Providing for Consideration of H.R. 3667, Missisquoi and Trout Rivers Wild and Scenic River Study Act of 2008
Press Release
PROVIDING FOR CONSIDERATION OF H.R. 3667, MISSISQUOI AND TROUT RIVERS WILD AND SCENIC RIVER STUDY ACT OF 2008 -- (House of Representatives - September 10, 2008)
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
H. Res. 1419 provides for the consideration of H.R. 3667, the Missisquoi and Trout Rivers Wild and Scenic Study Act of 2008, under a structured rule. The rule provides 1 hour of general debate controlled by the Committee on Natural Resources, makes in order three amendments printed in the Rules Committee report, and provides one motion to recommit with or without instructions.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Rahall and Representative Grijalva, Ranking Members YOUNG and BISHOP for helping to bring this bill to the floor today. And I would like to thank the staff of the Natural Resources Committee for their very hard work on a bill that is of great importance to my State of Vermont.
The Missisquoi and Trout Rivers are two of the most beautiful rivers in the most beautiful State in the Nation, and that, with all due respect to the man from Washington, I claim to be the State of Vermont. These rivers are bordered by the largest and perhaps the highest quality silver maple floodplain forest remaining in our State of Vermont. They are also home to diverse animal life, including brook trout, rare freshwater mussels, and spiny soft shell turtles. It's a favorite walking, hiking, fishing area for many people in northern Vermont and, indeed, from Upstate New York and all around Vermont.
Additionally, the Missisquoi River is part of this extraordinary 740-mile northern forest canoe trail, which is home to some of the best flat-water canoeing in Vermont and in the Northeast. Both of these rivers are highly valued by the surrounding towns and the communities. It has great recreational areas, swimming pools, and boating. Vermont parents that grew up swimming in these rivers take their kids back there, and it's a place in Vermont of just extraordinary scenic and natural beauty.
The bill, as these study bills all do, provides for a study of the two rivers, and it represents a first step toward protecting Abenaki Indian archeological sites along the flood plains, protecting scenic waterfalls and gorges, and a way of life that has been in these communities surrounding the two rivers for generations.
Passage of the rule will allow the Missisquoi and Trout Rivers Wild and Scenic River Study Act to be considered on the floor by the full body, and I urge support of this rule and the underlying bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am shocked that my friend from Washington would question my assertions about the beauty of Vermont, and I will invite the Member from Washington to come to Vermont so I can let you firsthand experience the evidence that I have had so much opportunity to observe myself.
By the way, I have been to Washington. I climbed Mt. Rainier three times and was out on the San Juan Islands.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. For bragging about Washington, yes, I will.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Well, of course I am going to do that. And, listen: Mt. Rainier I can see from my district on a clear day, because it is 14,410 feet high. But it is quite a view when you view it from a desert setting. So I invite you the next time you come back to come over to my district for all the great wines, where the wine grapes are grown, by the way. And I understand my friend likes to have a cold beer once in a while. The taste of that beer comes from the hops that are grown in my district.
So, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my friend yielding on that basis, and I look forward to his visit. I appreciate it and yield back to him.
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. Thank you, my friend from Washington. We better get back to the focus at hand, because now Vermont quality beer has been challenged as well as the beauty of Vermont rivers. So we will just call this part of the debate a draw and proceed.
Two things in response to comments made by my friend from Washington. Number one, it appears that there are no reservations or no stated objections to the study itself that is, frankly, quite important to Vermont. This is a very special part of our State that has the opportunity with the benefit of this study to be preserved for generations ahead, just as it has been cared for and enjoyed by generations in the past. So it is a very, very serious issue to the folks in Vermont. It is just a very special place.
The gentleman has not raised any specific objections. His objections are more in the nature of spending time on this instead of spending time on something else. So I would urge the Members to take that into account when they are voting on the previous question.
Second, I will address the energy arguments. This has been the refrain on the part of our friends on the other side as a response to every piece of business that we are doing on behalf of the American people. I think it has become apparent that this has become much more of a political debate than it has been an effort substantively to solve a very, very serious problem. Let me give a little commentary about that.
Number one, my friends on the other side have been in control of this institution and had the Presidency and the control of Congress for the past 12 years, until this Congress, and had an opportunity to enact comprehensive energy legislation when it was quite apparent to the American people that the problem of our excessive dependence on oil was a real and urgent problem.
They did nothing. In fact, the energy act they passed quite astonishingly provided taxpayer incentives, tax deductions, tax credits, to oil companies that were enjoying record profits. It is a mature industry, it is a profitable industry, yet the energy policy that was pursued and failed by our friends on the other side during the 12 years they were in charge basically was to give oil companies more taxpayer money.
It made no sense. There was no effort to use the power they had of the majority to bring to the floor legislation that would promote alternative energy. There was no effort to take the power that they had and provide tax incentives for the alternative energy industries that we know we must support if we are going to reduce and ultimately eliminate our dependence on foreign oil.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Would the gentleman yield on that point?
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I won't yield. My intention, my friend from Washington, is to respond and bring this to a close, thank you.
So, number one, we are hearing objections from people who when they had the power to do the things they claim they want to do, didn't use the power they had to accomplish those objectives.
Number two, when we have brought forward legislation and passed it, it has been with their objection. And what they claim they want to do are many things that we did over their objection. I will give a few examples.
To deal with the short-term price pressure at the pump and with home heating oil, this House of Representatives passed legislation that I sponsored to stop filling up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and take off some of the demand on oil. That has contributed to helping bring down the price of gas at the pump by 5 to 25 cents a gallon.
Secondly, this House of Representatives has gotten tough on speculators. The evidence is overwhelming that part of the runup in the price of gasoline when it was heading up to $150 a barrel was because of the speculative control and influence of hedge funds in foreign trading operations. We brought to this floor legislation, and just the fact that we did it finally, when it was ignored and accepted and mollified by our friends who were in control for 12 years, has helped bring down that speculative premium.
There is no justification for any one of our constituents when they pay for a gallon of gasoline or a gallon of home heating oil or a cubic gallon of natural gas to have included in their price a speculation premium for profiteers, and this Congress passed legislation to challenge that, against the opposition of our friends on the other side. So we have taken very specific actions to try to do what we reasonably can do to bring down the price pressure that is ripping off the American consuming public.
Second, we have passed energy legislation that is comprehensive, again over the opposition of our friends on the other side. One of the things we did was provided for tax credits for the alternative energy industry. We have to do that. That is of urgent, vital economic and environmental concern to this country.
We passed legislation that took away the tax breaks that are going to oil companies. There is no basis whatsoever to ask the taxpayer to pad the profits of a mature and profitable industry. They don't need it. They are doing quite well without additional taxpayer money to their bottom line.
But the new industries, the alternative energies that my friend from Washington mentioned, wind and solar, geothermal and biomass, they do need a boost, and historically when we have been at our best is when we have had the wisdom to use tax policy in a targeted and focused way to give a boost to these emerging industries and technologies that are good for the American economy and good for our environment, and that is what we need to do.
We have passed this in the House several times. Our friends on the other side opposed it. Our friends in the Senate won't move on it. We are prepared to do it again. But the suggestion that has been made repetitively, over and over again, that the leadership of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives is standing in the way of energy policy is flat out wrong. It is flat out false. Why is it being offered? It is being offered for political purposes, I would suggest.
Now, let me tell you this: That although we have passed comprehensive energy legislation several times in this House, although each time we have done it we have had to overcome the opposition of our friends on the other side, and although every time we bring up a legitimate piece of legislation that is part of the public business that this Congress must conduct, whether it is a study on the Missisquoi River, an energy bill or any other bill, every time we do our friends try to cease the debate and distort what has happened, we are prepared, as the gentleman from Washington knows, we in the Democratic Party, our leadership is prepared to bring up yet another comprehensive energy bill that does include all of the above.
The fact is, on our side we have passed all of the above time and time again, against the opposition of our friends on the other side, and then it has run into a brick wall in the other body or the steadfast opposition of the President of the United States. But the gentleman from Washington is aware that the leadership is prepared to bring up yet another bill to give us another opportunity to do the right thing.
Let me say this: I actually think it would be great to work together with the other side. I come from a State where we shift majorities back and forth. Sometimes the Democrats were in control, sometimes the Republican were in control. I was the senate president and I was the minority leader. I learned that in order for us ever to get anything done, we had to ultimately work together. I also came to understand that neither side had an absolute claim that they were the only people who had a good point of view, who had an iron grip on truth.
I believe that it would be best for all of us if there was some willingness to try to work on the substance, rather than just use this as a political football, and my observation is that for whatever reason, it is tough to get to that point here in the House of Representatives in Washington.
Mr. HASTINGS of Washington. Will the gentleman yield on that point?
Mr. WELCH of Vermont. I wouldn't yield, my friend, because I will be bringing this to a close.
I want to take the opportunity, as I must, when the assertions are made, falsely in my view, that the Democratic leadership is standing in the way of energy policy change, that is just flat-out wrong. The energy for energy reform has come from the leadership on the Democratic side. Frankly, it has come from the American people, who are tired of a Congress that passed off as an energy policy giving more money to the oil companies.
We have to make a fundamental decision in this hyper-political atmosphere of a presidential election whether we want to continue politics as usual, which in my view is a dead end, or we want to work together to achieve what we know is important for the American people, that is, short-term relief for prices at the pump, and it is a long-term energy policy that frees us from the dependence on oil from foreign countries.
So, Mr. Speaker, having said that, let me just close by coming back to this very important bill. It is a study. It is not necessarily important for many other parts of the country. But one of the things that makes this Congress and this country great is mutual respect. When there is a disaster in the Gulf Coast, all States pull together to help out. When there is flooding in the Midwest, all States pull together. When there is an opportunity for a small State like Vermont to take a step with Wild and Scenic River study that will help us and help our citizens enjoy the beauty of our land, I seek the help of my colleagues to let us accomplish that goal.
It is my request and my urging that all Members vote ``yes'' on the previous question and on the rule.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Source