[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 142 (Friday, October 11, 2013)]
[House]
[Pages H6537-H6544]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1930
THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT'S SHUTDOWN AND ITS IMPACTS ON OUR DEPARTMENT OF
ENERGY NATIONAL LABORATORIES
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Perry). Under the Speaker's announced
policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. Swalwell)
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
General Leave
Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that
all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their
remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special
Order, the Federal Government's Shutdown and Its Impacts on our
Department of Energy National Laboratories.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the
gentleman from California?
There was no objection.
Mr. SWALWELL of California. I also want to thank Science Committee
Ranking Member Johnson for her support of national laboratory
employees.
Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress knowing that in the policies I helped
and worked to enact and the legislative agenda that I would work on
that I could either help people or hurt people. And the decision for me
was quite easy, Mr. Speaker: I came to Congress to help people. I came
to Congress to think big.
I was very excited when I was told prior to being sworn in that I was
going to be serving on the Science Committee. I was even more thrilled
when I learned that I would have the opportunity to serve as the lead
Democrat on the Energy Subcommittee, knowing that the Energy
Subcommittee would have partial jurisdiction over two national
laboratories which are in my congressional district in Livermore,
California: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National
Laboratory.
These two national laboratories, with about 6,500 employees at
Livermore and 1,500 at Sandia, work every day to uphold our national
security mission to maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile and also
provide for energy security for citizens in the United States.
Prior to being elected to Congress, I had the opportunity multiple
times as a city council member in Dublin to visit these national
laboratories. And since being elected to Congress, I have had
opportunities to visit the laboratories and also interact with their
officials here in Washington.
What I have learned about these employees, these scientists, these
engineers who work at our national laboratories is they care deeply
about our country, but they also care very deeply about the science and
the research that they work on every day and the laboratory environment
that allows them to do that. So you can imagine how hard it is right
now. We are in day 11 of a government shutdown, and laboratory
employees were told about 2 days ago that, effective next week, they
will be furloughed, too.
As you all know, Federal workers across our country from almost every
agency have been furloughed or are working without pay. But at our
national laboratories, which operate as GOCO facilities, which stands
for government-owned/contractor-operated, these workers are not Federal
workers but they are government contractors. They are scientists.
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It is estimated that Livermore, California, has more Ph.D.'s per
capita than any other city in the world because of the approximately
7,500 employees at our national laboratory. It was one of the hardest
phone calls I have had to take since being sworn in to Congress when
both laboratory directors called and said that in an hour they were
going to tell their employees that they were going to be furloughed,
and that they needed me to do anything I could in the Congress to help
to get the government up and running and make sure the United States
pays its bills so that their workers can continue to do the great
things they are doing at our national laboratories.
This evening, I look forward to talking about what caused our
shutdown, the truth behind what has caused the shutdown. I look forward
to talking about the effect that the shutdown is having on people
inside and outside of government--employees who are Federal workers,
people who depend and rely on government services, people outside who
work as government contractors--with a particular focus on what is
happening at our national laboratories.
I also want to offer what I see as a way forward and a way that we
can get out of this government shutdown, a way that we can get the
Federal workforce working again, a way that we can make sure that our
laboratory experts, our scientists, are able to go back to work and do
great things to keep us safe and secure and move the ball forward on
our energy policies.
I also want to tell all laboratory employees that today we submitted
to Secretary Moniz, Members of Congress from the California delegation
and Senator Feinstein, a letter asking Secretary Moniz at the
Department of Energy to allow our national laboratory employees--and
there are about 30,000 of them across the country who have been
furloughed--to be paid backpay for the time that they are furloughed.
I am honored to be joined on that letter by Bay Area House Members
Zoe Lofgren and also Jerry McNerney, who will join me tonight. I am
going to yield in a moment to both of those Members and allow them to
talk about the national labs and the shutdown.
Congressman Jerry McNerney, who has represented the Tri-Valley area
prior to redistricting back in 2010, knows greatly about our national
laboratories. He is a Ph.D. serving in the Congress. He has a Ph.D. in
mathematics and is somebody who worked as a wind engineer and has
worked at our national laboratories. He will talk about the effect on
our national laboratories.
Another champion of our national laboratories is Congresswoman Zoe
Lofgren, who also serves on the Science Committee with me. She is
somebody who has been a champion for our national laboratories, and
particularly Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. Although they are not in
her congressional district, I am grateful for her constant support on
every issue, knowing that she and I share a vision and a goal that one
day we will realize fusion ignition.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlelady from California
(Ms. Lofgren).
Ms. LOFGREN. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, as my friend and colleague Representative Swalwell has
pointed out, the government shutdown is causing serious damage to our
country. The shutdown is putting Americans out of work and hurting the
economy--not only the jobs of Federal employees, but the thousands of
small businesses who provide goods and services to the government and
to government employees who are not spending money that they no longer
are getting in paychecks.
This harm is being felt across the country by millions of people. The
closures impact thousands of important programs and services. We know
parks are closed, stopping travel plans. We know that the Small
Business Administration is not lending to the tune of a billion dollars
a month. Federal business statistics are not being released, leaving us
essentially flying blind when it comes to how the economy is doing.
Army Corps of Engineers projects are halted. The Consumer Product
Safety Commission is not reviewing products to keep us safe. The VA is
not able to decide claims from veterans. We saw the horrifying news
earlier this week that death benefits for members of our armed services
and their families were impacted. Meals for seniors are not being
served, and children are being thrown out of Head Start. These are real
issues. The economy is being held hostage.
But what we want to talk about this evening is not just those impacts
that have been so well covered in the press, but how our economy's
future is being held hostage by this government shutdown and by a lack
of funding for science.
We were very proud in the San Francisco Bay area that we had three
Nobel laureates just this week--Stanford's Michael Levitt and Thomas
Sudhof and UC Berkeley's Randy Schekman--for terrific success. They
were funded not through the labs but through the National Institutes of
Health.
However, it is worth noting that this government shutdown is
resulting in the furlough of 13,000 researchers. It is blocking
hundreds of projects. The amazing thing to me was that their partner,
James Rothman of Yale, who shared in the Nobel Prize, because of budget
cuts and sequester, the research that actually got him the Nobel Prize
was cut. Because of the sequester, the funding was cut for the research
that got him the Nobel Prize. So there is an issue here not just on the
shutdown holding the economy hostage, but also the underlying poor
funding.
But let's talk just a minute about the national labs. A lot of people
don't really know what the labs are. Those of us who are close to them
do.
They were founded in 1943, and they were really meant to address the
need to mobilize the Nation's scientific assets to support the war
effort. Subsequent to that, they were utilized to bring the smartest
people in the country together to focus on things that would keep us
safe. As a matter of fact, they have helped keep us quite prosperous.
Out of the lab have come things such as optical digital recording
technology that is behind all music video and data storage,
communications and observations satellites, advanced batteries now used
in electric cars, supercomputers that as a society we would be lost
without. So much from the national labs.
But one of the things that I think is enormously important and,
unfortunately, has not received the kind of publicity it should have is
the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory.
At 5:51 a.m. on September 29, there was a leap forward in the fusion
experiment underway at that national lab. That Saturday shot was the
latest in a series of carefully designed and incremental ignition
experiments that have increased the yield. But here is the interesting
thing. For the portion of the target, the 192 lasers that went into
that target, there was more energy coming out than was put into the
target. That has never happened before. So this is not the end of the
quest to finish that science, but it is a major, major step forward. It
is something that is actually threatened by this government shutdown.
I just received a copy of a notice that is going out to Lawrence
Livermore tomorrow, and here is what it says, from the management at
the lab to all the scientists:
This is to remind you that beginning today, October 11, the
lab will begin shutting down normal operations. Only
essential functions necessary to assure safety and security
will be ongoing.
The lab is shutting down. The employees are furloughed, as we have
just gotten the most important step forward on this most important
experiment going on in the United States. How can that be possibly be
good for the United States of America?
Of course, Lawrence Livermore is not the only national lab that is
adversely impacted. Just up the road from my home in Santa Clara
County, we have the Stanford Linear Accelerator Laboratory, with their
fabulous Linac Coherent Light Source. It is the world's most powerful x
ray laser. Its focused beam, which arrives in staccato bursts a few
quadrillionths of a second long, is allowing researchers to probe
complex ultrasmall structures and freeze atomic motions. They will be
able to see what is going on at a molecular level in real-time.
What is happening at the Stanford lab? The same cutbacks that are
afflicting the Lawrence Livermore lab.
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Look at some of the things that are coming out of these fine science
facilities, like the wonderful corkscrewing lasers that can be the key
to unlimited bandwidth that was recently devised at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator, and the national lab at Livermore that has developed a
safe and versatile material known as DNA Tagged Reagents for Aerosol
Experiments. It is going to be a critical tool for protecting the
United States.
All of these things are at risk. And for what? For a stupid, foolish
partisan fight.
We could change this this evening, tomorrow morning. All we need is
to have a bill on the floor to vote to reopen this government and to
allow these scientists to continue to move forward to change the world
and to create a brilliant future for our economy and for our safety and
security.
So I thank my colleague, Representative Swalwell, who does such an
excellent job of representing the two labs in his district, as well as
all the other constituents who are so proud of him here in his service
in the Congress and for standing up for them--not just for their jobs,
but for America's future.
Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you to the gentlelady from
California (Ms. Lofgren), who has been a tireless advocate for our
national laboratories and is a fighter on the Science Committee day in
and day out as we wage these battles and try and think big and
challenge our colleagues to do everything we can to move the ball
forward so that we can reach that point where we have clean energy
fusion, where we have a renewable source that is safe and reliable and
does not require us to look across oceans and time zones to provide our
country's energy.
With that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from California, my
colleague, my former Congressman, my friend, who today is honoring Bow
Tie Friday as well, the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).
Mr. McNERNEY. I certainly want to thank my friend and colleague from
Dublin, California, Eroc Swalwell, for bringing this topic up tonight.
I want to thank my friend, Zoe Lofgren from San Jose, for being an
advocate and a champion of the labs long before I got here and carrying
on that great tradition.
{time} 1945
What I would like to do tonight is talk about my experience at the
lab.
When I first got my Ph.D.--and I won't tell you how long ago it was--
I started working for Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque. I
will tell you that there were a lot of great things about that
experience. My colleagues were Bill Sullivan and Don Lobitz. There was
Paul Veers. They were tireless; they were very well educated; they
worked hard; and they were very inspirational to me as a young Ph.D.
Our boss, whose name was Dick Braasch, went out there and delivered us
the resources that we needed in order to carry out the research that
was ahead of us.
In using that money and in using those tools and in using that
resource, basically we developed wind energy technology from the very
ground up. We were working on vertical access windmills, and we
understood and worked very hard on the aerodynamics in order to
understand exactly how to design blades to best maximize power and how
to best maximize energy production from windmills so that wind turbines
could be designed economically and make money. Now we see wind energy
is a tremendous success. We see new windmills going up by the
thousands--giant windmills that are 2,3, 4 megawatts. If you drive
underneath them, they are just an incredible sight to see.
I just loved the experience, and I hope that we can continue to
provide the resources for young scientists and young engineers who
understand and who have the passion to go out there and make a
difference and discover new technology and develop new energy sources
and develop new health technology so that we can move forward.
The United States of America is truly the leader in this kind of
technology. We lead in health care. We lead in health science. We lead
in energy development. We lead in all kinds of sciences. Our
universities are tremendous resources, but our laboratories are where
the seasoned scientists go and produce real technology that can be
transferred to the public sector.
Right now, if you look in Livermore, which is right outside of my
district, there is a technology transfer operation. There is a
cooperative organization between the laboratories--Sandia National
Laboratories; the Livermore National Laboratory in the city of
Livermore; in the city of Davis; Berkeley National Laboratory; Berkeley
University; and so on. All of these institutions are working together
with private companies to develop this technology and to transfer it
into the private sector to give our businesses and our companies the
edge they need to become successful and to create jobs and to lead our
Nation.
One of the things they are doing in Livermore that is so exciting,
which my colleague Zoe Lofgren talked about, was the National Ignition
Facility, the fusion facility there in Livermore. If you don't know
about fusion, I will back up a little bit. ``Fusion'' is when you break
apart a uranium or a plutonium atom to create energy. It is a source of
what you call the atomic bomb nuclear power, but fusion is the other
side of the scale at which you actually fuse nuclei together to form
bigger nuclei, and even more energy is released. The prototype is the
hydrogen bomb. What they are doing in Livermore is actually trying to
understand how to contain fusion energy. There is an unlimited amount
of fusion fuel out there. The ocean. It's heavy water. The ocean
contains heavy water. It contains tritium.
So it is a matter of understanding this basic force of nature and
controlling this basic force of nature. As Zoe Lofgren mentioned a few
minutes ago, what happened in Livermore just this last month was that
they were successful in creating more energy in the fusion reaction
than was put into the energy. It was put in the reaction.
So we see progress being made month by month, year by year. I've been
out there to that facility. I've met with these scientists. I've met
with the leaders. I can tell you that they have the same exact
environment of just encouraging young scientists to do their best to
make a difference, to understand science. It is very exciting for me to
see that, and I would love to see that operation, that type of research
continue at our national laboratories.
Los Alamos Laboratory, in Albuquerque, is also another fine
institution like Sandia National Laboratories, like Livermore National
Laboratory, and like Argonne Laboratory. There are several across the
Nation. They do basic research, and they do basic development. My
understanding is that the United States, with the NIP facility, have
about a 5-year lead over other countries--over China--which are
desperately trying to catch up with us.
When we furlough those scientists, when we stop that process, we set
back our scientists for not just the amount of time they are laid off,
but we stop the infrastructure. When you develop the technology that
they have developed, this is several years of lead time to get the
mirrors, to get the amplifiers that they use for this equipment. When
you tell your suppliers, Well, we are not going to be using you for the
next few months, those suppliers go away.
It takes years to develop the new technology, the new infrastructure,
for these scientists to be able to purchase these items that are right
now available. As we furlough these scientists and shut down that
program, those people are going to go away. Maybe they will find
customers in China. I hope not. So this is very, very critical for our
national energy security and for our national security to keep on top
of that and to not let that lapse.
The labs do other very useful things, like nuclear arms reduction.
Some of the nuclear inspectors are from the Lawrence Livermore National
Laboratory. We have chemical weapons inspectors. I would bet some of
the inspectors who are getting ready to go to Syria right now are from
these laboratories. I would bet a bottom dollar on that. If you are
worried about cybersecurity, if you know the threats that we may face
in our country with cybersecurity, then you are going to want to know
what they do at the Livermore National Laboratory and at the Sandia
National Laboratories. They have some of the top--I don't want to call
them ``hackers''--they have some of the top
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folks who really understand how to get into computer systems and how to
protect them and how to attack if they need to attack. We have some of
the very best people in the world at these laboratories who are working
on cybersecurity. We want to make sure that we continue to employ those
folks and to get the best we can out of these folks who have so much
passion on this subject.
Now, Zoe Lofgren also mentioned the Stanford Linear Accelerator,
SLAC. They have an x-ray laser. X-rays are incredibly hard to control,
and designing an x-ray laser which makes laser beams which are
monochromatic and coherent is an unbelievable achievement. The things
that they are going to be able to do with that are beyond what we can
imagine today. So keeping those types of operations in progress are
absolutely essential.
We don't want to be laying these people off. We don't want to be
giving them the message that their work is not essential. We don't want
to be giving them the idea that, Well, maybe I would be better off in
the private sector; maybe I would be better off making big dollars
instead of working on things that are so important to our national
security.
If you have watched in the last few months, I have been doing 1-
minute presentations on science achievements in this country, science
achievements that are funded by the National Science Foundation and the
National Institutes of Health. We have seen things like the Boltzmann
equation move forward, which explains how gases behave, how they expand
and contract. We have seen how statistics are used in neuroscience, how
differential equations are factored to get new insights into the
behavior of nature. These are ideas that are funded through grants from
the National Science Foundation and also from the National Institutes
of Health. They fund things on cancer, on understanding epidemics in
order to keep us safe. If you understand what is happening in the
biological world, there is always a threat of a new virus.
These folks are understanding that. They are giving us the tools to
protect ourselves, and I think it is absolutely essential that we
restore funding to the pre-sequester levels for the National Science
Foundation and for the National Institutes of Health.
We see our colleagues--well meaning, I know that--who want to reduce
the size of government. They want to reduce funding for science for the
National Science Foundation and for the National Institutes of Health,
and they think there are no consequences. There are consequences. The
consequences are going to be that we see less science in this country
and that we see more science in other countries. So we need to work
together to find a solution.
Yes, we are absolutely willing to negotiate. Just don't hold a gun to
our heads. Don't hold us hostage. Don't make this extortion. Come to us
with reasonable ideas. We will sit down with you at any time, at any
place, and if you want to demand that we eliminate the medical device
tax, we will even be willing to talk about that but after we get the
government functioning, after we pay our obligations. Then we can talk
about things that we want, like funding for the National Science
Foundation, like funding for the National Institutes of Health. Those
are the things that we want to see. There are so many other things that
have been reduced, like food stamps and the WIC program.
We want to make sure that our voices are heard and that the extortion
sort of tactics that we have seen from the leadership and from the far
right wing do not hold sway so that we can negotiate fairly, so that we
can use the rule of law, so that we can use the traditions of this
tremendous body--the House of Representatives--and the United States
Senate within the standard practices of bringing bills to the
committee, of negotiating, of adding amendments, and then of voting on
them, and moving those forward to the Senate to agree and then to the
President. That is the regular order. That is the order we want to use.
That is the order that has been used in this country. If you decide
that that isn't the way to do it, then we are going to fight you tooth
and nail.
I want to thank my colleague again, Eric Swalwell. I see another
colleague who represents Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque,
which is where I used to work. I appreciate the true effort tonight.
Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you to the gentleman from
California. His passion for our laboratories, for science really shows.
I am so glad he talked about what the Democrats have already done as
far as compromising. That is really important here because I had a town
hall last weekend. I went home on the one day we didn't have votes, and
I went to the City Hall Chamber in Dublin, California, the council
chamber there.
A number of folks rightfully asked me, What are the Democrats willing
to give up in these negotiations?
I think it is important for folks to know that the Democrats have
already made concessions, that we have made very, very difficult
concessions. The best way to describe those concessions is with that
ugly, terrible word called ``sequester,'' which has been across-the-
board cuts, and they have hurt our national labs with these deep, deep
cuts.
This chart here demonstrates it better than anything I have seen,
which is that you have the President's budget, which is about $1.2
trillion. Then you see the 2011 debt limit deal at $1.6 trillion. You
see Paul Ryan's budget at $967 billion. Then, across the Capitol, the
Senate passed a budget at $986 billion. To get a budget to keep the
government running, you need what I call the Holy Trinity. You need the
Senate, the House, and the President to all agree on one number.
You have the President, who wanted something in the low trillions.
You have the Senate that compromised at $986 billion. The House has
said that we will take $986 billion, and the President has now agreed
that he would take $986 billion. The House has one very, very harsh
exception. It will take $986 billion, but it started with wanting to
repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Democrats have compromised. This
chart shows that we have made deep and hard concessions during this
budget negotiation. The biggest one, as I mentioned, is this mindless,
across-the-board cut called ``sequester.'' Now, sequester is not
targeted cuts. We are not going after bad programs. Rather, we are
taking good programs, and we are taking bad programs, and we are seeing
across-the-board cuts. It is indiscriminate.
At our laboratories, they have programs called LDRD, Laboratory
Directed Research and Development. In the private sector, many
companies allow their employees, especially in high-tech and
innovation, about ``20 percent time,'' is what they call it. Google
calls it ``20 percent time.'' So, for one day a week, effectively, an
employee is allowed to work outside his assigned area--his subject
matter, his expertise--on something that he thinks can move the ball
forward in his industry. So ``20 percent time,'' they call it. At the
laboratories, they call this ``LDRD.'' They are given about 8\1/2\
percent. So it is an over 50 percent less cut than what you are seeing
in the private sector. It is 8\1/2\ percent that they are getting at
our national laboratories. Because of these sequester cuts, that 8\1/2\
percent has been cut by more than half. Now they are below 4 percent
for their LDRD, and the LDRD work at our national laboratories has
produced some tremendous results in science.
{time} 2000
I just want to go through some of them.
The gentleman from California talked about nonproliferation and what
the research has done at the National Laboratories as far as reducing
the stockpiles across the world.
Well, because of the LDRD work, what we have seen is that we are able
to better test nuclear weapons and verify countries in the numbers they
are claiming they have for nuclear weapons across the world because we
have this LDRD research.
Also, we are able to provide cleaner energy vehicles because of LDRD
research. The Volt, the Chevy Volt, for example. The Chevy Volt would
not be able to cruise on battery power were it not for the advanced
cathode technology that emerged from a National Laboratory.
Also, airport security. We are all so thankful and grateful that at
the airport they are able to detect many of
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the explosives that terrorists would seek to use to take down an
airplane. LDRD we can thank for much of the research that has come out
that makes our airports so much safer.
I was a prosecutor for 7 years. In so many cases, whether it was
homicides or sexual assaults, we were able to put perpetrators away
because of DNA research that was conducted at our National
Laboratories. To DNA testing we can now add human antibody detection, a
precise method of catching suspects and attaching them to crime scenes.
This was something I was able to use in a courtroom to great effect.
That science is so powerful when you have so many questions of who
committed the crime that all jurors can accept the scientific research
that has come out of LDRD and the DNA advances that we have seen there.
I want to yield now to a colleague of mine from New Mexico who
represents the Albuquerque area and the other Sandia laboratory, our
sister over there in New Mexico. I have Sandia and Livermore and the
gentlelady from New Mexico has Sandia in New Mexico. I am going to
yield to her and have her tell us about this shutdown and what effect
it has had on our National Laboratories, particularly in her district.
Ms. MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM of New Mexico. Thank you very much to my
friend and colleague from California.
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to draw attention to the hard work of the
men and women at New Mexico's National Labs who protect our Nation's
security and help grow our economy.
Sandia National Labs in my district is home to 9,000 of those
dedicated public servants. These are the best and brightest physicists,
chemists, mathematicians, engineers, and technicians. They have chosen
to serve our country instead of taking more lucrative jobs in the
private sector because they are passionate about the lab's mission.
Sandia is a national security asset that uses technology to find
solutions to the most challenging problems that threaten our Nation.
Their work supports numerous Federal, State, and local government
agencies, companies, and organizations.
During the BP oil spill, Sandia employees were called in to help cap
the well. The work they do is absolutely remarkable.
Since 1976, Sandia has received 101 coveted research and development
100 awards, often referred to as the ``Oscars of invention'' or the
``Nobel prizes of technology.''
While New Mexico's National Labs have been able to use carryover
funds to stay open during the shutdown for the past 11 days, that money
is quickly running out. Within the last week, employees at both Sandia
and Los Alamos National Labs received letters informing them that they
would face furloughs if the government doesn't reopen soon.
Despite the fact that they play a crucial role in our Nation's
security, the employees at New Mexico's National Labs are technically
not Federal employees. As a result, the legislation we passed to
provide back pay to furloughed Federal employees, which I was proud to
support, unfortunately does not protect employees at these labs.
Earlier this week, Congressman Lujan and I, along with Senators Udall
and Heinrich, sent a letter to Energy Secretary Moniz requesting that
he allow the labs to use their funding to back pay any employees
furloughed because of the shutdown.
I remain hopeful that the furloughs can be avoided because I have
heard stories about the damage that they can do, and I have seen
firsthand the damaging and devastating effect that the other Federal
furloughed employees and their families have suffered in Albuquerque,
my district, and the entire State of New Mexico.
In fact, last Sunday in Albuquerque, I hosted a roundtable meeting
with lab employees, furloughed Federal employees, and members of the
business community. They told me that any missed or delayed paychecks
would prevent them from paying their mortgage payments, household
utility bills, car loan payments, and credit cards on time.
But they are not just worried about their pay; they are also worried
about their careers. Lab employees who hold security clearances are in
danger of losing their clearances if their credit scores are impacted
because they cannot pay their bills.
After the meeting, I reached out to community partners to see if they
would be able to help us in any way. Several credit unions, banks,
utility providers, and other community partners reached out because
they all want to help.
If nonprofits in the business community can step up, then it is time
for Congress to step up too. We need to do our job, we need to pass a
funding bill to keep New Mexico's National Labs open. National Labs
should not be forced to operate under the threat of shutting down just
because a few dozen reckless Tea Party Republicans decided that
destroying the Affordable Care Act was more important than keeping the
government open.
New Mexico's National Labs deserve and require the certainty and
stability of a full funding bill and so does the rest of the country.
We need to vote on the Senate passed clean funding compromise right
now.
I thank the gentleman from California for his leadership in
protecting our national security interests and the labs in my home
State.
Mr. DeSANTIS. I thank the gentlelady from New Mexico. I am glad she
brought up the examples of the toll that this shutdown is taking on our
National Laboratory employees.
We are hearing back at Livermore, at Sandia, and at Lawrence
Livermore so many examples like what the gentlelady mentioned with
security clearances. You wouldn't think about it. But when thousands of
employees have security clearances that depend on them continuing to
have financial stability, that stability is threatened when our
National Laboratories furlough them and they are unable to meet their
debts and obligations and pay their bills and keep their families
running.
The gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney) also talked about the
effects of furloughing these scientists. When you furlough scientists,
you also furlough scientific progress.
I mentioned the town hall that I had last weekend in Dublin,
California. Lab employees from Sandia and Lawrence Livermore showed up
for that town hall. I am going to fly home this Sunday, and we are
going to host another town hall at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. It is
going to be at 1:30 on Sunday. We have alerted laboratories to that
town hall, and I look forward to talking to them. I hope to have a more
positive update than what I can provide today. I hope that I can tell
them that the shutdown will not continue; that they will be able to
continue their work at our great National Laboratories.
Now, I talked a little bit about how we got here. That we had a
budget from the President and the Senate at $986 billion, but the
House's budget wouldn't accept only $986 billion; it wanted to repeal
and defund the Affordable Care Act.
The reason I am so hopeful that we hold firm in the Senate, and that
the President continues to hold firm and insist that we pass what is
called a clean budget at $986 billion, is because of the dangerous,
dangerous precedent it would set should we allow either side to try and
seek concessions or seek a ransom for simply doing their job of
providing a budget.
Our job being here in Congress and working under article I of the
Constitution requires us to pass a budget that funds the government to
pay the debts and obligations of the United States.
It would be a dangerous precedent if we had an environment where
every 45 days, 60 days, or if we ever got back to passing a budget on
an annual basis, that one side in one Chamber attempted to use that
budgeting process to revisit and try and resettle scores that have
already been settled.
That is so obviously occurring here with the Affordable Care Act.
This is a provision that was initially brought up and contemplated in
the 2008 campaign for the Presidency, where one person, one candidate,
said that if he was elected he would seek to bring our country for the
first time in over 100 years since it was first proposed affordable
health care for all. That person was overwhelmingly elected to the
Presidency--Barack Obama.
In 2010, the Congress, the 111th Congress, passed the Affordable Care
Act. It was signed into law by the same President who campaigned on it.
[[Page H6542]]
In 2012, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, who was appointed by
a Republican President who served before President Barack Obama, wrote
a majority opinion that said that that law, the Affordable Care Act,
was constitutional.
That same President who ran on the Affordable Care Act in 2008, who
signed into law congressional action in 2010, who saw it upheld in 2012
by a Republican-appointed Supreme Court chief justice, ran for
reelection, and again was overwhelmingly elected.
The Affordable Care Act will do many great things to provide
affordable, quality health care to many Americans. But like every
government program, it will not be 100 percent perfect. It too will
require fixes and updates.
Just recently, Social Security celebrated a birthday. It is in its
late 70s now. Social Security is not the same program that it was over
70 years ago. It has gone through different modifications and changes
through the years. Just as the Affordable Care Act, we owe it to the
American people to look at it as it is implemented, to look how it is
helping people, to look at where glitches are and what we can do to
make it work.
We must mend any problems with the Affordable Care Act, but not end
it. We must not use the Affordable Care Act as a way to hold up a
budget that provides so many jobs for the Federal workforce, so many
services that come from the greatest government that presides over the
greatest democracy in the world, so many services being held up for so
many people across our country.
It would be a dangerous, dangerous precedent if we allowed either
side to do this. Let me just offer an example: if we were to make
concessions on this budgeting process--say at the very best buy us a
45-day continuing resolution where the government would be funded for
another 45 days--what would the other side ask for next? Would it ask
for us to privatize Social Security, something they attempted to do in
2006 but weren't able to do? Would they ask us to turn Medicare into a
voucher system, something that they are not able to achieve because of
a majority in the Senate and a Democratic President who has vowed not
to let that happen?
But also think and reverse the situation: imagine if you had a
Republican in the White House, a Republican-controlled Senate and a
Democratic majority in the House. Imagine if that Democratic majority
tried to use the budgeting process to achieve what it couldn't achieve
at the ballot box. You can imagine the different scenarios where we can
try and do this--whether it is passing background checks, something
that has frustrated so many House Democrats that we couldn't get that
passed in the Senate; whether it is passing an assault weapons ban,
something that so many House Democrats would like to see renewed, as we
had back in the '90s. It could be comprehensive immigration reform,
something that our country is calling for. People are coming to our
capital asking to have a roadmap to citizenship in reforms and work
visas. We can't do that legislatively right now. But imagine if
Democrats had a majority here and a Republican in the White House, and
they said: No budget; we are shutting down the government until we get
what we want because we couldn't do it at the ballot box.
We have never operated that way, and I hope we do not continue to
operate that way, and that more reasonable minds come forward and allow
us to put our National Laboratory employees back to work, allow us to
put our Federal workforce back to work.
This shutdown is affecting and hurting real people. I mentioned in
the beginning of this hour that I came to Congress to help people, but
right now it is hurting innocent Americans.
Even though the Federal Government is closed, essential services must
continue so hundreds of thousands of Federal employees are being forced
to work but with no paycheck. How can we treat such dedicated public
servants this way?
We saw just last week as an erratic driver tried to drive through the
barricade on Capitol Hill that our brave men and women of the Capitol
Hill police force rushed to protect the doors of democracy. And what
thanks did we give them in return? We told them to keep working, keep
protecting this House, but we are going to hold your paycheck.
Many more aren't even allowed to work in the Federal Government,
denied the chance to do the jobs they love, serving on behalf of the
American people, and they are left worrying if they will ever get paid
or if they are going to be lost.
{time} 2015
The loss also ripples throughout our economy, affecting businesses
throughout the country. It is estimated that this shutdown is costing
the economy $300 million a day. And so you can see, people are asking
across the country: Will I get paid this month? Will there be enough
money for food? Can I pay my mortgage this month? I am a first time
home buyer; some of those FHA loans look very good for me, but they are
delayed, they are on hold. Will I be able to pay my child's college
tuition? All of the questions that folks in our Federal workforces,
folks who are working at our national laboratories are asking.
Small businesses can't get SBA loans. Small business centers which
help women and veterans are closed. Our national parks are closed.
Technology updates for all of our Federal programs are being delayed.
And mentioned earlier, our cybersecurity centers, employees there are
going to be furloughed, the cybersecurity centers that work to protect
our Nation's networks, that work to ensure that nation-states and
individuals who wish to do us harm aren't able to do so.
I would like to now yield to the greatest champion in this House to
end and reduce the effect of poverty on our community and somebody who
has the honor of representing Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
which has over 4,000 employees. I have visited that facility, and they
are doing such great work to advance the progress of science.
I yield to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Lee).
Ms. LEE of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for
yielding, but also for your tremendous leadership on this issue and on
so many other issues. It is a pleasure to serve with you. You have
really hit the ground running as a new Member of this great body. I
also want to thank you for your work on the Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology. As a fellow member of the Bay Area congressional
delegation, you have made such an impact and your work is so important
for our entire California delegation, so thank you.
My district is California's 13th Congressional District, right next
door to your congressional district. As you said, it is home to
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Let me just say first how proud
I am to represent one of the most esteemed centers for scientific
research and technological advancement in the world. I have had many,
many opportunities to visit the lab where I have met some of the most
brilliant scientific minds on our planet. The employees, the
scientists, all of those who work at the lab are phenomenal
individuals, and it is just amazing to see how the scientists and
engineers especially use our Federal investments in our national
laboratory system to make unbelievable leaps in every field, from
nanotechnology and supercomputing to energy efficiency and
astrophysics.
The history of the lab is unbelievable. It was established in 1931 by
Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ernest Orlando Lawrence. The lab has been
associated with 13 Nobel Prizes. Fifty-seven of the lab's scientists
are members of the National Academy of Sciences. Thirteen have won the
National Medal of Science, our Nation's highest award for lifetime
achievement in the field of science.
Over the years, Berkeley Lab scientists have discovered 16 elements;
made the world's smallest motor, 100,000 times smaller than a human
hair; used ultraviolet technology to bring safe drinking water to
thousands across the world; and helped decipher the human genome.
I could go on and on, but we are not here today to laud the
accomplishments of the national labs in our district, but I think it is
very important to do that even in this very difficult environment.
We are here because these institutions of innovation are under a real
[[Page H6543]]
and immediate threat, thanks to the Republican shutdown of our
government. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory employs over 4,200
scientists, support staff, and students in my congressional district.
Its economic impact is even greater, creating 5,600 local jobs and
12,000 jobs nationally, with a total economic impact estimated at $1.6
billion a year.
If this shutdown continues, the Berkeley Lab will be forced to
furlough its employees in waves beginning in late October. Not only
does the shutdown threaten the livelihood of my constituents, the
scientists, the administrators, and the support staff that keep the lab
running, it also threatens to stall projects that could be the next
scientific breakthrough that changes how our world works or produces
the next Nobel Peace Prize winner. So this is really an absurd price to
pay for the Republican insistence on keeping people from receiving
affordable, quality health care. That is where all of this started.
For the life of me, I don't understand why my Republican Tea Party
colleagues are continuing these cynical ploys that threaten our
Nation's competitiveness and force our Nation's most brilliant minds
out of their labs. We need to end this shutdown. We need to fund the
entire energy and water bill, which provides funding for our national
laboratories through the Department of Energy's Office of Science. We
need an up-or-down vote on a clean budget bill to reopen this
government.
Democrats have already--and I know you have heard this over and over
again, Mr. Swalwell, because you know we have already accepted a short-
term budget bill to reopen our government even though we don't believe
its funding level is nearly adequate.
The American people deserve a functioning government, and they
deserve affordable, quality health care. They deserve both. I hope more
people are listening and more people understand that we know how to
open the government. We know how to begin to negotiate on a real budget
that makes our entire government, including our national laboratories,
whole.
And so hopefully this alarm that we are sounding tonight, Mr.
Swalwell, will continue to wake up the country and continue to ensure
that people know that we have their backs and that we know how to open
this government and we want to shut down this shutdown immediately.
Thank you again for your leadership.
Mr. SWALWELL of California. I thank the gentlelady from California.
She is absolutely correct. Democrats have compromised. We have accepted
a $986 billion sequester budget, which the gentlelady and I do not
accept. When you cut those programs, we are cutting the opportunities
to lift people out of poverty. I agree with the gentlelady, we have
made deep, deep concessions when it comes to a budget. We are ready to
open up the government and turn the lights back on, but we are doing so
at a painful price with the budget we are accepting.
With that, I will close. I want to say to what my colleague from
Berkeley and Oakland was saying: Keep our national labs open. Keep
those great scientists at Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, keep them on the job, moving the job forward on
science.
It was alluded to earlier that the National Ignition Facility in
Livermore, as the government that funds it was unraveling 2 weeks ago,
at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, they achieved something
they had been attempting to achieve for the past 3-4 years. That is
fusion. For the first time, they have been able to get more energy out
than what they have put in. This is a remarkable achievement. They have
achieved fusion, and they are knocking on the door of ignition at the
National Ignition Facility. They are closer than they have ever been.
They are closer now to meeting the 84th milestone. They have 84
milestones they have to meet. They have met 83 of them. They are so
close to providing this renewable energy resource which will change the
game on how every person in the world receives their energy, no longer
requiring us to be dependent on foreign sources of energy if we can
achieve this and then transfer this technology to the private market.
The data achieved at NIF is critical for understanding nuclear
fusion, which we need for keeping a reliable stockpile of nuclear
weapons. So this is a critical energy issue and a critical defense
issue. Understanding fusion, as I mentioned, allows us to get closer to
the goal of civilian fusion energy. And nuclear fusion energy, unlike
what we currently use, nuclear fission essentially would produce no
waste or carbon emissions. It is the ``holy grail'' of clean energy,
and I want to make sure that the scientists at Lawrence Livermore are
able to accomplish it.
Sandia also has a facility called the Combustion Research Facility.
This is a partnership, a public-private partnership with our automakers
and those who are making automobiles in Detroit. What they are trying
to do is make the American automobile engine more efficient at the
Combustion Research Facility. There are important, remarkable
achievements going on at our national laboratories.
With the furlough at our laboratory, all of their exceptional work
will be put on hold. So what does that mean in relation to the National
Ignition Facility and the Combustion Research Facility? It means that
work will stop that is being done to maintain our nuclear stockpile;
the great fusion energy project I mentioned; efforts to understand
climate change will stop; all while we stand still, other countries
like Russia and China will zoom past us in science, math, and renewable
energy.
And this isn't just what happens today. If these highly skilled,
highly intelligent employees are prevented from working, they will go
somewhere else. These people are Ph.D.'s. They will find somewhere else
to go.
At the beginning of the hour, I said I would not only tell us how we
got here, what it means, I would also offer a way forward. The way
forward, as I see it, is for the Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner, to
allow this House to have an up-or-down vote on passing the same budget
that the Senate has agreed to, the same budget that the President of
the United States said he would sign. We know the votes are there.
Twenty-five to 30 Republicans have said they would pass that vote.
So let's get the government back to work. Let's end the partisanship
games, the obsession with defunding the Affordable Care Act, and let's
get the government back to work. In the meantime, a short-term solution
I have offered is that Secretary Moniz allow furloughed employees at
all of our national laboratories, at all 17 sites, all 30,000
employees, to receive back furlough pay.
I have also worked since January with a small group of freshmen,
about 30 of us, Republicans and Democrats evenly divided. It is called
the United Solutions Caucus. We have been meeting almost every week
since sworn into office, pledging that we will work together and build
the foundation of a bipartisan relationship. In these trying times and
dark days over the last 2 weeks, we have met nearly every other day,
talking about what we can do to work together to turn back on the
lights of the government for the greatest democracy of the world. This
group gives me hope.
Just yesterday, the group met with two senior members, a Republican
and a Democrat, from the Appropriations Committee. Nobody in that group
and neither of those senior members want to see the government continue
to be shut down, so I am hopeful that we can continue to talk. I am
hopeful that this group can continue to work together, the United
Solutions Caucus, to provide a way forward, a way that ensures that the
Federal workforce is back to work; and for my district, ensures that
those hardworking scientists who want to think big, just like I did,
the same reason I came to Congress, that want to move the ball forward
on our nuclear and energy security, that they can go back to work and
they aren't ever furloughed.
So I ask my colleagues on the other side: Did you come here to help
people or did you come here to hurt people? I think you came here for
the same reason I did, to help people, and so I hope you will prove it
to the American people. Allow an up-or-down vote; allow us to pass a
clean resolution; and together, all of us, Republicans and Democrats,
can help the American people.
With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
[[Page H6544]]
Ms. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, the Department of
Energy's National Laboratories are vital to our national security, our
economy, and our environment. They have often been called ``crown
jewels'' of our federal research and development infrastructure, and
for good reason. This is why I am extremely concerned about the impacts
of this senseless government shutdown on these important facilities--
and this is on top of the harmful cuts that they have already had to
endure under budget sequestration.
It is worth reminding my colleagues here today that we have seen how
our past investments in the national laboratories have paid off when it
comes to energy development. DOE labs were key to the development of
high-efficiency gas turbines for coal plants, nuclear reactors, and the
directional drilling and hydraulic fracturing practices that have led
to the shale gas boom of today.
I think it is also important to note that DOE's Office of Science--
which oversees most of these national laboratories--is actually the
largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the
nation, and it operates more than 30 national scientific user
facilities whose applications go well beyond energy innovation. Our
nation's top researchers from industry, academia, and other federal
agencies use these facilities to examine everything from new materials
that will better meet our military's needs, to new pharmaceuticals that
will better treat disease, to even examining the fundamental building
blocks of the universe. I believe that this stewardship of unique
scientific research, including the nation's major national user
facilities, is another very important role that the Department plays in
bolstering our national competitiveness today and in building the
industries of the future.
It's no secret that Congress's inability to date to come to an
agreement on a sensible budget plan has led to some devastating cuts to
many of these important facilities, with serious impacts to our nation
in both the short-term and the long-term. Until we resolve the current
crisis, even more of our nation's best and brightest will be forced out
of work and some of their most critical research tools--for which the
U.S. taxpayers contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to build--
will have to cease operations. I believe that we are doing damage to
the seed corn of our future, and as the Ranking Member of the Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, I believe that ending this shutdown
and reversing these drastic cuts need to be our highest priorities
going forward.
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