ms. speier of california. the chair: pursuant to house resolution 691, the gentlewoman from california, ms. speier, and a member opposed, each will control five minutes. the chair recognizes the gentlelady from california. ms. speier: mr. chairman, thank you. i rise to introduce an amendment to the strategic energy production act. this bill is being pitched as an all-of-the-above energy bill when in reality it is an oil-above-all bill, full of giveaways to big energy companies. mr. chair, title 4 of h.r. 4480 would impose arbitrary deadlines on the interior department's review of applications for permits to drill for oil and gas onshore. after 60 days, if the interior department has not completed its review of an application to drill, the permit would be deemed approved regardless of whether the department ensured that the drilling was safe. my amendment is quite simple. it would just strike this unwise and unwarranted provision. first, a little context would be helpful. the united states is in the middle of a

ms. speier, is recognized for five minutes. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i'm pretty perplexed by this entire discussion. maybe you on this panel can shed some light. what happens with this locket is you get information at 8:00 coming of the half an hour to digest it and at 8:30 you release it to your clients into the public. that's how i understand. and all of the time, effort, money, extra efforts, extra expenses that goes into creating this lockup could be erased if we just had the department of labor issued the statistics at 8:30, you can digest and rather than get information at 8:30 the traders on wall street get it at 9:00. and what have we gained or lost as a result of that? i would suggest that this is all about what works for wall street. and i'd like to ask a question of the two representatives from bloomberg and reuters, mr. moss and mr. doherty, why would anyone subscribe to your newsletters if they weren't getting some benefit in terms of accessing information before the public? in response to one question asked earlier, you said that your inf

ms. speier, for five minutes. ms. speier: mr. speaker, thank you. i rise to implore this body to finally take meaningful action to end the epidemic of rape and sexual assault in the military. you know, for 25 years, congress has held dramatic hearings on this issue. it has rocked the military branches. committee members have beat their chests and demanded answers from decorated generals and the military leaders who testified. congress demanded reports. these reports were provided and are now gathering dust on shelves around washington, d.c. the time for reports is over. now it's time for action to solve this problem. the solution is to take the reporting and investigation of cases of rape and sexual assault out of the military chain of command and place them in a separate office independent of the chain of command with the authority to investigate and prosecute within the military. last week i called for the house armed services committee to hold a hearing on the widespread sex scandal at lackland air force base in san antonio, texas. no hearing dat

ms. speier: sunlight is the best disinfectant, one said, and sadly in citizens united the court turned its back on this wisdom and has given corporations the power to influence government from its shadows. to say these are not dark days for our democracy is not an understatement. millions upon millions of dollars are flowing into our political system through super pac's but the donors that supply this money remains hidden. let's not fuel ourselves, let's not full ourselves in thinking the identity of these donors is a secret to the politicians are being helped by their money. to ignore the potential for unseemly influence here is truly naive. when one donor can decide the fate of a legislator's re-election, they clearly wield a great deal of power. we must come together and pass the disclose act which allows the public to see who is making these megadonations, and together we can let sunlight back into our democracy. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady's time has expired. for what purpose does the gentleman from california seek recognition? >> i ask unanimous consent to address the hou

ms. speier: thank you and i thank the gentleman from massachusetts. this should be labeled fast and foolish. or maybe fast and fake. we are not talking about gun walking here. we are doing nothing to help the family of brian terry recover. what we're talking about are interoffice emails between the administration executives and the a.g.'s office. i want everyone here to be willing to turn over all of their interoffice emails. more importantly, let's talk about whether there's precedence for the assertion of executive privilege. let me just point to a number of cases when executive privilege was asserted for non-involved presidential communication. in 1981, october, president reagan asserted executive privilege over internal slickses within the department of superior concerning, interestingly enough, mineral lands leasing act. in october, 1982, president reagan asserted executive privilege over e.p.a. files concerning superfund provisions. on july, 1986, president reagan asserted executive privilege over documents written by william rehnquist when he w