mr. lowenthal: thank you, mr. chairman. i welcome those comments. let's be clear what i am talking about. i am talking about eliminating an almost a giveaway of almost all hard rock mining to define what is strategic and critical as defined by the robust methodology in the national resources council's report. now, what do i mean by a robust methodology? it says, if we look at all the mining we have, if we look at what we have to define what's strategic, we have to look along two dimensions in a scientific way. we have to know what is the impact of this mineral or this mining if it was supplied restriction. what would be the impact if there was a supply restriction? would it impact defense? would it impact national security? if it does have an impact, then it has a high, high rating on that. also, what about the supply risk? we need to measure. if we do not develop this mine at this place, are there other places that we can? if in fact a mineral has high supply risk, high impact, that not only are those minerals defined now but the secretary of inter

mr. lowenthal. mr. lowenthal: thank you, my dear colleague from pennsylvania, i agree it's absolutely ludicrous on $1.40 per meal, you're not having lobster dinners. ou're not having real dinners. you are barely surviving. these are proud people who want to make a difference to society, their son pointed out through this difficult time, they moved on after eare seving these benefit which is they now proudly talk about how much they helped them, are now productive members of our society and contribute greatly to the society. it is fallacious and silly to think that people choose to be on nap because they want to exploit the system. i yield back -- let me continue before i yield back for a minute. i want to talk a little bit about what our congressional budget office estimates that the bill that just passed today would deny snap benefits, to who? first of all it would deny snap benefits to over 3.8 million of our fellow americans in the year 2014. now who are these poor, unemployed, childless americans tha

mr. pocan: thank you, representative lowenthal. and on behalf of the procombressive caucus, thank you for -- progressive cause, thank you for sharing some of the issues we're work on. we're fightingor for every single person across the country. we want everyone to have access to democracy. we need to have meaningful campaign finance reform from the citizens united decision to every single candidate for congress and how we fund our campaigns. we need to make sure every single person has a right to vote in this country. something that because of the recent supreme court decision isn't guaranteed. but one thing the progressive caucus today really wanted to highlight, and we really i think have made the case, why we joined so many workers across the country in the month of august who are getting paid minimum wage, who are barely getting by, who aren't getting treated fairly in their workplace, we literally have too many people who are paid too little for the work they do. as representative nolan said, the rich are getting richer, the p