Bill Pascrell: “Thank you, Mr. Hastings. I rise, Mr. Speaker, in strong opposition to the rule and the underlying bill before us today…”

“Thank you, Mr. Hastings. I rise, Mr. Speaker, in strong opposition to the rule and the underlying bill before us today, H.R. 761, the National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2013. I just think it goes too far. I urge my colleagues to defeat the previous question and take up this legislation, which we've worked on for a full year now, the Bring Jobs Home Act, a bill which, for the first time, makes sure we promote insourcing of jobs and stop the corporate welfare business for outsourcing jobs. The underlying legislation would set a dangerous precedent by waiving mining projects from environmental reviews and eliminating public access to the justice system itself. Pushing mining projects through the permitting process is sure to continue to degrade our environment and create workplace situations which are definitely unsafe. But it won't solve the employment problem. Since that's been injected into the discussion, the legislation will simply allow our Nation's resources to be used to pad the pockets of the same international corporations who ship jobs overseas; and, by the way, that process of shipping jobs overseas is subsidized by the Federal Government. We have for years helped corporations send jobs overseas. What we should be doing is helping them get jobs back to America, particularly since we see an upgrading of the past 16 months in the manufacturing sector of our economy.…”