mr. mcgovern: mr. speaker, i thought one of the lessons of this last election was that the american people wanted washington to work, that they wanted us to work toward passing legislation, sensible legislation that could be passed in both chambers, go to the white house and be signed into law and we could move this country forward. ut i guess -- i guess that lesson somehow escaped my american colleagues, because what we're doing here today is another colossal waste of time. i rise in opposition to this rule and i rise in opposition to the underlying legislation. the points of the bills that we're considering today seek to prevent the e.p.a. from protecting public health and environment. it's that simple. the white house has already issued three veto threats against these bills. the other body is not going to take these bills up, so here we are in this lame-duck session with a lot of work we should be doing and instead we're doing this. on december 11, this government will run out of money. maybe we sh

mr. mcgovern: mr. speaker, on november 6, for the second time i participated in monty's march, which is a 26-mile walk from north hampton, massachusetts, to greenville, massachusetts, to raise the awareness about the problem of hunger, not only in our community but throughout funds for to raise the food banks in massachusetts. it is held by monty, who dressed up by evel knievel to attract some attention, a very unique personality, but somebody with a heart of gold who has been doing this now for several years. joining us on the march was dave, the northwestern district attorney, andrew moorehouse, the executive director of the food bank of western massachusetts, aircrafta congressional cooper of williams -- erica connell cooper of williams, massachusetts, sean berry, who runs four seasons liquor store, who was with us last year when we marched. a great guy. dan finn, a pioneer valley local first. a group called mutt and me, a medieval performance group, who walks with us with a big portion of the walk.

mr. mcgovern: i thank my colleague from massachusetts for the time. mr. chairman, there used to be a time when our republican friends respected science, there used to be a time when people like physicist from michigan was welcome in the republican conference. sadly, those times are long gone. if we can't agree on basic scientific principles, then there isn't much hope for us to agree on much else, so i will remind my colleagues on the record. up is up. down is down. gravity exists, the earth orr bits the sun, and -- orbits the sun. and climate change is real. it doesn't matter whether the data is private or public. it matters whether the findings are peer reviewed and can withstand scientific scrutiny. scientists understand that the real litmus test for supporting a finding is independent confirmation using a completely independent method. i urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support this commonsense amendment. with that i yield back the balance of my time. the chair: the gentleman yields back the balance of his time. all time has expired. t