we let the a m t patch extend to a number of people and i don't know if there's a way to handle those issues under that same umbrella of economic impact or not but ideal i thank you jennifer's observations i think he and i have a difference on liability but some of the things that we have already mentioned i think are more analogous not to tax extenders given additional tax relief or fixing the  didn't consider that today a paygo issue and we're prepared not to address it in a paygo way i hear that i hear that answer and i respect it but i also believe that when we've let these tax policies expire they have some of the same economic consequences and i suppose that can be debated when we get to that point in the debate but  select the waving of paygo i hope we've developed some principles here that can may be applied other things as well and i think we've we've discussed that and i appreciate the fact that we've had a difference on this for some time but you know in states that are i mentioned a couple of states that are particularly impacted by the the credit situation that we face right now on the sales tax deductibility it's just another burden on taxpayers that may be dealing with with another problem that's part of the overall economic challenge we face right now and just like the stimulus package  paygo to try to help solve this problem i'd suggest that there may be items beyond unemployment insurance that equally are related and maybe even more contributory to the problem than unemployment insurance and ideal i thank the gentleman for yielding you mentioned the state one of the things that we're very concerned about is the very substantial fiscal adverse impact of the states that will be caused by the change in the medicaid it will have a very great adverse financial impact on the states and i and i'm sure you received a cinema letter similar the one that i've received from both democratic and republican governors asking us to address that so there clearly are some items  which have an impact on the states and very frankly the discussion is how how many of those do we try to address if any in the supplemental how many do we address in a stimulus package or am i do we address in  separate legislation one of the one of the positive aspects of the stimulus package as you will recall because you and i were in the room was that sector paulson on behalf of the administration the speaker you and i and boehner sat down together and talked about how we could get from where we were to where we wanted to get and we came to agreement we have been unable to do that as you know on some of these things that we think are of serious concern as ll of us on the floor here know the initial checks that go out as part of the stimulus package are going out in the next few days over the next couple of months and that hopefully will be helpful on the  supplemental the any anything that we can do that i can do that our side can do to encourage going through the committee in the regular process we'd like to do that in the last twenty years under both democrats and republicans there have been thirty six supplementals all but seven of them went through the committee and those seven did not go through the committee based on a bipartisan decision that katrina or nine eleven or some other event had occurred where members on both sides of the aisle essentially said we know what needs to be done here we're in agreement with it let's take a bill to the floor in the other twenty nine instances where there was not bipartisan agreement every supplemental went through the committee in the twelve years that we were in the majority there were twenty supplementals none of them had a closed rule all of them except the ones i mentioned by bipartisan agreement went through the committee and ten of them had an absolutely open rule where we brought the supplemental to floor and the rule essentially said bring on every amendment that you want to and we'll debate it until  amendments are exhausted that's a time honored process not just under the democrat majority but under the republican majority and i'd like to again encourage we do whatever we can to further that discussion that you suggested may be going on now that would have the committee option as one of the options and ideas i thank you gentlemen for is observation has been to before and i will say that to other members of the room i have a great deal of respect on your side that i have discussed this with me i think the point is well taken that is under discussion and one other question that wasn't on the list and not on an immediate schedule but one of our members from oregon mr walden had asked me if i would bring up with you the topic of h r thirty fifty eight it's a bill sponsored by mr de fazio for moral law from oregon on public lands communities  transition it was introduced last july voted out of resources in december before the agriculture committee has now discharged the bill this involves schools and western lands very important our western members on both sides has asked me to ask you to first of all is there any not any information about when that might be scheduled and secondly to make that request that bill be scheduling idea i thank you gentlemen for yelling i don't have information now about the status of that bill where it is obviously it's a bipartisan bill mr de fazio missed one another's it is a bill that a very frankly has been brought up brought up in the do know the gentleman mentioned this week that in the eleven days left before this next to work period at home we would and we might have a flurry of activity and i would suggest you've seen lots of interest on our side that hopefully part of that flurry of activity could be an energy bill as we see these prices i think now we're in the eighteenth or nineteenth straight day of highest gasoline prices ever tomorrow maybe the  of the politics that we exchange on this legislation we have passed through here which was we think directed at trying to address the short term problems dealing with opec  that all of us if we're honest know that in the short term it's going to be very difficult to impact on that thirdly that the solution won't return is obviously moving towards alternative sources of energy and renewable sources of energy we passed a major piece of legislation last year to happen and we passed it in somewhat of a bipartisan fashion not totally annoying everybody unanimously voted for it but the president did sign present said it was step forward we brought the for the first time in a very long period of time said automobiles need to be more efficient for the first time the very long time i required the use of alternative fuels  are discussions about taxes gasoline taxes as you know and there are other discussions but we expect to be trying to if you have ideas we'd be glad to have them in terms of what can be done in the short term i think gentlemen i think we've brought some ideas last couple of weeks to the floor on bills that didn't necessarily relate to this and we'll probably have more we'll be talking about are you back people are by the quality and commitment of the staff that serves this institution doesn't serve republicans or democrats but it serves a purpose is of assuring that this institution runs in a way that gets the business of the american people done in a way that's productive and positive for them and for our country  going to observe the retirement of one of those people happily i can external his virtues i've known him for a very long period of time seen his work conscientious sure who's district he's in but i'm sure they're happy that he's living there although he's totally bipartisan i'm sure but he has done an outstanding job i have never than at other times he maintains in demeanor and as i say the competency of the talent the commitment and the character he's brought to his job has advantaged our country and the house represents mark we thank you know and i'd be glad to yield to and then you met mark congratulations to you we wish you the very best and we look forward to seeing you back here in the near future and repeat to the rule the gentleman from wisconsin mr ryan and a member post will be recognized for thirty minutes each the chair recognizes that the gentleman from wisconsin mr ryan thank you to consume the full amount of time if we had discussed earlier at the beginning of this congress the speaker the house said the following quote after years of deficit spending this new congress will commit itself to a higher standard pay as you go no new deficit spending and quote while the majority did follow through on half of their promise one of the first things they did when they took control of this place was put in a new pay as you go rule but things haven't quite worked out as well on the deficit this year's deficit is projected to double and spending is person projected to rise by over two hundred billion dollars but at least they did and the rule and one of the things that makes this rule interesting that requires this rule is that the house must use the most recent c b obeys line when determining whether a bill complies with paygo let me read this rule word for word to be clear quote the effect of a measure on the deficit or surplus shall be determined on the basis of  s by the congressional budget committee on budget relative to the most recent baseline symbolized by the congressional budget office and quote it sounds pretty straightforward mr speaker you've got to use the current baseline when you apply paygo no questions asked but despite this everyone i've talked to about this issue everything i've heard everything i've read in the newspapers has told me that the farm bill isn't going to use the updated two thousand and eight baseline but instead is going to use the two thousand and seven baseline an outdated baseline from over a year ago now i hope that this is not the case i hope that this does not happen but it sounds like that's the direction they're headed in that is what this motion is all about this motion is very simple all it would do is require that the house will follow its own rules and use the currency be a baseline when determining whether or not the farm bill complies with pay go why should we care why does this seemingly technical issue make us a difference first of conditions have changed in the past year agriculture profits are way up food prices are soaring and it's simply not accurate to use an estimate that's over a year old second there's a strong possibility that using the old baseline could hide billions and billions of dollars in new spending we don't have all the details yet and we don't know exactly how cvo is going to score it but based on what we've heard based on rising food prices and other factors we think it's quite likely that this bill is going to appear to cause billions of dollars less under the old baseline than it really doesn't of the current one now isn't that convenient i'm sure that a lot of taxpayers would love to have that type of choice i'm sure that when they were filling out their taxes a few weeks ago a lot of people thought would be nice to have the option of paying taxes on either last year's income or this year's income they could just pick the year where they made less money and save a couple bucks but the taxpayers don't have that choice they are required to play by the rules they've got to pay taxes on their current income whether they like it or not and if the majority follows the rules it doesn't have this choice either they must use the two thousand a baseline or they will be in clear violation of their pay go rules now the majority is dodge pay go before farm bill they passed last year had over five billion dollars in timing shift and other given gimmicks in it and i wouldn't be surprised if you saw some of those in the company for again this year but if they use an old baseline this would take it to a whole new level mr speaker this would be the first time the majority actually used a baseline shopping to violate the pay go requirement you see things like this and it's no wonder people think it's washington is broken these types of games are exactly what make people cynical about congress and i agree this just isn't the way the house should operate the american people deserve better than having the house play games with its own rules and then go home and claim they've entered a new era of fiscal discipline you know some people might find it odd for me to be down here talking about paygo and i'll be the first to admit that i've been critical of this rule and don't think it's the best way to proceed with respect to fiscal discipline but let's put those concerns aside for a minute budgetary rules are only as good as the integrity of the numbers that you use to enforce them so let's enforce those rules with updated see below estimates let's have a strong bipartisan vote for this motion and say that these games have got to end let's not manipulate exactly where we are and i will tell you from the perspective the house rules committee well we have not been enthusiastic supporters of this paygo procedure i will say that well my friend used the tax analogy as i listened the exchange between the distinguished republican whip and the majority leader i couldn't help but think about the gasoline prices should we tend amount to one of our constituents or any of us being able to go up to a gas pump and say you know what i'd like to pay the price of gasoline as it was six months ago as opposed to where it is today this is not the way this should be done and i have a statement i'd like to ask unanimous consent to include the record this point mr speaker without it hurts my colleagues democrats and republicans speaker we agreed that under normal circumstances a farm bill considered at this time ought to be scored on the march or wait baseline but let me emphatically emphasize there has been nothing normal about the development of this farm bill we're moving into our seventeenth month of intensive work on this farm bill i'm telling you we have encountered every barrier you can possibly imagine and we're almost done we have almost got this to conference committee and to the floor as the majority leader indicated we're hopeful to be on the floor next week during the period of time we've been working on this bill the house passed its farm bill july twenty seventh two thousand and seven it took nearly five months in addition before the senate passed this bill december fourteenth two thousand and seven they have gotten their build on earlier we probably could have concluded this this would have even come up when i had the farm bill out of here by now the senate passed bill however it's eight one hundred one thousand eight hundred seventy six pages long house bill eight hundred sixty pages long that alone will tell you we had an awful lot of work to reconcile these two bills the senate uses a different rule relative to determining baseline a rule used by the house in the construction of the ninety six farm bill as well as the two thousand and two farm bill this principle is pretty simple if you have done most of the work on the legislation under the old baseline you can conclude the work it would undo everything to suddenly have a new scoring requirement and if the senate didn't go along you'd have the crazy situation trying to do one baseline for the house another baseline for the senate try meld both in conference committee i'll never get this thing done and so the gentleman's motion to instruct it has an intellectual basis for it but the reality of this farm bill as we have worked now seventeen months building the bill most of that time under the old seven farm bill when we passed the bill in the house we had no idea what the ole baseline would be so it's not like we were forum shopping or trying to pick the most lenient number it was just the only way we could proceed and if we would at this point in time do a baseline shift i'm telling you this project so close to home gets put back to square one there's a i've asked my friend and colleague chairman john spratt to join me in this discussion because obviously it comes to budget matters he has brought respect across both sides of the aisle and i believe we can advance a more detailed discussion on some of the rules that issue who chairman peterson and committee said the budget barely made it clear that the new farm bill had to stay within the c b o baseline for the current farm bill passes could be added or altered but the aggregate cost could not exceed o's current baseline we base that position on the so called pay as you go room page you go require any new legislation in the form of mandatory spending be fully offset they did not exceed the current  baseline and this census with the new farm bill which is about to come from conference it appears that the farm bill will be complied with the f y o seven baseline but perhaps not fully compliant with the f y r baseline i have not seen the years as a rule of practicality it was founded on the rationale that we should not change the rules in the middle of the game or the middle of the legislative process or in this case in the middle of a complex conference this rules appl hundred ninety six to the farm bill passed then and again in two thousand and two to the farm bill which was passed then once again the underlying idea is to avoid changing the rules in the middle of a contested process that is complex and protracted enough already the house paygo rule the rule which we adopted in january of zero seven does set a limit to it it does say that the latest baseline can and should be used until such time as a budget committee reports a budget resolution the senate has a different room the senate paygo rule also sets a limit it proposes that the last baseline be used until a conference report on the budget is adopted so there's a significant difference this agreement position between the two rooms in the two bodies is part of the resolution of the all the differences in the conference this two s to be resolved much of the farm bill about to come before us was hammered out in two thousand and seven the bill passed the house and passed the senate in the comfort zone all sides believe that the final package would emerge certainly no later than march of this year the budget committee determined and inform the conferees than any farm bill would have to be zero seven baseline until the senate adopts a conference report on the budget for fiscal year two thousand and nine this makes sense because then you will have something done definitively by a concurrent budget resolution passed in both houses and the purpose of a conference is to resolve disagreements between the two houses here we have such a disagreement that said earlier if we use the f y o seven baseline or use the file a baseline we can't use base because a significant difference between the to and it seems fair and reasonable to me to use if while seven baseline since so much of this conference agreement was written with the f y o seven baseline as the yardstick and to revert to f y way would require more protracted negotiations and maybe no conference report it all i have to say to you could argue this either way but i believe on balance that this is a good record was allowed to expire the farm bill that was passed added to the baseline seventy three point five billion dollars by the gentleman from wisconsin voted for that farm bill i did now we have a an important restoration of pay as you go discipline and under the ocean seven baseline we have accounted for every dollar of spending in this farm bill no deficit and no no deepening of the deficit as figured on the all seven baseline compared to a very very different situation in the old two farm bill so the aman's motion involved in my view it pointing out that this might not technically jive with the house rule i believe that we've learned a lesson from the gentleman's motion we ought to have our rule like the old rule where the baseline on a discretionary call by the budget chair can continue to be the baseline under which you drafted the legislation because otherwise all of this work could be lost we need to get this bill done with this close to getting it done so with respect to my friend mr i and i would urge that we reject emotional what this statement service the close let the ag committe others tried to introduce the concept of law reform in this next farm bill but i don't intend to speak on this motion i just want to point out a little bit of irony in what this motion would actually do it's my understanding that by using the zero eight numbers it would result in a lower baseline for the commodity subsidy programs by about eleven billion dollars which i don't have a problem with because we've introduced a ten point option plan that's mind over ten billion dollars a reasonable savings of these come out of the programs already so it's consistent with that but it also calls for an increase in baseline of the conservation title of close to two billion dollars and under the nutrition title of close to thirty five billion dollars because of increased food costs and eligibility under these nutrition programs and if the nutrition groups knew what the practical effect was this motion to instruct would be they'll be doing cartwheels all over this town for the next week but i just wanted to point out the irony of today's baseline versus last year's big serious the gentlemen one time for me or time from that eight baseline number three you've had plenty of time to do this the c b l baselines been up for two months but number four and lastly this isn't an option this isn't a choice you don't have discretion it's the rules this is rejection is a very simple motion and i understand we're in the region winning perhaps minutes of the conclusion of the farm bill but nevertheless i think it's important that we get the policies right we do need a farm bill we needed as soon as possible is planning season back home our farmers need some predictability they needed know what rules are going to be operating under one way or the other but we need a good farm bill not a bad farm bill one that tries to get the policy right not the wrong way i still believe there's more room for reform of the commodity programs in light of record high commodity prices it's tough to justify to the average taxpayer that what is still being considered under the current farm bill is close to twenty five billion dollars of direct payments to go out over the next five years bearing no relationship to price or production it's not a safety net is our entitlement funding automatic payments that go to large producers primarily merely due to their existence and not because of markets but there's another important feature of this farm bill and that's the conservation title and this farm bill offers this nation the greatest public investment in private land ownership in regard to anything else we do around here and for a very long time we've had important land and water conservation programs set up on a voluntary and incentive basis to help our producers be good stewards of the land good manure management practices so they're not running off and polluting our rivers and streams and lakes and tributaries making sure we've got buffered strips in place making sure we've got the ability to absorb more c o two from the atmosphere so we don't lose ground on the global warming battle that we're that we're confronting and this is something that also benefits the american farmer family farmers in every region but it also benefits the community at large to enhance water quality programs through habitat protection and wildlife which is also vital to our  own local and regional economies and yet what's being considered right now in the conference is a dramatic reduction in the level of funding that came out of the house the house that in the story passage of conservation funding last year calling for another over five billion dollars and these conservation programs this i think in part is to address the backlog of demand because today under current funding close to two out of every three farmers applying for conservation funding assistance are turned away because again adequacy of funds amanda is there but what makes these programs especially attractive is there are so called green box payments there are non market non trade distorting still a way to help our family farmers manage their own land but in a way that doesn't distort the marketplace and what's being considered now is a dramatic reduction in the level of funding that came out of the house originally our motion to instruct today would merely ask the conferees to try to get back to that house level of funding rather than going even below where the senate took it the senate was proposing of four point two billion increase we're over five billion my understanding and i haven't been privy to the ongoing negotiations but they're talking about just the four billion dollars increase under conservation substantially below where the house went more specifically this motion would instruct conferees to maintain the house funding for the environmental quality incentive program that's the main program that helps with manure management projects throughout the nation especially beneficial to large animal feedlots that have to control that and prevent the spillage into the into the environment it would also maintain the allotment for the grassland reserve program and there's more pressure being put on these highly lands because of the increase in commodity prices but also maintain house funding for the wetlands reserve program and that of course is the great filter that exists throughout our communities to enhance quality water supplies but also crucial to waterfall populations in north america and also accept the senate side saver provisions so that the federal government doesn't incentivize the conversion of sensitive version prairie land back into crop production and again given the pressure that this with these historically high commodity prices the real concern that more of this virgin prairie land that's been vital for conservation efforts especially in the great plains are going to be brought back into production with the consequent adverse environmental and conservation affects that would result so all that's merely what this motion to instruct would do is get back to what the house passed last year under conservation give the farmers there out the country the tools they need to be good stewards of the land and do it in a non market non trade distorting fashion especially in light of the tremendous increase in commodity prices today and the pressure that producers are under to bring the land that has been  conserved for many years back into production and resulting with a lot more sediment nutrient runoff that will be at be a consequence of that action and with that i'd reserve the balance of my time general reserves gentleman from oklahoma he's recognized for thirty minutes thank you mr speaker and i would like to now yield half of that time to my colleague chairman hold why thank the gentleman from oklahoma for giving me to time gentlemen as recognizable finished figure i and i say to my my friend from wisconsin and my friend from oregon that we appreciate your support for the funding and for conservation at the house level and i got to say honestly that we wish you had had your support last july and i also say to my friends and i mean my friends that we we wish that we could work the will of the house and pass legislation here and send it over to the other body and have them rubber stamp it and send it down to the president and have him sign it as we've done our work here but in reality that's not the way we can operate and i say to my friend from wisconsin served on the on the agriculture committee and you know this my friend you know we do not have partisan disagreements on this committee and my friends from oklahoma agree with that we have regional differ insist and we have to balance those regional differences and try to figure out a way that those of us on the committee who care strongly about the commodity title are satisfied with the safety net but also realize that there has to be reform and those of us who care strongly about the conservation title realize that we need to have increased investment in conservation and you can compare that with energy and nutrition everything else but we're here to talk about conservation of this afternoon and i'd say to my friend sure we would like to have more money on my father used to always say to me that you know everybody want to go to heaven but nobody want to die we have to put this together and we have to realize what is possible when we the debate discuss this bill in the house of representatives we had thirteen point six billion dollars in addition to baseline when we are in the go shooting in the conference committee all we have ten billion dollars so you can see the difference so everyone had to give and take and again i think when the conferees are done their work we're going to see significant reform in these kamali title and are going to see reform in the conservation title and the chairman asked me just make one thing a perfectly clear and this motion to instruct we've consistently said reform would apply to all titles and we would spread scarce dollars out to more producers the conference agreement will do that and we will fully fund conservation we believe we have an obligation to do that but we have limited resources so we are going to do the best we can hopefully tonight and tomorrow to have a fully invested robust title for conservation with that i reserve the balance of my time on reserves thank you mr you mr speaker and let me  appreciate the hard work that our friend from pennsylvania and oklahoma in the strong support that they've shown throughout the years on these important conservation titled programs under the conservation title and now that we're getting in to closure of this farm bill i hope that voice that with that advocacy will rise again in defense of these programs especially in light of the pressure that exist to bring this land back into production with that i'd like to yield five minutes to my friend and colleague from oregon mr blumenthal thank you joe mr recognized for five minutes i appreciate the gentleman's courtesy i appreciate his completed leadership and advocacy in this bill and i would remind my good friend from pennsylvania that earlier in this debate mr kind and i mr ryan  flake we advanced proposals that would have provided more than enough money to fully fund the conservation would have provided more than enough money to deal for the areas of agriculture that are dramatically under served this does a terrific job for the large corporate enterprises for the richest of farmers lowering the limits to one hundred thousand dollars may in the minds of some be a draconian reform but when we know that the average farmer makes twice what the average homeowner the average citizen makes and i was actually campaigning in pennsylvania for a campaign in a presidential effort here a couple weeks back and i was in some very rural parts of pennsylvania and engaged in the discussion there and i found that pennsylvania is much like oregon we are short changed dramatically in the farm bill we earlier we had my good friend from north dakota a state that produces less agricultural value than the state of oregon and gets one sixth the subsidy pennsylvania is a massive farming effort twenty seven percent of the land area is devoted to farms but pennsylvania farmers get one half of their share of the subsidy and nationally and sixty two percent of the applications for conservation are not paid for and the average farmer in pennsylvania eighty three percent make less than one hundred thousand dollars a year so these are small farmers they're hard pressed they want conservation and they don't have the money for the application it's just like in my state i would suggest that we look hard because i i agree with my friend from pennsylvania my friend from oklahoma this is not necessarily partisan there are areas that agricultural policy divides not necessarily partisan but it's sometimes it's urban and rural sometimes it's east west south midwest it is more likely the type of agriculture that is practiced because the vast majority of farmers in this country would have been well served by the reforms that we advocated from year limiting the payments to two hundred fifty thousand dollars for instance like it's been advocated by the bush administration and by many people here but we don't even have to get to that point my friend mr kinds motion to recommit should bring us together because farmers all across the country in states large and small east and west are for environmental protection they are they have this is the most important environmental bill that the hundred tenth congress will address we should not miss the golden opportunity it is frustrating to me that the conferees are talking about cutting what we approved at five point seven billion to as low as four billion and who knows what it might end up there are lots of missing pieces we we need to go on record here strongly supporting maintaining at least a five billion dollar level and i will tell you farmers in my state regularly identify conservation programs as their top need they have to comply with all sorts of difficult environmental regulations and we need to assure that they get the payments they deserve for environmental protection that they provide it is the farm community the ranchers that are the source of the cheapest most cost effective water quality and water quantity improvement this money supports program that protect our most sensitive and ecologically important lands it keeps pollution out of the lakes rivers streams and wetlands it represents the largest federal investment in private land and it should be an investment that our farmers and ranchers can count upon year after year it's not just the clean water it's maintaining abundant wildlife populations it's storing carbon agriculture is and out is one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions the largest internationally with the increased pressure on lands from biofuel legislation that i've seen work through here that conservation into being the piggy bank for the carman for the farm bill this is an area that is short changed to deal with more powerful political interests well if the american public knew was at stake there would be no more powerful interests than protecting the vironment two thirds of the farmers who apply are turned down this is not right increase conservation programs help balance out some of the inequities in the farm program and provide benefits to everybody i urge you to support family farmers the environment sportsman and support a good  speaker i do rise in opposition to this motion i think my good and dear friends are well intended i think they believe that they are sincerely trying to do something positive but i would say to you this process that we're working through is a complicated challenging process but ultimately the final goal of any farm bill is to take the limited resources that we have used them in a way to achieve the maximum benefit f fellow americans whether that's in hansing the quality of the environment through the conservation programs or making sure that the world's safest and yet most a food a bill for affordable food supply continues to be available to everyone let's think for a moment about what farm bills represent the first comprehensive federal farm bill was not passed until one thousand thirty three in the depths of the great economic depression and in my region of the country the great drouth of the one nine hundred thirty s it was an effort to prevent rule america from disintegrating it was an effort to make sure that that food and fiber remain available to all american consumers at a price they could afford we have worked through many policy concepts we have had many different ways of addressing those needs since one thousand nine hundred eighty three with time the focus of the farm bill has shifted in the one nine hundred sixty s it went from being a farmer's farm bill as the coffee shop folks back home i think up to being a major player and meeting the nutritional needs of this country president kennedy's pilot program on ultimately what became food stamps adopted quip all of the things that enable farmers ranchers property owners to maximize the positive environmental impact on their property the farm bill evolved where are we right now we have a bill that is a result of one of the most challenging set of circumstances in decades we were given the baseline last year to write a farm bill and for those of you who might not remember what baseline that simply saying you have the money you had five years ago and not a penny more and oh by the way inflation skewed a good bit of that up go try and write a bill and then we were told schiff four billion dollars of that from where we are in the bill you want wherever you can to the food stamp program the social attrition program the feeding programs ok we worked for months but if things have gone along the process has changed now instead of four billion then it was six billion then it was eight million now i understand we are at ten point six billion dollars in new social nutrition spending i don't disagree with that but when you're not given any new money to start with when you're placed under a ten billion dollar mandate it makes it hard to do all of the things that need to be done with the few precious resources now we've worked in the most creative way to come up with additional revenue to reallocate resources to meet that ten billion dollar mandate from senior leadership in the majority and along the way we've come up with four billion extra dollars for conservation half of that money going to equal the basic cost share program that everyone has an at opportunity to apply for to try and justify the benefits that will be generated from it to have the resources to meet those needs my friends i know my colleagues are well intended i sincerely believe that but a farm  and foremost should be about making sure that every american has access to the safest highest quality yes most affordable food and fiber in the world then we can target all of these other programs then we can meet all these other needs let's don't lose sight of why we have farm bills let's don't lose sight of who they help and that's every american that eats and a good part of the world that depends on us as their food suppliers also the budget times are tough the circumstances are difficult it's been a long arduous conference we have yet to produce a final report which we will all then be able to debate and discuss but don't direct us in a way that makes the process more complicated when it comes to meeting all of those needs don't tire hands in a fashion that will lead i'm afraid to a net reduction in the ultimate benefit of those tax or dollars so hard for the taxpayers to come by but need to be spent so carefully to maximize their return let us pursue the agenda of meeting our needs with that mr chairman i reserve what time i might have left to own reserves ten from wisconsin speak to you myself such time as may consume do is recognize to speak i certainly appreciate the from my good friend from oklahoma on the hard work that that he has done but these are two individuals who serve on the agriculture committee in fact a friend from pennsylvania is the chair of the subcommittee in charge of this conservation title a friend from oklahoma is the ranking member of the subcommittee in charge of the conservation title all we're asking them in the conferees from the house to do is to protect their programs and to protect their funding level that which was contained in the house passed version of the  bill last year it's a simple request and it receives good support in the house when it when it left last year but there's an additional wrinkle that was just introduced to my knowledge within the last twenty four hours and that's the consideration to start capping payments under the conservation title i think that would result in bad policy i think it's going to result in a lot of unintended consequences because these conservation practices aren't marketable unlike those the subsidies going to commodity crops producers where they grow something and they can sell it in the marketplace to get it a farmer to have a good manure management system in place or to have buffer strips and that they can't take that outside then insult to the private marketplace so these incentives are important to partner with the individual landowner to get them to do the right thing on their own land and they want to do the right thing on their own land that's why two out of every three of them are being denied funding right now because of the inadequacy of funds the demand is exceeding the supply and we're saying let's try to catch to that demand right now which brings huge societal benefits at the same time to enhance quality water supply throughout our country and i still believe that's going to be one of the major challenges we face not only in this country but throughout the world in this century how we're going to maintain quality water supply and if we can't partner to the level that they expect in farm country it's going to make the challenge all the more difficult so i would hope that the conferees in their discussion the last minute deliberations and we're going to find a nickel or dime in order to pay for things don't go down that road of trying to cap these conservation payments like many of us have been proposing under the commodity title i think we can pay for what we're requesting in this motion through some more common sense reasonable forms under the title one come out of the program starting at another look at these so called direct payments and they are slated to go for another twenty five billion dollars over the next five years along and in fact unfortunately mr flake's motion to instruct fails a little bit earlier but all he was asking is let's just keep those direct payments current funding level a maximum of forty thousand dollars instead of increasing it at a time of high commodity prices not an unreasonable request but what's being considered now is going from forty thousand up to fifty thousand for these direct payments and having dual entities on the same farm to qualify for i also believe it's reasonable to take lot as the president and the administration is asking for us to have stricter means test under the commodity programs let's face it in one hundred fifty thousand dollars adjusted gross income cutoff is in the stratosphere for most individuals in this country we're talking adjusted gross now not just gross income this is after you back out your expenses and all the costs of operating that farm as close to a million dollars of profit we're talking about that an individual would receive and still receive these commodity subsidy payments under what's being proposed in the calm france so i think there's plenty of savings that can still be had without cutting the legs up from our producer while maintaining an important safety net in case things do turn bad in farm country and lord knows we've seen that cycle coming go in the past but let's do it in more fiscally responsible manner and maximize the scarce resources that we have for for the benefit of the community at large and that includes funding under the council under the conservation title a few groups of already weighed in on this motion to instruct and express their support from the environmental defense fund national wildlife federation the world wildlife fund defenders of wildlife environmental working group american rivers those who have been actively engaged in participating in trying to shape this next farm bill we still have an opportunity because the conference not closed no report has been filed yet there's going to be some last minute ultimately at the end of the day if my colleagues are serious about having a farm bill concluded and implemented into law the president has to be comfortable in doing it and clearly he's not there yet the administration is not there and they're pressing the conference to do more in reforming these commodity programs we can choose to ignore that but at the end of the day the president's got to sign something into law or they have to try to override a veto which i think is going to be very very difficult so i think there's still a way of working with the administration trying to produce a product that they feel comfortable with that the president feels comfortable with and one of the ways to do it is more reform under commodity and have a strong conservation title at the end of the day the president has consistently express support for a strong conservation title i don't think they would object to the request that we're making here in this motion to instruct and let's remind ourselves this is another way of providing help and assistance to those who are working the land in our country this isn't  it from the help in other areas that we try to provide to family farmers it's in addition to it it's a supplement and it's something it benefits every farmer in every region and including all people throughout the country instead of the concentrated payments that we see under the current title one commodity program but that i reserve the balance of my time and and from my colleagues information i have no for the speakers i believe i have the right to well as i'm prepared to do that if if they're ready to close to him is correct  i would just like to remind them that the pennsylvania leads the country in farmland preservation and we have doubled the investment for farmland preservation in this conference report as we are working it through i also would like to remind my friend that not only have we preserve the dairy safety net and dairy being the number one agriculture industry in pennsylvania that is very important we have a new program that we are working on in the conference to have a feed cost adjustment that is the cost of feed goes up and that will be a great benefit to farmers in pennsylvania and in wisconsin  for that as a cost to feed goes up and also we have for especially crops the first time a one point three billion dollar investment that will help farmers all across the country but they will help them in pennsylvania as well so i appreciate my friend trying to help me out and i would say to my friend from wisconsin and again and repeating ourselves that we are restrained we were working with thirteen point six billion dollars we now are working with ten billion dollars the commodity title has been cut by tens of billions of dollars from the from the last farm bill there are significant reforms that we are going to accomplish and the gentleman knows because he served on a committee that we have regional differences and it's difficult to get consensus because of the geographical makeup of the committee also we're going to get there we're going to fund conservation but i would like to make one last point to the gentleman the comments about the capping on conservation programs we have noticed in the covered recently that there has been significant abuses in the conservation title well wealthy people have purchased farms with no intention of farming and have become eligible to the tune of millions of dollars for conservation programs that was not the intent i don't believe in any farm bill i ever voted for that the gentleman from wisconsin voted for the gentleman from oklahoma we never intended that so the way to do it the way to get around that is to have caps on that and not only will you stop the abuses if you put caps on for millionaires taking advantage of it you'll have more dollars to spread around the more people who are on the waiting list right now  my friend we all wish we could do more gentlemen from oklahoma chaired the subcommittee when we began having hearings on it with the last election i became the chairman he's now my ranking member we're working very closely together but we have limited resources we're going to do the best we can  we need to get a bill that we can get out of committee we get passed honestly or get it passed in the senate and send out that president and we're working very hard on that my believe we're going to get a product that will get the majority support significantly in this body so with that mr recognize and simply note one of the challenges of any farm bill certainly every farm bill since the one nine hundred sixty s has been the payment limitation as you every farm bill we tighten the definition every farm bill we attempt to reflect the will of this body we will do that again this time the question about payment limitations on conservation programs that's an inevitable outcome simply the fact that there will never ever be enough money to do everything we all want to do and any year in a bill when we put ten billion additional dollars in the christian programs no doubt justified but that was a decision made on high makes funding for all these other programs even more challenging four billion dollars in additional conservation spending is an impressive accomplishment in the circumstances we work but those payment limitations are a necessary thing just uncommon as in conservation as in every other part of the bill to make sure that everyone has a fair and equitable chance at those resources when you apply for an equal program you have to demonstrate the benefits of that program and the more beneficial your efforts are the greater your chances are the farther up the list you are to be funded it is a competitive kind of a process and that's good but those payment limitations will make sure that more people have an opportunity to step into the process to utilize those funds if we want to dramatically well we're dealing with the money that's been given to us working under the circumstances that have been laid out and we're doing the best we can with that mr speaker i urge my colleagues to to reject the motion instruct and yield back the remainder of my time ge down from wisconsin is to go you myself such time as i may consume is recognize and i'll use just wrap up my remarks and again let me just reiterate i truly do appreciate the hard work my colleagues here today on the agriculture committee have been doing to try to that can get accomplished yet this year and one of the most difficult things that members are asked to do in any congress is to piece together the procul and the different interests that span this great country to find an acceptable  that can get that can get signed into law but we still have a little ways to go and i say to my friend from pennsylvania as far as the feed factor with dairy production there's no question that fixed costs are going up right now in production agriculture driven by a variety of factors not least of which is the energy debacle that we find ourselves in right now but i think once we start going down to that that freed rot you're going to get a lot of other groups not shining in and saying what about us what about us how come there is being taken care of what about poultry what about beef what about the others that are experiencing the same type of cost increases and then you're really talking about blowing the lid off some of these programs but all that i and others who are in support of this motion to instruct are asking is for the members of the committee to defend their work defend the programs that passed the house last year defend the funding level that came out of the house last year because of the vital importance that these programs have not only to the individual land producers but to the resources that are so precious to all of us in this country and now we see disturbing trends because of the high commodity prices great pressure to bring more highly wrote of all sensitive land back into production and there will be adverse consequences from that unless we can maintain a viable incentive based system with these conservation programs to deal with that additional pressure that producers are facing throughout the nation i think there's a better way of dealing with the abuses that my friend in from pennsylvania highlighted under the conservation program certainly we can do more oversight and get more information in regards to whether individuals are milking the system known in support of that we want to clamp down to it let's work with u s d a and  and those agencies in charge of implementing it rather than calling for a blanket payment limitation cap with crucial conservation funding because again i'm afraid that without these a cent of them place i don't care how wealthy you are it won't be much incentive for you to engage in these type of programs which just doesn't benefit the landowner but the community in the watershed area and the water and the wildlife at large so we need to be are full what road we're going to go down to and hopefully this isn't just a response to some of us who have been asking for meaningful payment limitations and means testing under the commodity program and just to get back at those who have been very supportive of conservation funding i think there are reasonable means test we can apply to the commodity title the fact that l d p and countercyclical payments aren't going out today i think is a good thing that means farm income is up and commodity prices are up and back home in wisconsin in the agriculture district that i represent farmers have for years come up to me and said you know ron not a big fan of these subsidy programs but i just wish the market would give us a decent price so we won't have to rely on a well that day has come and now today i've got producers and corn and soybeans coming up to me and say ron why are we still receiving these direct subsidy payments when we're getting such a good price in the marketplace and the right farmers know how these programs are working i think we can be a little bolder and more courageous in the reforms that some of us have been advocating final saving so we can deal with conservation nutrition rural development specialty crop having a good energy title to this farm bill to this can happen it can happen in a way that the president feels comfortable in signing and that would truly be a good bipartisan day then in the united states congress  back and i encourage my friends to support this motion to to instruct the conferees and i you back my time full time is expired without objection the previous question is ordered the question is on the motion although some fa the speaker's room washington d c may first two thousand and eight i hereby appoint the honorable danny age hoyer and the honorable chris van hollen to act this because pro temporary two signed and roll bill and joint resolutions through to the congress of the united states pursuant to the international and emergency economic powers act i hereby report that i have issued an executive order to order that takes additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in executive order one thirty forty seven of may twentieth one thousand nine hundred seven and expanded in executive order one thirty four forty eight of october eighteenth two thousand and seven and one nine hundred ninety seven the united states put in place a pr prohibition on new investment in burma and response of the government of burma as large scale repression as a democratic opposition in that country on october eighteenth two thousand and seven i determined that the government of burma is continued repression of the democratic opposition in burma manifested at the time in the violent response to peaceful demonstrations the commission of human rights abuses related to political repression and engagement in public corruption including by diverting or misusing burmese public asset or by misusing public authority warranted an expansion of the then existing thing actions executive order one thirty four forty eight issued on that on that date incorporated existing designation criteria set forth in executive order one thirty three ten block the property and interest in property of persons listed in the annex to that executive order and provided additional criteria for designations of certain other persons the order blocks of property and interest in property in the united states of persons listed in the annex to the order and provides additional criteria for designation of persons determined by the secretary of the treasury after consultation with the secretary of state to be owned or controlled by directly or indirectly the government of burma or official or officials of the government of burma the order leaves in place the existing prohibitions on new investment the exportation already exportation to burma financial services and the importation of any article that is a product of burma the order authorizes the secretary of the treasury after consultation with the secretary of state to take such actions including the promulgation of rules and regulations and to employ all powers granted to the president by the i e e e p a and section four of the burmese freedom and democracy access two thousand and three as may be necessary to carry out the purpose of the order i am in closing a copy of the executive order i have issued signed sincerely george w bush the white house april thirtieth two thousand and eight this president be one minute request for what purpose of a judge a woman from california rice this is speaker i ask unanimous consent that today following legislative business and any special orders heretofore entered into the following members may be permitted to address the house for five minutes revise and extend their remarks occlude there in extraneous material mr skelton missouri ms woolsey california mr de fazio oregon mr schiff california without objection order the speakers announced policy of january the eighteenth two thousand and seven and under a previous sort of the house the following members are recognized for five minutes at this time when the chair recognizes the gentleman from missouri  speaker in matters of national security experience leaders never forget that the unexpected is always just around the corner and the danger is never far away the and reveled with wine and meals only after his merry making did demichelis discover that a razor sharp sword suspended by a single thread hung over his head all day was immediately cured of his desire to rule when i consider the challenges confronting the u s national security today i do not see one two swords of damocles hanging above us the first danger concerns a strain current operations place on u s military readiness the second concerns a deterioration of security and stability in afghanistan military readiness ratings measure how prepare u s forces are to perform their assigned combat missions unfortunately but not surprisingly more than six years of war have resulted in serious readiness shortfalls with our army and marine corps ground forces experiencing the most acute problems in spite of average to fill the gaps in equipment training and personnel and readiness deficiency it's says serious enough to cause alarm over last year have continued only to expand today two thirds of the army's combat brigades are in in the united states are not ready for duty units in the u s are suffering from shortages of personnel and uni are preparing for deployment without having an all of their assigned personnel or equipment during training to fill shortfalls in army personnel in the navy and air force are supplying over twenty thousand troops to conduct ground force tasks such as convoy security and law just exum port while u s military forces are getting by painfully in performing today's missions despite readiness shortfalls we simply not prepared for the emergence of a new conflict experience tells me that we cannot assume another crisis won't come our way in my thirty one years in congress the us has been involved in twelve significant military conflicts none of which were predicted before hand because we can't know with complete certainty that dangers lurking around the corner are when they might strike we need surance policy military provides for america's security our current rent a situation demands a massive investment in time effort and money to restore our full capability of course devoting the resources required to solve our problems will force us to make painful tradeoffs some elements of modernization which is tomorrow's readiness but with current ran this levels this is a predicament our nation cannot avoid it's simply a cost we must bear the second danger i worry about is a deterioration of security and stability in afghanistan for too long the war in iraq has overshadowed the real war against terrorism in afghan afghanistan while the military efforts there is a qualified success the political effort at this point is not in the benefits of economic progress or far too uneven too many afghan citizens do not yet see tangible improvements in their daily lives the ever in afghanistan is not really reconstruction but the creation of a stable secure and unified nation which has never really existed the reason decision ascendant additional thirty two hundred marines to afghanistan is a necessary and positive step in the right direction but that alone will not be sufficient the center taking is gargantuan and requires a far more significant effort than the united states or our allies have been willing to commit history will judge us very harshly if our focus and effort in afghanistan is insufficient to the task a failure of the mission there would not only damage our security it would also seriously damage nato so how do we deal with these twin challenges to start with we must focus our nation's strategic priorities to find the right balance between the near term means in the long term health of our military we must address the imbalance in our deployment and use of trousseaux troops overseas because our readiness problems cannot be resolved as long as we continue to deploy in excess of one hundred thousand troops in iraq a responsible redeployment of a large percentage of that force is a strategic necessity in addition we must do first things first by focusing on afghanistan just as in world war two we focused more of our resources on germany in the war in europe until that war was won finally we must substantially increased use of our soft power our double diplomatic economic development and strategic communications effort infamous mission accomplished speech aboard the u s s abraham lincoln across this country americans are holding rallies and vigils to mark this occasion and members of the international longshoreman and warehouse unions are giving up a day's pay and they're marching in the streets to show their opposition to the failed policies of the bush administration and of the cost of those policies all remember that the president put on a green flight suit and white helmet and arrived in the copilot seat of a navy viking jet then he stood at a podium meath a big mission accomplished banner and he spoke he said the search for weapons of mass destruction had already begun and he could declare that the major combat operations in iraq had ended obviously the american people didn't get the real facts that day mr speaker so here's what should have been said he should have said my fellow americans our soldiers have performed with great skill and courage but frankly the administration doesn't have a clue what to do next it didn't have a plan for the occupation it didn't have an exit strategy and the people who actually understand the history and culture of iraq were warning us that there were going to be insurgencies and civil war he should have said major combat operations had not ended they have just begun today i joined with my out of iraq caucus colleagues maxine waters and barbara lee to send a letter a dear colleague letter that describes the terrible human cost of the bungling in iraq it shows that over ninety six percent of all american deaths in iraq and over ninety eight percent of all casualties have taken place since the mission accomplished speech but you don't have to look mr speaker at the cumulative devastation of the past five years to know that the occupation is a disaster just look at what happened in april april of two thousand and eight last month fifty american soldiers died the highest number in seven months thousands of innocent civilians were killed or injured in the bloody battle it satter city which continues to rage the pentagon was forced to extend that to stop loss policy because our military is stretched it's limits and is the administration a knowledge that al qaeda is growing stronger in its safe havens in pakistan the drumbeat for war against iran grew louder here at home the occupation continues to be a factor  driving gas prices higher the iraq recession continues in full swing and every week billions of dollars continue to be spent on military operations in iraq that are desperately needed for domestic programs right here sheer incompetence has surely been one reason for this but the most important reason for our failure in iraq is that fatally flawed national security policy it has been a marked by arrogance by the belief that america can go it alone and has a right to strike anywhere and anytime it pleases and by the idea that military power alone can assure our security i hope that we will use this mission accomplished anniversary date in a positive way so that we can learn the lessons of the past five years and dedicate ourselves to a new foreign policy that will serve us much better this new policy must be based on diplomacy international cooperation the rule of law rejection of the doctrine of preemption and the use of torture and a commitment to helping other nations other nations of the world to build a better life for their citizens finally mr speaker on this mission accomplished day we must ask ourselves what is america's mission the american people believe that our mission is to stand up for the values of democracy for human rights and for peace those are the values that the dock work her standing up for today those are the values that have been ignored and predictably resulted in disastrous results i yield back mr jones from north carolina under the speaker's announce policy on january eighteenth two thousand and seven the gentleman from michigan mr conyers is recognized for sixty minutes as the designee of the majority leader ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks without objection mr speaker we're in the  the cover the uninsured week and i remain mine to i rise to remind the chamber of the worth a worsening health care crisis that we faced as a nation and propose a solution to one of the biggest challenges of the twenty first century facing us lack of health insurance often denies necessary medical care forty seven million americans are uninsured this problem is not limited to the poor or the unemployed researchers have estimated that about four fifths of the uninsured are either employed or members of a family with an employed adult as well they're an additional fifty million americans who are under insured that is they have coverage that would not protect them from catastrophic medical expenses simply put an increasing number of americans like adequate health insurance because they and their employers simply cannot afford it despite the challenges of the war in iraq and the slumping economy we all agree that the uninsured need to be covered even the health insurance companies have their own plan for covering the uninsured and i'm glad that we are on the same page after all these years the real question we face is how do we go about covering the uninsured and how do we ensure that every american has access to quality medical care when they it i strongly believe in a single payer national health insurance an approach that has been too often marginalized in the base on this issue even though it has been successfully employed in almost every end street all nations except our own we have a bill to lay down the chilis before the house the following inro senate twenty nine fifty four an act to amend public law one to one ninety six to provide for a temporary extension a program authorized by the foreign security and roll investment act of two thousand to be on may second two thousand and eight uninsured but as the preferred solution to fix our broken health care system and make no mistake about it it is in very bad shape according to a january two thousand and seven article in the journal of health affairs france japan and australia rated best and the united states worst in new rankings focusing on preventable deaths due to charitable conditions in nineteen leading and that's three allies nations the article revealed that if the united states health care system performed as well as those top three countries there'd be a hundred and one thousand fewer deaths in the united states each year equally disturbing the institute of medicine reports that twenty thousand americans die each year as a direct result of having no health insurance how can we in the congress who receive fairly decent health care tell forty seven million uninsured americans that they cannot have access to health care with the knowledge that twenty thousand americans die each year without health insurance how can we in congress who do have health insurance not place universal health care as a front burner issue in this chamber this is a moral challenge that we must pick up and incremental ism will not work expanding a broken system or fixing parts of it will not work we must approach the healthcare solution the same way a physician approaches the treatment of disease doctors do not employ treatments only because they are easy or feasible they choose evidence based solutions based upon peer reviewed research in order to employ the most state of the art care available and so i propose we take the same approach to crafting a universal healthcare plan so today i asked the following question what further disaster must be followed us before we face the crisis of the end insured and under insured how many more people must die due to the inability to receive care in the world's healthiest nation before we and congress take action and create a truly universal health care system for those who believe that we are not ready to have a universal health care system and must delay the formation of a comprehensive national health insurance program i ask you to consider the following evidence that demonstrates why we can ill afford the laying action on a universal health care system health care horror stories are cases in which the results is so tragic that it shocks the conscious we hear about them almost every day in the newspapers magazines the internet television radio  personal encounters with our friends and neighbors in the movie sicko we as a nation saw firsthand how even those with health insurance suffer under the current for profit employer based private health insurance system in my office i receive scores of health care horror stories and have binders in my office of health care tragedies that we have collected over the last eight years in fact when michael moore was doing research for sicko he received twenty five thousand health care horror stories himself after he made an appeal for those harsh sores on his web site i'd like to read  health care horror story sent to us by age in campbell from michigan a story that unfortunately millions of americans who are uninsured or uninsured can relate to here's a story my sister who is twenty two years old right now was diagnosed with cervical cancer the same cancer i had at the same age she graduated from college back in december so she is off my dad's insurance jobs are hard to find here in michigan so she's working two part time jobs and neither of them provide insurance for part time workers she has to go through what i did but instead of actually being able to get medical treatment right away then having to pay for it she has to put off until she in the hospital can work out a payment plan they told her the soonest they might be able to perform the surgery will be in april we've been calling around seeking another option she's at stage four when i was at stage two when i went through my ordeal so she's in much worse condition than i was which worries me this is unacceptable it's like i am living my horror all over again only this is my sister this is why we have to fight we have to shake things up this election year there's nothing you can do for my sister at this point thanks to keep her in your prayers and i hope she can get surgery soon but for those women who may get cervical cancer down the road let's fight for universal health care so they don't have to go through the money worries i love my sister victoria or as my daughter calls  because she can't save biggie please just keep her in your prayers and thoughts thanks for letting me vent i love her too much to see this happen to her we do not have a health care system in this country what exists is a fragmented none system of health care it's a wasteful and inefficient patchwork of different plans and schemes that allow too many people to fall between the cracks the complexity of this man system is what makes it unsustainable private health insurers are in the business to make a profit make no mistake about it in fact the real problem is that insurance companies are not as much in the business to provide care as they are in the business to deny care they keep profits up by avoiding high risk patients limiting the coverage of those they do insure and passing costs back to patients through co payments and deductibles they deny coverage based on preexisting conditions including such costly diseases as athlete's foot and yeast infections they employ an army of adjusters who go through mountains of paperwork all mostly working to figure out a way to deny a claim we have the story of insurance company whistleblower dr linda peeno who tells us she was paid a boy lowness on how many claims that she could deny and threaten with the motion that she authorized payment on more claims than her peers based practices are harmful they're expensive all those adjusters and paperwork costs a lot of money and to that insurance costs  the insurance company spending on advertising huge executive salaries and profits for shareholders and the result is an average overhead of fifteen cents on the dollar compare that with medicare's overhead which is between two and three cents the complexity of this non system not only leads to gaps in coverage and navigating nightmares but is underscored by the duplicity and waste created by the multitude of health insurance companies mr speaker i'm pleased now to recognize the gentleman from ohio who's been on this plan for several congressmen of all congresses ago he was and is their original co founder and original signer with me to this bill he's worked relentlessly in the congress and across the country in making it clear that we're working on a system that someday is going to bring so much joy and benefit to the millions of americans in this conyers i am so grateful to have the opportunity to work with you mr conyers on this important bill for years ago when we were having those meetings with the legislation was being crafted we both knew what an important moment it would be for the people of the united states to be able to have a health care system they could call their own and so i want to take this opportunity as i begin my remarks to salute the work you chairman conyers and all that you have done and your dedication in working to make sure that the american people have a national health care system and not for profit system that's been your dedication it's been an honor to work alongside of you in this endeavor as we speak today about covering the uninsured we speak to the american people who are worried about whether loved ones are going to be able to get the care that they need there is nothing that is more troubling to a family that they have a family member who is ill and yet cannot get the medical care that would be necessary to bring them back to health there are fifty million americans who are uninsured this means that when they see others able to get the care they need they recognize in their own families that they cannot sustain the health of loved ones or themselves why is it that people are uninsured while there are many reasons but the principal reason is they simply cannot afford health insurance chairman that there are so many families that called upon to spend a thousand dollars or more a month for health insurance the price of gasoline going up to more than four dollars a gallon cost of bread going up milk eggs meat all basic staples of american diet cost going up up up people are finding that the cost of health insurance is becoming prohibited so they simply can't afford it so they remain uninsured there by leaving their entire family health open to a challenge how many of us would be able to survive financially being uninsured very few because what happens is that if you're uninsured and you have health care bills you can have to pay those bills and you know that the greatest cause of bankruptcy in the united states relates to people not being able to pay their hospital or their doctor bills that's a fact of life there is no other issue which touches the american family in touches all of us so uniquely as this issue of health insurance people can't afford it this is a tragic problem and it's getting worse about twenty two thousand people die every year because they're not insured this according to the updated institute of medicine statistic but we cannot talk about the uninsured without talking about the under insured as well there are another fifty million americans who are under insured now think about it fifty million uninsured fifty million under insured one hundred million americans one out of every three americans is touched by this dilemma and that means virtually every american family  uninsured or under insured if you're under insured dams are expensive you may not be able to pay the the premium to get the coverage you need co pays and deductibles go higher and higher and higher american families owned by the health insurance company what kind of a country are we becoming where the people of this country can't get the care they need because almost one out of every three dollars is taken off the top by the for profit insurance companies for advertising marketing the cost of paperwork corporate profit stock options executive salaries all those things mr conyers talked about in the past seven hundred billion dollars a year goes for expenses that are totally unrelated to the cost of health care seven hundred billion dollars a year meanwhile you have fifty million uninsured another fifty million under insured the insurance companies own us we don't own our own health care system and insurance industry is the reason for the under insurance problem and all that goes with it half of all bankruptcies tied to medical inch bell bills and of those medical bankruptcies listen to this three quarters of those had insurance before they got sick so even with insurance people are going bankrupt because that because they can't handle the co pays and the of all the medical bankruptcies in the united states three of every four people had some kind of insurance before they got sick they fell victim to insurance companies whose only way to make money is to deny care how do these insurance companies make so much money they make money not providing health care they make money telling people we're not going to pay that claim you're not going to be covered and the more money they can make the more people they can exclude the more money they make it is  health care is a racket health insurance rather is a racket and it's time that we took american a new direction which is what the conyers bill that i'm proud to be a co author of is all about h r six seven six is to provide for universal single payer not for profit health care system it finally puts health care back in the hands of the doctors and the patients it eliminates the insurance companies as middle persons middlemen who are able to skim that almost one out of three dollars off the top well fifty million americans are uninsured another fifty million or under insured we need to make a clear distinction between health care and health insurance the two are very different doctors and nurses are not the same as health insurance c e o's doctors and nurses provide care insurance companies c e o s they deny it there is a difference between health care and health insurance if you have insurance doesn't mean you have health care there are increasingly creative and complex ways to deny health care co pays deductibles premiums limits on daily coverage caps on a an annual amount spent failing to cover certain medical conditions failing to cover certain accidents failing to cover certain drugs failing to cover certain total spending amounts like the privatized medicare part d donut hole failing to cover hospital stays or minimizing the coverage what has this hunt for profitability and health insurance cost as well as costs a lot of money is driving up health care costs beyond the reach of most americans listen to this statistic between nine hundred seventy and one thousand nine hundred eighty eight the number of doctors and other clinical personnel increased by two point five fold during the same time the number of health administration administrators included increased more than twenty four fold there's an explosion of the number of people in the health care system who do not provide care they instead are told to deny  it boils down to this the insurance industry is the problem it is not the solution the only way to truly cover everyone is to guarantee access not to force working men and women to subsidize the insurance industry was very present forces people to pay out of their pockets to keep the industry alive we need health care run by doctors and their patients not insurance companies health care is a basic human right so mr conyers i just want to express to you my appreciation for the work that you've done to bring this issue before the american people to have had the opportunity over many of the last two congresses to work with you on this has really been an honor and when we remember when we go back home you to detroit me to cleveland and we see people who need care our hearts break when we realize that they can't get it because insurance has just ended up being a big business and they don't care about people anymore it's all about making money all about profit conyers you and i know that h r six seven six stands alone in an increasingly crowded field of ideas that are going to provide health care for people and this proposal addresses the accessibility problem the employer based insurance requires people continue to work in order to keep their insurance even if it were worsens their health now i know mr conyers worked with the u a w for years and years before  coming into congress what happens if you lose your job people end up after their cobra benefits are going to lose their health insurance our proposal said if you lose your job you're still insured if you don't have money you're still short if you have a preexisting condition you're still insured this covers dental care vision care mental health long term care prescription drugs it's all covered mr conyers thank you thank you for your dedication to the american people thank you for your willingness to lead the way and i'm just so grateful that i have the opportunity to work with you  so flattered that he remembers the days that we started with just a few members were up somewhere about nine now and growing every week every month  more and more people are joining us and in addition there are growing numbers of medical professionals doctors researchers health care experts who are all recognizing how important what you have said as in terms of how we move out of the situation that we're in your description the pain and suffering of so many of our citizens because of the lack of health care and leads to situations so horrible that the this idea but there's a new survey that just came out published in the annals of internal medicine that states that of the physicians that were contacted in this survey thousands of them fifty nine percent of physicians now support a national health care plan which is why i believe when you have the physicians supporting it the patients support it all we need is to keep adding to the numbers in the house of representatives and with mr conyers leadership we're on our way to creating a national health care system and once again i want to thank the gentleman for the opportunity to share some time with you here and again the people of the united states are you a de gratitude for your relentlessness and your dedication on this and i intend to keep working at your side as we move forward to create a universal single payer not for profit health care system h r six seven six t is the way to go thank you thank you congressman kucinich and as our numbers grow in the congress you know that the american people have already indicated in pol after poll that they want a universal health care plan many are willing to even pay more for to get it but they don't have to and this is a labor of love which i'm so proud of the nearly one hundred of our colleagues are now working with us and i you know again to the giants you know as the chairman is always able to do you bring up another point that i think would be helpful to amplify and that is that people say well how are you going to pay for this well guess what we're already paying for universal standard of care we're just not getting it two point three trillion dollars a year goes for health care in the united states two point three trillion and when you consider the fact that the for profit insurance companies take almost one out of every three dollars or almost seven hundred billion a year you take that seven hundred billion dollars my right mr chairman and you put the money into care and suddenly you have enough money to cover all americans the under insured any uninsured are covered so how we pay for it is using the money that's already in the system and that's how much profit is in health care insurance the health insurance these days mr chairman once again thank you for bringing out that point about the fact that it is able to be covered without without any current change in iraq our system although we have a funding formula that you've helped to develop that will guarantee that all americans will be covered far into the future so which people when they initially get sick they can go to a doctor instead of being forced to go to emergency rooms where they get temporary treatment and then they're back at home or on the streets again will make the country healthier than and the national health care is a ambition that is very much related to national security so i'm pleased that all of these things can occur with the consideration of house resolution six seven six in the last ten years the cost of health care to businesses have increased one hundred forty percent we need an efficient universal health care system that that protects american businesses from skyrocketing health care costs so that as a nation we can remain competitive in the global marketplace the rising cost of healthcare in this country has played a significant role in the current economic climate specifically with regard to the outsourcing of labor to foreign countries between two thousand and two thousand seven united states health premiums have risen ninety eight percent while wages have only increased by twenty three percent the average family health insurance plan no costs more than the earnings of a full time minimum wage worker our fractured none system of health care is crippling our economy but don't take my word for it just as the united automobile workers and the a f l c i a o or even the automobile makers themselves health care has become such a central issue for general motors that economists magazine only partly ingests call the company a pension hedge fund one help insurance business that happens ford and general motors pay nearly fifteen hundred dollars in health care costs for each vehicle they produce while the m w pays four hundred  fifty dollars in germany and honda only one hundred fifty dollars per vehicle in japan the general motors executive to former senator tom daschle will promote a proponent of universal health care that the high cost of health care is the single large this impediment to creating more jobs in the united states and i executive senior vice president for human resources mr j randall mcdonnell recently predicted that five years from now this problem will have to be cured or the competitiveness of the united states will be drastically impacted small business employees are one of the fastest growing segments of the uninsured and now compromise and now business owners and self employed individuals is probably the biggest challenge that we have in kansas and most states in quotation incredibly one fifth of the working age americans both insured and uninsured have medical debt that they are paying off over time more than two fifth's of these people over two thousand dollars or more medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in the united states accounting for half of the personal bankruptcies if one paid medical bills are the leading cause of bankruptcy in this country then how can we in good conscience that i any longer in congress to create a choose universal health care system high deductibles and private health insurance plans are another barrier to consistent care eleven million people with health insurance have per person deductibles of a thousand dollars or more once recent one just one recent study found that forty four percent of adults with duct levels of a thousand dollars or more did not fill a prescription declined to see a specialist skipped the recommended test or treatment or didn't see a doctor when the when the they had a serious medical problem there are additional sums spent by hospitals and doctors offices to deal with each insurance company's rules and regulations and forms to fill out after a number of our satellite industries take a cut we're looking at up to fifty cents on the dollar being spent on administration marketing and profits all this money could be being spent on health care drug prices in this country about sixty percent higher than prices in canada or britain and this is not because big pharma is doing so much research and development in fact data from the pharmaceutical companies own annual reports show that they spend almost three times as much working on marketing and administrative costs as they do on research and development it's not because american companies are carrying the burden of doing research and development but the rest of the world drug companies and the european union put out about the same number of new products each year that american companies do and our drug industry's research and development gets huge tax spare subsidies from government supported research done by the national institutes of health and american universities in fact only a very small percentage of the new jobs produced in america are in fact innovative developments most o of old drugs develops simply to extend patent protections so they can keep on charging those high excessive prices the reason drugs cost more in america than anywhere else boils down to a single factor profit the jug companies have the highest profit margins of all american corporations their profits as a percent of sales runs about nineteen percent compared to medium a median of about five percent for a fortune five hundred companies mr speaker the american people are concerned about the direction in which our economy is heading as we spiral headlong toward a recession if we're not already in one both large corporations and small businesses have to make difficult decisions to keep their business afloat for most americans the loss of employment means the loss of health insurance the bottom line if we can streamline the operations of the health care system by decreasing wasteful overhead and appropriately allocating funds we can not only ensure the coverage of everybody in the united states but we can provide for true health care and that is an important point coverage that does not equal care my plan h r six seven six is simple and its simplicity is the very thing that will allow it to succeed where others will fail many of the plans generally add u individual mandate and even more insurance options others suggest financial mechanisms like tax credits or savings accounts other plans will not guarantee coverage that is universal of affordable or comprehensive they fail to do anything to decrease administrative costs or complexity in fact they add to it they can't can show costs and so ultimately they will be unsustainable now i began from the premise that health care is a basic human right not a privilege a basic human right this is the consensus opinion of the international community and as in china in the universal declaration of human rights and documents i also believe that government has a fundamental role to play in guaranteeing this right to each and all of its citizens this is the view of the other industrialized nations all of which have single payer health care systems that cover all their people costs far less than ours and sadly get more and better results in terms of health outcomes i believe that health care must not be a market commodity the market dictates that one the ability to consume a particular product is constrained by one's ability to pay this approach may be feasible when one is talking about buying hamburgers or tennis shoes but it is unacceptable when it comes to health care our access to health services should be determined by only one thing what our doctor thinks we need a profit should not be a factor let me clarify i do not advocate socialized or government run health care such as the national health service in great britain i propose a plan that is publicly financed but privately delivered like those in germany or france or taiwan the role of the government in the h r six seven six proposal is limited to collecting revenues and dispersing payments to providers doctors hospitals and clinics will continue to be run privately i believe they will be required to operate as not for profit organizations in a single payer system we could do just that we will do just that revenues would flow into the system through an automatic payroll tax very little paper were required doctors would build the government electronically and they would be reimbursed glee cutting out the middleman and say in the savings would be tremendous studies by the congressional budget office the government accountability office and consultancy such as the leaven group consistently find that the savings under a single payer plan would be more than enough to cover all the uninsured so in fact it's possible to cover all americans under a comprehensive health plan without spending any more money than we do now we would just be more efficient with it the two other major drivers of health inflation and the increasing use of expensive prescription drugs and the proliferation of new and expensive medical technologies a single payer system would address both these costs by leveraging the buying power of the federal government we can negotiate huge discounts both for drugs and for other major drivers health inflation medical technology we can bring down the cost of medical technology by allocating it more efficiently as it is we have no organizing structure to manage the distribution of health care resources the result is that we have a glut of medical imaging machines specialists and other medical services which are seen as generating the most potential profit for their owners hospital a has one m r i machine hospital b then feels it must have two m r i machines and so on to end up with him a time machines all over town standing vacant while we continue to spend enormous sums of acquiring more it is unwise impractical and should be in that under a single payer system we can distribute resources more efficiently so that we are buying him or i'm issuing these based on the need for them not based on how much profit they can generate for a particular hospital original board could determine with the input of doctors and other providers what number of machines would be appropriate for the population based on demographic demographics and other factors allow an explanation of how a single payer system under r six seven six were existing public health care spending including government spending for medicare and medicaid would continue but it would flow into a single  fund we would add a payroll tax of about three point three percent to each to workers and employers in addition to the one point forty five percent medicare tax the total have health care costs would be four point seven five percent this is cheaper than what the private health insurance companies charge so families and businesses will be spending less than what they are spending now if they have insurance we also get revenue from other sources like a quarter of one percent tax on certain stock and bond chants actions all of these revenue sources add up to more than enough to cover current spending but just in case there are additional expenses in a particular year we also authorize and new appropriation revenue flows from the federal trust fund into the count's of the currently existing medicare regions reimbursement is then they go shared it with doctors and other providers at the regional level with current levels being the starting point doctors are paid on a fee for service basis while hospitals and other large institutions are paid with monthly lump s known as global budgets instead of on current expenditures global budgets are cost control mechanisms that are very effective in another single payer systems every american would receive a national health insurance card at birth or would be able to apply for one at the post office or gov or other government facility the application form a limited to two pages everyone living in the united states would be eligible all medical necessary services would be covered including inpatient and outpatient care mental health care dental care and prescription drugs patients can go to the doctor or healthcare provider of their choice private insurance companies are prohibited from duplicating coverage provided under the plan they may still offer coverage for non medically necessary services such as cosmetic surgery they are not printed it for being hired by the government to do billing services but overhead costs would be strictly regulated this plan relies on the existing medicare infrastructure for administration there's no new government bureaucracy in fact they'll be far less bureaucracy and health care after the role of the insurance companies has been limited just to let you know there are nationally recognized health economists and physicians who believe that if we spent more efficiently the money we're already currently spending on health care then we would cover every american with quality and affordable health insurance right now through a privately delivered public finance single payer system mr speaker i had thank you for your cooperation and i yield back the balance of my time order without objection under the speaker's announced policy of january the eighteenth two thousand and seven the gentleman from maryland miss department is recognized for sixty minutes as the designee of the minority leader thank you very much mr speaker i came early to our office yesterday morning and i opened the door and took the newspapers inside and put them out on the reading table and as i took them out seven of them for newspapers and three of the kind of inside the beltway papers i noted the lead story above the fold in the sun there were two stories demand each supply swiftly rising food prices are on doing progress in fighting hunger globally and another above the fold headline energy bill a haze payouts on rise then i picked up the washington times and noticed an above the fold headline bush lays gas blame and then the wall street journal the biggest headline above the fold with a graphic and picture above it grain company's profits solar as global food crisis mount and then i took the three inside the beltway newspapers to put them on the reading table and i looked at the headlines there on the front page gas prices fuel effort to  am g o p alexander eyes energy agenda and then the the hill the first of those was politico the second was roll call the third the hill politics at the pump and so mr speaker the seven papers that our office gets every one of them yesterday had as their leading story above the fold something about energy prices and food prices which of course are related also appearing today and i wanted to make sure that we didn't miss this new york times column by thomas friedman very well known author and commentator which just drives america's energy problems as the predictable consequences of an energy strategy that would be exacerbated by the most unpopular by the most popular proposed changes to and i quote maximize demand minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us most and a little bit i will read some other excerpts excerpts of this very interesting  piece by thomas friedman i have here a little book which came across my desk signed by one of the authors to representative roscoe bartlett you're a political voice in the dark please continue trying to shed a light on this critical issue and the critical issue he's talking about is explain the title of his book a very unpleasant truth peak oil production and its global consequences and i turned to the little page that talked about who the authors are about the authors w d lyle jr holds a p engineering from purdue university else got out and holds a ph d in physics and s m u both are retired scientists from the exploration and producing technical center of a large international oil company they have been awarded over forty patents and coauthored or are authored more than fifty technical papers with contributions appearing in a variety of journals such as science geo physics nuclear science and engineering and the journal of petroleum technology both authors it says live in the dallas area so these are obviously well  respected authorities in their fields and i turn to chapter six what about alternative energy sources and what should we do now and it begins by saying what must we do now to prepare for and respond to the inevitable and impending energy crisis and mr speaker the seven papers that i just referred to and the headlines on all of them about energy and food would indicate that maybe just maybe we're on the cusp of this crisis and then he says the first and most important thing that needs to be done is to educate and convince the public that a problem even exists long before i got this book more than three years before i get this book i thought also that that was the most important thing that needed to be done and so mr speaker i've come i'm to this floor i think this is the forty third time i've come to the floor to spend an hour talking about the challenge  really it was to explain to the american people the challenge that we face to educate and convince the public th problem even exists well i think these seven headlines indicate that at least the editors of those papers thought that a problem existed because they were all talking about the high price of energy and the  consequences on food prices but education is not the only thing that i've been doing i've been personally involved in at least four activities which i think will help to it vance america on the path that we need to be treading i'm sponsoring in conjunction with the smart organization a smart green showcase on july eighteenth of this year in frederick maryland that will offer smart energy solutions for homeowners and small business owners there's a lot of information out there there's a lot of new technology that just isn't widely known practical ways you can use less energy save money and help our country transition to domestic cleaner and renewable energy sources the conference will provide educational and networking opportunities for homeowners and representatives of large and small businesses academic and nonprofit organizations that smart green showcase has its own website and i would courage you to go to that web site w w w dot smart green conference all one word smart green conference dot com for a fuller explanation of what will be shown at this  smart green showcase in the next few days i will submit a bill that is a companion bill to a senate  twenty eight twenty one that was introduced in the senate on the third day of this month by senator maria  and senator john ensign and almost half of the senators have already signed on to this bill i have here a brief summary of the bill and because what it does is so important to where i think we need to be going i'm going to take just a moment to read this brief summary this clean energy tax stimulus act of two thousand and eight a man's internal revenue code to extend certain tax incentives for energy production and conservation it extends through two thousand and nine the tax credit for the production of electricity from  sources for example biomass geothermal energy landfill gas and trash combustion it includes marine and hydro kinetic renewable energy as a renewable resource eligible for such credit it allows sales of electricity produce from a nubile resources to a regulated public utilities this one is really very porton to encourage everybody even every homeowner to produce electricity if they're not using it sell it back to a power company extends the energy investment tax credits for solar energy through two thousand and sixteen for fuel cell and micro turban property through two thousand and seventeen it repeals the dollar per kilowatt limitation for fuel cell property under the energy investment tax credit it allows public electric utilities to qualify for such credit it extends through two thousand and nine the tax credit for residential energy efficient property expenditures it repeals a two thousand limitation on the tax credit for solar electric property it allows an offset against the alternative minimum tax of tax credit amounts it extends through two thousand and nine the tax credit for investment in clean renewable energy bonds increases the national limitation amount for such bonds it extends to two thousand and nine deferral provisions relating to the recognition of gain by certain electric utilities and extends to two thousand and nine the tax credit for non business energy property includes residential biomass fuel stoves that is pellet stoves as eligible energy property for purposes of such credit it extends to two thousand and ten the tax credit for energy efficient new homes extends to two thousand and nine the tax deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings and increases the allowable amount of such deductions and finally it extends a tax credit for energy efficient appliances to include appliances produced in two thousand and eight two thousand and nine and two thousand and ten and it revises and updates energy fission see standards for such appliances  accordance with the energy independence is security act of two thousand and seven and as shown on the first chart here i also have a self powered farm energy bill h r eighty this is really a very significant approach to addressing our energy problems because we're going to turn more and more to our farmers for  energy and products that are produced by energy that in the future will have to be produced with less energy and this bill would support federal research development demonstration and commercial application activities to enable the development of self powered farms that are net producers of both food and energy that should be capable of independence from offsite sources of energy if i'm standing all alone mr speaker if our farms can't be energy independent we really really have a huge challenge for the future i think this is very doable and this bill will offer awards rewards to those who do that outside sources of energy fuel and raw materials or fuel a community resource for food and energy fuel or raw materials for  minimize or lemonade ongoing operating expenditures to off site energies for fossil fuel derived energy employs sustainable farming practices for long term soil fertility we mustn't forget what we do to make our farms energy independent and to get energy from our farms that we must be really concerned about sustainability it would be easy for a few years to mine the soil that is taken out of the soil more than you're putting back but if it is not sustainable it will not be useful for the long term employ sustainable farming practices for long term soil fertility and produces at least two times as much energy including fuel or raw materials for fuel as it consumes both onsite and the transfer of farm products to market and the next chart shows an additional bill r six seventy that i have introduced american energy for america's future a bipartisan drive back dependence reduction through innovation and vehicles and energy act and what this does is to encourage transition from depending so much on liquid fuels from oil for transportation and move to electricity for transportation and the reason for this mr speaker is pretty obvious if you stop to think about it we use two kinds of energy largely in our lives today electricity for many many things but not much for transportation most of our transportation comes from from fossil fuels from from oil and the some gas you see city buses advertising that they're running on clean natural gas we have lots of opportunities to produce more electricity we can do more solar france produces seventy five eighty percent of their electricity from solar we have enormous opportunities to grow wind and sol they are now growing it something like thirty percent a year that's incredible growth rate but they started fairy small so even with that big growth rate they are still producing a very minimal amount of energy to the grand mix of energy we can get a lot more energy and those parts of our country where you are close enough to the molten core of the earth to get true  geothermal energy you go to iceland i've been there i did not see a single chimney and iceland they may have one i didn't see it because they get essentially all of their energy their from from geothermal energy that's tapping the molten core of the earth which will heat water and you can do lots and lots of things with with hot water and then of course we have lots of opportunities for micro hydro without the kind of impact on the environment that our macro hydro has had with these huge dams and we try to compensate with fish ladders and so forth compensate for the damage we've done to the environment with fish ladders and so forth so the fish for spawning can get around that and so we have lots of opportunities for producing electricity our options for producing more liquid fuels are far more limited and so this is a very important bill and we're going to be talking for the rest of our few moments together today about these opportunities for producing more liquid fuels and you will see that they really are limited that we really have a challenge there to so to the extent that we can move transportation dependency from oil to electricity will have done a great deal to minimize our dependence on oil and free ourselves from dependence on oil from a suppressant properly said in his state of the union message from people who don't even like us i wanted to just spend a couple moments reading some additional comments from thomas friedman's article i don't read this because i necessarily agree with everything he says but i read it because i think that it's very important as this little book said that the american people understand the seriousness of the challenge that that faces us so read a few more excerpts from his article that appeared today in the new york times and the title of his little op ed piece is called dumb as we want to be here's what's scary our problem is so much worse than you think we have no energy strategy if you're going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage gasoline consumption and gas guzzling cars and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage new renewable energy technologies we're doing he says just the opposite the mccain clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert peter schwartz of global business network describes as the true american energy policy today and i quote again maximize demand minimize the ply and buy the rest from the people who hate us most and that additional excerpts from the article go on to say this is not an energy policy this is money laundering we borrow money from china and ship it to saudi arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes to our gas tanks no no no we'll just get the money by taxing big oil even if you could do that he says what a terrible way to spend precious tax dollars for almost a year now congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment credit to stimulate investment in solar energy in the production of tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy the democrats wanted that wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry president bush said he would veto that neither side would back down night now as it said i read this not because i necessarily agree with everything he says but i read it because it is a very important voice that is saying what i've been trying to say for more than three years now hey we face a problem we've really got to do something about that problem the next chart this is a little cartoon which i think tells a story that most that many people don't believe just why is gas so expensive over three dollars and fifty cents a gallon now  why is gas so expensive and the cartoon says it was just two words a tiny little supply and a huge big demand now there are many people who believe that gas is very expensive at the pump because the major oil companies are gouging us many people think that gas is high at the pump because the oil from which we refine it is very expensive because the arab world is holding back and not producing as much oil as they could produce or somehow gouging us the reality is that neither one of these commonly believed reasons for our high gas prices are probably true there may be a little gouging here and there by of stations and so forth but the price of oil is not determined by our big oil companies exxon mobil and shell and royal dutch the price of oil is determined as this cartoon indicates but how much there and how much we would like to use the arabs don't determine the price of oil they can affect the price of oil they could if they could produce more oil they could drive down the price of oil by increasing the supply so that would be more consistent with the demand and that would reduce the price of oil there is increasing evidence that they could not do this that is they could not increase their supply russia a couple of weeks ago announced that they had peaked in oil production that they could no longer increase their production just last week saudi arabia indicated that they had reached a maximum oil production they have the granddaddy of all oil fields are huge field producing five million barrels a day they want to bring on line a new field i read a lot about the technicalities that feel it's very interesting what they've done this is the number of wells and what they planned to do what they hope to do is to flood that field where the oil will not flow if you drill down to that field you will not get any oil although there is a great deal there and they hope to make this oil flow by pumping water in a dipper if free of the field under considerable pressure but this is a very delicate operation because if they pump that too high a pressured too large a volume and the water overflows the oil it could seal off the little intercedes through which the oil would flow and i might kill the field so it would be no oil thing to but hopefully they won't do this they're very good at knology and if they're able to develop this field they will get they hope a million two hundred thousand barrels a day that they hope will make up from the oil that they aren't now not getting as the president feels they're pumping hundred fifty six with a talk which i think will go down as the most famous speech given in the last century by m king hubbert to a group of  oil engineers and business people at san antonio texas fifty and one hundred fifty six fifty two years ago on the eighth day of march and he told them this was we were the largest producer of oil in the world the largest consumer of oil in the world and i think the largest export of oil in the world and he said in fourteen years and one hundred seventy the united states will reach its maximum oil production company asked him please don't give that talk you know make us look silly and make you look silly he gave the talking for a long while was an object of derision and then right on schedule and nine hundred seventy we reached our maximum oil production now they didn't know that in one nine hundred seventy you only know you've reached a maximum when you look back and see gee we were  things in this chart that he did not include in his analysis he couldn't have known that we're again going to get so much natural gas liquids and he looked at only the lower forty eight he didn't look at alaska and he didn't look at the gulf of mexico where we have found huge amounts of oil i have been to alaska to deadhorse to proof of a and i've seen the very beginning of that the forefoot pipeline to which for a number of years now about a fourth about a fourth of our total domestic production has been flowing well you can see that even when you add the oil which he did not include in his analysis the oil that we got from the find in alaska and from the gulf of mexico that that was just a blip on the slide down the other side of hubbert's peak but now we have done a number of things to try to reverse this because we are not at all comfortable in this country producing only two percent of the world having only two percent of the world's oil and using twenty five percent of the world's oil we have very good scientists and engineers and we have used a lot of enhanced oil recovery we have used discovery techniques three d seismic and computer modeling to go out and find more oil and we have drilled more oil wells than all the rest of the world put together now in spite of better discovery of aggressive pumping of these producing about happens much oil as we produced in one thousand nine hundred and seventy now i spent a few moments looking at this chart but i think it's very important to understand what empting hybrid predicted and what happened and the reality that no matter what we have done we have not been able to reverse what he said would happen and that was in one thousand nine hundred seventy we would reach our maximum oil production and then after that no matter what we did all production would fall off the next chart the next chart if i could have the next chart the next chart is a quote from one of four different reports that our government has paid for and not totally ignored but largely ignored they all say the same thing by the way this is from the first of those four reports done by s a i c a very large prestigious international engineering science organization dr robert hirsch was a principal author of that so it's frequently called the hirsch report and he says here on page sixty four world oil peaking is going to happen now the same person that and ask the question to others if emptying hubbard was so right about the united states and if he predicted that the world was he peaking about now wouldn't it have been appropriate to have a plan the a plan b which recognize that that might happen and gee you better have some contingency plans preparing for it that is not when i say we i mean the world that's not what we have done there is no indication as evidence by the behavior of any company or any country any of these entities have been doing anything to address the huge challenge that we would have if in fact the world followed the course that the united states so predictably followed that we the world would peak about now world oil peaking is going to happen this report says the world production of conventional oil will reach a maximum and decline there after that maxim is called the peak oil peaking presents a unique challenge this report says the world has never faced a problem like this there is no precedent in history to guide us is what this report says there is no lesson from the past that you can use to guide you as to what you need to be doing to get you through this challenge the next  a chart of data which is compiled by the two leading entities in the world that track the production and consumption of oil now we store a little very little in our strategic reserves in this country and some other countries but by and large all the oil we produce is consumed peak oil are we there yet the agencies are the i the international energy agency part of the un and the i a e a the energy information administration a part of our own department of energy the i a e a the international one says that for the last eighteen months or so we have reached a plateau and oil production as a matter of fact just at the end of it their line that they have drawn through there up and down because it's not a constant thing up today and down tomorrow and so forth is actually dipping over just slightly  a the green line shows that from their data we have been constant and actually a little lower now but relatively constant and oil production for the last three years now if in fact the world's production of oil has been flat in the last three years and these are the two best recognized entities in the world for tracking this if in fact it's been for the last three years and demand has continued to go up what would naturally happen to oil prices well prices were what them when they started fifty couple  dollars a barrel and now well they're off the chart but one hundred ten today it's dropped off a little hundred twenty of last week i think that drop off mr speaker is because hundred twenty dollar oil is just plain too costly for a lot of the world and they haven't been able to use it they just make do with less and so we have some higher reserves and we thought and the speculator now are speculating that the price of oil will come down because of these for the moment because of these reserves of course hundred ten dollars oil as the price is off the char albert predicted in seventy nine that the world would be peaking about now all four of these studies the first one i mentioned s a i c study the second one a court of engineers study the third when the government accountability office study in the fourth one one done by the national petroleum council and all four of those say essentially the same thing peaking of oil is inevitable absolutely inevitable that it is either present or imminent move with potentially devastating consequences now i said again if empting however it was right about the united states  quite some little while looking at that chart and spite everything that we have done better or oil discovery aggressive pumping of the oil and hansel recovery and  all that we drilled more wells than all the rest of the world put together and king hubbard's prediction is still true today we're producing about half the oil that we produced in one thousand nine hundred seventy he predicted that the world would be peaking oil production about now these four studies all said that peaking of oil is inevitable they didn't know when it would occur these data from the e i i would lead you to believe less this is just a little plateau and it'll take off again and the next chart will look at if we never next chart now the next chart will tell us how likely this is that this is just a little plateau and then it's going to take off again if you had only one chart to look at only one chart to use in informing yourself and talking about this subject this would be the chart this chart shows in the bars here going back as far as one nine hundred thirty the discoveries of oil and what it was up and down when we found some big fields and some of these years we get some huge spikes but notice the general trend of this since about hundred seventy it's been down down down down and that's in spite of ever more aggressive and better techniques for finding the oil now if this plateau or this peak is just a plateau and going to take off again then you need to believe that one of two things is going to happen i very quickly better ways of teasing out from the reserves we're now pumping more oil or we're going to find more reserves of oil more big reserves of oil the solid black line here indicates the oil that we have used and the world was a very happy position up until about nine hundred eighty because every year until hundred eighty found more oil sometimes a lot more oil than we used that year if you integrate under this curve you will get the total volume of oil that we've used so this area represents the volume of oil that we've used now ever since about nine hundred eighty of course we have been finding less oil than we use so now this area here has been filled in by reserves back here they're still there we know they're underground we know we can pump them now how much more will we find in the future most of the experts believe that we have probably found of conventional oil talking a few minutes about unconventional oil most experts believe that for conventional oil we've probably found ninety ninety five percent of all the oil that we will find in the future those who made this chart suggest that future discoveries will follow descending curve ever less and less as we go on further and further into the future because once you've found some oil then additional oil is more and more difficult to find now this clearly won't be that so they will be up and down but they're suggesting that would follow a curve much like that now what will the future look like what the future will look like will depend upon your perception of several things how much more or you think we will find it will depend upon how aggressive you think we could be in pumping oil but one thing is certain you cannot pump oil you have not found now the way this chart is drawn it doesn't go clear out to the end of course this was another hundred fifty years every year and this is then experience in the united states every year less and less oil harder and harder to get and now with the world situation not true in our country because somebody else made up the deficit for the oil we didn't pump and so for a long while even when our oil production was dropping off oil was still ten dollars a barrel because other countries could produce it quickly and easily and they did so they made up for our shortfall that's not going to happen in the future because as indicated by a prior chart as indicated by all four of the studies paid for by your government delivered to your government or oil is going to peak and if the united states is a microcosm of the world you would reasonably judge no matter how aggressive we become and we have been really aggressive in our country like chile more oil wells and all the rest of the world put together that you still are not going to reverse that decline so what the future looks like you see the oil that you are using here about the amount of oil that you have found is going to be filled in by reserves from here you can use your eye and transfer these reserves there and see reasonably what that curve will look the next chart presents a little schematic i will point out what is quite obvious that this can be made very sharp if i can press the abscess and expand the ordinance that would become a very sharp curve here i've spread it out so it's a very gradual curve this is a two percent growth curve that's about the rate at which the world had been increasing its use of oil by the way two percent growth doubles in thirty five years it's four times bigger in seventy years it's eight times bigger in one hundred five years it's sixteen times bigger in one hundred  forty years this led albert einstein to answer a question asked by someone after we have discovered nuclear energy what would be the next big energy force in the universe and its response was a most powerful force in the universe is the power of compound interest and of course compound interest is compound growth this chart shows  thirty five year growth period the yellow that i think we're about here and peaking is either present or imminent and most people are looking at avoiding any problems in the future by filling the gap if this is what you have available and this is what you would like to use this yellow area represents the gap there  things out there that we can exploit to get some liquid fuels from in their totality most of the experts that are really seriously looking at this in the most people believe that it will be extremely difficult to produce as much liquid fuel as we now are using let alone filling the gap i will say that that will not bring us to any calamitous and we have enormous opportunities for conservation and efficiency the other morning as i came into work i noticed and one of the lanes in front of me a big s u v with one person in it in the lane right next to them was a prius with two people in it now the prius i have one we get about forty eight person was six times better in the prius with two people in it than it was in the s u v with one person in it and the prius is a very comfortable vehicle and riding with someone else makes the trip to work more enjoyable so we have lots and lots of opportunities to increase our efficiency the next chart is an interesting one because there are a lot of people who believe that somehow we're going to find a huge amount of more oil out there in a few moments we're going to talk about some of these potential for and there may be a lot out there but what i'm saying is that we really need to have a plan b because there's nothing that we have done in our country which has avoided the evitable slide down the other side of predicting here in this chart that we will find as much more oil as all the reserves we now know to be able to be most experts believe that the ultimate amount of oil total amount that we will pump in the world from the beginning to the end of the age of oil will be about two trillion barrels here it's two point t they're suggesting here that we'll find not another nearly a trillion because this curve is based on what they call the main or expected value of three trillion barrels now that means that they think we're going to find just about as much more oil as all the oil which we now have in reserves which can be pumped now even if that hurt occurred and this is because of that exponential growth even if this occurs the peak is pushed out from here to twenty sixteen the dotted line by the way and i don't know if it's even doable the dotted line shows what would happen if you aggressive enhanced recovery and pump it more quickly it pushes the peak out a little bit then you fall off a cliff after that this black curve by the way you're recognized on the big black curve on the oil chart member with all the bars going up and this is a recession in the seventy's if it weren't for that you know it's all saying it's an ill wind that brings no good and that it will wind of those arab  oil price spike hikes and the worldwide recession that followed that that says here we actually were using less energy for a while we really looked at our efficiency and your air conditioner now is probably three times as efficient as it was the n your freezer the same thing if we had not done that look at this curve look where it would be off the chart there was a stunning statistic during the carter years and that that every decade we used as much oil as had been used in all of previous history that's really different now this slope you can see is very much less than this slow so this was a kind of a blessing in disguise because it woke us up and we now have a much lesser challenge then we would have had had we not had those oil price spike hikes and that little recession in the seventy's and this call to arms that resulted in a lot of equipment that's now a whole lot more efficient the next chart is a fairly recent statement by shell oil company's c e o vanderveer by the year twenty one hundred he says the world's energy system will be radically different from today's world current predicament limits our maneuvering room we are experiencing a step change in the growth rate of energy demand and shell estimates that after twenty fifteen supplies of easy to access  oil and gas will no longer keep up with demand it may be a little sooner than that is indicated by these cars and the i a e a and the as a result he says society has no choice but to add other energy sources the next chart is one that kind of puts this in perspective this looks at the industrial age by the way there's a fascinating speech that was given king hubbard speech was the most important speech of the last century i think the most insightful speech of the last century with be the speech given by the father of our nuclear submarine hyman rickover given fifty one years ago the fourteenth day of this month to a group of physicians in st paul minnesota if you do a google search for rick over an energy speech it will pop up and he noted then that we were about one hundred years into the age of oil which and he uses just beautiful expressions which he referred to as the golden age of gold and truly it has been a golden age and he had no idea how long the age of oil will last now we have a much better idea but he made a very important statement he said that how long the age of oil lasted was important only one regard that the longer it lasted the more time that we have to plan for an orderly transition to non fossil fuels about seventeen months ago i was privileged to lead a codel of nine members of congress to china to talk about energy interesting lee they began their discussion of energy by talking about post oil while i thought these people think in terms of generations and centuries were a great country and a part of our affluence and our greatness is that we have a near term focus essential for our business but i think it be nice we had a little longer term  hard for our business is to see the on the next quarterly report hard for elected officials to see beyond the next election but they were talking about post all yll and what they would be doing and what the world should be doing now and would be doing and they post oil world well hyman rickover talked about eight thousand years of recorded history and he said that the age of oil would be but a blip in the history of man i only have here about four hundred years of that eight thousand years but if you went back the rest of the eight thousand years it would be flat because we use very little energy here's the industrial revolution beginning with wood and then we found coal and boy did it take off when we found gas and oil this is the same curve that you've seen before by the way this is the dip in the seventy's and the lesser slope now here we have compressed the abscissa and expanded the ordinance so now we have a very sharp curve compared to gradual we've been looking at in the past if i superimposed on this a graph population growth it would explode from roughly half a billion here following this up almost exactly to nearly seven billion people we have in the world today this reality is the next chart shows us introduces us to a very challenging geo political reality we have two percent of the world's reserves we use twenty five percent of the world's oil we import almost two thirds of what we use we pump four times faster than the rest of the world we produce from our two percent eight percent of the world's oil production so we're pumping our more wells and all the rest of the world put together our work and we're pumping down our reserves faster we represent a bit less than five percent of the world's population one person in twenty two and we use of force of the world's energy the next chart speaks a little more to this geopolitical challenge that we face if you look at the top ten owners of oil that's the bar on the right here it's mostly countries that on it saudi aramco national iranian oil iraqi national oil and so forth and lukoil which is kind of private in russia has only two percent these of the top ten you know look at the top ten producers of oil  big guys on the really big exxon mobil royal dutch b p they produce only twenty two percent of the oil most of the oil is produced by countries rather than companies the next charts fix further to this geopolitical challenge that we faced this shows what china is doing around the world the dollar signs indicate where we own some oil you don't see very many of them here the world the next chart speaks again to this geopolitical challenge that we that we have this is what the world would look like if the size of the country was relative to how much oil it had this is really an interesting world isn't it you see saudi arabia dominates the landscape they should they have twenty two percent more than a fifth of all the oil in the world iraq kuwait you have to get a magnifying glass to see the united arab emirates on a map look at the huge amounts of oil that iran look how much it had russia not a giant compared with the others but they're an  e pumper of oil i think they're now the number two producer of oil in the world venezuela it dwarfs our part of the world doesn't it bigger than everybody else in this part of the world but the other notice that we get most are oil from canada our third largest producer of oil is mexico together they have about as much oil as we can or didn't have very many people there to put in mexico to use the oil and so they and exports are but this speaks again to the geopolitical challenge that we face the last chart that we have only a few minutes remaining i just wanted to look at the sources from which we're going to get  liquid fuels i have argued that because we face this huge challenge in the future and because it's going to be very difficult to produce as rapidly as we would like to the liquid fuels to replace what won't be there as we slide down the other side of the world hubbert's peak that it would be nice to have in reserve a little bit of the oil that we know is out there which is why i've not been enthusiastic about drilling in anwar or offshore or on our public lands maybe it's because i got ten kids and sixteen grandkids and two great grandkids and i came to congress because i was afraid that my kids and grandkids weren't going to live in the same kind of country that i grew up in i thought we had too much government it taxed too much it regulated too much and it spent way too much i just like for my kids and my grandkids and my great grandkids had the same opportunity i had and energy is so important in our world so i've been resistant to immediately drilling in anwar and offshore and on our public lands because like money in the bank that yielding huge interest rates i don't think you oughta rush to the bank and pull it out and spend we've been more valuable later this speech we have only a couple of minutes left to talk about this and we'll get a little of this and a little of that there is no magic bullet out there i'm sure everybody is familiar with what only one bag of rice now let me close mr speaker by saying that that you know i'm kind of exhilarated by this this is a huge challenge there's no exhilaration like meeting and overcoming a big challenge and i think america is up to this leadership i think that we can once again become an export ing country we have the technology we have them know how we're the most creative innovative society in the world and i think when america understands  challenge they will be up to the challenge and america will lead the world i believe in moving from fossil fuels to renewables i think that i will be here a week from today and what i want to do at that time this is spend most of the time talking about realistic expectations from all of these alternative sources of liquid fuels thank you very much mr speaker and i yield back gentlemen used the phone  under the speaker's announced policy of january today two thousand and seven the chair recognizes the gentleman from ohio with sixty minutes they what's been happening here in congress affects what's going on to young people but not limited to just young people in the thirty something bracket but also to young people and college young people in their twenty's young people trying to figure out how they're going to make their way in the american economy in the twenty first century and as we know  speaker we have been given many challenges under the past or over the past few years here in congress dealing with many of the issues that face americans and when speaker pelosi took over  a short time ago we have been committed since this congress was taken over by the democratic party to push initiatives that are consistent with the values that we hold dear in the united states of america and we hear a lot of rhetoric about values in this country but if the policy initiatives that come out of this beautiful bill doing in washington d c do not reflect our values then or in the wrong business and i'm proud to say that since we have taken over here we have shifted course from policies that many americans believe have taken us in the wrong direction and many of us still believe even those of us here think we have made a shift in policy but it's been difficult with the president to try to get a complete pivot out of the months and months and months and years and years and years of bad policy so i think it's important before we talk a little bit about what we have done is to go back and think about what we're trying to come out of some of the challenges that this country faces and i think it's important to recognize politically that from two and till two thousand and six the republican party controlled the house controlled the senate and controlled the white house they had an opportunity to implement their policy the ne conservative foreign policy the conservative domestic policy the conservative energy policy that conservative higher ed policy in america the conservative quote unquote compassionate conservative agenda on poverty and inequality has all been implemented so when we talk about what's what will it look like if the conservative agenda is implemented i think that is a false analysis of what will it look like i think we know i think what we're living with here today is the implementation of the conservative republican agenda control the house control the senate control the white house the bush tax policy the bush energy  policy all of these things that i've already mentioned have been implemented and if you want to know what it looks like all you really need to do is go to the gas tank you need to get your healthcare bill and see what your premium and the costs look like you need to pull out the stub of your child to ition all of these things are the end result of the republican domestic agenda being implemented here in the united states of america you may not like it i know a lot of republicans mr speaker who don't like it but that is where we are and if you look at the financial situation that this country has been put in the straitjacket that we've been put in that a lot of the changes that the democratic congress wants to make that we are at this point unable to make because of the financial position that we have been put in as a country and as a nation the fact of the matter is this president bush mr speaker and the republican congresses that were under his watch borrowed more money from foreign interests than every president and congress before president bush combined now think about that in just those few years president bush and the republican congress borrowed more money from foreign interests then every president and congress before them combined the republican controlled congress and president bush raised the debt limit five times and borrowed three trillion dollars primarily from japan china and opec countries now you want to talk about a scam going on in a shell game we have a situation where we are borrowing money from oil producing countries to basically give us money to go out and buy their oil or to borrow money from oil producing countries and from china so that we can fund the award twelve billion dollars a month and put it on the credit card now that seems to me the definition of insanity mr speaker three trillion dollars and this is as simple as your house payment or your car payment you borrow money and you have to pay interest on it so countries like china will get the interest that the united states is paying on the money that we've borrowed and the chinese will take that money and they will sink it into developing and industrializing their own economy and of putting up nuclear plants so that they have nuclear energy and the building roads and bridges and industrial parks and the funding their military and their navy that's what they're doing with money that the united states is borrowing from them and we take the money and we get ourselves into this war in iraq at twelve billion dollars a month that is soon approaching a trillion dollars for the cost of the war and some economists are saying that at the end of the war the grand total will be three trillion dollars now from youngstown ohio and niles ohio in akron ohio the folks that i represent aren't really comfortable with the united states taking their tax dollars and paying interest on money they're borrowing from the chinese so that the chinese could build manufacturing facilities that will and manipulate their currency and ship the products back to the united states and put american workers out of work now there's something ironic about what's happening there and there's really something sick mr speaker about what's happening here and when you look at the polls when you hear people say that seventy percent of americans think we're going in the wrong direction the president has an approval rating of twenty eight percent and you know the other seventy two percent do not approve of the job that he is doing you have to ask yourself what is wrong what is wrong what is going on to have this dramatic breach in the american body politic and so when speaker pelosi and when we ran our elections in two thousand and six to come and take over congress in two thousand and seven it became imperative for us to try to pivot and shift this thing in another direction so one of the issues is make sure that we pay for programs that we have here in the united states no deficit spending now we've had problems especially with the war because we're committed over there and it's been very difficult we've tried to get out the president has vetoed every attempt we've ever tried to make but we're trying to establish a public policy in the united states of america that represent our values yes and if you look at what we have pushed coming out of this body i think most americans would agree these are some pretty basic steps that we want to take the first thing we did when we got in is raise the minimum wage for the first time since  the american worker got a pay raise it wasn't much it should be a lot more but we did what we could and we said this is a priority for us ten years without an increase in the minimum wage but health care and energy and all of these other costs are going up for folks let's try to lift some people up to reward work and we did that we have switched and tried to repeal the  oil subsidies corporate welfare many of us know it is corporate welfare you know everyone hates welfare if we're giving it the poor people they should go to work they should work there is this is america we should not g welfare that's the rhetoric that you hear but behind the scenes our friends on the other side and president bush are very happy to give the oil companies fourteen or fifteen billion dollars in oil subsidies and energy subsidies now can you imagine and today when you go to the gas pump and you pay three fifty three seventy five four dollars for a gallon of gas y think you're frosted just filling up the tank think about the fact that president bush said that he will veto any bill that comes out of this house that repeals the fifteen billion dollars that's gone in corporate welfare to the oil companies now can you imagine in this day and age where exxon's profits are through the roof that the president of the united states says he will veto a bill that strips the corporate welfare out there making tremendous profits and what we have tried to do on the democratic side and speaker pelosi has tried to do is to take that fourteen or fifteen billion dollars away from the oil companies away from the energy companies and invest that money into alternative energy research  to wind into bio mass into solar now we all know that this these alternative energy forms there's not one silver bullet there's not one you know prod project or product that's going to come out in and save us all and you know be a panacea for the entire united states of america in the world we know that but americans invent things americans make things better americans take a challenge in a problem and they fix it and they solve it they put the best in the brightest people that we have in this country and they set a goal i'm not going to go do the research of president bush or only isn't going to go do the research that we've got a couple rocket scientists that belong to this body have been elected by their constituents here that may be able to actually do some of the research but for the most part our job here is to set the public policy and provide the resources and the leadership for the country and that's what we're trying to do is t invest into the department of energy partner with energy companies you know we know you're not going to get rid of oil overnight many of us believe nuclear has a major role in what's going to happen here but the bottom line is let's make an investment into the united states into the people into the human resources that we have here to figure out what we're going to do and then get the private sector and private enterprise to partner with to get this thing kicked off it is crucial for us to reduce our dependency on foreign oil crucial because we can extract ourselves from a lot of these political situations that we find ourselves in and a lot of the global politics that we see and read if you read between the lines and you think for yourself you will see that there is some kind of energy component behind this behind the politics that are going on the geopolitics that are going on and if we can become dependent on the midwest and stead of the mid east i think this country will remove itself from a lot of the problems that we have had and we could help move this country forward and that's what we are committed to doing here in the united states and just just today out of the or yesterday of the education committee george miller who's the chair of the committee they passed an authorization i think of six billion dollars five remember correctly to help schools new schools will be a formula to make sure that the school is green so now you're providing some leadership for the companies that will provide the products for a school or a building to become green they'll be a little bit of a stimulation and i want to tell one quick story that i found interesting we have a gentleman here in congress his name is jim oberstar and he's the chair of the transportation committee he's been here since the late seventy's and i may miss a few of the facts here but the point can be made that in the late seventy's when he was a member of congress and president carter was in he was trying to the solar panel there was some money put into the department of energy to research and develop alternative energy sources and something popped out of that was called the solar panel and mr oberstar had a piece of legislation that said we need to retrofit all federal office buildings in the united states with solar panels and by the federal government coming in and buying the solar panels it will stimulate the solar panel market because the federal government is such a big consumer and just like buying pens and everything else and it will drive the cost down of the solar panels so that was in seventy seven seventy eight and eighty when president reagan came in he completely eliminated that part of the department of energy that was providing those that research and basically nothing happened and he is now went from a rank and file member mr oberstar is now the chair of the transportation infrastructure committee so he now has this bill that he reintroduced told his staff to go back and get his notes from thirty years ago about what he wanted to do with solar panels now can you imagine how far behind the eightball we are when you look at production of solar panels it used to be an industry that knighted states excelled in and we had a great share of the solar panel market in the early ninety's but now we have been surpassed because have not made the investments and i'm not here mr speaker mr meek to say that government somehow somehow has all the answers but we do have a role to play  stimulating the economy mr make and when we do that we will allow the private sector to come in so we need to do what we need to do with alternative energy research we need to do what we need to do with high speed rail we need to do what we need to do with broadband access these are the things that government has a role in infrastructure education health care these are the things that we need to invest in and that's what we've been trying to do in the area of health care one of the things that i mean can you can't really find a better example or illustration of a difference in values from speaker pelosi and president bush on this one issue it's the issue of state the state children's health insurance program when we came in one of the speaker pelosi priorities was to provide leadership and resources for the state children's health insurance program this is a program that would provide health care mr meek for ten million children that of modest income then quite qualify for medicaid middle class kids middle class families struggling to provide health care this was to fill that gap bipartisan support here in the house and in the senate tremendous support so it passed the house passed the senate president bush vetoed it now can you imagine where your priorities are when you're willing to spend twelve billion dollars a month in iraq and you won't sign a children's healthcare bill to provide health care for middle class citizens at thirty five billion dollars over five years but you'll spend twelve billion a month in iraq and not even ask a question as to where the money's going there is billions of dollars that are lost in iraq nobody knows where they are mr speaker nobody knows where that money is and we struggle to find thirty five billion dollars to provide health care for modest income families that investment at the end of the day will probably save us billions of dollars because these kids won't go right to the emergency room they'll have some preventative care that will save us money in the long run and the president vetoed it and he vetoed it in the senate eighty senators overrode the veto but in the house we could not override the veto because a handful of republicans on the other side were committed to support the president and his position now can you imagine that in the wealthiest country in the world the dominan superpower we can scrape up thirty five billion dollars over five years to provide health care for middle class kids and the president thinks he's taken a stand on this issue and saying he's fiscally responsible after running up three true in dollars in debt borrowing it from japan and china and opec countries when you're deciding on where your philosophies are what your values are this is the issue this is the defining issue health care for kids twelve billion a month in iraq tax cuts for people who make billions of dollars a year health care for kids this is clear and our job as representatives of the people mr meek and i'll kick at the here in a second is to make sure that we bring some equity to this system and i will say this the investments that we have made or tried to make on asked chip the minimum wage alternative energy the fact that we did pass and the president did sign a thousand dollar increase in pell grants over five years for students and we cut the student loan interest rate in half from six point eight percent to three point four percent so if you're going out trying to borrow for your kids your interest rate is cut in half those are the priorities that we push every day here on this house floor those are the priorities that are going to lead to an expansion of our economy we only have three hundred million people in this country mr make there's one point two or one point three billion in china one point two or one point three billion in india we only have three hundred million and the philosophy of our party is to make sure that we invest into those three hundred million people that make sure they're educated and they're healthy and i feel like if we make sure our kids are educated and healthy that most everything else will take care of itself that's there we are that's the agenda we're pushing mr make i appreciate the fact that you've taken time away from your busy schedule and your family to come down here and i'd like the old to my my very good friend from florida mr ryan i want to thank you for sharing that only thoughts with the members but also reminding them of the work that has been done the work that needs to be done here here on this house floor i can tell you mr ryan that it's very frustrating at times to hear of some of these here and see some of the finger pointing and goes on not only under the capitol dome but here in washington d c we the work that we the work that this hundred tenth congress has done overshadows the work of one hundred ninth congress as relates to accomplishing things on behalf of the american people and i am very concerned about the fact that members seeing to get a little amnesia on how we got to will we are now less we've had a chart on the floor here i don't know what happened to it i'm not accusing anybody of anything but i was driving the point home of our colleagues on the other side talking about gas prices and writing the speaker a letter and saying well what are you going to do you promise a year ago that you would do something about it what are you going to do what  democrats are going to do and then republican leadership wrote we stand firm to to be with you as it relates to doing something about energy prices our gas back prices and it's interesting because these day individual especially on the republican side were part of supporting and standing up to two thousand one plan in the meeting that took place in the white house mr cheney and a number of energy companies which i think was one of the most profitable meetings for the oil industry because they have just to hand over fist made money since that meeting and even today i think it was projected or hit was announced that  another record breaking quarter for oil companies why while americans pay through the nose and small business pay through the nose for feel i couldn't help but be on i seventy five in florida on my way back to you know we've had an uptick in truckers filling up and pulling off without pain i said wow i said you know it's interesting i mean all of the tags and identify markers you know identified a company or  private own company he said i can tell you something and he obviously course he saw a meeting think that was like a congressman or anything but he said times are it out there i mean these guys they can't they can't afford to fill up their truck and make a profit and be able to support their family not justifying it but it's been up to he said a higher gas goes import protection that we have to soon we're going to have to have someone out there you know getting because punk i'm saying all of that to make the point that times are hard out there we know bread is three dollars a loaf we know this  fact that rice even if you go to costco is now you can buy a fifty pound bag of rice i mean you're like it's like it's being rationed in a way and just the price of food all over the world has really exploded saying all of that mr ryan i think that when we start looking at our work here in congress now more than ever members we have to hold first the american people and the will we have to hold that as our number one priority now let me just mention just a few things mr ryan because i'm not going to try to get excited on this issue today because if i do i may miss something and i don't want to miss anything because the points have to be made and i think that it's important to ryan as we look at this in members mr speaker that we look at the work that has been done in this congress this week sending four key bills to the president for his signature and we really don't have a lot of time to  wait and see if he's going to do something because when you look at it you have to look at the how a bill the bill that allows competition for important howie and transit projects outlined in a two thousand and five highway bill which will help promote forty thousand new good paying an american jobs and transportation and construct i think it's important people understand that this bill will will help stimulate the economy versus slow it down it's important president signs this when you look at the other piece of legislation that have passed these are bills that that are that are key bills and sharing continuing to access the student loan act and his bill is a critical bill they provide students and families with continuing continued uninterrupted access to federal guarantee student loans we talked about not only this generation but the next generation of working families being able to afford the higher education traumatic brain injury act of two thousand and eight comes down to these blast blasts that take place with these i e d they will join the five point three million americans that are affected here at home by the same thing and a congress has passed is to provide the kind of funding this needed so they can get the treatment that they deserve we look forward to the president signing but as we look at issues such as energy and feel i think it's  important that we talk about some of the things mr ryan that the speaker and i know you mentioned something about this whole gas thing because this is hitting home for many of us the speaker last week called on the president to to suspend the of oil for this dziedzic petroleum reserve temporarily that when you when you when you look at this issue you have look at it from the standpoint of bringing gas down this this this actually what the speakers asked for would actually bring the gas prices down five to twenty four cents a gallon this is a critical first step mr mr speaker towards bringing gas prices down so the american people can hopefully afford to put gas in a tank and small businesses i met with some independent franchise owners of k f c and taco bell as stablish minutes and they were talking about the cost of food in ingredients they were talking one gentleman told us about the fact that he his sales are down because american people cannot afford to go into which you may call these restaurants you can get a mail under ten dollars they can't afford to do it as often as they have done it before hopefully the checks in the stimulus package will be able to assist not only when i talk about going out and buying a mail but to be able to provide for their families will help stimulate this economy to help drive down the cost of food in the cost that many small businesses need to survive now i think it's also important members that we look at it from another standpoint the standpoint of of what farmers are are having to to look at it we had a we had a hearing here on capitol hill today that talked about food verses feel and the price of food cost what is what how how are we going to bring a balance between  bio biofuels and how we're going to see the american people in the world through our crops that are here and that's going be an interesting discussion especially as we start looking at shifting from the middle east  and investing in middle eastern countries as it relates to energy versus the midwest and we talked about that mr ryan and i talked about that a lot in the previous two congresses but when we start looking at legislation that will give  ideas that will give the american people some relief now i think it's important that we look at the letter that the speaker sent regarding the strategic oil reserve that will bring the price of gas down five to twenty four cent i think it's also important to look at measures that we have passed here in congress and that and that many of the many of our friends on other side of the now seem to be standing up in the middle in this which may call a policy door not allowing us to be able to sin piece of legislation to the president without the president knowing that he has enough republicans on this justice department to to carry out its even more in forstmann efforts against these these what we call cartels price gouging also renewable energy and energy security act a number of our republican colleagues on the other side as you can see this piece of paper here voted no and i think that it's important especially amongst their leadership is important that we no longer have that kind of activity going on when the american people are looking for some relief and looking for some enforcement something's not right something's not clean in the middle something doesn't smell right when it comes down to why gas continue to go up and up and up and it's amazing there's an hour or about gas and then it will go down for a minute and then it will be back to some twenty two to fifteen cents a gallon on on top of what it used to call so i think mr speaker and members we need to pay very close attention  to what's happening on this energy issue but also pay attention to what's getting done and we're doing a lot here since a lot of good legislation to the president we hope that the president will sign the legislation vote versus vetoing to make a point that is pointless when it comes down to the for progress of the american people mr i when you look at what the speaker's been asking the president to do now of barrels of oil go in a day and this is to make sure that in case of a crisis we have oil for national defense purposes so on and so forth this is all that's going in every day at the speaker based on the history and what the experts in the economists are telling us is that if you divert that oil that's going in to the petroleum reserve and you allow that oil to be purchased on the market that it will drive down the cost of oil and this will lead to a savings at the pump twenty five cents per gallon because there will be an increase in the supply of oil in the market and it will drive the cost down now we're not sitting here saying that this is the magic wand we're going to wave and everything's going to be fine but what we are saying is when you implement this  and you take some of the pressure off you can save almost six dollars a barrel and twenty five cents at the pump so if you are a truck driver mr make twenty five cents you know when you're putting twenty or thirty gallons in adds up when you're spending your life driving and drawing the kids in the back of the minivan or you know filling up the truck and going back and forth this is a significant savings and the speaker has been pressing the president to you know make this move and put this oil back into the market mr make but hasn't had any success at all you know the my friend  at commonsense and we look at the needs of the american people they want to know what's happening every time they look at that gas price board that's in front of the gas station they're thinking of power who's aroun government they're thinking about who's who's you know who's overseeing this who's in a magic room somewhere pushing up these gas prices and i think it's important that we understand that it's bigger than a debate that this is really dealing with folks having a park their car this is dealing with folks who who are going through some real hard times and we have to make sure that we stand up for them now president may well wait a little while and say well i'm not going to sign this i mean i'm not going to do with the speaker asked to do in suspending filling the strategic reserve i'm not going to do it maybe he may do it now i don't know i mean the first quarter reports of come out yet i mean as it has come out on the oil revenues maybe that may happen and no i'm not saying that that's the motivation i'm just saying that the american people need some relief and they need it now and hopefully they can be able to get it more sooner than later because we're having folks rising food costs rising energy costs and also finding themselves in a situation where they can't even afford to drive to work or to get their children so i think it's also missed mr ryan as i spoke before about our friends on the other side of the aisle my republican leadership we definitely want them and we want them to work with us as it relates driving these energy energy cost down and then going after the individuals that may have something to do with jacking up the price on the american people last week i talked about the fact that a gallon of gas and iraq cost like a dollar i believe there's a doubt between a dollar thirty and a dollar fifty five here in the united states it costs a lot more and we all know what those cost are people are reminded every day when they have to go to the pump and i have constituents at a put in some on it every day when i say put some on it they can afford to fill the hole tank they're putting in five six dollars whatever the case may be and just getting less than a  gallon and a half of gas because that's all they can afford in specially for those individuals that have have over stepped over their budget taken a credit card out filling it up the critics that soon adds up because it's not within their budget to have to pay the twenty four dollars or the fifty dollars a have to pay on these credit cards but i go back to say that fill in iraq is a lot cheaper than it is here in the united states and the u military is spending in the neighborhood of three dollars and change in filling a gallon in gas in the same country so when we start looking at how we're helping iraq and how iraq is assisting in appreciating our help we also have to look at the difference in the disparity in the cost of gas between what our troops and civilian personnel have to pay for a gallon of gas there and what every day iraqis pay so we look at it from the from a big sense from the big picture mr ryan we have to look at it from the executive branch level and i think it's important the president looks at all of this and take it all in the consideration but we do need some production and exploiting car tail that i think it's important that we we see the passage of h r twenty two sixty four that is passed this house and the republican leadership has voted against you look at the energy price gouging act you have to look at it for what it's worth and this legislation will reduce the burden of rising gas prices on american families by providing immediate relief to consumers by giving the federal trade commission authority to investigate and punish those who water patiently inflate gas prices i mean i want that i want it bad to be honest with you because i think it's important that we we have  these and we have these important agencies give them what they need right now as far as i'm concerned a federal trade commission is like a police officer in a high crime area without a weapon and i can tell you there will be no real and force meant there if thousand and eight h r fifty three fifty one very important piece of legislation the bill will in the net thirty subsidies or head in unnecessary subsidies to oil companies and which we're investing in clean and renewable energy and i think it's important that americans understand and also mr ryan that every member of congress understands that none none of none of the legislation of that mention thus far would have seen the light of day it wasn't for one hundred tenth congress and it wasn't for democrats allowing it to come to the floor absolutely and i think you made some great points mr make and i just would like to say that it if you listen to some of our  friends on the other side talk about gas prices here is a party mr speaker and an administration for six years with  an oil the president and the vice president being all men trying to say and not doing a thing on energy dependence on foreign oil so on and so forth to somehow accuse the democrats of not addressing the issue and completely oblivious to the facts that we're the ones passing legislation to crack down on price gouging mr make we're the ones that are passing legislation to hold opec accountable for price fixing it's the democratic party that repealing the subsidies to big oil so that we could take that money and invest it into alternative energy sources it's speaker pelosi that's calling on the president to take the barrels of oil that are going in the strategic petroleum reserve and put those in the market to drive down gas by a quarter that's something easy we could do but it is the president and the republican congress mr speaker that have consistently vetoed these bills in the senate blocking lower prices every step of the way and if you look at what we have done here the push by the speaker to have fuel efficiency standards being raised for cars and trucks will reduce oil consumption by one point one million barrels per day and twenty twenty this is forward looking this is something that will save consumers between seven hundred dollars and one thousand dollars at the pump in two thousand and twenty now we know that's not addressing the issues today we're talking about the strategic petroleum reserve we're talking about cracking down on opec we're talking about cracking down on price gouging that may be going on in the united states in our local communities these are the short term issues and each one has been opposed by the republicans and been opposed by the president of the united states so when you ask the folks at home mr speaker what the congress has done the answers are here and if anybody wants to know what they are they can go to the speaker's web site trying to stop price gouging at the pump price manipulation from opec divert the oil that's going in  strategic petroleum reserve wrong with that that's what we're trying to do here repeal the subsidies for big oil and put that money and invested in alternative energy research mr speaker these are the policies of the democratic congress and each one of those has been opposed by the republican party and opposed by the president of the united states period dot mr make period dot so let there be no mistake when common sense tells you we have a couple of oil barons running the executive branch mr speaker and the democrats are trying to push these initiatives to provide some relief for the common good and the common folks that we represent and it's opposed by the republicans and opposed by this administration it's important for us to set this record straight mr meek so as we begin to wrap up here mr ryan that through the hard work of not only this staff year that provide us with not only the information that we use to fight on behalf of the american people but also when we go back to our districts what we hear from our constituents we give them voice we are them we are letelier representatives of the various parts of the country that we're from and it's important that we bring that level of frustration here speaking as small business men and women when they say that just for you know many of whom that have small that they own like a pickup truck or an s u v stories congressman it cost me a hundred and five dollars just to fill my truck that is and they're still selling trying to sell their products for the same price just a little bit more everything is going up up up and they're getting priced out  and i think it's important even from my neck of the woods in florida where you have bagel shops and you have places that some of them are having to they've gone so high up on bagels and they've gone through because of the costs and folks can't afford it so when you look at it this is a this is a major major issue in every american is being touched by especially for those middle class families and for those individuals that are what we call our working poor and so mr ryan every day we come to the floor i think it's important to give light to that also want to give the numbers on iraq as i always do you know as of today may one and iraq the total deaths are four thousand and sixty four total number of wounded in action returned to duty sixteen thousand five hundred in sixty seven and total number of wounded in action not returning to duty is thirteen thousand three hundred forty four mr ryan you know every time i come to florida like to read that and set a record so that members will understand  responsibility trying to bring our men in women suit majority of our men and women home one last point mr ryan i think that when we look at this issue called public service and  speaking to all of the members we have to look at it from the standpoint that we're only here for a short period of time less than twelve thousand seven thousand americans have actually had an opportunity to serve in his u s congress and every day a member should take the responsibility to treat it as though is their last day to serve and not not put something off for another day or another week or another month  because there are people out there that it counting on us and depending on us as relates to bringing about health care to their children bringing down these fuel costs and energy costs and also making sure that we're able to stimulate this economy in the right way so with that i yield back mr wright well i appreciate that and you brought up those who are serving here and i think it's worth noting that veterans measure that that another of the democrats have tried to push for a new g i bill for free college for bad posed by secretary of defense secretary gates opposed by the administration this is an opportunity for us to to thank those men and women who are serving our country to say you know when you get out you're going to have free college tuition anywhere in the country and i think that's a small gesture and once again i think the president and i are our friends on the other are out of step with what the american people think we should be doing and that's one thing a wave the flag and it's another thing to put your money where your mouth is so mr meek i want to thank you for the opportunity to join you here  on this beautiful thursday evening in washington d c and look forward to coming down here with you next week and continuing to make the case for the programs that speaker pelosi and  next for morning hour debate