mr. baird: i want to commend mrs. biggert and mr. carnahan. you know, it's particularly impressive to me that members of congress pick issues under the radar but of tremendous importance. as my colleague from texas observed, the percentage of energy consumed by buildings is phenomenal. it's the largest consumer of energy in this country. in moving forward with positive solutions is particularly noteworthy and merits commendation. we think if it should be one form of power or another but saving money is in the best interest in this country and high-performance buildings is the best possible and most economically responsible ways to do so and i would commend the gentlelady and her colleague, mr. carnahan. with that i reserve the balance of my time. the speaker pro tempore: the gentleman reserves the balance of his time. the chair recognizes the gentleman from texas. mr. olson: madam speaker, i want to identify myself with the comments from my colleague over there with the extremely good work of congressman carnahan and congresswoman biggert have

mrs. biggert: mr. speaker, i rise in opposition to this rule. i offered an amendment on monday to address an injustice against the members of our armed services that were shut out from consideration by this rule. briefly, my amendment would have given an across the board pay raise of 5% to our military personnel. according to estimates made by the congressional research service, the pay gap between military personnel and civilians is 3%. given that the cost of living increase for 2010 is 2.9%, my amendment is an important first step to addressing this problem, particularly due to the recession, but really at any time it is unacceptable our men and women in uniform receive less than civilian counterparts. i was in afghanistan and had the opportunity to see firsthand the professionalism and the commitment of our troops, what service they render to us. why are they being treated this way? and i received assurances from the parliamentarian that my amendment was in order and the congressional budget office said it complies with all pay-go requirement

biggert. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlewoman from illinois is recognized for one minute. mrs. biggert: i rise today in opposition to this rule and the bill. i offered five bipartisan commonsense amendments to the bill with support of other members. not one of these were made in order. i offered an amendment to strike the section that mandates national building codes because my amendment was rejected of state or local governments don't comply with these new national mandates. homeowners today who are struggling to make ends meet could be charged $100 a day for not being in compliance. a new tax on american homeowners is the wrong direction. i had another amendment to strike from this bill the new tax on all transactions cleared by any u.s. regulated derivatives clearing organization. this bill then will have very chilling consequences. it will punish those using u.s. regulated clearing organizations. discourage the use of central clearing organizations, and reduce transparency and liquidity and encourage legitimate businesses activities to move to unregulated foreign markets. a

. >> thank you very much, mrs. biggert. >> let me ask, we're here debating this largely because of actions that stemmed from the problems at aig with expensive trading and credit default swaps out of their financial products unit in london that was not regulated by state commissioners but by the federal government, the office of thrift supervision. however, some are using the collapse of aig to argue for the creation of an optional federal charter for the insurance industry. as i said in my opening statement, this is somewhat problematic because here we've got an entity that had the federal oversight so the question has to be asked, would an optional federal charter had it been in place, would it have prevented the collapse of aig which, again, is already federally regulated? may i get your point? >> i think it's a good question. and again, we look at it from our narrow perspective in the industry. the first word that you used, optional is where the trouble is, i think. in that an optional charter would leave itsel

mrs. biggert: mr. speaker, i rise in opposition to the stuart stuart. in my home state of illinois we de-- to the american clean energy and security act. in my home state of illinois, we use a lot of energy. illinois will be hit especially hard. gas prices could rise by 77 cents a gallon and diesel by 88 cents a gallon. this is part of an entirely arbitrary penalty on oil and gas that is passed onto the consumer. h.r. 2454 does little to incentivize a new nuclear production, despite the fact that nuclear power is safe and emissions free. and what it does is grossly inadequate considering the overall goal of this bill. i am deeply concerned also that there is no framework for an international agreement for climate change in this bill. in the absence of the framework and in agreement from developing nations, my district can count on losing thousands of jobs to countries like india and china if this legislation is enacted. mr. speaker, i oppose this bill and urge my colleagues to do the same. i yield back. the speaker pro tempore: the gentlelady yields bac

. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you, all, to our witnesses, as well. especially mr. skinner who i understand came across the ocean to be with us today. we have a fairly large panel and wide perspective of different opinions on the insurance industry so i look forward to all of your testimony. tomorrow, as you indicate, we expect to hear from the obama administration on its plan for financial regulatory reform and from what i can tell, it seems unclear to what extent the proposal will address insurance legislation. different ideas have been floated of course, but within the administration, and beyond it seems a clear consensus as to what to do with insurance has not totally been crystallized. part of the difficulty reaching a consensus is related to the difficulty reaching a consensus on what is a systemic risk. further more, how do you identify it? is that even possible in the future? how should it be addressed and how should it be cleaned up once it has been identified, if it's not too late? i would add anoth