[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 52 (Tuesday, April 1, 2014)]
[House]
[Pages H2794-H2796]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                COAST GUARD AND MARITIME TRANSPORTATION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Smith of Missouri). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 3, 2013, the gentleman from California (Mr. 
Garamendi) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to talk 
about a couple of issues that are on the floor. I really want to spend 
this evening talking about an enormous opportunity that America has to 
further jobs in this Nation. It is a piece of legislation that passed 
off the House floor this afternoon. H.R. 4005, a piece of legislation 
that deals with the Coast Guard and the maritime industry.
  But just a few words about the previous hour that was spent here 
talking about the 40-hour workweek. There is nothing in the Affordable 
Care Act that does away with the 40-hour workweek, not at all. The 40-
hour workweek remains, and, in fact, Democrats are trying to strengthen 
the overtime provisions that are needed to be put into effect, when men 
and women across the United States work more than 40 hours and do not 
receive overtime, time-and-a-half pay. So that is another thing.
  We just basically heard yet one more effort by our Republican 
colleagues to eviscerate and otherwise put aside the Affordable Care 
Act, which now has perhaps 12 to 15 million Americans with some sort of 
insurance. Perhaps it is a new health insurance policy that they 
previously did not have available to them or they are on Medicaid or 
they are on their parents' health insurance. Well over 12 million 
Americans now have insurance because of the Affordable Care Act.
  They also have guaranteed coverage. No longer can an insurance 
company discriminate against them because they have a preexisting 
condition. No longer are newborn babies denied coverage because they 
are born with some sort of a medical problem. That is what used to 
occur in America before the Affordable Care Act.
  Also, it is kind of ironic, if you will, that we just heard an hour 
of discussion on the 30-hour workweek, the 40-hour workweek. The 30 
hours only talks about when an employer must provide insurance for 
their employees. It doesn't take away anybody's 40-hour workweek at 
all.
  However, the ironic part is today, the Republicans announced the new 
Ryan budget, which seriously impacts every American's health care 
policy. The new Ryan budget repeals the Affordable Care Act and those 
guarantees of coverage that I spoke of just a moment ago. The guarantee 
that a newborn child with a medical problem has insurance was wiped out 
by the proposal that was introduced by Mr. Ryan today. The guarantee 
that every woman is no longer discriminated against because she is a 
woman, a female, that guarantee was wiped out by the proposal that was 
put forward by Mr. Ryan today.
  The guarantee that there are no more limits on coverage. Before the 
Affordable Care Act, if you came down with cancer and your insurance 
policy, as was common, had a total limit on the coverage, you would 
blow through that coverage and then bankruptcy was in your future. Oh, 
unless, of course, you didn't take the medical care. So these basic 
guarantees of health insurance availability were wiped out, or would be 
wiped out, by Mr. Ryan's budget that he proposed today.
  Similarly, something that is really important for every senior is 
seriously affected by the Republican Ryan budget that was put forth 
today. It was 1965 that Medicare went into effect. Lyndon Johnson 
signed that bill. I actually have a photo of the speech that he gave 
here on the House floor, calling for the enactment of Medicare and 
Medicaid. It was 1963, '64 when that occurred.
  The budget proposal that was put out by Mr. Ryan today would 
effectively end Medicare, as we know it. And if you are 55 years of age 
or younger, you would not have Medicare when you become 65. Instead, 
you would be given a voucher and told, go buy insurance in the health 
insurance market, which was so roundly criticized by our Republican 
colleagues today, and the improvements that have been made in that 
market by the Affordable Care Act.
  So let's try to get this straight. First of all, a proposal put 
forward today by the Republican majority in this House would 
effectively end Medicare for every American who is 55 and younger and 
put those people into a health insurance market that has had all of its 
guarantees of coverage, all of the consumer protections, all of the 
consumer Bill of Rights in the Affordable Care Act repealed. So on the 
one hand you repeal all of those protections, and then on the other 
hand, you take every American 55 years and younger and force them into 
that dog fight with no protections in the private health insurance 
market. I don't think we want to go there. I don't think we want to go 
there.
  What we want to do is to make sure that seniors have affordable 
Medicare insurance. But the proposal put forth today will deny those 
men and women that are currently in Medicare the opportunity to have 
the doughnut hole, the prescription drug doughnut hole, removed. 
Instead, the proposal put forth today would increase that doughnut 
hole, sending seniors back into the unaffordable prescription drug 
program that existed before the Affordable Care Act. So if you are a 
senior out there, beware. Beware of the budget proposal that was put 
forth here in the House of Representatives today because there is 
serious harm to you in 2016, should that proposal ever become law.
  We will fight that. We don't want Medicare to disappear, as we know 
it. We don't want a voucher program that forces seniors into the 
clutches of the private insurance companies without the protections 
that are presently in the Affordable Care program.
  I didn't intend to talk about this today. But following on the 
previous hour from my colleagues who were talking so vehemently against 
the Affordable Care Act, I thought we ought to have a discussion about 
what is in the Affordable Care Act, all of the protections that are 
there for every, every American, whether they are 65 or older. And oh, 
by the way, if you are 65 now and you are on Medicare, you have an 
annual free medical checkup--high blood pressure, diabetes, all of 
those things that can affect you--an annual free checkup which has 
already shown that it keeps seniors healthy longer and has dramatically 
reduced the cost of Medicare this year and will continue to do so in 
the years ahead.

  Now, what I really wanted to talk about was something really good and 
really positive that happened here on the floor of the House today, and 
that was the passage of H.R. 4005, the Coast Guard and Maritime 
legislation that reauthorizes the United States Coast Guard for 2 more 
years, expands their opportunities to protect our waterways, our lakes, 
and to protect America in the oceans that surround this great Nation. 
It also provides an opportunity for the mariners who want to enter that 
profession from the armed services, who may have been in the Navy, who 
have gained certain skills, so that they can get a license to be a 
mariner, to be a sailor, to be a ship's captain or an officer on one of 
our merchant marine ships. There is more that we can do with this piece 
of legislation, and I want to put it up here so that we can take a look 
at some of the opportunities that exist in this law. Here we go.
  About 20 years ago, there were several hundred American-flagged ships 
and several tens of thousands of American sailors that were bringing 
American commerce, exports, and imports into our ports. So if we 
support the growth of jobs and the growth of trade, then we need to 
support the merchant marine and Coast Guard renewal act that passed the 
House today because it provides these opportunities.
  This is not an LNG tanker. But the United States may very well be 
exporting liquefied natural gas. Rather than importing, we are likely 
to be exporting. Seven permits have been granted to the gas companies 
to export LNG, liquefied natural gas.

                              {time}  2030

  That is good, to a point. Export too much of this, and a strategic 
American

[[Page H2795]]

asset will be wasted, and we will lose the opportunity to have low-cost 
energy in the United States.
  That low-cost energy, a result of an abundance of natural gas that we 
now have in the United States, will be lost if we export too much of 
that gas through the liquification and the export of it.
  Right now, we are somewhere around 10 percent of the total supply 
would be exported; and economists tell us, at that level, we are not 
going to see a rise in the cost of energy in the United States. That is 
good, and it is good for the gas companies.
  They have been drilling, and if they are able to export this, they 
are going to make a substantial profit on that gas that they are 
allowed to export, a very handsome profit, because we have seen the 
Ukrainian situation with Russia threatening to shut down the supply of 
gas to Ukraine and quite possibly to Western Europe.
  Well, the cost of gas in those countries is two, three, and, in some 
cases, four times what it costs here in the United States; so the gas 
companies naturally want to export to that market, to take advantage of 
the higher prices there.
  All well and good, if it is limited. Even at that limited rate, we 
could see over 100 new, American-made ships handling that export.
  We need to be very aware here in Congress that American policy--the 
laws--have everything to do with American manufacturing; so if we are 
going to Make It In America once again, we need to use every 
opportunity to enhance our manufacturing base.
  The export of billions--and indeed trillions--of cubic feet of 
natural gas from those seven export terminals could lead to 100 or more 
new tankers, LNG tankers, in the export of that gas, sending that gas 
all around the world, liquified natural gas.
  We can build those ships here if we use our public policy wisely and 
simply require that American natural gas be exported on American-made 
ships built in American shipyards made by American workers and then 
flagged and sailed by American sailors, building, once again, the 
American merchant marine.
  We have this opportunity. We should not lose this opportunity. Now, 
we may run up against certain trade barriers put there by the World 
Trade Organization. We need to find a way to maneuver around those 
trade barriers and use every opportunity that this strategic natural 
asset gives to this country, to use that not just for the benefit of 
the gas companies and their profits, but also to the benefit of 
American workers, American steel companies producing the steel, 
American engine companies building the engines for these tankers, and 
American shipyards putting together these ships that will be exporting 
this natural gas.
  The liquefied natural gas industry opportunity must not be missed. We 
must, once again, rebuild the American shipping fleet by 100 tankers. 
It is a very real possibility. We must not lose that possibility.
  In the legislation that passed today, we see the opportunity for the 
Coast Guard to build new offshore patrol cutters. We see an opportunity 
for the maritime industry to enter into the manufacturing of ships from 
American shipyards, and we see the opportunity for the Coast Guard to 
protect America's ports. These are things that must be done, and this 
is public policy at its best.
  However, there is a threat to all of this. The threat is found in the 
reality that passing an authorization bill is the starting point. It 
authorizes the expenditures.
  The question then goes to: Will there actually be an appropriation 
that will fund those new ships for the Coast Guard, that will fund the 
merchant marine, the Ready Reserve fleet, and the maritime shipping 
programs?
  That is on the appropriations side, and that will bring me back full 
circle to where I started this discussion.
  The budget that was proposed today by Mr. Ryan and the Republicans 
decimates the programs that would fund the education of the mariners in 
the maritime academies, that would fund the new ships for the Coast 
Guard, would decimate the opportunity to build the marine security 
program that puts ships available for the military, shipping men and 
equipment to wherever they are needed in the world if there is some 
trouble out there that the military must respond to, that decimates the 
funding for the programs that are in the Coast Guard Maritime 
Authorization Act.
  We need to be consistent here. It is not enough to vote by unanimous 
consent off this floor a bill that authorizes a robust Coast Guard, 
that authorizes the rebuilding of the maritime industry, that 
authorizes the pay level for our coastguardsmen and women, and 
simultaneously put forth a budget that would defund or largely 
eliminate those programs.
  So the question is: Are we prepared to create jobs in our Nation or 
not?
  A final point goes to something that is really important in my 
district, and it is this: the levees that protect the tens of thousands 
of citizens in my district from flooding. This is a picture of a levee 
that broke in California some time ago, and the flooding devastated a 
community. This is a threat all across America.
  The question for us here on the floor of the House of Representatives 
is: Are we willing to put together an infrastructure program like the 
President had called for in his budget? Or are we going to go with the 
Ryan budget which reduces--significantly reduces--the investment in 
critical infrastructure that protects our communities?
  I could just as easily put a picture up here of a bridge that has 
collapsed and of roads with potholes. In this Nation, our water systems 
are antiquated, our sanitation systems are inadequate, our levee 
systems don't meet the needs to protect our community; and in 
California, with a major drought underway, we do not have the money to 
build the water storage systems to protect the world's largest 
agricultural sector, California agriculture, and certainly the Nation's 
largest agricultural sector, or the cities and the communities that 
depend upon the water.

  We have enormous infrastructure needs. The President, in his budget, 
put forth a major undertaking to fund new infrastructure by ending tax 
breaks for American corporations that are sending jobs overseas.
  On the other hand, put forward today by my Republican colleagues is a 
minimalist program--not a robust program that would put millions of 
Americans back to work--but rather a minimalist program that actually 
would continue the decrease in the expenditures on infrastructure.
  Let me just put up one more chart here, and this is a chart of where 
we are going with infrastructure spending at the Federal level. This is 
2002. In 2002, we were spending somewhere in the range of $325 billion 
a year on infrastructure.
  In 2012--and we are not even at the lower level called for in the 
sequestration--we are down to less than $250 billion a year on 
infrastructure, all Federal expenditures--highways, levees, ports, 
water systems, and sanitation systems, all of that. From $325 billion, 
we have lost $75 billion. Those are American jobs that are not coming 
into play.
  If we take the budget proposal today from Mr. Ryan, this number will 
go even lower. We can't do that. This Nation is built on its 
infrastructure, it is built on its education, it is built on its 
support for seniors, and it is built on the humanitarian instincts that 
we have.
  And what are we getting from our majority? Less--less infrastructure; 
less for seniors; less for Medicaid, the poor, and the elderly; and 
less Pell grants for those kids that want to go to school.
  That is not how you build this economy. You build this economy on a 
great education system that has to be funded, kids that can go to 
college, not less Pell grants, but more, so that kids can find an 
affordable college education; more infrastructure investment, not less.
  But go with the President. He would have us back up to this number, 
325 billion, not the 75 billion less that is in the current budgets, 
the current austerity budgets or the budgets that have been proposed by 
Mr. Ryan today.
  Are we going to build America or not? We put forward a major bill, 
the Coast Guard bill, and then we don't fund it; so it becomes 
hypocritical and devastating to the American economy.
  For those seniors that depend on Medicare, the Ryan budget, instead 
of

[[Page H2796]]

closing the doughnut hole for prescription drugs that cost seniors that 
have serious health care an enormous amount of money, it opens it so, 
once again, seniors are going to have to pay for drugs that they cannot 
afford. The Affordable Care Act closed that.
  Choices, we are going to make choices here. We are in the process of 
deciding what the budget will be for the Government of the United 
States.
  Will it be a budget that provides the fundamental needs to grow this 
economy, education, and manufacturing so our shipyards and so our 
bridges can be built with American workers? Are we going to do that or 
not? Are we going to take care of the seniors? Are we going to educate 
our kids?
  These are the questions that we confront here, and I would ask our 
colleagues to stop the--I don't know--3-year effort now to repeal the 
Affordable Care Act and, rather, work on making that new system 
effective, efficient, and viable.
  It is the path we are on. It is not a government-run health care 
system. In fact, it is a private insurance system that has now been 
added with protections for the consumers, the consumers' health care 
bill of rights.
  Don't repeal it. Make it work better. Work with us to address those 
problems that we know exist in the system. No program has ever been 
perfect, and we can do better here. That is our goal.
  So today was a good day for me. As ranking member of the Coast Guard 
Maritime Subcommittee, we put forth a good policy--not complete--we 
need to add to it, and hopefully, that will happen when the bill is 
taken up in the Senate; but at the same time, we hear a continuing call 
to do away--to eliminate the patient's bill of rights. We don't want to 
do that.
  I am going to yield back my remaining time here and just put this 
question before all of us. This is a country that needs to grow. This 
is a country that needs to prosper, and we need to work across the 
aisle here, just as we did last week with my colleague, Mr. LaMalfa, a 
Republican, a conservative.
  We said we need to build something in California. We need to build a 
water storage system. So we have introduced legislation, the sites 
reservoir legislation, a bipartisan piece of legislation, a major 
infrastructure reservoir for the State of California, where we can 
store water for the drought that is going to come--not for the current 
drought, that opportunity was lost years ago--but for the next drought, 
nearly 2 million acre feet of water to be stored to be available for 
farmers, for the city, for the environment, to be used when needed when 
the rain is not there.
  That is the kind of bipartisanship that we need. We need to come 
together. We need to spend our money wisely and efficiently. We can do 
that in a bipartisan way. I want to thank my colleague, Mr. LaMalfa, 
for working on a project that is desperately needed in California. We 
need those levees all across this Nation.

                              {time}  2045

  We need those shipyards building American ships to carry that natural 
gas all around the world. We don't need to do too much of it. We don't 
want to drive up the price in the United States. We want to make sure 
that if we are going to export a strategic national asset that all of 
America benefits--not just the gas companies, but all of America--the 
shipyards, the shipbuilders, the steelworkers, the plumbers, the pipe 
fitters, the electricians, those middle class jobs, 100 ships. It is 
possible. We need to work together to make that happen.
  We have got a full agenda ahead of us. An austerity budget won't make 
it. It is going to harm this Nation. It is going deprive us of what we 
need to do: to build the infrastructure, to educate, to do the 
research, and to make this country move forward. Hopefully we will make 
a wise decision
  With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back my remaining time.

                          ____________________