[Congressional Record Volume 163, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 7, 2017)]
[House]
[Pages H1059-H1064]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
{time} 1730
WHAT HAS WASHINGTON DONE TO YOU?
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 3, 2017, the gentleman from California (Mr. Garamendi) is
recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, well, let's see, I got a phone call from
my district--one of several dozen today--and they all are kind of about
the same thing: What is going on in Washington? What are they doing in
Washington? What is happening? What is happening with ObamaCare, the
Affordable Care Act? What are they going to do about this wall? People
are concerned. People want to know what is happening in Washington.
I suspect a good many of us are trying to figure out what the next
steps are. It seems like every other moment something new is erupting
from the White House, another tweet or another executive order, and we
have had a lot of them. And so what I want to do today is to kind of go
back and take a look at what has transpired over these last 2\1/2\
weeks. What has happened in Washington these last 2\1/2\ weeks?
Besides a lot of confusion, angst, and concern, some very, very
important things are happening, and here is my take on it. I am going
to kind of put a title on today, and I am going to say: What has
Washington done to you, not for you. What has Washington done to you?
Let's start with the very first day that President Trump was
inaugurated. Well, it was all about the Affordable Care Act, otherwise
known as ObamaCare. So he set out to begin the repeal of ObamaCare, or
the Affordable Care Act.
Oh, by the way, they are one and the same. It depends which way you
are looking at this thing, but the repeal of the Affordable Care Act
has dire consequences on Americans.
Some 30 million Americans could be affected, according to the
Congressional Budget Office, or in my State, we are looking at maybe 5
million people could lose their health coverage, their insurance, as a
result of that. There is $16 billion that immediately flows to the
State of California for the expansion of the Medicaid, Medi-Cal program
in California. That would be gone. And those people that are on that
program would simply not be able to get care.
It goes beyond just those who are in the exchanges. The exchange in
California is working quite well. Maybe a 1\1/2\ million people in
California are covered through the exchange, and they have options in
most every part of the State.
In my part of the State, there are some shortcomings because services
are not readily available, but there are 34 clinics managed by nine
organizations that provide medical services in my district. Every one
of those clinics rely upon ObamaCare, or the Affordable Care Act, for
the services that they render. If the Affordable Care Act disappears,
we repeal ObamaCare, those clinics are out of business.
And what does that mean? It means that thousands, literally hundreds
of thousands of people in my district would no longer be receiving
medical
[[Page H1060]]
services through the clinics, through the Affordable Care Act's
expansion, or through the Medi-Cal program. This is serious business.
There is another piece to this, and I would like to put up some
charts on that, but let's just go back and quickly review the benefits.
The benefits are:
5.1 million seniors receive savings on prescription drugs. You know
that famous drug doughnut hole; it has almost disappeared as the result
of the ObamaCare Affordable Care Act.
32.5 million seniors receive free annual preventions, health
checkups, every year. What does that mean? It means their blood
pressure is checked out, their potential for diabetes, for other
chronic illnesses, and they get the medicine for diabetes. They get
better health care, and the cost of Medicare is reduced.
Also, it strengthens consumer protections for seniors in Medicare
part D, and at least 85 percent of Medicare Advantage Plans' revenues
go back towards providing senior services. That is just for seniors.
So there are many, many benefits in the Affordable Care Act beyond
just those that are getting new insurance policies. It is a big deal
for seniors. They are able to get an annual checkup. They are able to
get their drugs much cheaper, able to provide them with the necessary
pieces of it.
One of the very first acts that has been taken up here by Congress is
the budget resolution passed by both Houses. It is now in effect, the
first budget resolution, and that budget resolution tells the Budget
Committee and the Ways and Means Committee: Repeal the taxes that are
associated with the Affordable Care Act. It is a lot of money,
somewhere between $700 million and $1 trillion of tax cuts directly
associated with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare.
Who gets the benefit of those tax reductions? Well, the top 1 percent
would receive some 70 percent of the benefit.
What does that amount to? Well, it amounts to--did I say 1 percent?
The top one-tenth of 1 percent would receive the great majority of the
benefit, or $200,000 tax reduction for the super-superwealthy. The rest
of them, the top 1 percent, get 57 percent of that $700 billion, and
that is over a 10-year period. And everyone else, that would be the
other 99 percent, will share in a much smaller portion, the remaining
43 percent.
For an average family, it probably amounts to maybe a tax reduction
of $160. However, those are the people that are able to get their
insurance through the exchanges, and so they are getting a really bad
deal because the average exchange, for example, in California, is
somewhere over $2,500.
So this is the tax repeal. It is a massive tax cut for the super-
superwealthy.
It turns out that to pay for the Affordable Care Act, a very
progressive tax was put in place, and it does provide benefits for
those who are uninsured, the Medicaid population across the Nation, as
well as providing the buy-down of the insurance policies that are
available through the various exchanges.
Keep in mind, when people talk about repealing the Affordable Care
Act taxes, what they are talking about is a massive redistribution of
wealth in this Nation and a furtherance of this income inequality that
has been such a problem in our society and in our economy.
So the repeal of the Affordable Care Act does many, many things, most
of which would be quite a problem for working men and women, for the
seniors, for the elderly.
I didn't mention here that a good portion of that Medicaid population
goes to provide long-term care in nursing homes for seniors who are not
wealthy. I don't have the exact percentage, but some people say it is
50, 60 percent of Medicaid benefits across the Nation wind up providing
services in the long-term care facilities.
Is that important to seniors? Oh, yeah.
Is it important for children of seniors, you know, those people that
are in their forties and fifties whose parents are in their seventies
and eighties? They are deeply concerned about this particular issue of
the Medicaid expansion being eliminated by a repeal of the Affordable
Care Act, and then they wind up in a situation of having to take care
of Mom and Dad, trying to figure out how to do it on their insufficient
income.
So we need to understand that the very first act undertaken by the
President was to set in motion a very serious rejiggering, a
reoperation of the entire healthcare system in this Nation, so much so
that the standard insurance companies that provide policies to the
great majority of Americans are going: Whoa, wait a minute. You
eliminate the Affordable Care Act, ObamaCare, and we don't know how to
price in the marketplace for the coming year.
Right now, those insurance companies are in the process of figuring
out what their policies are going to be, how they would price them.
One of the things the Affordable Care Act does is to provide an
opportunity for those that have preexisting conditions, serious
healthcare problems, for those people to be able to get insurance;
therefore, the risk is spread. Now, if the Affordable Care Act
disappears, would this be part of the replacement? We don't know.
Our colleagues on the Republican side keep talking about repeal and
replace. We don't have a replacement plan yet, but what we do have is a
probability of a massive tax cut for the very wealthy. We are also
looking at chaos in the insurance system.
So let's be aware of what is going on in Washington when we talk
about repeal and replace and when you talk about ObamaCare--which, by
the way, is also known as the Affordable Care Act.
I have, today, some of my colleagues joining us. I notice that two of
them are here. We could go alphabetically, in which case--well, let me
see, P-Q-R. That means Panetta comes first.
My new colleague from the Monterey Bay area of California will join
us here. He wants to talk about some of these issues that confront
Americans and explain to all of us what this Congress and what the
President is doing to Americans.
I welcome Mr. Panetta to his very first Special Order hour that I
have been able to work with him. I know you have spoken on the floor
before, and we look forward to your comments tonight. I thank the
gentleman very much for joining us.
I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Panetta).
Mr. PANETTA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from California, and
I rise today to oppose President Trump's anti-immigrant executive
orders and to share with you why I feel these orders harm the people
across my district and, ultimately, across our Nation.
I am here because my grandfather came here as an Italian immigrant
back in 1921. He told us that the reason he came here was to give his
children a better life, and he wanted a chance to achieve what I think
we all know to be the American Dream.
I am here in front of you living the reality of that dream. And that
is why I strive every day as best as I can to give back to my country
and community here in Washington, D.C., and especially on the central
coast of California.
I do that not only because of my grandfather, but because it was our
forefathers that made it clear that this is a nation, this is a country
based on ``We the People.'' And so to me, being in this country, being
American, means that all of us bear the burden to serve one another and
to welcome those--especially those--who are willing to come here and
share in that responsibility. I believe that we should embrace them. I
believe that we should embolden them with the opportunities to share in
that American Dream.
We know that the world looks to the United States for enlightened
leadership, but these ill-advised actions send a wrong message about
our values as a nation. We are a nation of immigrants. We are stronger
because of our diversity and because of the people who have taken the
risks to come here just as my grandfather did, to live here and to
contribute to our country and our communities.
On the central coast of California, that is the heart and soul of
that area. I see hardworking men and women who have come to this
country to live in it and contribute to it. The two main industries
there on the central coast are agriculture and tourism--big industries.
[[Page H1061]]
There are people, workers, owners who contribute greatly not only to
those industries, but to our communities, and they are our neighbors,
our friends, our families, our children. They sit next to my two
daughters and play with them at school. Clearly, without them, my
community would be a shell of its former self.
I hear the pain in their voices because they feel that this
administration's executive order targets them and makes them feel
unwelcome. I see that these types of executive orders drive a wedge in
our country, and it drives them further away from participating in our
community.
Before I was sworn in on January 3 of this year, I was a prosecutor;
and for the 5\1/2\ years that I was there at the Monterey County
District Attorney's Office, I prosecuted gang crimes. That kind of
prosecution, as you can imagine, as you know well, it can be very
difficult to have witnesses come forward and participate in one of the
cornerstones of our country: our criminal justice system. They are
intimidated. They are worried about retribution and retaliation.
Yet now, from what I have heard, they are worried not just about
criminals; they are worried about the government, the government
cracking down on them if they came forward, cracking down on them and
sending them back to where they came from. These executive orders
discourage participation in our community. Instead, as a nation, we
should encourage people to step up, to step forward, and to be a part
of our criminal justice system.
Last weekend, I met with community members and I heard directly from
them about their concerns, and this weekend, I am doing it again. I am
holding a townhall to continue this conversation.
{time} 1745
I believe it is our responsibility to listen to all of our community
members and consider the implications of these types of executive
orders and the implications that they have on all of our constituents.
When the President of the United States was sworn in, he took an oath
to protect all members of our Nation by supporting and defending our
Constitution. As a Member of Congress, I took an oath to support and
defend that very same Constitution. Rest assured, I will honor that
oath, and I will honor the oath to my grandfather and to this country
by fighting and resisting unconstitutional orders from this or any
other President.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Panetta, thank you so very much for joining us
this evening. Thank you for your statement of your life and your
family's work. We know your father. Leon has been a dear friend of mine
and most of us here in the House. You're going to really be a
tremendous addition to this House. Your experience as a prosecutor and
in local government and county government positions you very well to
bring the message.
Certainly, the Salinas Valley is one in which immigrants are the
history, and they are the reality of today. Thank you so very much for
watching out for them, for your passion, and for your extraordinary
background in making all of us aware of what happens when sanctuary
cities, immigration laws, and others are just tossed around without
much thought about what the impact is in the community and to families,
as well as to the economy of the community. I appreciate that and hope
you will come back and join us on another Special Order.
From the other side of the country, we have Mr. Raskin, another new
Member of the House of Representatives. Welcome. You have a fascinating
background, and I look forward to your comments today.
Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Raskin).
Mr. RASKIN. Thank you so much, Mr. Garamendi. Thank you for convening
us to talk about the first month of the Trump administration. The
attacks on our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and the rule of law
are coming fast and furious, so it is hard to collect all of them, and
I appreciate the effort to try to inventory them today.
I represent the wonderful people of Montgomery County, Frederick
County, and Carroll County, Maryland, the Eighth Congressional
District, and I am, by training, a professor of constitutional law
which I have done for the last quarter century at American University.
So in reviewing the highlights--or the low lights--of the last
several weeks, Mr. Garamendi, I thought I would start, actually, with
my very first day on the job. I went to sign up for health insurance in
the basement of the Longworth House Office Building, which I was
delighted to do because my job entitles me to sign up for health
insurance, and I recognized how fortunate I was. As I was down there, a
number of other new Members began to form, and I looked at them.
Then, as I was going through, at the same time, some memoranda that
my office had received, I noticed that some of the first bills we were
going to be looking at were to set the stage for dismantling the
Affordable Care Act, for voucherizing Medicare, for pulverizing
Medicaid and downsizing it, for demonizing Planned Parenthood, and for
making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of citizens across the
country to get basic health care.
I said to myself: Tell me that it is not the case that I am entering
Congress with other Members who are going to be signing up for health
insurance that they get as part of their job, and then they are going
to go upstairs to the floor of the House and vote to strip 22 million
Americans of their health care in the Affordable Care Act.
But, believe it or not, this is precisely what has transpired, and
there is a very clear move on to try to dismantle the Affordable Care
Act. The majority has voted more than 60 times to repeal the Affordable
Care Act, but America has woken up to the fact that it is for real this
time, and we have hundreds of thousands--millions--of citizens
mobilizing across the country to defend the Affordable Care Act and to
demand accountability from their Member of Congress. I am thrilled to
see that.
Also, during the last few weeks, we all read a report from 16
intelligence agencies of the United States, including the FBI, the CIA,
the National Security Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and a
dozen more, all of them expressing their confidence and their very
strong belief that Vladimir Putin, the KGB, and the Russian Government
worked a campaign to undermine and sabotage American democracy in the
2016 Presidential election. It included acts of cyber sabotage,
espionage, fake news, and propaganda that all entered into American
political discourse and our institutions in order to change the outcome
of the 2016 Presidential election.
What we have gotten from the President of the United States is a
series of blithe dismissals of the whole thing saying repeatedly: Other
people do the same.
I think it was yesterday that commentator Bill O'Reilly said that he
needed to criticize Vladimir Putin, who was a killer, to which the
President responded: Lots of people are killers. And, essentially: Have
you looked at what America has done recently?
That kind of talk is absolutely outrageous and scandalous that the
President would say that.
The point is not to join the killers of the world. The point is not
to participate in the league of bandits, bullies, dictators, despots,
and rightwing movements that are forming all over the world. The point
is to take them on and to stand up for democracy, human rights, and the
real ideals of the country.
So back in the home office, in Moscow, they must be chortling that
the President of the United States would establish a moral equivalency
between the first democracy--the first constitutional democracy ever
created on Earth--and a thug who is presiding over essentially a
kleptocratic, authoritarian regime in Russia, a man who has said that
the collapse of the Soviet Union was the single greatest catastrophe of
the 20th century.
So we have that to deal with.
Meantime, instead of taking on the real authoritarians on Earth, the
President summons up all of his courage with Steve Bannon, and they
impose a ban on people coming to America from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan,
Somalia, Syria, and Yemen; and they invoke 9/11 several times in the
course of establishing this unprecedented refugee ban. The only problem
is that the terrorist hijackers who came to attack
[[Page H1062]]
the country on 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab
Emirates. The vast majority of them came from Saudi Arabia, which is
the stronghold and the organizing center of Wahhabism, fundamentalism,
radical Islamic terrorism on Earth which has been promoting and
disseminating militant Islamist ideology all over the world. Yet, the
Trump administration did nothing about that, either because they were
too powerful for them to take on or because Mr. Trump has had extensive
business dealings with Saudi Arabia, as well as in other countries that
were passed over in this ban.
Now, of course, because this is a religiously oriented Muslim ban
that is meant to whip up propaganda, hysteria, and chaos in the country
and has nothing to do with national security, it has been struck down
in different parts or in whole by five or six Federal district courts,
most recently by the United States District Court in Seattle. The case
is now in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
There are so many problems with the executive order in terms of due
process, equal protection, free exercise of religion, and so on, that
there are multiple judicial decisions that are striking down different
aspects of the executive order.
Well, what else do we have going on? Today, in one of the committees
that I serve on, the House Administration Committee, there was a 6-3
vote to dismantle the only Federal election entity, the EAC, which is
charged with trying to promote the cybersecurity of our elections. That
vote was along party lines--6-3--to dismantle the Election Assistance
Commission which had been created and established on a bipartisan vote
many years ago. That was just taken down.
So I would say that there appears to be an effort to plunge America
into a certain kind of chaos at this point. That, of course, has been
the explicit wish of Steve Bannon, who has described himself as a
Leninist who wants to tear down our system of government and demolish
the politics of the country to replace with something else which has
gone un-named.
So, my fellow Americans, Mr. Garamendi, these are very serious times.
I am thrilled that the people of America are organizing in every State
of the Union and in every community to build up the capacity to resist
these attacks on our Constitution, on our Bill of Rights, and on the
rule of law. The majority of the people who did not vote for this
President are mobilized, they are galvanized, and they understand that
eternal vigilance is, indeed, the price of liberty, and people are
going to remain eternally vigilant--and passionately so--during the
course of this administration when the attacks continue to come fast
and furious on our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Raskin, thank you so very much.
Indeed, your experience as a professor teaching constitutional law
will be a very valuable asset to this House, and particularly in the
context of what is transpiring on the floor with the repeal of so many
of the regulations that are protecting Americans in so many different
ways, and certainly with the incredible array of outlandish executive
orders emanating from the White House, not the least of which is the
immigration issue.
So as we journey through this period of disruption and chaos, I am
certain that we will count upon you to provide us with insight into the
way in which all of this fits into the very clear framework of the
Constitution.
Mr. RASKIN. I thank the gentleman from California for his leadership.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Mr. Speaker, there are so many other things to talk
about here, and I probably have another 20 minutes to do it. I doubt
that I will take all that time, unless my colleague from Iowa wants to
engage in a colloquy about some issues of the day which we might find a
very exciting and interesting thing to do, Mr. King. I see you await
your turn here.
Over the last week, Congress--the last 2 weeks now, 3 almost--has
enacted a series of repeals of regulations that had been passed in the
Obama administration. On the floor today, not more than an hour and a
half ago, three additional repeals of regulations took place. These
were under the Congressional Review Act, a law that is some 25 years
old now that allows the Congress to literally repeal regulations that
are out there.
I will give you a couple of examples. Today, one of them dealt with
the planning process for the Bureau of Land Management. About a quarter
of a million acres of land are under the jurisdiction of the Bureau of
Land Management. This is public land. It belongs to all of us. This
land is your land. Well, this is the land that belongs to the American
people. The repeal today of a new public review process on land
planning is--I don't understand it. I was once deputy secretary at the
Department of the Interior, and I oversaw the Bureau of Land
Management. I was operating under the law that was old in the 1990s.
But here we are with this repeal of a new process, a process that
actually invited into the land planning for the Bureau of Land
Management where are the roads going to go, how are they going to
manage the various uses of the land, whether it is agriculture, for
cattle, or for recreation, or hunting, whatever, that they invite into
that process all of the local agencies. The county, the State,
environmental groups, hunting, fishing, cattlemen, agricultural groups,
whoever would have a stake in that, they were invited into the process.
It shortened the process from 8 years down to something probably in the
2-or 3-year range to go through this entire thing, and, for reasons
that I will never understand, the repeal eliminated the use of good
science and economics.
So I don't understand what is going on here. This is a good process
so that the public would be invited. Yet, the Congressional Review
Act--should the Senate agree and the President sign this particular
review--the Bureau of Land Management will never be able to go back and
enter this process of land planning again.
{time} 1800
They cannot issue a new regulation. What is happening here is
nonsense. There is mountaintop removal in coal country, where mountains
are simply wiped off the face of the Earth and all of that dirt is
piled into the nearby streams. We have that regulation.
Providing clean water for the communities and the rivers for
recreation or fishing or any other thing is gone and no longer
available to protect the communities. It goes on and on.
I know one thing that the President did the very first day was an
executive order to eliminate the reduction in the mortgage guarantee
fee. This is a fee paid by homeowners--usually low-income homeowners--
who, because of their income, because of their financial status, cannot
get a regular mortgage unless there is a guarantee. He said this was
for the benefit of the homeowner. Baloney. This was for the benefit of
the bankers.
We already know that he has appointed three people to his cabinet
that are from Wall Street, particularly from Goldman Sachs, and another
one from another agency on Wall Street. He was going to do away with
Wall Street. No, he brought Wall Street into the cabinet. We are going
backwards on this.
I am going to take a deep breath--I need it after all of that--and I
am just beginning to get wound up and haven't gone through the other 20
things that are on my list.
I did notice that this is my day to welcome to the floor of the House
of Representatives new Democratic members. Mr. Raskin is from the
marvelous State of Maryland. I have two Californians here. Ro Khanna is
from the Silicon Valley.
I yield to the gentleman from California (Mr. Khanna) to share with
us his take on his first 33 days in Congress.
Mr. KHANNA. Mr. Speaker, I thank Representative Garamendi for his
leadership in the State of California and the country.
I rise today to voice my strong objection and disapproval for FCC
Chairman Ajit Pai's decision to roll back a program that would provide
internet access to low-income Americans.
I was shocked that this was one of the first decisions that the FCC
Chairman made. What he has done is provide few subsidies for low-income
Americans who need internet access.
Now, we know that 45 percent of Americans under 30,000 currently
don't have internet access. Providing these
[[Page H1063]]
folks with internet access is giving their kids a basic shot at digital
proficiency and having a job in technology or a chance at the American
Dream.
Chairman Ajit Pai has become a poster child with this decision for
everything that is wrong with Washington. It is what people complain
about. He is writing the rules of modern-day capitalism in a way that
privileges these elite telecom companies with concentrated economic
power at the expense of low-income Americans.
This Congress must stand united to make sure that an unelected
bureaucrat doesn't get to write the rules of our economy in favor of
wealthy interests at the expense of ordinary Americans.
Mr. Speaker, I will be circulating a letter to our colleagues that I
hope we can send to Chairman Pai, and, hopefully, he will reconsider
this decision that is really not in the interest of ordinary Americans.
Mr. GARAMENDI. If I might ask a question of the gentlemen. He
represents the Silicon Valley--at least a large portion of the Silicon
Valley--and the issue of net neutrality has been bouncing around here
for some time.
Basically, the FCC, as I understand it, has decided that there would
be net neutrality, which, as I understand it--and perhaps the gentleman
can explain it better than I, so I will let him do so--may be the next
thing that this new chairman intends to do away with.
Has the gentleman followed that?
Mr. KHANNA. I have. I appreciate the Congressman's leadership on
this.
Net neutrality, as the gentleman knows, is a very simple idea. That
means that everyone should have equal access to the internet; that you
shouldn't get to pay for faster service or you shouldn't get to pay to
have more of your message out.
You would think that if anyone would appreciate the importance of it,
it is the President, who uses the tool of the internet with Twitter and
Facebook.
Mr. GARAMENDI. Oh, the tweets.
Mr. KHANNA. You would think we would want a democracy where every
citizen has equal access to these tools.
Well, who doesn't want that?
Some of these big companies that have concentrated economic power and
have an interest in making money and not for speech.
This Chairman has shown a consistent pattern already, in a few weeks,
of basically siding with these large telecommunication companies at the
expense of ordinary citizens.
It may sound like a technical issue. Some folks glaze over when you
say net neutrality or you talk about the technical issues of the
lifeline program, but I think what they have got to know is you have an
FCC Chairman who is siding with wealth interests in telecom companies
over what would benefit ordinary people.
Mr. GARAMENDI. I thank the gentleman for the explanation and the
purpose of net neutrality. In a way, it is one of the things that, in a
very real way, protects the individual--by having access.
What is happening with these regulations and many of these executive
orders that the President puts out is to remove from the individual
protections that they have. I mentioned mountaintop removal in coal
country and the protections that the indigent farmer down the stream
has for clean water. That protection is gone.
You look at the mortgage guarantee. It is a small amount, but it is
an additional $500 a year that an individual would have to pay,
assuming they had to have a mortgage guarantee. Most low-income people
have to have that mortgage guarantee in order to buy a home. It is $500
out of their pockets.
So it is the protections that have been in place. There may be
others. I am sure that in the gentleman's area he may know of others,
if he would like to share with us, but I really thank him for bringing
to us his expertise in the area of communications. I know that he has
worked in this area before. He represents a part of America and
California where this is a very big issue.
Mr. KHANNA. I thank Congressman Garamendi for his leadership and
showing what is really happening with the scale-back of all these
regulations.
Mr. GARAMENDI. I will use another analogy of flying below the radar.
A lot of this is flying below the radar because we are looking at all
of the tweets that come out in the morning, the various news programs
focusing on the President, and missing some really important things
that protect Americans.
Mr. KHANNA. If I can make one more comment. Everyone says they are
not for regulation. That is easy. Every time I get on an airplane, I am
very thankful that we have some regulations. Regulations can't just be
eliminated with a hatchet, like this administration is doing.
Mr. GARAMENDI. That is so very true.
Let me just go through some of the regulations that are being
repealed here in the House over the last couple of weeks.
First of all, let's remember that the Congressional Review Act being
used to repeal these regulations has two parts to it. One, it has the
ability of Congress to repeal regulations, which I think is a good
idea. The second part of it, I think, has some real shortcomings. And
that is, once that regulation has been repealed, both Houses vote
before the President signs it, then the issue cannot be revisited by
that administrative agency.
I gave the example of the BLM, but it applies across the board.
Regulations that deal with smoking on airplanes is a regulation. If we
repeal that regulation, suddenly there is smoking on airplanes. You can
never go back and do a regulation again in that area.
I thank Mr. Khanna for joining us and for bringing his expertise to
us.
I am going to run down a quick list here. Oil and gas companies
operate around the world. Our new Secretary of State was the CEO of
ExxonMobil, the world's biggest oil company.
Did ExxonMobil pay a fee or a gratuity or corruption to a foreign
country?
We will never know now because the Congress has passed a regulation
that required oil and gas companies to disclose any fees, any money
that they have paid to a foreign government for the opportunity to
extract oil or gas from their country.
We happen to know that many of the countries in which these American
oil and gas companies operate are rife with corruption. So this is a
way for us to do an anticorruption program around the world that
involves our national oil companies. That is on the way to being
repealed.
How about mentally ill people being able to get a firearm?
I suspect 80 percent of Americans--maybe 100 percent--think that
somebody who is seriously mentally ill ought not to be able to get a
firearm.
Well, there is a mechanism. It is a national database. We call it the
NICS database. It is a database that gun shops have to inquire if an
individual is on that database for domestic violence, criminal
activity, or for mental illness.
We have had a problem with the mental illness part of this because
many mentally ill people do not get on the database for a variety of
reasons. The counties, cities, States don't provide that information.
In some cases, it is deemed to be proprietary or confidential.
But there is a way. It exists in the regulations today that would
require the Social Security Administration--when it makes a payment for
disability for severe mental illness to an individual, that
individual's name goes on this database. When that individual may want
to go down to the gun shop and buy a weapon, the gun shop would query
the database and, lo and behold, the individual comes up and he won't
able to get a gun.
It makes sense. It enhances the database. It adds to the database
individuals that are so severely mentally ill that they are able to get
Social Security disability payments.
Who is to object to that?
Well, apparently a majority of the House of Representatives and the
Senate does object to that. Probably the National Rifle Association
also. So now we have a situation in which we have a protection for
Americans being protected from the mentally ill individual that could
not buy a gun now suddenly being able to not be on the national
database for those people that are mentally ill. One more protection is
gone.
There are others, and I am going to run through them as quickly as I
can here.
I don't know whether you believe in climate change, global warming. I
certainly do. I have worked on this for
[[Page H1064]]
more than 30 years now, and it is a real issue. We know--there is no
debate about this--that methane is a very powerful greenhouse gas. In
fact, it is far more powerful than carbon dioxide.
So the emissions of methane are one of the things that we would want
to reduce going into the atmosphere to add to those elements in the
atmosphere that creates global warming, climate change.
Well, the House of Representatives has passed a resolution through
the law that allows it to do so--to roll back a requirement that the
Bureau of Land Management put in place that requires oil and gas
companies that are drilling for oil, drilling for natural gas, to
control the leakage of methane from the gas well.
Wow, that is a terrible thing to do. Really? To require that an oil
company, a drilling company that is going after natural gas on
government--excuse me, your land, the American public's land--that
they, in the process of drilling for that natural gas or oil, control,
capture the methane that would otherwise leak from that well?
Well, that regulation is gone. The protections of Americans are gone.
Greenhouse gas emissions are emitted without regulatory control. Many
of these gas wells are in communities and in neighborhoods that will
also enjoy more methane emissions.
{time} 1815
One more--or maybe more. Oh, yes, labor violations. Labor laws have
been on the books for well over 80 years. The labor laws are health and
safety, worker safety, requirements on hours, working conditions,
hazardous circumstances. There are many different regulations that
affect employers. They have to provide a safe working environment for
their workers. Some do. Well, I would say most work at making sure that
their workplace is safe. Some do not. Some of those who do not provide
a safe workplace have been fined by the Federal Government for those
labor violations. It is a good thing. It causes those companies to
provide a safe working environment for their employees.
A regulation was put forward by the Obama administration that said
that if a company wants to contract with the Federal Government, they
must disclose their labor violations, where they have violated the
various labor laws. It may be hours of work, overtime pay, working
conditions, hazardous circumstances, safety. They would have to
disclose it. It didn't say they couldn't get a contract, but it did say
that they would have to disclose to the public that they have not
provided sufficient awareness of the various labor safety and workplace
laws. That is on the way to being repealed.
What I want to do tonight is to simply say to the American public:
Pay attention. There are many things going on here in Congress and in
the administration that are harmful to you, the American public. The
kind of protections that you have counted on--worker safety,
environmental protections if you live downstream from a coal mining
operation, any of those things--are in the process of being repealed,
and your protections along with them. So be aware of what the new
administration and the Congress is doing to you, not for you.
I could talk about the wall and about the $15 billion to $30 billion
that is going to be spent if Mr. Trump gets his way here and builds a
1,400-mile wall. I want to just end with this, and that is choices.
Your representatives, myself, 434 of my colleagues here and 100
Senators and a President, we make choices about how your tax money is
going to be spent.
Should it be spent on a wall?
Well, let's consider for a moment spending it on a wall. This is $15
billion, the minimum amount of money, and it is not going to build much
of the wall. But for $15 billion, what could you do for it?
I am from California. I was once a regent of the University of
California and on the board for the California State University, so I
am familiar with this system. $15 billion could fund the entire
California State University system for 3 years, and that is nearly a
half a million students. You could replace all of the water pipes in
Flint, Michigan, 270 times over for $15 billion.
Choices. Do you want safe drinking water in Flint and other
communities around the United States or do you want a wall? Are you
concerned about the American military, the Navy, five Virginia-class
submarines, or one Ford-class aircraft carrier plus a submarine? Or how
about scholarships for undergraduate programs at the University of
California, which I had the privilege of graduating from a few years
ago?
27,777 4-year, full-time scholarships. That is the undergraduate
population at the University of California Davis, which I have the
privilege of representing.
There is one more place you could spend $15 billion or even one part
of $15 billion, and it is on this. These are the deadly diseases in
America. Let's see. Breast cancer, over the last decade we have seen
breast cancer actually decline. Prostate cancer has declined by 11
percent, heart disease by 14 percent, stroke by 23 percent, HIV/AIDS by
52 percent. Alzheimer's has not declined. It has increased by 471
percent, and it is going to go even more.
What could we do with $15 billion of research on a disease that
affects every American family?
We could almost assuredly find a cure for Alzheimer's. I thank my
colleagues here in the House of Representatives for increasing the
budget for Alzheimer's research from around $500 million to just under
$1 billion. That was done last year. If we can increase that funding
another $1 billion a year, the researchers indicate to us that we have
a high probability of delaying the onset of Alzheimer's by 5 years.
With another $1 billion after that, we probably could find a cure for
this disease that is going to bust the American bank. Medicare and
Medicaid, that is where the big money is going to be spent.
So my plea to our President and those who want to build a wall is: We
have choices. You want to do something for the American public? Let's
spend that $15 billion to $30 billion on education. You want to do
something for every American family? Spend some portion of that $15
billion to $30 billion by doubling the amount of money that we are
spending annually on Alzheimer's research. You want to do something for
the security of our Nation? Meet those critical needs that our military
has. Whether it is a new submarine or an aircraft carrier we can
debate, but we do know that we have expenditures that are necessary in
that area.
So, Mr. President, don't waste our money. Don't waste our tax money
on a wall. By the way, we know Mexico is not going to pay for it. Don't
get in a fight with our trading partner and our neighbors to the south
and Australia.
Be aware, Americans. Watch closely to what is happening here in
Washington. If you are concerned, so am I concerned about where we are
headed and about what this government is doing to you, not for you, but
rather to you.
Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Members are reminded to address their
remarks to the Chair and not to a perceived viewing audience.
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