National Nuclear Security Administration Continuing Appropriations Resolution, 2014

Floor Speech

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Ms. KAPTUR. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank my colleague, Congressman Frelinghuysen, for his comments though, obviously, I have serious reservations about this bill because our country has been the world's shining example in how a democratic Republic can actually work efficiently, successfully, and democratically. Yet, today, we continue with the shenanigans from a minority of the majority, wasting God's good time.

For my colleagues who are listening, and for the country, let me say this bill should be coming to the floor at a level of $31 billion to meet the national security, energy, and water needs of this country. The measure before us today contains $10.6 billion and only deals with the nuclear security portion of the legislation. That is simply not sufficient for this great country.

We cannot continue to be governed by staggering from manufactured crisis to manufactured crisis, and the folly--some would say madness--of what is going on here must be stopped. It is creating great uncertainty inside this economy, and it is harming us globally with our trading partners and with countries who simply can't understand what is happening here.

Over the course of the last several weeks, my Republican colleagues have loudly called for compromise. They have said, Negotiate to reopen the government, but, all the while, changing their demands daily and moving the goalpost. They moved it up the field, down the field, off the field. We start the day and never know exactly where we are.

Mr. Speaker, the Democratic Members of this House have agreed to a total spending level that is the Republican level of $986 billion for all of our bills. That is not a number I personally agree with. It will not meet our Nation's needs, but it is a compromise offered in good faith to move our country forward.

My advice to all those who are listening is to bring that clean continuing resolution with the Republican budget number in it to the floor. Let's reopen the government, and we can deal with our tangential issues that have nothing to do with operating the Government of the United States.

Our economy is still in the process of recovering from a horrible Great Recession. We have still not come back to the preemployment levels in this country that were so deeply harmed by the Wall Street-induced housing crisis. Shouldn't we be debating ways to spur economic growth, not continuing to debate a shutdown that is slowing economic growth?

Under the Obama administration, we have had 42 consecutive months of economic growth. We are crawling out of a mammoth hole. The American people view the disarray here as very, very destabilizing to their own security because they are worried about their futures, and what is going on here adds to their anxiety.

For the entire country, the Republican shutdown is already having real and negative consequences. Over 800,000 workers have been furloughed. They are having to borrow on their credit cards because they don't know how they are going to make their mortgage payment. They have to put their kids in school. They have to buy groceries.

From coast-to-coast, we know--although we don't have people in place at the Department of Labor right now--that over 66,000--up to 300,000--more unemployment claims have now been filed in the country because of what is going on due to these 800,000 more people that have gotten some form of a pink slip.

For the entire country, this shutdown is wrong and unnecessary. The impacts will be felt across this economy--and already are--in the services that the American taxpayers pay for and that the Federal Government has, up to now, provided. As we continue to shortchange critical energy and infrastructure investments so vital to a strong economy, we will witness, as dusk follows dawn, the slowing of economic growth and the hindering of American competitiveness.

Let me turn to what is not funded by the piecemeal approach that this bill represents. Our bill should be coming to the floor with all the parts of the Department of Energy and Army Corps of Engineers and National Nuclear Security Administration in it. The bill should be coming to us at a level of $31 billion. The bill is but one-third of that. At a level of $10.6 billion, it is two-thirds underfunded.

Let me turn to what is not funded in the bill that is before us.

First of all, the Corps of Engineers, one of the most important instrumentalities in our government to create jobs, is not even in this cynical bill. Communities across our country will continue to feel the consequences of this decreased investment. We should be doing more to prevent flooding, to build infrastructure, to create jobs, not less.

For those of you who have been yelling from the rooftops about the Harbor Maintenance Trust Fund, this bill does nothing--zero--for your ports and harbors.

This bill does not fund any of the energy technology accounts so critical to our Nation becoming energy independent again. As our foreign competitors double down to develop 21st century technology--look at the Chinese stealing our solar technology--and undermine our markets through illegal dumping and intellectual property poaching, our choice in this bill: do nothing.

So, renewable energy will receive cost competitiveness by whom? Which countries will succeed? Who will develop it and own that technology? According to this, we are ceding the turf to them, ceding the field to them.

If you look at U.S. trade accounts, you don't have to be a mathematical genius. What is the number one category of trade deficit of this country? Imported energy. And what is the number two category of trade deficit? Automotive and automotive parts. It is all connected. If America doesn't heal those accounts, we become weaker as a country; we have fewer jobs here at home, less wealth creation here at home.

And this particular bill is absent any forward thinking about new energy systems for our country. The

United States has spent $2.3 trillion importing petroleum just since 2003.

I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say we have a $17 trillion debt that we have to pay off. We sure do. And where do you think it has come from? It has come from the lack of wealth creation inside this country for a quarter of a century, starting with imported energy.

This represents thousands and thousands and millions of jobs across this country lost and dollars out of the pockets of working-class Americans who see their purchases of fuel transferred to build giant hotels in Dubai, supporting universities in Dubai, all across the Middle East, while we see companies close, communities shut down, Detroit go bankrupt; and all these problems because we are not energy independent and we are not transportation independent.

These are dollars spent not in much-needed job creation but siphoned off overseas, assisting our competitors in developing their economies and their energy futures, not our own.

Is it any wonder that America has a debt? It is rooted in very major holes inside this economy. You could start with two wars. What did those cost us? Probably $4 trillion to $6 trillion--unpaid for. There wasn't any war tax imposed when President Bush took us to war.

I remember Donald Rumsfeld saying, Well, you have got to go to war with the military you have. Well, they borrowed to do that, and now this President has begun to keep his promise to the American people. We are out of Iraq and we are moving out of Afghanistan, as we try to hold those sad places together with our allies.

The housing crisis of 2008, it is anybody's guess what that cost us, but we know it hollowed out money creation in this country. We have the largest transfer of wealth and loss of equity in modern history. Do you think you crawl out of that in a month or 2 months? It takes years. We have had 42 months of steady job creation.

The trade deficit, America hasn't had a balanced trade account in three decades. Since 1975, the cumulative trade deficit of this country was $8.4 trillion. There was more petroleum coming in here from abroad than American energy exports out, more cars and auto parts in here from abroad than cars and auto parts out, and more electronics components coming in here than American electronics exports out.

So if you add up $8.4 trillion of trade deficit, $6 trillion of war expenditures, if you take the cost of the meltdown on Wall Street--only God knows how many trillions that cost us--is it any wonder that the United States has a budget deficit and debt and the Federal Government is trying to hold the Republic together and our 50 States from coast-to-coast? It is pretty clear to me what is going on here.

So we look at this bill. Our Republic will not compete in the 21st century and beyond if we further reduce investments in energy and cede our energy future to other countries. The bill before us today does nothing about that. In fact, in one of the most important related sectors to us, manufacturing, this bill does nothing in manufacturing.

One of the reasons we don't have as much economic muscle in this country is because every community you go to, what do you see? Shuttered factories. Every product you pick up, what does it say? ``Made in China.'' Anytime I go to the store and find anything made in America, I buy it in hopes that it will help somebody somewhere along the way.

This bill does nothing for manufacturing. We have lost 15 percent of our manufacturing jobs. And it isn't just because of technology; it is because they have been shipped out, outsourced, made in China, not made in the USA, made in countries some of my constituents don't even know where they are, and these goods come in here. And every time American jobs get displaced in the manufacturing sector, 8.8 million manufacturing jobs disappear.

Manufacturing is one of the most important drivers in our economy, and yet we have a huge trade deficit in manufacturing. There is little merit in using Federal dollars to foster technological advances or breakthroughs for products that are not ultimately manufactured domestically in our country. This bill usually provides a means for us to do more to reverse the trend of domestic firms shifting manufacturing overseas because, to put it simply, domestic manufacturing drives domestic innovation, and that drives wealth creation and job creation in our country. This bill does nothing in the advanced manufacturing sector--off the table.

How sad. How sad for those people across our country who know the value added from manufacturing.

This bill does nothing for science or advanced science and energy. Return on investments from our publicly funded research and development ranges from 20 to 67 percent. What a bang for the buck. With this rate of return, we should be passing a bill that invests in science and high sciences, but that is not happening inside this bill. In fact, across this country, at all of our major labs, the workers are furloughed or have the threat of being furloughed hanging over them--at Livermore, at Sandia, at Argonne. The brain power of this country is being put on the shelf while they watch this charade here inside this Chamber.

This bill does nothing to address the funding for the Office of Environmental Management, whose mission is to complete the safe cleanup of what they call an ``environmental legacy'' and that I call a ``nuclear mess,'' brought about by five decades of nuclear weapons development and government-sponsored nuclear energy research.

So what do we do to clean up nuclear mess around our country in this bill? Zero. We do nothing.

What about our promises to the people who live near those communities? What about those who sacrifice so much for America's nuclear superiority? We shut the door. So long. Nothing. There is nothing in this bill.

This energy and water bill is one of the most critical investments we can make in this country. It should promote job creation. It should ensure national security. It should protect and promote our vital infrastructure and advance American competitiveness through energy independence and through strengthening manufacturing and scientific capability right here at home, right here in the good old USA. Unfortunately, a minority of the majority of Republicans is choosing to ignore all of these critical investments in order to execute a blatantly political stunt that is already harming our country, upsetting our people, and tamping down on job growth.

Mr. Speaker, our Nation is stronger when we come together. We as a people can solve the serious challenges facing our country; yet here we find ourselves today again, wasting time on a lopsided bill which only extends the GOP-driven shutdown. We should be spending our time passing a clean continuing resolution, not holding the entire country hostage to a reckless political stunt that some must get great pleasure out of but that is such a sadistic approach to the governing of this country. We ought to work together toward a long-term solution, not continue to award a faction of one party which has no interest in governing this country.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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APTUR. Mr. Speaker, I would thank the chairman for that courtesy and just say that I would urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this particular piecemeal continuing resolution. Hopefully, others will come to their senses and we will be able to vote for a clean continuing resolution, which I think the majority of members of our subcommittee would appreciate, so we can reopen the government and deal with all of the responsibilities that we have under this particular bill and meet our responsibilities to energy and water across this country.

I thank the gentleman for his courtesy, and I hope to reciprocate sometime.

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