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Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, this resolution provides the Committee on Education and Labor with deposition authority in connection with its investigation of underground mine safety. The resolution also requires the Education and Labor Committee to report to the Rules Committee on its use of the authority by the end of this congressional session.
Mr. Speaker, we're here today with a pretty straightforward mission. We want to empower the men and women who are investigating the causes of the serious safety problems facing miners in America.
As we saw recently with the terrible disaster at Upper Big Branch Mine in Raleigh County, West Virginia, there's some combination of industrial wrongdoing there and inadequate regulation that we must address. The explosion at Upper Big Branch in April killed 29 coal miners, ripped apart an entire community and State, and was the worst mine disaster in this country since 1970.
Why is Congress involved? Because one of our most serious responsibilities as lawmakers is oversight and investigation. And from what we've been able to tell from the facts so far, there is an urgent and compelling need for the public to know all the facts surrounding this and other recent mining tragedies.
I come to this issue with a personal feeling. Many of my constituents back home and some here know that I was born in Harlan County, Kentucky, in the midst of some of the best bituminous coal on Earth. Some of my earliest memories are hearing the whistle blow at night over at the mine. Even the smallest child, as I was then, knew what that whistle meant. It meant serious trouble at the mine.
The pain and suffering endured by miners in Kentucky and West Virginia and everyplace else should inspire us to do everything in our power to make this dangerous and volatile work environment as safe as we possibly can. The bottom line should never supersede a human life.
The resolution before us today would give the House Committee on Education and Labor staff authority to take depositions as they pursue their investigation. We know that greater review of this issue is sorely needed. There are far too many unanswered questions surrounding underground coal mine operator compliance with the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act, and the safety of every single miner in this country depends on answering those questions.
Getting to the truth on mining safety is not a partisan issue, and empowering staff to get the truth is in everyone's interest. Granting a committee this sort of authority is not without precedent. In numerous times over the years, Congress has approved resolutions such as this to provide temporary powers to committees trying to get at the truth. And every piece of information that comes from the questioning will be obtained by and shared with members of the committee from both parties.
The House gave the Education and Labor Committee similar authority during a probe into a mining accident just a few years ago. It was in the 110th Congress that the Education and Labor Committee was given staff deposition authority in their 2007-2008 investigation into the deaths of nine miners and rescue workers at the Crandall Canyon Mine near Huntington, Utah. That led to strengthening mine safety with laws that may be too lax in enforcement.
Among the issues the committee wishes to delve into is the growth of the number of mine safety enforcement cases that are pending before the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission. The Commission is meant to serve as an independent agency that provides administrative trial and appellate review to contested citations, penalties, and worker retaliation cases.
In reality, though, the increased enforcement and tougher penalties that followed several high-profile mine accidents in 2005 and 2006 has swamped the Commission. Mine owners have tripled the number of violations that they appeal, and they contest 67 percent of all penalties that are assessed. As a result, the government is facing a lengthy backlog of cases at the Commission that has surged from 2,100 in 2006 to approximately 16,000 in February of this year.
This deposition power for the committee will help to prod reluctant witnesses who have important insight into this issue but might otherwise not be willing to offer testimony. This is an important tool, and I urge my colleagues to rise and support me on this plan here today.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, this has been a most interesting debate. As I started, I am terribly concerned about what caused the awful mine disaster in West Virginia. I look forward to finding out why that was. Lack of government oversight, without any question in my mind, will be a large part of it, just as we're finding out in the oil spill.
This has also been an interesting afternoon of playing charades. I have a 6-year-old granddaughter who loves to play a game with me. She will tell me a tall tale, and then I pretend to believe it. Then, at a moment of her choosing, she says, ``Gotcha.'' Don't let them ``getcha'' today. What they have been doing here is totally nongermane to this bill. And if you all run up and vote ``no'' on the previous question, they're not going to bring this up, because they can't.
Don't be taken in by this again. The Obama administration did not create this awful problem, but we're totally aware of it, and we have undertaken responsibility to clean it up. And we're going to do that. As soon as the supplemental bill comes, we're going to have one of the best chances in the world if we start to cut back the money that we're spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where we've already spent a trillion dollars, lost enormous numbers of our young soldiers, maimed many, many more. And it is time for us to cut that out. That, again, will start, along with other things we are doing, to get this country back on some solid footing.
Let me say to you once again, Please come down here and vote ``yes.'' Don't be fooled by this. I imagine that this is the beginning of every charade every week, sort of like what Mr. Perlmutter said about the COMPETES Act. Please don't forget, my colleagues, that twice we tried to vote out that bill to create jobs, put people back to work, and procedural games have killed it, to the great concern of the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce, to name a couple.
So this afternoon I want you to come down here as quick as you can, wherever you are, and put your ``yes'' in here so that we can get this done and to give Chairman Miller the opportunity to use this deposition authority with his staff to get to the bottom of this mine disaster. We have many disasters of all stripes that we're working on, as you know. Don't be held up by what we have been through here today. There's no question about it, it's nongermane.
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