[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 7]
[House]
[Pages 8814-8821]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




           CONCENTRATED ASSAULT ON ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Porter). Under the Speaker's announced 
policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) 
is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority leader.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor this evening while 
there is a battle raging in Iraq, one that is well known to the 
American public, and I want to spend a few minutes this evening dealing 
with another battle that is taking place, a battle that is raging in 
this country that has potential risks that are every bit as great as 
that of international terror for the safety, health, and well-being of 
our citizens and, indeed, the citizens of the planet.
  I am talking about a concentrated assault on environmental 
protections in this country. I am deeply troubled

[[Page 8815]]

by the gap between what we have seen growing in terms of the political 
process with some of my Republican Members and people in the 
administration in terms of what environmental protection means, where 
we are, and where we should go.
  Now, I come from the perspective as somebody who was part of an 
Oregon tradition of politics that was decidedly nonpartisan or, in 
fact, aggressively bipartisan when it came to environmental protection. 
My first assignment as a college student from a government official was 
from the legendary Republican Governor of Oregon, Tom McCall, who 
appointed me to his Livable Oregon committee. Throughout the years that 
I worked in Oregon politics on the State and local level, I was pleased 
to work hand in glove with a wide variety of people who put 
environmental protection first, and partisanship and special interests 
came later.
  On the floor this evening, I must, I guess, acknowledge my dismay 
about the growing gap between the parties when it comes to 
environmental protection. I think this was crystallized for me when I 
received a copy of a widely circulated memorandum from the famous 
Republican pollster and political consultant, Frank Luntz, that was 
distributed to Republicans in Congress earlier this year. It was 
ironically entitled ``Straight Talk.''
  Frankly, Mr. Speaker, I do not think this memorandum has been given 
enough attention, and I hope to do a little bit of that this evening 
because I think it is very important to understand the differences 
between the two parties as they relate to environmental protection; and 
this memorandum is revealing strategy where some of my Republican 
friends, people in the administration and Congress, are advised do not 
use your ingenuity to develop more environmental protection, do not use 
your creativity and political muscle to put the money behind enforcing 
our environmental laws to try to extend the boundaries. Instead, the 
approach of this memorandum is to put the time and the energy into how 
you describe what you are doing, try and feather the impact, try and 
obscure the real record. I think there is no place it is going to be 
more telling for the American public this week than to look at the 
energy bill that is on its way to the floor.
  There we see instance after instance where the bill that has been 
passed by the Republican majority is going to put off our energy 
problems into the future for the next generation or maybe even the 
generation that follows them to deal with. There is a refusal to deal 
with global climate change.
  In committee, I am sorry that the Republicans rejected both the 
bipartisan language that had been passed unanimously in the Senate as 
well as even the President's woefully inadequate voluntary climate 
change initiative. We will not find these in the energy bill.
  We will find that the critical area of transportation, which consumes 
70 percent of the United States oil consumption, indeed just to provide 
fuel for our automobiles, takes for the United States just our cars, 
and we represent less than 5 percent of the world's population, that 
consumes 10 percent of the world's oil production. But amazingly, the 
bill that is coming before us does not act on efficiency standards. 
Indeed, they are giving additional tax breaks, and it seems that my 
Republican friends in committee have yet to find a problem in this 
country that is so great that it cannot be solved by another tax break, 
tax deduction, or tax benefit.
  But these tax breaks do not go to the 99 percent of the American 
public that arguably if we can afford tax reductions, and this will be 
the first time in war that we are proposing not sacrifice but tax 
deductions for those that need it the least, these tax breaks and 
royalty relief are to the interest of oil, gas, coal, and nuclear 
energy. Indeed, some of the provisions incredibly at this time would 
take away the payments that are due to the American public, royalties 
for energy sources that are extracted from public lands at a time of 
skyrocketing energy prices. Well, the proposal there is to reduce the 
royalties that would otherwise be paid to the American taxpayers.
  When we speak of the environment, one of the strategies that is being 
suggested by Mr. Luntz is to hug a tree, to support open space and 
parks. Well, by reducing the money that otherwise would go to the 
Federal Treasury to provide support for our public priorities, one of 
the most important sources of the revenue that comes from the royalties 
would go to the Land and Water Conservation Fund, which has been 
eviscerated under the President's budget.
  Also in this legislation, there are proposals to again open the 
pristine lands in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge, a land that was set aside 
for all time by Republican pro-business President Teddy Roosevelt. 
Instead, it is proposed that we open up this area even though, and here 
I will show a little bit of hometown favoritism, I quote from the 
Portland Oregonian from earlier this month which I think says it as 
well as anybody: ``The oil beneath the refuge would not lead America to 
energy independence.

                              {time}  1945

  It would not allow the country to recede from Mideast policies. It 
will have no impact on current gas prices or any shortage that is 
caused by the war in Iraq, and it will take 7 to 10 years even to get 
the first drop of oil from the refuge.''
  And I could not agree with my hometown newspaper more. The irony is 
that having visited the wildlife refuge, Mr. Speaker, having looked at 
that fragile Arctic environment and weighing the costs and 
consequences, it is clear to me that this ought to be the last place in 
America that we drill for oil, not the first. And I note that the 
American public in survey after survey has sided unequivocally with the 
protection of the wildlife refuge.
  It is important, Mr. Speaker, that we spend a little time focusing on 
that energy bill, because I am afraid as it comes rushing to the floor 
it is unlikely that we are going to have adequate time and energy to 
devote to it.
  But I would reference one other in these times of very difficult 
problems that are radiating out from our military action in Iraq. When 
people are looking at the tremendous stresses on our military, they are 
thinking about ways that we ought to protect the ability of our 
military to be able to maintain its position as the mightiest fighting 
force in the world. We are seeing that there has been under the guise 
of military exigency an attempt by the administration to exempt the 
Department of Defense from protection of the environment, using the 
rhetoric of defense to cover up environmentally destructive actions, to 
exempt the Department of Defense from some of the most environmental 
protections. These exemptions seek to address theoretical encroachments 
to military readiness. There is no evidence, no sound science, showing 
that our environmental laws have hampered our troops' ability to 
prepare for war. Instead, these laws actually protect the health of 
families living on or near military bases and actually support 
readiness by sustaining and extending the life of training ranges.
  I would hope, Mr. Speaker, at a time when the Members of Congress are 
spending more time thinking about the condition of our military and how 
to maintain its effectiveness, that instead of attempting to eliminate 
these fundamental environmental protections that put our soldiers, 
their families, and surrounding communities at risk, we would think 
about being aggressive in terms of protecting the environment so that 
we actually coax more out of these resources.
  I will be speaking more about that, Mr. Speaker, in the course of 
this hour. But I wanted, if I could, to take a moment to acknowledge 
that I have been joined by the gentlewoman from southern California 
(Ms. Solis), a woman I have known during her tenure in Congress to care 
passionately about the environment, to work with her community at home 
dealing with issues of environmental integrity and environmental 
justice, working to try to make sure that the big picture is made. And, 
Mr. Speaker, I yield to my colleague to

[[Page 8816]]

speak to these issues with me this evening.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. 
Blumenauer) for the opportunity to be here tonight to join him in 
helping the public better understand the decoding of the environmental 
rhetoric that we keep hearing from the other side. And for some time we 
suspected that the Republicans were speaking from the same talking 
points as we have on environmental policy issues. Now we have 
confirmation. The Republicans have been trained to use so-called 
straight talk; false language, distract people with personal stories, 
and muddy the issues with claims that the environment and the economy 
cannot coexist without measures that will cause dirtier water, fewer 
parks and polluted air.
  In a memo that I saw recently circulated by the Luntz Research 
Companies, Republicans are told that the environment is one of the most 
important issues that they are in fact very vulnerable on, and we know 
that. Some of us here in the House know that, and out there in our 
communities, and in order to combat this vulnerability, the Luntz memo, 
to use buzz words in their arguments, words like, for example, 
``safer,'' ``cleaner,'' and ``healthier.'' They are told to avoid the 
economic arguments first so that personal stories can be shared. The 
Luntz memo notes that Republicans should stay away from big words and 
provide examples about how Federal agencies are not protecting our 
natural resources. And we can see this rhetoric being used every day in 
policies that the GOP is offering.
  In fact, I brought a copy of the memo that was outlined. It was 
circulated by the Luntz Research Group, and if I start reading from it, 
my colleagues would be amazed by what they would see.
  And if I could maybe share some of that, on page 132, Overview: The 
environment is probably the single issue on which Republicans in 
general and President Bush in particular are most vulnerable.
  Secondly, indeed it can be helpful to think of the environment and 
other issues in terms of a story, a compelling story, even if factually 
inaccurate, and I underscore that, factually inaccurate, can be more 
emotionally compelling than a dry recitation of the truth. So here we 
are talking about falsehoods.
  Let me go on, Mr. Speaker. This week we are going to be debating the 
energy bill, and this is a good example of how using rhetoric can be 
made publicly available to folks, but it is a bad policy for people and 
consumers and especially those that I represent in the State of 
California. The Republicans claim that the bill is a fair balance 
between the environment and the economy, but the bill encourages our 
continued dependence on fossil fuels; drilling in the Arctic, the 
National Wildlife Refuge, and other ecologically sensitive areas; and 
it fails to create a comprehensive plan for renewable alternatives. My 
goodness.
  And last year, as my colleagues know, California faced blackouts and 
price gouging. My constituents faced energy bills that rose upwards of 
300 percent in a short 4-year span.
  This bill that is being proposed will provide very little relief for 
the constituents that I represent, and I do not think it is a fair and 
balanced approach, and I believe that the Republicans claim that they 
are supporting development and advancement of technology. At least that 
is what they are representing. Yet the bill is loaded, loaded, with 
subsidies to the oil and gas industry, subsidies that do not 
necessarily require research and development, subsidies that reward 
pollution instead of innovation and technology and efficiency. These 
industries that the Republicans are subsidizing often put their plants 
in the center of districts like mine, in low-income, economically 
underprivileged communities. And I know that, because they believe that 
our community is not paying attention and that they can get away with 
planning and siting projects that are harmful to our water, to our air, 
to the environment, and to the people that we represent.
  This is the case in the San Gabriel Valley, and I say that because 
many of these folks come into our district promising jobs, 
redevelopment, cleaning up the blight, giving jobs to poor people, and 
then they leave us with a blank check, nothing there, no jobs, 
pollution, and, in my district, four Superfund sites and little 
enforcement by EPA at this point to really do a better job of cleaning 
up the environment.
  So I have a lot of questions about the message that the other side is 
using to say that they are now on the side of the consumer and the 
population about cleaning up the environment.
  One last item I would like to talk about also is on the budget. 
Another example of effective messaging and lax policy is the Bush 
budget. The President and his supporters claim that the budget will 
create a ``safer'' and ``cleaner'' and ``healthier'' Nation. However, 
the budget uses creative accounting to raid the Land and Water 
Conservation Fund, a fund that has impacted hundreds of communities as 
they try to protect their natural resources through restoration and 
cleanup projects, projects that are directly linked to the health of 
our families, because we are talking about the very water that they 
drink.
  And President Bush claims that he ``preserves and protects'' the 
environment; however, his budget request for the environment is slated 
for a $1.6 billion reduction compared to fiscal year 2002, falling from 
$29.6 billion to $28 billion.
  Projects on the chopping block, for example, are dealing with 
environmental education like lead-poisoning prevention, a serious 
concern in our district where many young children are affected by this 
particular additive that is very harmful to the development and puts 
many children, millions of children younger than 6 years of age, at 
risk for intelligence, behavior, and physical disparities that they 
will be affected by if they are exposed to lead. And we all know that 
but we are not doing enough to help address this. We are actually 
cutting back in that area.
  And I say that it is time to do a better job. It is time to look at 
why water quality investments are also falling short. For example, in 
this budget, $2.7 billion in FY 2002 to only $1.8 billion in 2004, a 
loss of $861 million, or more than a 32 percent cut. What in the world 
are the Republicans really saying? We want to protect the environment, 
we want to protect families and consumers, but at the same time they 
keep chopping, chopping, chopping.
  So that is what the message, I think, tonight has to be, Mr. Speaker; 
that we clarify what our agenda is and whom we are standing up for. And 
I am very proud to represent the district that I come from, the San 
Gabriel Valley, where now people are having hardships. We have 
unemployment rates upwards of 11 percent, and this has gone on for more 
than 2 years.
  People want clean drinking water. They do not want to be notified in 
the mail that their drinking wells have to be closed because they found 
rocket fuel in their water. We need to have more tools to do the 
cleanup. We need to go after the responsible parties, and we cannot 
afford to let people off the hook who are the polluters. That is what 
the Superfund law was all about, and that is what we should be here to 
enforce tonight and every single day that we are here fighting for our 
communities.
  I would just say, lastly, that it is a privilege to be here as a 
Member of the House advocating for environmental issues, in particular 
environmental justice activities that affect not just my area but many 
corners of our country. And people need to better understand that 
environmental justice issues are issues of better health care, better 
education, and an opportunity to begin to clean up their communities 
and enhance economic development in a positive way so that everybody 
can grow and prosper, and children, whether they are rich or poor, can 
live in a clean environment.
  I thank the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) for the 
opportunity to speak tonight on this very important message regarding 
the truth about the environment and who is sticking up for 
environmental justice.

[[Page 8817]]


  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Solis). I appreciate her zeroing in on the notion of how to 
interpret, read between the lines. We have joked a little bit about 
having a decoder ring so that people can understand what is being 
offered, and her points about the disconnect between the budget, which 
really is a tangible expression of priorities; that is, a budget 
submission that is antienvironmental and has actually been made worse 
by the Republican budget resolution; the simple notion accepted by the 
American public to aid environmental cleanup by having the polluter pay 
that has been suspended, and abandoning the Superfund, making it very 
difficult to be able to continue the notion of environmental justice 
where we have put such a burden on people who often have no 
alternatives, who are unaware of what is happening, and how the 
administration is suggesting that we not initiate new activities but, 
in fact, we pull back from what we are doing now that is, in fact, 
inadequate. I appreciate her forthright expression of that.
  I think it is important that we work together to have that decoder 
ring to understand. I hope that we are able to deal with the advice 
that Mr. Luntz has given to the Republicans. I think it is important 
that he points out that scientific consensus is against them, that the 
public is suspicious, but we hope that instead of trying to deal with 
semantics, rhetorical cover-up, that we can encourage people to go back 
to what we started with in terms of the Clean Water Act, which was 
actually from the Nixon Administration, to have an opportunity where 
people are embracing environmental values.

                              {time}  2000

  We have been joined this evening by the distinguished gentleman from 
New Mexico (Mr. Udall). I have been pleased to work with the gentleman 
on the floor of this House. I have been very impressed in my visits to 
his district, as the gentleman reflects the strong environmental values 
of the people of New Mexico, and we are honored the gentleman will join 
us this evening to join in this discussion.
  Mr. UDALL of New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman very much 
and thank the gentleman from Oregon for that very kind introduction.
  Let me also say about our colleague, the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Solis), who has been a real champion on environmental issues in 
California, she served in the California legislature and I think has 
been at one point written up as a Profile in Courage on environmental 
issues because she took on an environmental racism issue in her 
community and fought it for a number of years and passed a significant 
piece of environmental legislation. So what the gentlewoman says about 
these issues, I think she has lived and walked the walk.
  The gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Blumenauer) has also been a key 
environmental leader on many, many issues here in the Congress, 
including energy, which we are talking about tonight. The gentleman has 
pushed for livable communities. The gentleman has tried to make sure 
that the Federal Government does everything it can to be a good partner 
in communities.
  One of the things we see is the Federal Government owns a lot of the 
landscape; and because of one of the gentleman's pieces of legislation, 
we are trying to make sure that the Federal Government in fact is a 
good neighbor, and when they locate buildings or relocate buildings, 
that they visit with the locals in addition to going through the normal 
planning processes.
  The gentleman has been to my community. I know many of the people 
very much appreciate the gentleman's efforts in terms of transportation 
and trying to make sure that we develop sensible transportation 
alternatives in our communities: allow people to bike to work, have 
mass transit, have alternatives that make sense from the perspective of 
energy, which is one of our big topics tonight.
  I know that the gentleman mentioned earlier the Arctic National 
Wildlife Refuge. Rather than go directly into my comments, I wanted to 
say a few things about what the gentleman was talking about, because 
the gentleman said he has been there.
  I have also been there. I just wanted to talk a little bit about how 
that is a very special place, and I think anybody that is going to vote 
in this body on this issue ought to take the opportunity to try to go 
up and visit it. When I say go up and visit it, I do not mean go to 
Kaktovik, the little village up on the very upper end, which is a 
community that has a lot of problems but does not represent at all the 
environment in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  What I did was I spent a week in this whole area, floating on a river 
by the name of the Hula Hula River, named after the whalers that came 
in the area hunting down whales, Hawaiian whalers; and they called the 
river the Hula Hula. In the course of floating out of this river, it 
floats out of the Brooks Range. It is probably one of the clearest, 
most pristine streams you have ever seen. We took the opportunity to 
stop and fish in the Hula Hula River for Arctic char. We saw a variety 
of wildlife. We saw grizzly bears, musk oxen, herds of caribou.
  Coming back from that trip, and after experiencing that and camping 
in this area, I cannot think of any area that is more deserving of 
being a wilderness area than the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  The argument is that we need to raid the oil that is there. In fact, 
what the situation is on the whole coastal area in Alaska is that 97 
percent, 97 percent of that coast is open to exploration, is open to 
oil production, and just a little part of it we are trying to preserve 
as a wildlife refuge.
  It has been a wildlife refuge, it was put in many years ago under a 
Republican President, and we do not see that bipartisanship today on 
the environment, by the way. So I think the gentleman's remarks are 
right on point when it comes to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
  I also would like to say a few words about the energy bill that we 
are going to start debating this week, the Energy Policy Act of 2003. 
During the last Congress, the House spent countless hours debating a 
similar bill.
  Unfortunately, one of the major provisions in the last energy bill on 
which Members could not agree was renewable energy. As my colleague, 
the gentleman from Oregon, has said earlier, the Republicans are 
putting off dealing with our Nation's energy dependence problem and 
leaving it to legislators of a future generation. Their theme seems to 
be, ``Why do today what we can leave for the next generation to deal 
with in the future?''
  Last month I introduced legislation that establishes a Federal 
renewable energy portfolio and establishes standards in that area for 
certain retail electric utilities. There are some who say that a long-
term sustainable energy plan is impossible, or that renewable energy 
and energy efficiency are just dreams and that the U.S. will never be 
able to break its reliance on traditional energy sources, like oil and 
coal.
  I disagree, and I know the gentleman from Oregon disagrees; and now, 
in the post-September 11 world, as we are in the midst of a war with 
Iraq, the renewed conflict in the Middle East shows us that we cannot 
continue to rely on imported oil from that region.
  When my father, Stewart Udall, was Secretary of the Interior, and 
this shows the dramatic change in our society, what happened in the 
last generation, the U.S. imported when he was Secretary of the 
Interior in the 60s 20 percent of its oil. My father argued that we 
should not import more than 20 percent because this was a national 
security issue if we were relying too much on one area of the world.
  Our people may not know it, but today we import 53 percent of our 
oil, 47 percent which comes from the OPEC countries; and by 2020, the 
United States will import 62 percent of its oil unless we change the 
way we are doing business here in the United States.
  Even more concerning, world oil production is expected to peak 
sometime in the next few decades, even some say as early as 2007. That 
means as energy

[[Page 8818]]

demand increases more and more rapidly, the world's oil supply will be 
proportionately diminished.
  Energy production has brought tremendous prosperity and allowed us to 
grow our economy at unprecedented rates. However, nonrenewable forms of 
energy are responsible for many of the greatest environmental threats 
to America's well-being.
  For these reasons, I am particularly interested in a renewable 
portfolio standard. I believe that an RPS paves the road for 
development and investment in clean energy technologies and local 
economic development. RPS, in my mind, clearly serves as a model for 
tomorrow's small and medium businesses to draw a profit from their own 
environmental responsibility.
  As a Nation of what I call ``petroholics,'' we claim only 2 percent 
of our electricity is generated by nontraditional sources of power, 
such as wind, solar and geothermal energy. Instead of pushing for the 
exploration of oil development and contributing to this country's 
addiction to oil, we should be pushing for the exploration of renewable 
energy development. I believe this bill goes a long way to develop a 
strategy for putting renewable energy into place.
  With that, let me just say to the gentleman from Oregon that I think 
we need to focus as a country on renewable energy. We obviously need a 
strong domestic industry, the production of oil. But as many of us 
know, that peaked in the 1970s; and we are headed down. The rest of the 
country and the rest of the world, in particular the rest of the world, 
are going to be going after more and more limited supplies of oil. So 
the further we can get ahead of that curve, the better off we are going 
to be.
  Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Oregon for providing 
leadership on this, for being on the floor and fighting for these 
issues; and I hope that on some of these battles we can be victorious 
in the coming weeks.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his comments. 
I am pleased to be a cosponsor of the gentleman's, I think, really far-
seeing bill on renewable energy; and I am hopeful that the leadership 
in this Congress will have the foresight to allow it to come to the 
floor and to allow a spirited debate. I am convinced that if we put it 
to the Congress and to the American public that that legislation will 
pass.
  As I was listening to the gentleman describe the experience we both 
have shared in the Arctic wilderness, I had in the back of my mind, I 
think I said Teddy Roosevelt designated it. It was another Republican 
President, President Eisenhower, who made the designation.
  If I said Roosevelt, I was there dealing with the pristine jewel, 
Yellowstone, which was the creation of then-President Teddy Roosevelt, 
which we are now seeing under assault, where the administration is 
proposing that the place in America with the worst air, not L.A., not 
Houston, it is in Yellowstone Park, where we see park rangers forced to 
wear gas masks because of the pollution, and we see the rule on 
restricting the use of snowmobiles being rescinded. I guess I got a 
little ahead of myself. I apologize if I said that.
  I appreciate the gentleman focusing on the opportunity to truly make 
us energy independent, dealing with renewable energy sources, 
particularly the nontraditional: the fuel cells, wind, geothermal. As 
we look at how these will be treated in the energy bill that will find 
its way to the floor, we will find that there is but a tiny fraction of 
the attention, the resources, to be able to accelerate those 
developments. Again, it is a disconnect between the ``green'' rhetoric 
that is being couched by the Republican pollsters and pundits and what 
could have been actual accomplishment.
  The bill will fall terribly short, as the gentleman mentions, in 
terms of environmental stewardship. It will fall short in terms of our 
meeting our international obligations and opportunities, and it will be 
a fiscal disaster. It is interesting, the Taxpayers for Common Sense 
and others in the Green Scissors Coalition are going to come forward to 
point out how this is a lost opportunity that is going to cost the 
American taxpayers billions and billions of dollars.
  It is sad that a country with less than 3 percent of the recoverable 
supply of the world's oil, and as we have talked about, much of it in 
ecologically important areas, we are going to be focusing on trying to 
extract every last drop and avoiding things that will put us in a 
positive position.
  I would like to acknowledge that we have one of our other colleagues 
who is with us here this evening. Time is winding down, but we could 
not not acknowledge the leadership and advocacy of our colleague, the 
gentleman from the Puget Sound area of Washington (Mr. Inslee), from 
the Seattle area, a gentleman with whom I was pleased to take a tour of 
the Arctic, as we saw what was on the line.
  I say to the gentleman, welcome. I would yield to the gentleman for 
some comments about this critical area that I know the gentleman has 
spent so much time and effort to provide better alternatives for the 
people on this floor.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to briefly talk 
about the Arctic, because we were on the banks of the Ivishak a couple 
summers ago. I have been to Yellowstone, I have been to Glacier, I have 
been to the Grand Canyon; and this area is the most biologically 
dynamic place I have ever been, one of the most beautiful places I have 
ever been in my life, and certainly it will not solve our energy needs.
  People sort of feel about the Arctic the way they feel about the Mona 
Lisa. They may not get to see the Mona Lisa. The advocates of drilling 
are saying it is going to be a small footprint, just a relatively small 
oil production facility. I think that is a little bit like putting a 
small mustache on the Mona Lisa.

                              {time}  2015

  It is small, but it is still disfiguring, and Americans do not want 
it.
  I hope that we will have an opportunity to offer a new approach to 
energy in this year's debate that is akin to a new Apollo energy 
project for America that will be as bold as the Apollo project that 
John F. Kennedy stood in this Chamber in 1961 and challenged America to 
go to the Moon in 10 years. We think the U.S. Congress ought to be 
challenging America to go to a future of self-reliance in energy to 
break our addiction on Middle Eastern oil, to adopt and embrace a goal 
of reducing our global warming gas emissions and, in fact, grow jobs in 
America.
  That is what we need, a visionary, bold, creative energy policy; not 
one that relies just on the technologies of the past, but one that 
will, in fact, engage the American talent and that can-do spirit.
  We know that Americans have the most creative talent in the world. We 
have created most of the technologies of the last century. Now it is 
time for us to create the energy technologies of the next century. We 
know the world will beat a path to the door of the country that does 
this. We do not think we should give these markets of wind turbines to 
Denmark, or the market for fuel-efficient vehicles to Japan, or the 
market of solar power to Germany. We believe those jobs should be right 
here in the United States.
  So we hope to offer, and in fact, we will be going to the Committee 
on Rules tomorrow, to offer America a new Apollo energy project which 
will, in fact, attempt to use all of our sectors in a creative way; to 
do research on coal to see if we can find a way to sequester the 
climate-changing gases of coal emissions; to help both consumers in the 
auto industry to get more fuel-efficient cars; to help our local 
domestic auto manufacturers with tax breaks for the retooling expenses 
they are going to need to make fuel-efficient vehicles; to help improve 
some of the productivity of some of our oil wells in our domestic 
facilities now. Because we believe that America ought to adopt the can-
do spirit of a new vision of energy, rather than simply relying on the 
old, the old types of technologies that we have used.

[[Page 8819]]

  So I appreciate the opportunity to talk with the gentleman. In fact, 
we may be back tonight or tomorrow to talk some more about that.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I hope we are able to. I appreciate the 
gentleman focusing on the fact that we have had a tremendous 
technological series of advances in this country, and it is time, first 
of all, to make sure that we do not lose control of some of those, and 
that we blaze a trail for the future. It is stunning to me that we have 
an opportunity to give a little nudge to some of the promising 
technologies, some of the fledgling enterprises, all across the 
country. And I know the gentleman has been visited by people from our 
own Pacific Northwest who are on the cutting edge of being able to give 
a little bit of a push, a little bit of incentive, to have the 
government step up and lead by example.
  Our Department of Defense, for instance. I had been talking earlier 
about my personal dismay that this administration is bent on somehow 
exempting the Department of Defense, the largest manager of 
infrastructure in the world, and, sadly, the source of some of the most 
serious pollution. Rather than encouraging, rather than giving the 
resources to clean up after themselves, they are talking about 
exempting from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. I know the 
gentleman from Washington has given thought to the notion of what will 
happen if we gave a little bit of the money we are giving now to the 
Department of Defense, almost $1 million a minute, if a little of that 
were devoted to making sure that we had the most energy-efficient 
military in the world.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield for a minute, I 
am glad he brought this point up, because we out in Washington State 
think the administration's effort to essentially gut, and it really is 
gutting, five major environmental bills for the Department of Defense 
activities is seriously misguided. The reason I say that is out in 
Washington, we have a whole host of military establishments. We have 
the Akamai Firing Center in eastern Washington. In my district we have 
the Bangor Nuclear Submarine Facility. We have the Puget Sound Naval 
Shipyard. And at every single one of those sites, we have had the 
Department of Defense work with our local communities and we have 
solved some of the environmental challenges without any great failure 
of training or security.
  The Department of Defense has worked with these local communities to 
solve a problem with the sage grouse at the Akamai, to solve the 
problem of water quality in the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, to solve a 
salmon habitat issue at the Bangor facility. And this proposal to gut 
these environmental protections is really a solution looking for a 
problem, because the Department of Defense in the State of Washington, 
one of the most heavily defense-oriented places in the country, has not 
experienced any particular qualm or difficulty in solving this problem.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I think that is telling. There is 
already, as the gentleman well knows but unfortunately the public is 
not aware, there are opportunities in the case of national defense 
exigency for the suspension of this legislation. But the gentlemen 
raises a point that mirrors my experience time and time again. The 
characteristics, the leadership, the training, the commitment, that 
makes our men and women in the Armed Forces the finest fighting force 
in the world also makes them uniquely qualified to solve problems. And 
when they are given an opportunity, whether it is building a green 
building, whether it is solving an environmentally difficult problem, 
if we give them the order, the resources, the clearance, I am stunned 
at the progress that can be made.
  I am likewise troubled, and the gentleman comes from the State that 
probably more than any in the country bears the scars of past shortcuts 
environmentally. We could talk about an area the gentleman is well 
aware of in terms of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation where we were in a 
rush to develop nuclear weapons before the Nazis, but now we are 
spending billions of dollars a year to clean it up.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, that is true. 
And the Hanford site, this is going to be a 50-year recovery effort.
  But some of the problems in the State of Washington, perhaps less 
known, but every bit as concerning, are water quality issues now, of 
some of the toxic chemicals that have been, by necessity, associated 
with the Department of Defense sites. And I can say without hesitation 
that the people of Tacoma and Federal Way and Paulsville, Washington do 
not believe it is necessary to allow a degradation of their drinking 
water standards in their kids' drinking water in order to have the most 
secure Nation we have. And the reason they are confident of that is 
they have seen the dedicated men and women of the Army and Navy work 
with these communities to solve these problems.
  So they cannot understand why this administration would come in for 
what appears to be simply idealogical reasons and gut the protections 
that have assured citizens that their Federal Government is not going 
to let tetrachloride or some of these other heavy metals get into their 
drinking water. It just does not make any sense to them when we have 
been able to solve these problems because of the flexibility that the 
gentleman alluded to.
  So we hope that this effort will be beaten back and that the common 
sense that has been used, both by the Department of Defense and our 
local towns around this country, will prevail.
  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman raises very important 
points from his own experience.
  I had been working on areas of military toxins and unexploded 
ordnance, and have been frankly amazed at the breadth of the problem, 
in every State in the Union, coast to coast, areas right here in the 
District of Columbia. Eighty-five years after the conclusion of World 
War I, there are still cleanup operations taking place on the American 
University campus, which was the site of American chemical weapons 
production and testing during World War I. We have yet to clean that 
up, not because the men and women in the military do not know how to do 
it, but it has been a failure of commitment on behalf of several 
administrations, including this one. Congress has been missing in 
action. At the rate we are going right now, it is going to take 
potentially 500 to 1,000 years or more to clean up from the problems of 
the past.
  We have some signature areas. The Massachusetts Military Reservation, 
there is water pollution that threatens all of the water for the 
Martha's Vineyard area, but it is almost every district, every single 
State. Right now, we do not even know how many million acres are 
polluted, for instance, with unexploded ordnance.
  I think the gentleman's point is well taken. I am hopeful that we do 
not suspend these five critical environmental laws. Not only will it 
put the health of the American public at risk, but it also threatens 
the men and women in the military who are around these areas.
  And, last but not least, we face a situation now where there are some 
problems of military readiness. There are fewer and fewer areas that 
the military can train by going in, treating them right, cleaning them 
up, solving environmental problems. It is going to save the military 
problems in the long run, and it is going to extend the life of these 
scarce areas where important training takes place that is critical to 
military readiness.
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, he just 
prompted a thought.
  One of the problems on this sort of assault on environmental 
protection by this administration is that it is not just one front, it 
is a multifront assault on environmental protection. One that the 
gentleman just alerted me to is the attempt to weaken our ability to 
successfully prosecute Superfund toxic waste dump cleanups, and the 
gentleman may have talked about this this evening, I do not know. But 
in my district, I live right across the harbor from a site called the 
Waco Creosote Plant. It was an old creosote plant, where a lot of the 
lumber they brought

[[Page 8820]]

in, in fact some I think may have gone to the Panama Canal construction 
project, was created there. Creosote is really effective at killing 
little bugs that might get into your pilings, but it is very, very 
toxic. It has some very, very nasty chemicals in it.
  That stuff is on a point at a harbor right across the bay from where 
I live on a little island just west of Seattle. That Superfund site 
now, to clean it up, is costing tens of millions of dollars to 
successfully clean up that creosote, because it is leaking into Puget 
Sound now, and that stuff is a carcinogen and we believe it has caused 
some pretty awful things to happen to the fish that a lot of people 
like to eat. In fact, the shell beds, the shell beds are closed around 
this area. You cannot eat the clams and oysters and the like.
  But the administration, despite the ongoing demand to clean up not 
this one, but thousands of toxic waste dumps around the country, has 
decided not to fund those by canceling the tax that would pay for this 
cleanup. That are now paid by the polluters. Before we have had a 
policy that the polluters will pay to clean up this pollution, rather 
than John Q. Citizen. This administration wants to take the cost of the 
cleanup of this creosote toxic waste dump, and there are thousands 
arose the country, and take it off of the polluters who put the 
creosote in the ground, who should be morally, ethically, and legally 
responsible for that, and put it over on the taxpayers, so the 
taxpayers have to pay for this cleanup.
  Well, I can tell the gentleman that my neighbors do not think it 
should be their job to clean up the creosote that these companies put 
in the ground, because they were not following the law for decades. And 
we believe the administration is flat wrong in trying to take care of 
these special interests by putting that enormous cost of these cleanup 
efforts on to people who are playing by the rules, earning a paycheck, 
paying their house payment, and they are now having to pay their taxes 
for that Superfund cleanup.
  Mr. Speaker, it is one manifestation of how special interests here in 
this Chamber have got their way when they should not get their way. 
These cleanups ought to be borne by the polluters. Not only is it an 
equity issue, but the clear fact of the matter is that because of the 
costs associated, these are billions and billions of dollars, one 
little cleanup on my little island, it is about 16 acres, is going to 
cost something like $20 million or $30 million, and we need to repeat 
that across the country to keep this stuff out of our water. If we do 
not keep that polluter-pays concept, these jobs are not going to get 
done.
  So this is related to the issue, and I just want to point out that it 
is not the only assault that we suffer.

                              {time}  2030

  Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments. I 
appreciate his leadership and look forward to working with him on 
energy, on defense, and on the areas generally of making sure that we 
are strengthening, not weakening, our environmental protections.
  In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, I know the time is about up, I know you 
will be disappointed, but I want to summarize because it is important 
for us to be working with friends like the gentleman from Washington 
(Mr. Inslee) and others to focus on actions, not just rhetoric.
  And one of the things that I have found most disconcerting as I have 
watched what this administration has done is taking Mr. Luntz's advice 
to not be rolling back regulations but, as they call it, updating 
Washington's rules on the environment. Now, he has been encouraging 
Republicans not to attack the principles behind environmental 
protections, but to try and shift things around in terms of the 
regulatory configuration. Well, the Bush administration has made 
significant and far-reaching changes to environmental protections since 
the President assumed office. But not through outright legislation, not 
putting it before the American public and having a discussion about 
what our values are, what we are trying to protect and how best to 
encourage more environmental protection.
  We have been having a series of late Friday afternoon rule changes 
and clarifications at a time when asthma and cancer rates are on the 
rise. When people in Alaska are seeing tropical insects, when we are 
having roadways buckle, permafrost is disappearing, the public knows 
that we should be strengthening, not weakening, environmental laws. We 
are not just seeing a broad depth and breadth of changes, but we are 
seeing them done under the radar screen. For example, we have seen a 
series of rollbacks occurring on Friday afternoons, during the holiday 
season, when Congress is not in session and when the public's attention 
is diverted. For example, the EPA announced its biggest rollback of the 
Clean Air Act since its inception on the afternoon before Thanksgiving 
and another on New Year's Eve calculated to try and shield the action 
from the public.
  Three of the most egregious roll-
backs occurred first earlier this year when we had proposed changes to 
the Clear Water Act that will have sweeping impacts on 20 million acres 
of wetlands across the country. Now, these rules changes were in 
response to a Supreme Court decision that very narrowly interpreted the 
Clean Water Act and brought attention to what bodies of water the act 
should apply to.
  Now, instead of advancing clarifying legislation that would make 
clear we want to protect these precious wetlands, half of which are 
gone already, some communities have lost 90 percent of their wetlands, 
deteriorating the quality of water, increasing threats to flood, 
instead they have proposed leaving out lots of, these appear to be de 
minimis efforts, they want to talk about creeks, small streams, natural 
ponds, types of wetlands like bogs, marshes, prairie potholes. These 
will all be waterways no longer protected by the Clean Water Act. They 
sound de minimis, but they are part of the critical green 
infrastructure that has protected our communication for generations. 
Now they will all be vulnerable to dredging, filling, and waste 
dumping.
  I mentioned earlier the confusion surrounding the snowmobiles in some 
of our country's most beautiful national parks. During his Presidential 
campaign, candidate Bush spoke of protecting national parks as an 
ongoing responsibility and a shared commitment of the American people 
and their government. The budgets, I will mention, cut funding to this 
ongoing responsibility. And even though the public has spoken out again 
and again in favor of banning snowmobiles from areas like Yellowstone, 
the administration announced last November a proposal to increase the 
number of snowmobiles in both Yellowstone and Grand Teton National 
parks by 35 percent.
  Now, against the wishes of the American public, the EPA, the National 
Park Service, the administration has decided to jeopardize the health 
of the park's ecosystem and employees in areas that President Bush in 
the campaign referred to as ``silent places unworn by man.''
  Finally, I want to mention, Mr. Speaker, the environmental rollback 
that will have a significant impact in my community in the Pacific 
Northwest, the national roadless policy. Near the end of his term, 
President Clinton restricted logging and road building in almost 60 
million acres of national forest. This was after the most extensive 
public input process in the history of our national park system. There 
were over a million and a half public comments. Over 600 public 
hearings. Well, a district judge in Idaho placed an injunction on the 
rule. The Bush administration did not choose to contest it. Luckily, in 
one of the few victories that those of us who care about the 
environment have had recently, the 9th Circuit Court has upheld the 
roadless rule, which will effectively protect it for the time being. 
But this reckless degradation of our Nation's air, water, forest, and 
soil protection will have a severe and long-term impact on the planet, 
leave a far greater legacy of environmental problems that our children, 
not us, our children will be left to manage.

[[Page 8821]]

  And I hope that the American public will focus on what Republican 
consultants like Frank Luntz are suggesting, understand the significant 
impacts of environmental rollbacks proposed, and understand that there 
are significant opportunities, not just for the American public and the 
environmental community, but significant environmental opportunities 
like I mentioned this evening in terms of environmental clean up with 
the Department of Defense that will save tax dollars, that will protect 
the environment for generations to come, that will improve military 
readiness, and not be at the expense of the health of our communities 
or our men and women in the fighting forces.
  I hope that instead of greenwash, instead of rhetorical flourishes, 
instead of dodging the issues and obscuring the record, I hope that the 
administration will join with people on both sides of the aisle who 
care about the environment and give the American public what they 
request in terms of livable communities, protected open space, clean 
air, and clean water. It is within our grasp. It is within our budget. 
I hope that it is within our will before we adjourn.

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