langevin: i thank the gentleman for yielding. mr. speaker, while i support the underlying bill, i rise in opposition to the language in the national defense authorization act. that exempts the department of defense from section 526 of the energy independence and security act. there are critical energy security provision which also supports the development of domestic alternative fuels. now this exemption, mr. speaker, will derail the d.o.d.'s efforts to strengthen national security through reducing dangerous greenhouse gases. now the current chairman of the joint chiefs of staff recentlyly warned that climate change will have a significant affect on increasing competition for water and food, potentially causing humanitarian crises that could lead to failed states. further, this concern is not new to d.o.d. in 2008 the defense science board recommended to avoid investing in processes that exceed the carbon footprint of petroleum. what this provision proposes to do exactly that. i would hope that we would like to renew this language an

langevin of rhode island. the chair: pursuant to house resolution 276, the gentleman from rhode island, mr. langevin and a member opposed will each control five minutes. the chair recognizes the gentleman from rhode island. mr. langevin: i rise today to urge my colleagues to join me in support of my amendment to help secure our nation from cyber attacks. it would coordinate federal information security policy by creating a national office to cyber space, update our federal emergency management practices and ensure protection from cyber attacks. this amendment passed the house of representatives last year without observation. in the intervening year, the threats that we face in cyber space have multiplied. the director of the c.i.a. told the congress that there could be a cyber attack. "los angeles times"" reported that a hacker added chemicals to the water. with a few mouse clicks he could have rendered the water undrinkable for millions of homes. mr. speaker, my amendment would secure our government-owned i.t

langevin for amendment number 277. please to 77 the reading of the amendment will be dispensed with. >> the gentleman is recognized to explain his amendment. >> thank you, mr. chairman. first, before i begin my prepared remarks this is an amendment dealing with the tracking of the surveillance system. i have some important points that need to be made but i want to let my colleagues know i plan to withdraw the amendment and hope to work with the majority to somehow restore funding to this important program. mr. chairman, the amendment would basically moved $100 million out of work for the system into what i believe is a critically important pt ssa system in the space surveillance system. first of all, my point here is that the $100 million of the funding for the gmp goes well beyond the president's budget and is needed by the department by comparison the system has been killed in this market and desperately needs the funding. the pss is a constellation between nine and 12 satellites that basically offered assistance of

langevin: i thank the gentleman for yielding. mr. speaker, my amendment would basically assure that the total cut to the national defense education fund doesn't come from k-12 education program which links deform o.d. scientists and engineers with students and teach evers in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics or stem field. we know our nations won't leave behind subject matterers and if we don't engage each generation it will hurt our capability for innovation and our national security. we support national competitions to create locally based contest rich environments for students and teachers with an understanding of the real world aply cages of the stem fields. just last year, 1,750 d.o.d. scientists and engineers from laboratories in 26 states engaged more than 180,000 students and teach evers in outreach and informal education initiatives. i believe we have to make investment in these stem programs and ien courage my colleagues to support this amendment. i yield back the balance of my time. the chair: the gentle

langevin: mr. speaker, i rise today to urge my colleagues to join together to immediately address one of the greatest problems facing our families and small business right now. that's rapidly rising gas prices. as i traveled across rhode island during the district work period, the issue of high gas prices was never far from anyone's minds. it affects every family's bottom line. and our fragile economy -- as a fragile economy continues, it is imperative that we work to find solutions in the short term as we turn our attention towards a serious long-term solution to reduce our demand for oil. our nation simply cannot have low gas prices without reducing the amount of oil we use. now, we main in constant competition right now with india, china and our developing nations and the world does not have the resources to continue to supply us with cheap oil, continuing the disruption in the middle east that hurts production. now, i supported a bill that took steps to improve vehicle fuel standards and energy

langevin: i thank the gentleman for yielding. mr. speaker, i rise in support of the amendment offered by my colleague and the ranking member, mr. smith of washington. to strike a line in the bill relating to transferring detainees to the united states for prosecution. this amendment does not require that detainees be transfered to u.s. soil. it simply allows a range of options for prosecution of terror suspects and supports our most sacred national values. as currently written, this legislation ties our hands at a crucial time in gitmo's history. it's important to know that as of today over 400 terrorism convictions have occurred in u.s. federal courts since 9/11. prosecuting terrorists in the u.s. is just one of many options, incruding military commissions and detainee transfers which must be available in order to bring these terrorists to justice. a yes vote for this amendment is a vote for our national values, for due process and for leaving all our prosecuteorial options on the table when dealing with the terrorists. i want to th

langevin expanding this final -- spinal cord injury research. an amendment by mr. turner to create a confidentiality privilege for sexual assault response coordinators, sexual assault victims advocates, dod, safe helpline personnel. an amendment by mr. turner to address the leadership structure and the air force institute of technology. an amendment by mr. johnson that requires a report on any department of defense project on autism services. an amendment by mr. hunter regarding the display of flags by our armed forces. and an amendment i mr. kaufman for a comprehensive study of the selective service system. >> is there any discussion on the amendment? mr. turner, the gentleman from ohio, is recognized for five minutes. >> i want to again thank the chairman wilson for his work on on the important issue of sexual assault. there a number of revisions is placing the bill that are very important and respond to the needs of victims of sexual assault so i appreciate his work there. one of the provisions here is again a part of a strong act that i've worked with represent

langevin. on which further proceedings were postponed and on which the noes prevailed by voice vote. a recorded vote has been requested. those in support of the recorded vote will rise and be counted. a sufficient number having arisen, a recorded vote is ordered. this will be a two-minute vote. the chair: sorry the clerk will redesignate the amendment. the clerk: amendment number 49, printed in house report number 112-88, offered by mr. langevin of rhode island. the chair: recorded vote has been requested. members will record their vote by electronic device. two-minute vote. [captioning made possible by the national captioning institute, inc., in cooperation with the united states house of representatives. any use of the closed-captioned coverage of the house proceedings for political or commercial purposes is expressly prohibited by the u.s. house of representatives.] the chair: on this vote the yeas are 172, the nays are 246, the amendment is not agreed to. the unfinished business is the requ

langevin for his comments. >> thank you, mr. chairman.i want to thank, in particular, all the members of the subcommittee for their efforts in crafting and support this piece of legislation. i particularly want to recognize and thank chairman thornberry for his leadership and his cooperative spirit and hard work in crafting this mark today. i agree with him. a bipartisan way, this is the best subcommittee of the committee and again, i appreciate everybody's work in that regard. this mark supports a wide array of special capabilities by the department, from an increase in funding for our exceptional special operations forces who as we know recently took out osama bin laden, demonstrating incredible courage, patriotism and dedication, as they always do. additionally, it supports the newly established cyber command led by general keith alexander that protects our military information in cyberspace. i'm please d that the mark full supports the fiscal year 2012 request, the science and technology policies and programs, particularly, in areas s

langevin: i rise today as we as a nation commemorate this historic day that osama bin laden was brought to justice, or more appropriately, justice was brought to him. i want to take this occasion to con garage late president obama and his team, c.i.a. director leon panetta and the members of the c.i.a. and our intelligence community as well as our nation's military who worked dill jebtly and tirelessly over the last nearly 10 years to hunt down and eliminate osama bin laden. i know the countless man hours and millions of dollars and incredible effort was put together to make sure that osama bin laden and al qaeda were held accountable for the horrific attacks on the united states of america on 9/11. let me say that my heart and my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families of that horrific day on 9/11. we hope that this in some weibrings closure to them and as we hope also that it now closes a painful chapter in u.s. history with the elimination of osama bin laden. i thank, again, all those who had a hand in this, particularly members of our military and intelligence c

i want to thank the co-sponsors, representatives hanabusa, langevin, loebsack and reyes. this amendment is designed to preserve current law. with respect to the service contracts and outsourcing activity of the department of defense. current law now has in place a requirement that before the department of defense can do more outsourcing, can do more privatization of service contracts they have to do an inventory of the contracting activity that's already in place and this makes perfect sense. this is really a good government proposition, if you think about it. it's important enough that it was included in the 2010 defense authorization act, so it is part of current law. unfortunately the proposed bill, the new defense authorization act, would remove this requirement and if you remove that requirement you're really undermining the public's stake in making sure that government is functioning in an efficient manner. now, this, the impetus for having this kind of requirement in place and the amendment that we're putting forward here today would maintain the requirement that's

langevin's comments. i would like to ask you to oppose this amendment. i am not asking for a show of hands but who really wants to have a debate about who or what gets targeted by u.s. nuclear weapons? that is a very obviously difficult debate to have. sometimes needs to be an extremely cold hearted debate because these are nuclear-weapons. they do a lot more damage than non nuclear-weapons. i can understand it is difficult to have this counterforce versus countervalued targeting debate but it is not one we want to have but one we have to have. because of that, one that we have to have a logical conclusion is we have to settle on insuring that the executive, whoever that executive is war may be has the flexibility to make a decision about targeting that matches threat and national security. i may differ with others but i don't think there's anything humanitarian in the targeting debate. i just really don't. it is a debate threat is one of necessity and when we make these decisions about targeting, it is really about our threat and national security. as a