The legislative intent of this amendment is to increase funding for the highly successful Energy Star program by $3 million, bringing the total funding for this program up to the President's request of $6.2 million. This increase in…

Mr. Speaker, the American middle class is getting angry. At a time when the richest 1 percent of the population already owns more wealth than the bottom 95 percent, what we are seeing is the CEOs of large corporations who contribute huge…

would my friend from California deny that today veterans all over the United States are being wait-listed, cannot get into the VA system because of lack of adequate funding for our veterans, and, at the same exact time, Congress gives huge…

Our current trade policy is an absolute disaster. Export-Import Bank is an inherent part of that disastrous trade policy. The gentleman I am going to ask to speak in a moment comes from the State of Ohio, as does the chairman of the full…

I offered an amendment that received 135 votes, including a majority of the Democrats and 22 Republicans, and that very simple amendment said that a company receiving Ex-Im funds must not lay off a greater percentage of U.S. workers than…

one of the untold and unspoken-about crises facing this country is that in many respects we are losing our democratic traditions. As you know, France recently had an election, and 80 percent of the people voted in that election. We are…

To my mind, the great crisis facing this country in terms of agriculture is that every single day we are seeing family farmers being forced off the land, people who, in some instances, have been, their families have been on that land…

American agriculture now stands at a crossroads. The question that we as a society have to answer is do we want an agricultural system that is comprised of very few, very large corporate producers--probably owned by one of the largest…

Mr. Chairman, I think the issue here is so clear-cut that it is almost laughable. I was a mayor of a city for 8 years, and when someone from the business community came in and said they wanted something, I said, Let's talk about it. What…

I have some very, very strong concerns about the direction of the Export-Import Bank. It is my belief that unless we make fundamental changes in that bank and the way that it functions, that we should eliminate it because as presently…

Last summer, I worked with my very good friend, the distinguished chairman of the subcommittee, the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Bereuter) on issues relating to the Export-Import Bank. In fact, we introduced a bill, H.R. 2517, that would…

the gentleman comes from Detroit where General Motors is. How many workers have been laid off by General Motors, a major recipient of the Export-Import Bank? Does the gentleman have any idea?

But I would say any objective look at what goes out there, say, in terms of talk radio, is that the tilt is not only right but extreme right.

I think my friend said it very, very well. This is a great Nation, and we have enormous things to be proud of. But I remain very, very concerned that fewer and fewer people own more and more of our economy, own more and more of our media…

Let me reclaim the time from my friend. I have appeared on national TV programs, I am going to be on one tonight, as a matter of fact, but the issue of why the United States is the only country in the world without a national health care…

I have suggested to you, and you do not deny it, that in the last election more people voted for Gore and Nader than voted for the President and Mr. Buchanan, suggesting that we are somewhat of a centrist country. You say that the reason…

If you are a progressive, then I would hate to see who is conservative, with all due respect.

what are some of the most important issues facing the vast majority of the people? The President of the United States seems to think that the most important issue is that we give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest people in this country. In…

I would characterize the United States as being kind of a centrist country, not right wing, not left wing, kind of centrist. If you turned on talk radio today, would my friend agree with me that what you would hear is one extreme right…

You would be hard-pressed to name national progressive radio talk show hosts. We could name one of the Limbaughs of the world ad nauseam on the right. But the bottom line is, as the gentleman from Illinois just indicated, when you have a…

The bottom line here is that one has got to be very naive not to understand that companies like General Electric that spend millions of dollars on lobbyists here to take jobs to China, that send money to lower their taxes, that send money…

But I am suggesting that it is not the market. The people in this country want a variety of viewpoints. Talk radio is predominantly extreme right wing. It is extreme right wing because the stations are owned by conservative multinational…

The current campaign finance system is a disaster, and it is an embarrassment to American democracy. Shays-Meehan is not going to solve all the problems. It is not going to do away with all of the influence that corporate America and the…

In a time of a $6 trillion national debt and a growing deficit, a recession and a war, do we provide hundreds of billions of dollars in tax breaks to the wealthiest 1 percent of the population, people with a minimum income of $375,000 a…

Mr. Chairman, today we are talking about bioterrorism and how to protect the American people against this nightmare, and that is an appropriate subject of discussion and something that the American people want us to address. But we must be…