Commerce, Justice, Science, And Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010

Floor Speech

COMMERCE, JUSTICE, SCIENCE, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS ACT, 2010

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Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join our chairman, the gentleman from West Virginia, in beginning consideration of H.R. 2847, making appropriations for fiscal year 2010 for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, Science and related agencies. The bill provides funding for programs whose impact ranges from the safety of people in their homes and communities to the study and exploration of space.

The bill before the House today addresses a number of national needs and requirements, and I think it is important for the Record to show that I believe, and I think any fair-minded person would, to say that the chairman has done a commendable job in balancing the many competing interests and has put together a solid bill in a fair and evenhanded way.

At times I have felt the minority has not been treated very, very fair, and I will say with the gentleman, we have been treated very, very fair, and I think it is important to make sure everyone knows that. We have not been foreclosed from anything.

I also want to thank the members of the subcommittee for their help and assistance, including the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Lewis, and the Republican members of the subcommittee, Mr. Culberson, Mr. Aderholt and Mr. Bonner.

I also want to thank the staff on both sides of the aisle who spent long hours in putting this bill and report together. The majority staff: John Blazey, Tracey LaTurner, Dixon Butler, Adrienne Simonson, Diana Simpson, Darek Newby and Scott Sammis. And the minority staff: Mike Ringler and John Martens. And on my staff, Tom Culligan, and on the chairman's staff, Sally Moorhead and Julie Aaronson.

Overall, the bill, as I said, includes important increases to priority programs, including the need to address violent crime, particularly crime related to drug trafficking and gangs; and the need to boost our Nation's competitiveness through more investments in scientific research and improving science, math in education.

However, I believe we could have met the most pressing needs by prioritizing within the lower allocation. This allocation given to the subcommittee is $64.8 billion, which is $6.8 billion or 11.7 percent above 2009. This allocation allows virtually every agency, account and program to grow, and I believe it is more than a sufficient amount to address the highest priority needs.

The rate of increased spending in the bill corresponds with the majority's overall budget blueprint, which increases discretionary spending by $77 billion over the current fiscal year. Since the other party took control of Congress, nondefense, nonveterans affairs discretionary spending has increased by 85 percent.

This rate of spending does not represent a step toward restoring fiscal balance. There was an article today I think in Reuters mentioning that our Nation, if we continue the current course, will lose our triple A bond rating, it is the earliest date I have ever seen, by 2010. It is 2009 now. That means next year. So how we deal with that is really a tough, but an important, issue.

Some highlights: for the Department of Commerce, the bill includes $13.85 billion, including an increase of $4 billion to conduct the 2010 Census.

The chairman has included strong funding for trade enforcement, which I appreciate, particularly with regard to China and the full request for Commerce Department programs to enforce dual-use export controls and respond to cyber-espionage threats.

For the Justice Department, the bill includes $27.5 billion, $672 million above the request. The FBI's operating level is funded at the President's request, which is necessary in order to continue current staffing operation levels, which also fund the urgent increases in counterterrorism programs.

Too often we fail to recognize the critical and often dangerous work that the FBI is doing at home and abroad in order to detect and prevent terrorist attacks. This is incredibly important work, and the bill strongly supports those efforts while also providing necessary funding for the FBI to fulfill its traditional roles and address emerging problems such as mortgage and financial fraud, child exploitation, and the spread of violent gangs.

On the gang issue, this bill includes a new $35 million initiative to fund the FBI's Safe Streets Task Force and ATF Violent Crime Impact Teams. This will fund new task forces and new positions on existing task forces in the areas, which is pretty much the entire country, plagued by gang violence.

The bill increases State and local law enforcement accounts by $197 million. Despite this increased funding for SCAAP, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, the program is reduced to $300 million from the current level of $400 million, and the chairman, appropriately so I think, has drafted an amendment to increase SCAAP that I hope will pass with bipartisan support.

In the area of science, the bill includes important initiatives in science competitiveness. Our country is falling behind. We have about 95,000 engineers working for the space program, and China has about 200,000.

The previous administration launched the American Competitiveness Initiative, which included a commitment to double the funding are for basic scientific research over 10 years and also to strengthen education and encourage entrepreneurship. I am pleased that the chairman has done this and also that the new administration embraced this goal.

For the National Science Foundation, the bill provides $6.9 billion, a 6.9 percent increase above the current year for research that will set the groundwork for the development of new technologies and science education that will ensure we have a well-educated and skilled workforce to improve competitiveness.

For NASA, the bill includes $18.2 billion. This includes the full request for aeronautics, the shuttle program and the International Space Station, as well as funding above the request for NASA science and education. However, the bill freezes funding at the current level for exploration activities pending the outcome of a blue ribbon panel review of future options.

The result of this cut is a funding level that will not be sufficient to sustain the current development scheduled for the next generation of space exploration vehicles and would result in severe disruption to the Nation's human spaceflight program.

I look forward to the recommendations, as the chairman does, of the review panel being led by Norm Augustine, and to working with the chairman and other Members to ensure that the final bill will include sufficient funds to continue the U.S. leadership role in human spaceflight.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the important language that is included in the bill regarding the release and transfer of Guantanamo detainees. This bill does not prevent the closure of Guantanamo. It seeks only to ensure in the process of carrying out the executive order that national security, the security of our communities and the security of our men and women in uniform overseas are the highest priority.

The bill prohibits the release of any detainees into the United States. It also prohibits transfer to the U.S. for prosecution as well as transfers or release to other countries unless and until the administration presents a comprehensive report to the Congress on the proposed disposition of each individual. This report will detail security risks and measures to mitigate those risks and will include a certification that affected State governments have been notified in advance.

Regarding transfers to other countries, the report must address the risk of recidivism. Some are going to Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Saudi Arabia has funded many of these radical madrasas up on the Pakistan-Afghan border, and Yemen has been the center of a lot of terrorist activities. The report must address the risks of recidivism and detail the terms of any financial agreements related to the acceptance of the individuals transferred.

The language will ensure that detainees are not released into our communities, and it places important restrictions and conditions on future transfers and releases.

It has become clear in the last few days that the administration is rushing to release and transfer as many of these detainees as possible before the will of Congress to place restrictions can be enacted.

In closing, despite concerns about the overall levels of spending, the bill represents the chairman's best efforts to distribute the allocation he was given to the various competing requirements under the subcommittee's jurisdiction. I commend the chairman and I thank the chairman for his openness and his thoroughness to the minority.

I would say that the chairman held a week of hearings on prison reform. We, unfortunately, have the largest per capita prison population in the world. They were the best hearings that I have seen held in this Congress.

Based on that, and I want to commend Mr. Mollohan, based on that, the Council of Governments and the Pew Foundation will be putting on a major conference this fall that I am sure the chairman will be very much involved in to establish the best practices, because you cannot just put a man or woman in prison and lock them up and throw away the key without any job training and things like that.

There was not a lot of coverage. I don't think The New York Times ever covered the story. I don't think many of the major papers did. But it was the best hearings in the time that I have been here, and I want to thank the chairman for his efforts and concerns. I think a lot of positive things will come out of that.

Lastly, I am pleased to operate under an open rule today, and look forward to the consideration of the many amendments that have been filed and will be urging my Members on this side at final passage to support the bill.

I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. WOLF. Mr. Chairman, in closing, as we look at this bill, I know there is going to be a series of amendments at different times, and I think a lot of the amendments that will be offered will be from Members who are very sincerely concerned about the economic crisis that our country faces. There was an article today in Reuters. Let me read it to the Members here. It says:

``New York Reuters: Technical analyst Robert Prechter on Monday said he sees the United States losing its top AAA credit rating by the end of 2010, as he stuck by a deeply bearish outlook on the U.S. economy and stock market.

``Prechter, known for predicting the 1987 stock market crash, joins a growing group of market heavyweights in forecasting the United States will lose its top credit rating as the government issues trillions of dollars in debt to fund efforts to bail out the economy.

``Fears about the long-term vulnerability of the prized U.S. credit rating came to the fore after Standard & Poor's in May lowered its outlook on Britain, threatening the U.K.'s top AAA rating. That move raised fears that the United States could face a similar risk, with the hefty amounts of government debt issued in both countries to pay for financial rescues causing budget deficits to swell.''

So as Members offer these, I would just say there are some things there that are important in the country. We have got to get control of spending. But in other areas, our country is facing a crisis--in the area of science. Last year China and India graduated 700,000 engineers, and we only graduated 70,000, and 40 percent of our engineers are foreign students who are returning to their country.

And, lastly, in the space program, we have 95,000 engineers working on the space program. But China has 200,000. And unless we do some fairly dramatic things, our factories will close and we will lose the edge in science and engineering. So we need to gain control of the entitlement spending, and I hope to be able to offer an amendment to the Financial Services bill. I'm going to offer an amendment that sets up a bipartisan commission to put every spending program on the table, every spending program in the government on the table, and give that bipartisan commission an opportunity to then go around the country holding public hearings, but to send a proposal up to Congress and require the Congress to vote on it.

So I understand the frustration of many of the Members when they see this Congress failing to address the fundamental issues of spending in the Congress. And we also have the trustee's report showing that the Social Security system is beginning to go bankrupt faster, the Medicare system is going to go bankrupt faster, and young people have no confidence and believe that the Social Security system is not sound.

We have a moral obligation to deal with that, and I hope that Congress will.

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Mr. WOLF. I rise in support of the amendment.

As the gentleman says, Colombia is a strong ally and a partner in this hemisphere; and I support the Congress acting to implement U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement. The trade agreement that has been negotiated would bring important economic benefits to the U.S. and level the playing field between our countries. It would create jobs. The unemployment rate that just came out is 9.2 percent. Not to do this would border on being crazy. The gentleman's amendment would serve the ongoing debate by generating information about the economic impacts here in the U.S. of our failure to adopt the agreement. So I urge support of the amendment.

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