The Federal Government's Shutdown and Its Impacts on our Department of Energy National Laboratories

Floor Speech

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Mr. SWALWELL of California. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order, the Federal Government's Shutdown and Its Impacts on our Department of Energy National Laboratories.

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Is there objection to the request of the gentleman from California?

There was no objection.

Mr. SWALWELL of California. I also want to thank Science Committee Ranking Member Johnson for her support of national laboratory employees.

Mr. Speaker, I came to Congress knowing that in the policies I helped and worked to enact and the legislative agenda that I would work on that I could either help people or hurt people. And the decision for me was quite easy, Mr. Speaker: I came to Congress to help people. I came to Congress to think big.

I was very excited when I was told prior to being sworn in that I was going to be serving on the Science Committee. I was even more thrilled when I learned that I would have the opportunity to serve as the lead Democrat on the Energy Subcommittee, knowing that the Energy Subcommittee would have partial jurisdiction over two national laboratories which are in my congressional district in Livermore, California: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory.

These two national laboratories, with about 6,500 employees at Livermore and 1,500 at Sandia, work every day to uphold our national security mission to maintain our nuclear weapons stockpile and also provide for energy security for citizens in the United States.

Prior to being elected to Congress, I had the opportunity multiple times as a city council member in Dublin to visit these national laboratories. And since being elected to Congress, I have had opportunities to visit the laboratories and also interact with their officials here in Washington.

What I have learned about these employees, these scientists, these engineers who work at our national laboratories is they care deeply about our country, but they also care very deeply about the science and the research that they work on every day and the laboratory environment that allows them to do that. So you can imagine how hard it is right now. We are in day 11 of a government shutdown, and laboratory employees were told about 2 days ago that, effective next week, they will be furloughed, too.

As you all know, Federal workers across our country from almost every agency have been furloughed or are working without pay. But at our national laboratories, which operate as GOCO facilities, which stands for government-owned/contractor-operated, these workers are not Federal workers but they are government contractors. They are scientists.

It is estimated that Livermore, California, has more Ph.D.'s per capita than any other city in the world because of the approximately 7,500 employees at our national laboratory. It was one of the hardest phone calls I have had to take since being sworn in to Congress when both laboratory directors called and said that in an hour they were going to tell their employees that they were going to be furloughed, and that they needed me to do anything I could in the Congress to help to get the government up and running and make sure the United States pays its bills so that their workers can continue to do the great things they are doing at our national laboratories.

This evening, I look forward to talking about what caused our shutdown, the truth behind what has caused the shutdown. I look forward to talking about the effect that the shutdown is having on people inside and outside of government--employees who are Federal workers, people who depend and rely on government services, people outside who work as government contractors--with a particular focus on what is happening at our national laboratories.

I also want to offer what I see as a way forward and a way that we can get out of this government shutdown, a way that we can get the Federal workforce working again, a way that we can make sure that our laboratory experts, our scientists, are able to go back to work and do great things to keep us safe and secure and move the ball forward on our energy policies.

I also want to tell all laboratory employees that today we submitted to Secretary Moniz, Members of Congress from the California delegation and Senator Feinstein, a letter asking Secretary Moniz at the Department of Energy to allow our national laboratory employees--and there are about 30,000 of them across the country who have been furloughed--to be paid backpay for the time that they are furloughed.

I am honored to be joined on that letter by Bay Area House Members Zoe Lofgren and also Jerry McNerney, who will join me tonight. I am going to yield in a moment to both of those Members and allow them to talk about the national labs and the shutdown.

Congressman Jerry McNerney, who has represented the Tri-Valley area prior to redistricting back in 2010, knows greatly about our national laboratories. He is a Ph.D. serving in the Congress. He has a Ph.D. in mathematics and is somebody who worked as a wind engineer and has worked at our national laboratories. He will talk about the effect on our national laboratories.

Another champion of our national laboratories is Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, who also serves on the Science Committee with me. She is somebody who has been a champion for our national laboratories, and particularly Lawrence Livermore and Sandia. Although they are not in her congressional district, I am grateful for her constant support on every issue, knowing that she and I share a vision and a goal that one day we will realize fusion ignition.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Lofgren).

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Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you to the gentlelady from California (Ms. Lofgren), who has been a tireless advocate for our national laboratories and is a fighter on the Science Committee day in and day out as we wage these battles and try and think big and challenge our colleagues to do everything we can to move the ball forward so that we can reach that point where we have clean energy fusion, where we have a renewable source that is safe and reliable and does not require us to look across oceans and time zones to provide our country's energy.

With that, I would like to yield to the gentleman from California, my colleague, my former Congressman, my friend, who today is honoring Bow Tie Friday as well, the gentleman from California (Mr. McNerney).

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Mr. SWALWELL of California. Thank you to the gentleman from California. His passion for our laboratories, for science really shows. I am so glad he talked about what the Democrats have already done as far as compromising. That is really important here because I had a town hall last weekend. I went home on the one day we didn't have votes, and I went to the City Hall Chamber in Dublin, California, the council chamber there.

A number of folks rightfully asked me, What are the Democrats willing to give up in these negotiations?

I think it is important for folks to know that the Democrats have already made concessions, that we have made very, very difficult concessions. The best way to describe those concessions is with that ugly, terrible word called ``sequester,'' which has been across-the-board cuts, and they have hurt our national labs with these deep, deep cuts.

This chart here demonstrates it better than anything I have seen, which is that you have the President's budget, which is about $1.2 trillion. Then you see the 2011 debt limit deal at $1.6 trillion. You see Paul Ryan's budget at $967 billion. Then, across the Capitol, the Senate passed a budget at $986 billion. To get a budget to keep the government running, you need what I call the Holy Trinity. You need the Senate, the House, and the President to all agree on one number.

You have the President, who wanted something in the low trillions. You have the Senate that compromised at $986 billion. The House has said that we will take $986 billion, and the President has now agreed that he would take $986 billion. The House has one very, very harsh exception. It will take $986 billion, but it

started with wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The Democrats have compromised. This chart shows that we have made deep and hard concessions during this budget negotiation. The biggest one, as I mentioned, is this mindless, across-the-board cut called ``sequester.'' Now, sequester is not targeted cuts. We are not going after bad programs. Rather, we are taking good programs, and we are taking bad programs, and we are seeing across-the-board cuts. It is indiscriminate.

At our laboratories, they have programs called LDRD, Laboratory Directed Research and Development. In the private sector, many companies allow their employees, especially in high-tech and innovation, about ``20 percent time,'' is what they call it. Google calls it ``20 percent time.'' So, for one day a week, effectively, an employee is allowed to work outside his assigned area--his subject matter, his expertise--on something that he thinks can move the ball forward in his industry. So ``20 percent time,'' they call it. At the laboratories, they call this ``LDRD.'' They are given about 8 1/2 percent. So it is an over 50 percent less cut than what you are seeing in the private sector. It is 8 1/2 percent that they are getting at our national laboratories. Because of these sequester cuts, that 8 1/2 percent has been cut by more than half. Now they are below 4 percent for their LDRD, and the LDRD work at our national laboratories has produced some tremendous results in science.

I just want to go through some of them.

The gentleman from California talked about nonproliferation and what the research has done at the National Laboratories as far as reducing the stockpiles across the world.

Well, because of the LDRD work, what we have seen is that we are able to better test nuclear weapons and verify countries in the numbers they are claiming they have for nuclear weapons across the world because we have this LDRD research.

Also, we are able to provide cleaner energy vehicles because of LDRD research. The Volt, the Chevy Volt, for example. The Chevy Volt would not be able to cruise on battery power were it not for the advanced cathode technology that emerged from a National Laboratory.

Also, airport security. We are all so thankful and grateful that at the airport they are able to detect many of the explosives that terrorists would seek to use to take down an airplane. LDRD we can thank for much of the research that has come out that makes our airports so much safer.

I was a prosecutor for 7 years. In so many cases, whether it was homicides or sexual assaults, we were able to put perpetrators away because of DNA research that was conducted at our National Laboratories. To DNA testing we can now add human antibody detection, a precise method of catching suspects and attaching them to crime scenes. This was something I was able to use in a courtroom to great effect. That science is so powerful when you have so many questions of who committed the crime that all jurors can accept the scientific research that has come out of LDRD and the DNA advances that we have seen there.

I want to yield now to a colleague of mine from New Mexico who represents the Albuquerque area and the other Sandia laboratory, our sister over there in New Mexico. I have Sandia and Livermore and the gentlelady from New Mexico has Sandia in New Mexico. I am going to yield to her and have her tell us about this shutdown and what effect it has had on our National Laboratories, particularly in her district.

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Mr. SWALWELL of California. I thank the gentlelady from California. She is absolutely correct. Democrats have compromised. We have accepted a $986 billion sequester budget, which the gentlelady and I do not accept. When you cut those programs, we are cutting the opportunities to lift people out of poverty. I agree with the gentlelady, we have made deep, deep concessions when it comes to a budget. We are ready to open up the government and turn the lights back on, but we are doing so at a painful price with the budget we are accepting.

With that, I will close. I want to say to what my colleague from Berkeley and Oakland was saying: Keep our national labs open. Keep those great scientists at Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, keep them on the job, moving the job forward on science.

It was alluded to earlier that the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, as the government that funds it was unraveling 2 weeks ago, at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, they achieved something they had been attempting to achieve for the past 3-4 years. That is fusion. For the first time, they have been able to get more energy out than what they have put in. This is a remarkable achievement. They have achieved fusion, and they are knocking on the door of ignition at the National Ignition Facility. They are closer than they have ever been. They are closer now to meeting the 84th milestone. They have 84 milestones they have to meet. They have met 83 of them. They are so close to providing this renewable energy resource which will change the game on how every person in the world receives their energy, no longer requiring us to be dependent on foreign sources of energy if we can achieve this and then transfer this technology to the private market.

The data achieved at NIF is critical for understanding nuclear fusion, which we need for keeping a reliable stockpile of nuclear weapons. So this is a critical energy issue and a critical defense issue. Understanding fusion, as I mentioned, allows us to get closer to the goal of civilian fusion energy. And nuclear fusion energy, unlike what we currently use, nuclear fission essentially would produce no waste or carbon emissions. It is the ``holy grail'' of clean energy, and I want to make sure that the scientists at Lawrence Livermore are able to accomplish it.

Sandia also has a facility called the Combustion Research Facility. This is a partnership, a public-private partnership with our automakers and those who are making automobiles in Detroit. What they are trying to do is make the American automobile engine more efficient at the Combustion Research Facility. There are important, remarkable achievements going on at our national laboratories.

With the furlough at our laboratory, all of their exceptional work will be put on hold. So what does that mean in relation to the National Ignition Facility and the Combustion Research Facility? It means that work will stop that is being done to maintain our nuclear stockpile; the great fusion energy project I mentioned; efforts to understand climate change will stop; all while we stand still, other countries like Russia and China will zoom past us in science, math, and renewable energy.

And this isn't just what happens today. If these highly skilled, highly intelligent employees are prevented from working, they will go somewhere else. These people are Ph.D.'s. They will find somewhere else to go.

At the beginning of the hour, I said I would not only tell us how we got here, what it means, I would also offer a way forward. The way forward, as I see it, is for the Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner, to allow this House to have an up-or-down vote on passing the same budget that the Senate has agreed to, the same budget that the President of the United States said he would sign. We know the votes are there. Twenty-five to 30 Republicans have said they would pass that vote.

So let's get the government back to work. Let's end the partisanship games, the obsession with defunding the Affordable Care Act, and let's get the government back to work. In the meantime, a short-term solution I have offered is that Secretary Moniz allow furloughed employees at all of our national laboratories, at all 17 sites, all 30,000 employees, to receive back furlough pay.

I have also worked since January with a small group of freshmen, about 30 of us, Republicans and Democrats evenly divided. It is called the United Solutions Caucus. We have been meeting almost every week since sworn into office, pledging that we will work together and build the foundation of a bipartisan relationship. In these trying times and dark days over the last 2 weeks, we have met nearly every other day, talking about what we can do to work together to turn back on the lights of the government for the greatest democracy of the world. This group gives me hope.

Just yesterday, the group met with two senior members, a Republican and a Democrat, from the Appropriations Committee. Nobody in that group and neither of those senior members want to see the government continue to be shut down, so I am hopeful that we can continue to talk. I am hopeful that this group can continue to work together, the United Solutions Caucus, to provide a way forward, a way that ensures that the Federal workforce is back to work; and for my district, ensures that those hardworking scientists who want to think big, just like I did, the same reason I came to Congress, that want to move the ball forward on our nuclear and energy security, that they can go back to work and they aren't ever furloughed.

So I ask my colleagues on the other side: Did you come here to help people or did you come here to hurt people? I think you came here for the same reason I did, to help people, and so I hope you will prove it to the American people. Allow an up-or-down vote; allow us to pass a clean resolution; and together, all of us, Republicans and Democrats, can help the American people.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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