speakers include white house counsel greg greg and john podesta. this lasts about an hour and a half. >> it was like the perfect foil for all of us. >> good evening, everyone. if i could quiet the crowd,

greg. -- mick greg. and this is your movies on demand screen. oh cool. (cable guy) so what are you going to do next? who are you? who is he? it's okay. well, i'm going to... activate over 100 hd channels? program his remote? sync his tv with his computer? wow. it's like you've been watching him all day. have you been watching me all day? no. (announcer) switch to verizon fios and get the ultimate home entertainment experience. plus up to $150 back. it's time for a coffee break. not quite. ♪ when i need a tasty treat ♪ ♪ a pick me up that lifts me off my feet ♪ ♪ i know what can cool us off! ♪ ♪ coffee toffee twisted frosty ♪ ♪ coffee toffee ♪ twisted frosty ♪ oh, baby, do you wanna get frosty with me! ♪ let me break it down. ♪ hand spun with real coffee, girl ♪ ♪ just like you like it! ♪ do you wanna get frosty with me! ♪ it's waaaay better than fast food. it's wendy's. frosty! geico's been saving people money and who doesn't want value for their dollar? been true since the day i made my first dollar. where is that dollar? i got it out to show you... uhh... was it rather old and wrinkly? yeah, you saw it? umm fancy a crisp? geico. fifteen minutes could save you fifteen percent or more on car insurance. orioles continue their alumni series at camden yards with the greats and favorites of the past, come k and feet the fans and relive the gold old days. there's larry sheets talking o fans, we have one of the legends, a true legend, and former teammate of rick demps, scott mcgregor, who has a real job. what's it like being out there with the fans? >> i love it. it's always fun. they always remember us, you know, they were great days, and part of our baltimore lore. so it's good to go old and an oriole. >> your roster is one that l ntinue to change. the and better dean roster, it's a short season club, the organization has to decide whh of the three short clubs to we send them to. aberdeen is the highest of the 3, so you usually get good players. >>> we do. we get -- ed will be our center fielder, and i don't know, i don't know if he'll come to u, i think it's -- i think the pr of being up there, and close y instead of sending them to west virginia where nobody knows where he's at. the one thing about the -- it starts out weekly, and by the end of the season, it's as good as the south atlantic league. but right now, you have the roster changing daily. >> let's go back to your first year at aberdeen when you had a chance to work with jim johnson. that sinker is look unhit-abl. did you have a lot to do with that? >> i had him and frederick, avenues he was always a sinker baller, but he wasn't throwing 97, he wasn't through 95. and the last year when they lengthened his side, he picked up the extra velocity. man, now he's throwing three r four miles harder. i decided to he throw slower, but they throw harder. >> the whole idea of a player development, in particular with pitchers is fascinating, if you look how the organization is structured, you have dave schmidt, who is the overall pitching coordinator for all the minor leagues, he makes sure e policy stays in place, and the various pitching coaches. the last couple of years, the orioles have elected to send you to aberdeen to get the guys as they are exposed to professiol ll. how much of an influence can you have and the other part of it, how coach able are they? >> there's a great influence, because you really can get them started on the right foot. you can look at some mechanical things, and if they have some real issues, you can get that going in the right direction, and they definitely listen. they google you now days. they find out who you are. it's like you pitched in the world series twice? i'll listen to you. so you have that part. i've never found -- my 8 years back, i haven't found one pitcher yet . they listen, and they try, and it's a very rewarding thing for me. i enjoy it. >> mask, people don't realize how far we go back. i remember when you were a por pitcher, over 90 miles an hour. you hurt your arm, and came bk as affines guy. in your approach to teaching pitching to young players, you run the gambit, is there a different way to approach both kinds of pitchers? >> well, yeah. if you got a big strong power pitcher like johnny maine, he was throwing the ball by everybody, and started throwig changeups. i said just keep throwing. if you have the ability to throw hard and fastball and slider, that's one thing, and if you don't have that, you better have the changeup, but it's all about reading bats and learning howo pitch a little bit and they have to do that. >>> we're trying to get the come, dempsey, sheffield, same bat speed? is that what we got? >> they both hit people in the left field with line drives. >> i said i hit more home runs than those guys, mine were jut foul. >> i played cricket. >> i'm going to try that. mack greg mound the last time the orioles won the world series. they just got back from runnig extended spring training. they've been watching players force three months. >> thank you. good to see you. >> that's scott mcgregor. aberdeen starts their season tomorrow night. here is the pitching line lin. livan, he is 5-1, and jason berken trying to stop a 3 game losing streak.  >> i call friend of mine that works for the packers, he has tickets on the 45-yard line, he -- drove 15 hours to get to wisconsin, went to the game. it was like 50 below, and it s a loss. but a great experience. >> so jason berken, you're a major league player, you have connectionths in the front -- connections in the front office. the giants beat the packers tt day. today we will cover the bass during the telecast with jason berken, home depot covers the bases. visit www.homedepot.com.  rick, tonight, he's looking for his first win since his debut. he h

greg amendment nine, related to shared decision-making and you had greg amendment 10 related to data collection. >> those are both agreed to. >> i would agree. then when we get a quorum, we can do a unanimous consent. >> i would offer the greg amendment 35. >> greg amendment 35. >> can we hand that out so we don't -- >> as one more members show up we'll consider these discussed. >> what title is this? what section? >> it goes to title 2, generally, title 3 and title 4 generally. it's the gao review of the activities of those titles. >> we now have -- is it right do we have 10 or 12 here? >> six, seven, eight, nine, ten. i'm sorry, still missing people. >> i can talk about it if you don't mind. >> go ahead. >> mr. chairman, as we all know and the president has made the point and totally appropriate, one of efforts has to be to reduce the costs of health care. rate of growth in costs over the years. we're facing -- >> we're facing a unsustainable situation in our federal budget, which has driven in large part by the cost of health care. we know that we have approximately $38 trillion on funded liability in the medicaremenmedicare accounts. and 12 trillion in the medicaid amounts. we know headed towards 20% gdp. and that these

greg, beth, juliet, melissa, greg scott on the majority staff with david and daron been gentleman min on the minority staff, pete, ryan on my staff and melissa and megan from mr. simpson's staff have worked hard and have been a great help to the subcommittee staff. in closing, i want to remind members that although the increases i have outlined are substantial, their impact will be even greater. our subcommitt funds programs that span a bod spectrum of issues, from our cultral and natural heritage. our agencies fight fires, protect great water bodies and tend to the needs of the first americans. these programs are vital to every american. they will improve the environment for everyone and work to fulfill our nation's trust responsibilities. i'm proud of this bill and i ask that you support it. and i reserve the balance of my time. . the chair: the chair recognizes the gentleman from idaho for 30 minutes. mr. simpson: i yield myself such time as i may consume. the chair: without objection. the gentleman is recognized. mr. simpson: madam chairwoman, let me begin my remarks by expressing my thanks to chairman dicks for the reasonable and evenhanded manner in which he conducted the business of the interior subcommittee this year. while we may disagree about the needed 17% increase in our subcommittee allocation, our work together has been a bipartisan, collaborative effort. we are certainly not going to agree on every issue, but even when we disagree, chairman dicks and i continue to work well together and i thank him for that. i'd also like to commend the chairman for the extraordinary oversight activity of our subcommittee this year. as he mentioned, oversight is one of the committee's most important functions and we have upheld that responsibility by holding 20 subcommittee hearings since the beginning of the year involving over 100 witnesses. i don't know many other subcommittees that can match that record. i also want to applaud the chairman's decision to provide full pay and fixed cost for each of the agencies under this subcommittee's jurisdiction. we are both concerned by the fact that the president's budget submission for the u.s. forest service covered only 60% of the pay and fix cost while the budget request for the department of interior included 100% pay and fix cost. to date the committee has received no explanation or justification from the administration for this discrepancy. i'm also pleased by the needed attention this legislation provides our native american brothers and sisters. there are many unmet needs within indian country, and education, health care, law enforcement, drug abuse prevention, and other areas. this bill does a great deal to address these issues. chairman dicks and i agree on many things including our obligation to be good stewards of our environment, public lands for future generations. however, we part when it comes to the need for an allocation as generous as the one chairman obey has provided in this bill. the 302-b allocation for this bill is 32.3 billion. 4.7 billion or 17% increase over last year's enacted level. this increase comes on the heels of historic increases in the subcommittee spending in recent years. interior and the environment spending between 2007 and 2009 including base bills, emergency supplementals, and the american recovery and reinvestment act have increased by 41% and that's before this year's 17% increase. chairman obey is fond of saying, show me a smaller problem and i'll show you a smaller solution. while i may not be able to show the chairman a smaller problem, but i can show him an historically bigger problem where the solution of more and more deficit spending has not worked. including the great depression of the 1930's and japan in the 1990's. but it isn't just the spending that concerns me. this legislation is funding large increases in programs without having clearly defined goals or sufficient processes in place to measure the return on our investment. we are making rapid investments in water, climate change, renewable energy, and other areas all of them worthy endeavors. but with relatively little planning and coordination across multiple agencies and the rest of government. our country has some serious environmental challenges that need to be addressed. and this bill has an overly generous allocation to meet many of those needs. with all due respect to chairman obey, too often we believe that our commitment to an issue is measured by the amount of money we spend rather than how we are spending that money. history has shown us that bigger budgets do not necessarily produce better results. the climate change issue is an illustration of this point. climate change is today what the term homeland security was in the days and months following the terrorist attacks of september 11. anyone who came into our offices, any of our offices, to discuss an issue, spoke of it in the context of homeland security. the argument was we have to do x, y, or z for our homeland security depends upon it. well, today many of our priorities are related to climate change. i agree with chairman dicks that this is an issue we need to study and carefully and know more about. it's affecting the intensity of our fires and duration of our fire season. but what have we learned from the money the subcommittee and other committees have provided. are we spending $40 million on climate change next year to learn something new or what we already know? i'm also concerned many climate change functions within this bill won't be coordinated with similar efforts undertaken by federal agencies resulting in duplication of effort. we ought to require coordination across the entire federal government on an issue as important as this and one on which we are spending as much money governmentwide as we are. it's nor this reason that the minority -- for this reason that the minority adopted an amendment requiring the president to report to congress 120 days after submission of this -- of the 2011 budget request on all obligation and expenditures across government on climate change programs and activities for f.y. 2008, 2009, and 2010. it's not because we are opposed to climate change programs but because we need to be coordinated governmentwide. given the uncertain economic times our country is facing, i'm also troubled by the unsustainable pattern of spending in 24 legislation. the committee and congress ought to be concerned about the impact of too much spending as we are about the potential impact of climate change and other issues. chairman dicks has spoken on many occasion abouts what he describes as the dark days and the misguided policies and priorities of the previous administration. still, for any perceived or real inadequacies of past policies or budget, it would be a mistake for any of us to believe we can simply spend our way to a solution for every challenge we face. the federal reserve chairman, ben bernanke, recently told congress it's time for the obama administration to develop a strategy to address record deficits or risk long-term damage to our economy. he said, quote, unless we demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal sustainability in the longer term, we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth. unquote. a good bill is a balanced bill. but providing the disproportionate level of of funding to one agency creates an imbalance that undermines the legitimate needs of other deserving agencies. that is why i question a $10.6 billion budget for the e.p.a. a 38% increase from last year. this on top of a 7.2 billion the agency received in the stimulus package and 7.6 billion it received in the enacted 2009 interior bill. taken together e.p.a. will receive over $25 billion this calendar year alone. that's about the size of this subcommittee's entire budget just two years ago. while the e.p.a. will recve an extraordinary historic funding increase, it's worth noting that the u.s. forest service has -- was recently rated as one of the worst places to work in the federal government by a study conducted by the office of personnel management. it isn't clear whier forest service employees feel as they do, but it may be linked to the incredible funding challenges the service has faced in recent years due to the growing cost of fire suppression. from our hearings we know that almost 50% of the forest service budget is now consumed by the cost of fighting wildfires. in past years the forest service has had to borrow hundreds of millions of dollars from other accounts just to pay for fire suppression. without any question this creates uncertainty among forest service employees. president obama is to be commended for tackling the issue of budgeting for fire suppression by proposing a fully funded fire suppression budget as well as a contingency reserve fund. i commend chairman dicks for providing forest service with resources to address many fire related needs. still based upon recent fire patterns and monumental increase in demand for fire suppression dollars, i feel strongly that the wildfire contingency reserve fund should be funded at the president's request at $357 million. this reserve fund is similar to the emergency fund source contained in the flame act which passed the house on march by an overwhelming 412-3 vote. that is why the minority offered an amendment adopted during full committee consideration which increased the fire contingency reserve found from $250 million in the chairman's mark to the president's requested level of $357 million. if virtually every other item in this legislation is funded at or above the president's request level, there should be no justification -- justifiable reason to exclude fire suppression. i want to thank the chairman for accepting that amendment in the full committee. we paid for this increase by rescinding $107 million from the e.p.a.'s prior year balances. according to the may, 2009 report issued by the e.p.a. inspector general's office, the e.p.a. presently has $163 million on the books that have been sitting there unspent since 1999. the e.p.a. does some good work, but if those dollars haven't been spent in 10 years we ought to put them to good use fighting fires. while chairman dicks has done a good job addressing many critical issues in this bill, i don't believe that a $4.7 million or 17% increase over the f.y. 2009 enacted level is justified or warranted. this unprecedented increase follows a $3.2 billion or 13% increase between f.y. 2008 and f.y. 2009 spending bills as well as $11 billion infusion from the american recovery and reinvestment act. frankly we can't afford this. in closing, i would again like to thank chairman dicks for the evenhandedness that he has shown in working with us. we work well together. and i think this bill shows that. in closing i'd like to thank both majority and minority leader staff for their long hours and fine work in producing this legislation. on the majority side this includes deala -- diela, chris, julie, greg, beth, melissa, ryan, and pete. on the minority side let me thank my staff, melissa, megan, kaylyn, as well as the committee staffers. if the members of this house worked as well together as the majority and minority staffers do, we would get more done in this place. i reserve the balance of my time. the chair: the gentleman reserves. the chair recognizes the gentleman from washington, mr. dicks. mr. dicks: i'd like to yield two minutes to the gentleman from kansas for the purpose of a colloquy. mr. tiahrt: i thank the chairman of the committee and chairman dicks for the opportunity to discuss this important issue. after serving with chairman dicks as ranking member of his subcommittee during the 110th congress, i know how hard he has worked to make sure communities have access to e.p.a. grants to help with their state and tribal assistance grants and clean water needs. it has come to my attention that in the fiscal year 2009 appropriations act, contained money for the city of manhatt

greg amendment nine related to share in decision making and you had greg an amendment 10 related to data collection. >> those are agreed to. we will just except those only get a quorum and now an offer the brennan and 35. >> can we hand out? and as soon as one more member shows up we will cover these amendments that have already been discussed. >> what page? >> which title is this? >> it goes to title to generally, title three anti-war generally. >> it is the gao review of the activities of those titles. >> we now -- and to have 10 or 12 here? we only have 10. we're still missing people. >> i can talk about it if you don't mind. >> go ahead and give max mr. chairman, as we all know and the president has made the point and is totally inappropriate, one of the average has to be to reduce the cost of health care and the rate of a growth and cost over the years because we are basing -- >> [inaudible] >> i do. we are facing an unsustainable situation in our federal budget which is jim and in large part by the cost of health care. we know that we have a approximately $38 trillion unfunded liability in the medicare accounts. another large amount of unreliability i think in the range of $10 trillion in the medicaid accounts and we also know that health care is not taking 17 percent of gdp headed toward 20% of gdp in the these numbers are simply not sustainable for our government coronation and thus one of the core elements of health care reform has been not only to get everybody covered which people on our side are totally committed to it and to give people quality health care which we are equally committed to put in the process develop proposals which reduce the cost of health care. and then bend at the curve has become the term to month and the cost curve. and the president called for banning the curve and i congratulate him for that. and of the chairman talked about the sun number of occasions. certainly senator casey and senator hayden have talked about it just yesterday when discussing what the effect of a really good will this program would be so i know there is consensus around this table that we should attempt to do that. senator conrad has really been a leader on the issue of dead and this government and the fact that the dead is the threat has become really a watchword for us. unfortunately beyond not doing well by the police he has the point down. was advised by cbo and myself in a letter that they wrote and i will quote it briefly in the record that the rising cost of health care will cause federal spending to grow putting the federal budget on an unsustainable path. to quote again the federal budget is on unsustainable path. >> we have 12 members present -- i think the amendment we discuss this senator mikulski and recommended as well as senator reid is senator enzi and the two amendments by senator gregand senator mikulski, they have been agreed to on both sides and i ask unanimous consent those amendments adopted -- without objection is so ordered. >> that is a good start mr. chairman. [laughter] >> we have gotten five done -- we are debating senator greg amendment number 35. >> so this amendment addresses that issue of spending because as we know this bill has been scored only a sixth score because the cbo did not have the full bill and it is a score that will increase by $1.3 trillion with an offset of about $300 billion in new taxes so the net being $1 trillion and when you throw in the potential for the medicaid and a class act store on this bill and the potential for the government plan tile depending on how it is involved on this if in an up with a bill that is easily headed toward $2 trillion price tag that is unfunded which would go right on top of our debt and only aggravate dramatically our debt situation. unfortunately it does not include initiatives which have been sugge