To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to make permanent the deduction of State and local general sales taxes.

Mr. Speaker, I want to spend the first few minutes this evening talking about oral arguments that were recently made before the Supreme Court. It was on the Wisconsin Right to Life, Incorporated, versus the Federal Election Commission.

Now, it is not clear from that title what we are talking about. What we are really talking about is a test of the constitutionality of a clause in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that prohibits any issue advocacy advertising, electioneering they call it, 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.

Now, in the State of Maryland in a nonpresidential year, our primary is in September, and it is, as a matter of fact, less than 60 days before the general in November. So we are prohibited from issue advocacy ads 30 days before the primary, which are added immediately to the 60 days before the general. So for 90 days, 3 months, before the election, we cannot communicate with our constituents.

I would submit, Mr. Speaker, that few people are seriously considering the next election 90 days before it occurs. So for all practical purposes, we in Maryland, and many other States like us that have primaries close to the general election, are almost completely prohibited from communicating with our constituents through issue advocacy ads.

This is political speech, and what this Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act does is to deny political speech 30 days before a primary and 60 days before a general election.

I think to put this in context to see how really important this is, we need to go back to the founding of our country and to understand why our Founding Fathers came here.

Most of them came for one or both of two reasons to escape tyrannies in the country that they lived in. One of these was the tyranny of the church. In the British Isles it was the Anglican Church, and on the continent it was the Roman Church. And in most of the country there was a state church. And these state churches, the Anglican Church in England and the Roman Church on the continent, could and did oppress other religions. So our Founding Fathers came here to escape that tyranny.

They also came here to escape the tyranny of the crown. And it is incredible to us. We can't understand it because we live in a whole different culture. But almost every country from which our Founding Fathers came had a king or an emperor which claimed and was granted divine rights. What that said was that the rights came from God to the king and the king would give what rights he wished to his people. Some magnanimous rulers gave considerable rights to their people; others gave very few. So our Founding Fathers came here intent on escaping those two tyrannies.

So it is no accident that after writing the Constitution in which it was very clear that this was to be a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, as Abraham Lincoln said four score and seven years later, and that the government was to reflect the wishes of the people, that the people through collective government would govern themselves. That was really quite implicit in the Constitution because article I, section 8 of the Constitution gave very few rights to the Federal Government.

But the ink was hardly dry on the Constitution before they wondered if people would really understand that what they wanted was a very limited Federal Government and that they wanted most of the rights to belong to the people. So it is no accident, I think, that in that first amendment, which they wrote, that they addressed both of these tyrannies. From the very beginning, they wanted to make it crystal clear that we were to have freedom of religion, and they say it very simply, that they wanted to avoid what they came from, what they came here to escape, and that was an established religion, a religion established by the government. So they said very simply ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.''

I don't know why we have trouble understanding that, Mr. Speaker. It is just plain English. It has nothing to do with a wall of separation between Church and State. Indeed, our Founding Fathers were deeply religious people, and they believed that we should have religious people running our government. President Adams said that our Constitution was written for a religious people which serves the purposes of no other. So it is no surprise that in the first amendment they addressed both tyrannies actually. ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.'' Don't establish any State religion. And, furthermore, let everybody worship freely. They said ``or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.''

And then they addressed the tyranny of the crown. And I have here an article that was written by James Bopp, who was the primary person to argue this case before the Supreme Court. He said that the American government was to be an act of self government by the people and the first amendment was to ensure the people's participation in their own government by protecting the four indispensable democratic freedoms of speech, press, assembly, and petitioning the government. Thus the first amendment was intended to deprive the government of the power to silence criticism of official actions, which is precisely what this well-intentioned but, unfortunately, otherwise directed Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act does. It limits the criticism of the people who are making our laws, of anybody in the government or anybody running for government.

The first amendment says it this way: ``or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.''

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important case before the Supreme Court. It is just not an issue of political speech, which, by the way, was the speech that our Founding Fathers most wanted to protect. And how ironic that a law that

concerns elections is a law which strikes down the very speech freedom that our Founding Fathers most wanted to protect.

But this is significant beyond that, Mr. Speaker, because if our Congress can deny this right to the American people, what else can it deny? We are a great, free country, 1 person out of 22 in the world and we have a fourth of all the good things in the world. How did we get here? I think it is very instructive to ask that question and to have it answered for my satisfaction. You may come to different conclusions. But I think there are two major reasons that we are this very unique country, this 1 person out of 22 in the world, less than 5 percent of the world's population that has a fourth of all the good things in the world. And I think that both of the reasons that we are this great, free country are addressed in this first amendment. Our Founding Fathers believed that God sat with them at the table when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the amendments, and I think they were right. And I think we put at risk who we are when we deny the religious role in the establishment of our country.

And the 10 commandments are coming down from the court house walls. Nativity scenes appear less and less frequently in public places. And we are now, of all things, going to debate whether it's okay to say ``under God'' in the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag. Mr. Speaker, I reread the Declaration of Independence recently, I think it is well to read that every so often, and I noted that God is mentioned four or five times there. I wonder if our courts might declare the Declaration of Independence unconstitutional.

There is, on a lighter side, a really great clause here. I have no idea what the king had done, but I think that there could be no better description of our regulatory agencies, and I don't know how our Founding Fathers could have been so prophetic in describing our regulatory agencies; this is what they said, Mr. Speaker. ``He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.'' They had a way with words, didn't they? And I think that there could be no more concise definition of the unfortunate frequent application of our regulatory agencies and their limitation of the rights of the American people.

Well, I would encourage Americans everywhere to listen, to watch for the report of the Supreme Court. They promise to hand down their decision sometime before the end of the court's term in June. This is a very important decision, it goes beyond just this case of ``Washington right to life.'' Just what was that case? The right to life people were sending out educational information. And unfortunately, one of the Senators was running, and since always right to life, abortion and so forth are issues in political campaigns, the FEC decided that this was prohibited advertising, although I don't think that either Senator was even mentioned in the advertising. And so the right to life committee there, I think very appropriately, has decided to make this a Supreme Court test.

Indeed, when this law was passed many people thought that it was unconstitutional. The President thought that it was unconstitutional and said so, that the court would strike down this provision. Indeed, I think those who wrote the law thought that this provision was probably unconstitutional because they put into the law language that said that if any one part of the law was struck down, that the rest of the law was still applicable. That appears in very little of our legislation. It's an indication, I think, that they felt that this part of their legislation was on pretty shaky constitutional ground.

So I would encourage you to watch this. This is a very important decision, not just for this case, but I think that that will be read very broadly as an indication of how much power does the Congress have to infringe on our constitutionally--our God-given liberties, by the way. These came from God, they didn't come from our Constitution. All the Constitution seeks to do is to make sure that the government can't take them away from us.

I want to spend our remaining time, Mr. Speaker, talking about a subject that was highlighted today in the ACORE, the American Council on Renewable Energy, ``The Outlook on Renewable Energy in America.'' And there are several recent articles that deal with this. There was a very interesting exchange between T. Boone Pickens and Steve Forbes. T. Boone Pickens believes that the world has reached its maximum capacity for producing oil; that try as hard as we wish, the oil-producing countries will not be able to increase their production of oil, and this phenomenon is called peak oil. And T. Boone Pickens said several weeks ago that he believes the world has reached peak oil. Steve Forbes took exception with that and indicated that he believed that the marketplace could take care of this. And if it didn't find more oil, it would find alternatives to oil so there would be no decrement in our growth when we're growing at roughly 2 percent a year in energy use. By the way, that 2 percent a year may not sound like much, but that doubles in 35 years, it's 4 times bigger in 70 years and it's 8 times bigger in 105 years. Now the world will still be here in 105 years, and my great, great grandchildren will still be alive in 105 years. I don't have the foggiest notion where we would get 8 times the energy compared to the energy that we are using now. So clearly that is not a world we should look forward to. T. Boone Pickens had an interesting discussion with Steve Forbes; and if you use those two names on a Google search, you will pull up their conversation.

There are many people who seem to worship the marketplace, they believe that it is both omniscient and omnipotent, it is all wise and all powerful. I point out to them that there are some things that even God can't do; God can't make a square circle, and the marketplace can't make oil where there is not oil. And the marketplace cannot provide alternatives to oil faster than technology will permit us to do that.

There is an interesting article, and this one appeared on March 25 in the Washington Post. This was really an interesting article. It says, ``Corn Can't Solve Our Problem.'' Corn, of course, is the source of ethanol, which is an alternative renewable energy. And the article pointed out that if we took all of our corn ground, every bit of it, no tortillas for Mexicans and no food for pigs and cows and chickens and no cornbread for us, all of our corn is made into ethanol, that if you discounted that for the fossil fuel input, which they said was 80 percent. By the way, there are some scientists who believe that we use more energy in producing ethanol from corn than we get out of the ethanol. I generally use 75 percent in my discussions, this article said 80 percent. But if you discount the ethanol you produce by 80 percent, it would displace 2.4 percent of our gasoline. Now, that's making all of our corn into ethanol. It would displace, after you discounted it for the fossil fuel input, because you are just burning fossil fuel in another form if you don't do that, if you discounted for fossil fuel input, it would displace 2.4 percent of our gasoline.

The authors of the article pointed out something very interesting. They said if you are really interested in saving gasoline, you could save that much gasoline by tuning up your car and putting enough air in your tires. And I heard nobody who disputed that. So if we use all of our corn for ethanol, you could save as much gasoline by simply tuning up your car and putting air in the tires.

Then on April 5 there was another very interesting article that related to these renewables, and this was an article in the Wall Street Journal, upper right, very important, above the fold. It says, ``A Dying Giant: Mexico Tries to Save a Big Fading Oil Field.'' ``Canterell's Drop Off Faster Than Expected, Turning to Technology'' is the title of the article. Canterell was the name of a Mexican fisherman who kept getting his nets fouled in crude oil, and he would take these nets to Pemex, and he knew who was at fault because there was only one oil company in Mexico, and said look what you did to my net, and they would give him a new net. And he came in so frequently they finally said, gee, we didn't think we were spilling that much oil. And they asked

him, where is this oil coming from? And he says, come and I will show you. And so he took them and showed them oil kind of bubbling up out of the ocean and they drilled there. This was named after him, the Canterell oil field. It was the second largest one in the world. The largest one in the world is the Ghawar oil field, the granddaddy of all oil fields, producing still, down from what it was at its peak, still producing 5 million barrels of oil a day. Canterell, until 2 years ago, produced 2 million barrels a day. In the last 2 years, it has dropped off 20 percent in production. Thus, the article, upper right in the Wall Street Journal on April 5.

Obviously, if we don't have oil, we're going to have to find alternatives, so this relates to the subject of this conference today on alternative renewable energy.

And then May 1, there is an article about Hugo Chavez ``aims to weaken the U.S.,'' it says, ``China to get preference with oil from projects now under state control.'' And he was celebrating his nationalization of the fields of four companies. I think that maybe all the oil now in Venezuela has been nationalized.

In addition to nationalized oil, he made the point that he was going to make China, with whom he is partnering, a preferred customer for his oil, and it would be shipped there rather than the United States. And his aim is to hurt the United States.

This pending critical shortage of oil has resulted in a common cause by five groups in this country. The ``peak oil'' group is just one of the groups that have common cause. And I wanted to spend just a moment talking about these people of common cause, all of whom want to move from fossil fuels to renewables, for different reasons.

The first group are those who are concerned about national security. A letter was sent by Boyden Gray and 29 others, Jim Woolsey, a number of retired four star admirals and generals to the President, this was a couple of years ago, saying, ``Mr. President, the fact that we have less than 2 percent of oil in the world and we use 25 percent of the world's oil and we import about two-thirds of what we use is a totally unacceptable national security risk. We really have to do something about that.''

The next slide is on this same subject, and this is a statement by Condoleezza Rice, a very interesting statement. ``We do have to do something about the energy problem. I can tell you that nothing has really taken me aback more as Secretary of State than the way that the politics of energy is--I will use the word `warping' diplomacy around the world.'' Concerned About National Security. So this is one of the groups that has common cause, Concerned About National Security.

The next chart shows a second group. This group has a lot of visibility now. Al Gore came here to the House 2 or 3 weeks ago and testified before our Science Committee. This is the group that believes that greenhouse emissions, primarily CO2 produced by burning these fossil fuels which were sequestered away, some believe as much as millions of years ago when the sun shone on subtropical seas, as in the North Sea, in ANWR, in Prudo Bay, very different world then. And the algae-like organisms grew and dropped to the bottom and silt came in and the tectonic plates opened up, this is the conjecture of how we got our gas and oil. And this was moved down to a depth where there was the right temperature, the right pressure with a rock dome over the top to contain the gas, which is why you don't find gas and oil everywhere; that with time this then was converted into gas and the volatiles, of course, were oil. Well, these are the climate change, the global warming people who really want to move from fossil fuels to the renewables. Because when you are using a renewable, you release the same amount of CO2 perhaps, but that's the CO2 that was sequestered in the spring. If you're burning this in the fall, you are releasing the CO2 that was sequestered in the spring and summer while the plant was growing, so there is no net increase, it's simply recycling of the CO2. So this is the second group that has common cause.

A third group that has common cause are the peak oil people. And this is a classic name here, Hubbert. In 1956, M. King Hubbert predicted that the United States would peak in oil production in 1970. That was considered to be totally ridiculous. The United States was then king of oil, producing I think more oil than any other, and exporting a lot of oil at that time. And just as he predicted, in 1970 we peaked in oil production, and we've been going downhill ever since.

The red curve here, by the way, is the Soviet Union. They kind of fell apart when they came unglued and now they are going to have a second small peak. And a little later we will have a chart which shows you relatively the amount of oil which each of the major oil-producing countries in the world has.

We have two bills, and my next slide is one of those. This is a bill which our office has filed. This is to support Federal research development demonstration and commercial application activities to enable the development of self-powered farms. Our rationale is that if a farm can't be energy independent, we face a very grim future.

This is because as fossil fuels become less and less available, we have to move more and more to alternative fuels. Many of those are going to be produced on the farm, so if the farm can't be energy independent, we are going to have some tough times ahead. So this bill challenges our American farmers to become independent, and there will be prizes for doing that.

The second one is a broad act, America's Energy for America's Future, the bipartisan DRIVE Act as it is called, the acronym, Dependence Reduction Through Innovation in Vehicles and Energy Act, H.R. 60. So there are a number of bills before Congress. These are two important ones.

What I want to do now is to go through three reports that we have had, the first one in February of 2005, the second one in September of 2005 and the third one just released in February of 2007. These reports all say, and I have a few slides from each of these so you can see, Mr. Speaker, that they were delivering the same message to the American people. Paraphrasing what they said, each of these studies concluded that peaking of oil is imminent, if not present, with potentially devastating consequences.

Let's look at the first slide. This is from the Hirsch Report. The first of these reports, February of 2005, is the Peaking of Oil Production: Impacts, Mitigation and Risk Management. This is by the very big, prestigious SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation, and Robert Hirsch was the project leader, so this is frequently referred to as the Hirsch Report.

These are some quotes from that report. They said that ``the peaking of world oil production presents the United States especially and the world generally with an unprecedented risk management problem.'' Unprecedented. That ``the economic, social and political costs will be unprecedented.''

Another authority in this area, Kenneth Deffeyes, says that ``the least bad outcome of oil peaking will be a deep worldwide recession that may make the thirties look like good times.'' Then he goes on to say, ``If you don't like that, try the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: War, famine, pestilence and death.''

A second chart here from the Hirsch Report, and I will just read the highlighted part here, ``oil peaking presents a unique challenge,'' they say. And then they make the statement ``the world has never faced a problem like this.'' There is no precedent in history to guide us. Unprecedented. ``The world has never faced a problem like this.''

The next chart is another quote from the Hirsch Report. ``We cannot conceive of any affordable government-sponsored crash program to accelerate normal replacement schedules.''

What they are talking about, any program that would provide energy from other sources to make up for the energy that won't be there once we have reached peak oil production, and the world's demand for energy keeps going up at about 2 percent, doubles in 35 years, four times bigger in 70 years.

The next chart shows us we are not going to drill our way out of this. This is a very interesting chart. When the Reagan Administration came in, we knew that M. King Hubbert was right. We were already 10 years down the other side in 1980, it peaked in 1970. Ten

years down the other side of Hubbert's Peak, and we knew something was wrong.

What the administration proposed, and this was my second favorite president, by the way, but he was wrong in this. What the administration proposed was to incent the American oil producers to go out and drill for oil. So we gave them some tax incentives. This is what the drilling was, and, boy, did they drill. But notice, the more they drilled, the less oil they got, because we went from positive, producing a bit more than we needed, to negative, not producing as much. If the oil is not there, drilling won't find it.

By the way, we really drill for oil in our country. We have drilled more wells in our country than all the rest of the world put together. In spite of drilling all those oil wells, currently I think 530,000 operating wells, 4,000 wells in the Gulf of Mexico, more than four times as many as all the wells in Saudi Arabia, in spite of that, we have not reversed the prediction of M. King Hubbert that our country would peak in 1970, and then it was down, down, down.

The next chart is a schematic which I think depicts the situation and where we are. This is a 2 percent growth here. By the way, you can make this very steep, we simply compress the abscissa, or make it very shallow, this has a long scale on the abscissa. But it doubles in 35 years. This has been following a roughly 2 percent increase in use. Obviously, up until today we have been able to produce as much oil as we are using. It costs more because there are some tentative shortages. That is why the price of oil has gone up.

So once we get near the peak and the demand keeps going up and the production is leveling off, that yellow area represents a gap between the amount of oil which is available, the green part of the curve, and the amount of oil we would like to use, which is this ever-increasing 2 percent growth rate.

Many people believe that what we ought to do is to fill that gap. I don't think, Mr. Speaker, we can fill the gap, and I don't think it would be productive to try to fill the gap, because there is only so many options out there for filling the gap.

I have 10 children, 15 grandchildren, and 2 great grandchildren. Wouldn't it be nice if I left them a little energy? Which is why I don't vote to drill in ANWR and I don't vote to drill offshore until they convince me that the energy they get from those projects is going to be invested in alternatives. Because we have known for 27 years, since 1980, we have known that M. King Hubbert was right about the United States. We peaked in 1970. Down, down, down since then. He predicted that the world would be peaking about now.

I ask you, Mr. Speaker, if he was right about the United States, which is clearly a microcosm of the world, why shouldn't he be right about the world and why shouldn't we be doing something about that?

Well, in their report, I think unwisely, the Hirsch Report looked at ways of filling the gap. The next chart shows a stylized approach at filling the gap.

What it shows is when you decide to start doing these things, you won't get anything for quite a while. We have, what, about 3\1/2\ years before you get anything. So you have to anticipate the need before you start.

Notice that enhanced oil recovery, coal to liquid, heavy oil, gas to liquid, these are all finite resources. They won't last all that long. The only renewable one, the only one that will continue there is efficient vehicles. So they now are trying to fill the gap with clearly finite resources. There is only so much oil. If you get it there, it won't be there later. There is only so much coal. If you liquify it now, you won't liquify it tomorrow. There is only so much heavy oil. If you use it now, you won't be using it later.

The second chart from the Hirsch Report shows something very interesting, and we don't have time this evening to look at all of the information on this chart. But they are making an assumption here, which this is repeated from the Energy Information Agency, this is not what the Hirsch Report is predicting, by the way. They are repeating information from the Energy Information Agency. And somehow the Energy Information Agency, which stands not quite alone, but near live alone in this view, believes that we will find as much more oil as all the oil that now exists which is recoverable.

If we find that much oil, it will simply push peaking out to 2016. This chart was in 2000, and if we didn't find any more oil, it was going to peak then and start down, which is about what M. King Hubbert had predicted.

By the way, conventional oil probably peaked about then, but we are now getting a lot of oil from things like the Canadian tar sands, the heavy oils, the heavy sour oils and so forth. So we are now getting a fair amount of oil from what is called unconventional oil sources. But the conventional oil probably has already peaked.

They show another very interesting thing here, that if you use enhanced oil recovery and get it more quickly, you may move the peak out, what, about 20 years. But notice what happens after that. You can't pump it later if you pumped it now, and look how it falls off after they have used enhanced oil recovery to get it sooner.

The next chart is a very interesting one. This is projections by the Energy Information Agency. There is a lot we could talk about on these charts, because they are using data from the USGS and the USGS was using a frequency thing, which somehow gets translated to P here. I guess if you don't write clearly, F can look like a P. I have no idea how they got from frequency to P.

They say that we have three possibilities for the amount of oil that we are going to find in the future. The P is for probability. They say that there is the 95 percent probability. They say the mean is the 50 percent probability, if in fact it is probability. Obviously if it is 95 percent probable, it is a whole lot more probable than 50 percent probable. But they somehow take these frequency figures that USGS used, and what they did with frequency was simply make a lot of assumptions and they ran models from these assumptions and they ran these things many times and they got different numbers. So the frequency indicates the number of times that they predicted that quantity of oil. So this has to do only with their simulations and not with reality in the field.

But somehow Energy Information Agency translated the F to P and to 95 percent probability, 50 percent probability, which they said was the mean. Now, if it is a frequency thing, the 50 percent thing could be the mean, but in probabilities it doesn't make any sense.

They were predicting in, what, a little bit before 2000, that if it followed the 95 percent probability, you would get that much oil. If you followed the 50 percent probability, it would follow this line, which they said was the most probable. And the 5 percent probability would follow this line.

What they didn't do, of course, was to include the other half. When you see the path of a hurricane it is a pretty narrow for today. Tomorrow it will be uncertain, because we are uncertain about it. The 50 percent has another line which goes down here and the 5 percent another line that goes down here. Really a big funnel. If you are only 5 percent certain what the future is going to be, obviously it is a big range that you are looking at.

But look at what the actual data points follow. The actual data points follow, as you would expect them to, follow the 95 percent probability, because that is what 95 percent probability means. It is more probable than 50 percent probability.

The next chart shows, and this again is from the Hirsch Report, we are going to go over two more of these reports quickly. This is the Hirsch Report. They here have listed the projections of some of the world's experts on when we would reach peak oil.

Notice this first group, 2007, 2009, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2010, then 2010 to 2020, and then a couple of them, one no visible peak and then CERA and Shell say it would be after 2020 or 2025 or after.

The next chart shows a very interesting chart produced by Cambridge Research Associates. This is the CERA, Cambridge Energy Research Associates. They produced this chart to try to convince the reader that they shouldn't have any confidence in the predictions of M. King Hubbert. Let's look at this.

The total U.S. production is the red. The green is the actual lower 48, which, by the way, is what M. King Hubbert

predicted. He didn't have in his prediction any oil from Alaska or any oil from the Gulf of Mexico. He was looking just at the lower 48. And the yellow ones here are Hubbert's lower 48 prediction.

He said that it would follow a curve like this, and the lower 48 actually followed a curve as shown by the green squares there, and CERA says that proves that M. King Hubbert was wrong and you shouldn't have any confidence in it. I think the average person looking at that says, gee, those green ones are pretty darn close to the yellow ones and he may a pretty good prediction, didn't he?

Now why did the red ones deviate from it? That is because we found a bunch of oil in Prudo Bay. A fourth of our total oil production came from Prudo Bay. So there was a little kick here in it. But notice, down, down, down after that. There was just a blip in the slide down the other side of Hubbert's Peak produced by this huge oil find in Prudo Bay from which a fourth of our oil has come from the last number of years. And you can't even see there the contribution of that fabled oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico which is now being pumped by about 4,000 wells.

The next chart is a chart by CERA, and they put this in an article in which they said that this whole peak oil notion was a farce and them are debunking it. But, boy, when I looked at that chart, it looks like it has a peak to me. It goes up and it goes down. And they said it is going to be an undulating plateau.

By the way, they now are predicting, using the USGS figures, that we are going to find as much oil as all the oil that exists which is recoverable in the world.

Leherrere says that this is absolutely implausible considering all the advances we have had in discovery of oil, computer modeling and 3-D seismic and so forth.

If we don't find that extra oil, and you can make up your mind whether you think we are going to find it or not, we would have been peaking about here. Boy, that is about now, isn't it.

If we find much more oil, we will be peaking later. They have an enormous amount of oil from unconventional there. Maybe, maybe not. We are getting a million barrels a day from the Canadian tar sands. That is a part of the 84-85 million barrels a day that we are burning, a little more than 1 percent. And that is not sustainable because they are using huge amounts of energy from natural gas which will run out. The vein will shortly be ducking under a big overlay so they will have to develop it in situ rather than shovel it out with a shovel that shovels 100 tons, they dump it in a truck that holds 400 tons, and they take it and cook it to get this real heavy, stiff oil out. When it flows, they then mix it with a volatile so it will keep flowing in the pipelines. They know it is not sustainable, and they are going to run out of natural gas. They are thinking about building a nuclear power plant; and, furthermore, shortly they will need to develop in situ and they have no idea how to do that.

Now we are going to look at some charts from the second study. All three of these studies are saying essentially the same thing: The peaking is either present or imminent with potentially devastating consequences if we don't do something about it.

The question everybody needs to be asking is why aren't we doing anything meaningful about this? We are barely nibbling at the margins of the problem, and this is a huge problem.

The U.S. Corps of Engineers, experts Colin Campbell, Jean LaHerrere, Brian Fleay, Roger Blanchard, Richard Duncan, Walter Youngquist and Albert Bartlett, who is no relative of mine, and I wish I had some of his genes. If you do a Google search for Albert Bartlett and energy, you will pull up the most fascinating one-hour lecture I have ever heard. He has given it over 1,600 times. It is honed to perfection. You will be fascinated by it. Please pull it up and read that article.

They have all estimated that a peak in oil production will occur around 2005. This is concurred with by the CEOs of several companies.

The next chart is another one from the Corps of Engineers, and they are quoting Jean Leherrere. The USGS estimate implies a fivefold increase in discovery rate and reserve addition for which no evidence is presented. This is his quote. ``Such an improvement in performance is, in fact, utterly implausible given the great technological achievements of the industry over the past 20 years, the worldwide search, and the deliberate effort to find the largest remaining prospects.''

This is a repeat of the chart that we just looked at. It shows the peaking currently if we don't find this additional oil, and it shows that if we find as much more oil as all of the oil we have found now, that the peak is pushed out to only 2030 or so. It is most unlikely that will happen.

Another chart from the Corps of Engineers study, this is the second of these big studies, let me just refer to the underlying part. ``A careful review of all of the estimates leads to the conclusion that world oil production may peak within a few short years after which it will decline. Once peak oil occurs, then the historic patterns of world oil demand and price cycles will cease.'' With limited supply, the price of oil will go who knows where.

The next chart, again from the Corps of Engineers study, ``Oil is the most important form of energy in the world today. Historically, no other energy source equals oil's intrinsic qualities of extractability, transportability, versatility and cost. The qualities that enabled oil to take over from coal as the frontline energy source for the industrialized world in the middle of the 20th century are as relevant today as they were then.''

Just a word about the quality of this oil. One barrel of oil has the energy equivalent of 12 people working all year. You pay just a little over $100 for it refined. You are hiring the equivalent of a person working for you for a whole year for less than $10. If you have some trouble getting your mind around that, imagine how far that gallon of gasoline or diesel, still cheaper, by the way at $3 a gallon than water in the grocery store, how far that takes your car or your SUV.

I drive a Prius. A gallon takes me about 50 miles. How long would it take me to pull my Prius 50 miles? I can't pull it unless it is on the level, and then I work really hard and go very slowly. If it is uphill, I couldn't do it without a come-along and hooking it to the guardrail or a tree or something and inching it up the hill. How long would it take me to pull my Prius that 50 miles that a gallon takes me.

Another way of looking at the quality of fossil fuels is to recognize that if a strong man works hard all day, you can get more work out of an electric motor for less than 25 cents worth of electricity. That may be humbling to recognize that we are worth less than 25 cents a day in terms of fossil fuel energy; but that is why they say in this report, ``Historically, no other energy source equals oil's intrinsic qualities.''

My next chart, this is a fairly recent article and they say, ``The current price of oil is in the $45-57 per barrel range.'' It is now $64, $65, $66. ``It is expected to stay in that range for several years.'' It didn't, it went up to $78. It has now dropped. There was a fear factor that looks like it was about $18 because it pretty quickly dropped from $78 to $60 when the fear factor went away.

Oil prices may go significantly higher and some have predicted $180 a barrel in a few years. This is from the Corps of Engineers study, and they are a very credible organization.

Now I am going to move to a third study, a GAO study. I asked for this study because I wanted to see if it corroborated the conclusions drawn by the other two studies. This one came out in February 2007, and it was embargoed for 30 days and then it came out a month or so ago. ``Crude oil. Uncertainty about future oil supply makes it important to develop a strategy for addressing a peak and decline in oil production.''

This is their curve for Hubbert's peak, peaking about 1970. This is the increased production from Prudhoe Bay, but down, down, down. Now we are at about half of the oil we were producing in 1970. That is in spite of the fact that we have drilled more oil wells than all of the rest of the world put together.

The next chart is very interesting. This chart has only the top 10. We are

not in the top 10. This lists the top 10 companies on the basis of oil production and reserves. Here it is on the basis of production and reserves.

Our big oil companies, ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, you see those names on the pumps, they produce this much. They don't even appear in the top 10 over here. They don't have any meaningful oil reserves. They are pumping somebody else's oil. The top 10 reserves over here are Luke Oil, 2 percent, and then all of the rest of the top 10 are guess where, Saudi Aramco, National Iranian, Iraq National, Kuwait, Venezuela, Dubai, and so forth. Libya, Nigeria.

The next chart shows the same kind of data in a pie chart. Some people like to look at pie charts. This is the world oil reserves, OPEC and non-OPEC nations.

Now we have blown up the OPEC nations here to see who owns most of the oil. Obviously Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Venezuela and so forth contain the oil there. By the way, Saudi Arabia is not included in that pie chart because it is so big it stands alone.

The next chart shows pictorially what these have shown in these little pie charts. This is what the world would look like, the world according to oil, and this is what the geography of the world would look like if the nation had square miles relative to the amount of oil it has. If the amount of oil determined the size of a country, this is what our world would look like.

Boy, look at Saudi Arabia. It dominates everything. The United States, we are squeezed over here, but we are in good shape compared to India. Look at India with a billion people and China with 1.3 billion. Boy, are they dependent on somebody else's oil.

Russia, a huge oil exporter, but they don't have that much oil compared to the Middle East countries. This is very sobering. What it shows is that most of the oil in the world, and the President said it very well in his State of the Union message, most of the oil in the world is controlled by countries that don't even like us. Just look at the names of these countries, and you can figure that out.

Venezuela dwarfs us. They have several times as much oil as we have. Alaska, that is pretty big, a half or third of what we have in the lower 48.

The next chart, this is from a very interesting speech that I hope to spend an hour talking about next week here on the floor. It was given 50 years ago by Hyman Rickover in 1957. He said some really fascinating things in that speech.

Mr. Speaker, you will be amazed at how prophetic Hyman Rickover was. He is the father of our nuclear submarine. We generally think of him in that venue, but he was wise beyond his time relative to energy. You will be amazed at the predictions and observations he made.

``High energy consumption has always been a prerequisite of political power.'' Boy, look at where the political power is going to be if political power is relative to the amount of enery you have. Just think of that last chart that we looked at.

``Ultimately, the nation which controls the largest energy resources will become dominant.'' I read that and I thought of China who is now going around the world buying oil wherever they can find it for sale. In terms of the economies of buying oil, whoever has the dollars today buys it and it doesn't matter who owns it. That may change in the future. That may be a very true statement in the future.

``If we act wisely and in time to conserve what we have,'' and we obviously didn't do that. I have made the observation that when we found that incredible wealth in the ground, we should have stopped as a culture and asked: What can we do with this to get the most good for the most people for the longest time? That is clearly not what we did.

With no more responsibility than the hog who found the feed room door open or the kids who found the cookie jar, we just pigged out. We want to continue doing that. The call now is to drill, drill, drill.

As I mentioned earlier, I have 10 kids, 15 grandkids, and 2 great- grandkids. I am going to leave them an incredible debt. Not with my votes. Look at them, and I didn't do it. But am I also going to leave them a world largely devoid of easily accessible energy, which is why, again, I don't vote to drill in ANWR and offshore.

``If we act wisely and in time to conserve what we have and prepare well for the necessary future changes, we shall ensure this dominant position for our own country.''

We haven't done that.

Because we have not done that, we now have a real challenge. By the way, I have no doubt that the American people, with proper leadership, which I do not see a whole lot of for the moment, can meet this challenge. We are the most creative, innovative society in the world.

A couple of real quick charts here because our time is running out.

This chart looks at proven oil reserves by investment risk, and about a third of this pie chart; there is no investment because it is not allowed by the companies that own it. Then there is high investment risk. In some of the other countries, you make an investment risk like Hugo Chavez just did. They take the facilities away from you and nationalize them. There is a tiny piece of the pie chart here that has a low investment risk.

The next one looks at political risk, how unstable are these countries, what is the political risk. Boy, more than a third of it high risk, nearly a third of it minimum risk. So you look at these two risks, and that really means that we need to look carefully at the future.

Next chart, and this is an interesting one. This is a prediction of when we will peak. Now, several authorities here do not have any idea exactly when, but they said it could occur as early as this and maybe as late as that, but all of these have occurred before 2020. All of these have occurred before 2020. Very few believe that peaking could not occur before 2020.

The next chart, and I wish we had more time to look at this because this is a fascinating chart. This chart shows the discovery of oil. These bar graphs are the discovery. Obviously you add up all those bars, you will get the total amount of oil that we have found. You will get the same thing if you put a smooth curve over there. The area under the curve will equal the oil we have found.

The solid black line here is the oil we have used. Now, obviously up until about 1980 we were finding more than we use, but since then, we have been borrowing from what we found and we are now peaking.

And what will the future look like? They are predicting here we will find it not smooth like that, but on average that much, less and less. Most experts believe, by the way, we have found about 95 percent of all the oil we will find.

What will the future look like? We can change a little of the detail, but we cannot pump what is not there. If you use enhanced oil recovery, you may extend this out a little bit and it will drop off very quickly, as you saw on that chart.

The next chart is one which I really think is very productive to look at, and Hyman Rickover mentions this. In 8,000 years of recorded history, and we have here only the last 400 or so years of recorded history, roughly 400 years, but in 8,000 years of recorded history, the age of oil will occupy about 300 years. We have been about 150 years into the age of oil. Hyman Rickover in his speech of 50 years ago said that we are about 100 years in what will be called a golden age, and clearly it has been a golden age.

World population, if we put it on this chart, exploded at just about that rate, and if we reach peak oil, it will drop off the other side as quick as we have gone up. Notice what happened in the 1970s, Arab oil shock, more efficiency. If that had not happened, by the way, we would be in even more trouble today because up until the Carter years we had used as much oil every decade as we had used in all of previous history. That means if we had used half the oil, which is I think where we are now, you would have 10 years at current use rate.

Well, what do we do? I would just like to note in the remaining minutes that we have here, that I believe America is up to this challenge. There is no exhilaration like the exhilaration in meeting a big problem and overcoming it, and properly motivated, we are the most creative, innovative society in the world.

I said there were five groups early on. I mentioned only two of them. The two other groups that have common cause in moving to alternatives, one of those is the environmentalists that believe that our air is polluted enough; why would you want to burn more fossil fuels and pollute it more. The other is a group who is longing for a return to dominance in manufacturing. We are very creative. We could become a major exporter of the technology for exploiting these renewable alternative sources.

So there are these five groups. I do not want to argue with whether we have global warming or not because what they want to do for global warming is exactly what we need to do for peak oil. It is exactly what we need to do for national security. It is exactly what we need to do to clean up our air. It is exactly what we need to do to have some manufacturing superiority again. So these five groups have common cause.

We need to buy time by an aggressive conservation program. We need to use it wisely, to invest the time and energy in renewables that will pay off. The benefits, of course, I have indicated. We will now be a major exporting country again.

The last chart, and I am sorry we do not have time to look at this more, but we are very much, and I will close with this, like the young couple that has gotten a big inheritance. Fifteen percent of what they spend they earn, 85 percent is from the inheritance, and it is going to run out. Fifteen percent of what we use, more than half of that nuclear power, is renewables. The 85 percent is fossil fuels which will not last. So the big challenge is the challenge the young couple has. Obviously in the future they are going to have to either spend less or earn more, and that is exactly the challenge we have.

Last chart, and I really want to look at this one in the moments we have here. It is not like we are going to be living in a world that is not comfortable. Interesting chart here, it shows on the ordinate how satisfied you are with life. On the abscissa, it shows the amount of energy you consume. We are way out there in the far right. We use more energy per capita than anybody else in the world. But notice, all these countries, 20 some of them that use less energy than we, which are happier with their station in life than we are. You do not need to use the amount of energy we use to be happy.

We have a really challenging future. I think we are up to it with proper leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the distinguished member of the Rules Committee for yielding.

I rise to finally say we have relief. I thank the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and the chairwoman of the Small Business Committee because without you, we wouldn't be here today being able to finally move forward not only tax relief for small businesses but getting a vote for the minimum wage. Thank you very much.

And I thank you for working it out with the ranking members. Finally we will be able to move in the other body that would not give us an up- or-down vote on the minimum wage. But we have good news because we extend the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. We help small businesses invest in new equipment, which is so very important. And, third, and what is certainly not least, we win the support, as I said, of the Senate to move forward on the minimum wage.

But it is important to note that this WOTC will help veterans, ex- felons, high-risk youth, and welfare recipients, individuals who create the engine of our economy who are trying for a second chance. So this is the right kind of mixture, giving relief to small businesses, which I have always said, are the backbone of the economy of America. I am grateful to say that the small businesses in the 18th Congressional District, which have created an economic engine in our community, will now have the right kind of tax relief to create opportunities for them to reinvest in their own businesses to buy more equipment, because every one of us go home to the churning of small businesses. Every day small businesses open their doors and create jobs for one and two and three and four and five and six and seven and eight and nine and ten employees. So this will be the right message that we will send.

Then, of course, we will give the opportunity for training for our welfare-to-work mothers. We will give training for our veterans. We will give training for high-risk youth. And, yes, we will help those who are trying to reenter to be able to create an opportunity for their families.

Finally, of course, I am gratified that we will have the opportunity now in 10 years to provide the opportunity for those on minimum wage. And in the State of Texas this will create a $4,000 increase for our working families with a minimum wage increase.

Let me thank the proponents of this bill. I ask for a vote in support of H.R. 976.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 976, the ``Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2007.'' I support the bill for several reasons. First, H.R. 976 extends the Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC)--which provides incentives to employers to hire individuals from targeted groups that frequently experience barriers to work--for one year and expands it to cover disabled veterans.

Second, H.R. 976 helps small businesses invest in new equipment and more easily afford large capital expenses. It extends small business expensing (Section 179) for one year--increasing both the amount small businesses can deduct from their taxes (from $112,000 to $125,000) and the number of small businesses that can take these deductions (by increasing the income limits for businesses taking the deduction from $450,000 to $500,000).

Third, and not least important, passage of H.R. 976 is necessary to win the support of the Senate and signature of the President on the legislation passed earlier by this House to raise the minimum wage for millions of hard-working, low-wage workers by $2.10 per hour to $7.25. It has been more than nine years since the minimum wage was last increased, the longest period in the history of the law. In contrast, during this time period Indeed, Mr. Speaker, that it removes the last major hurdle between low-wage workers and the long-overdue pay raise they desperately need, is reason enough for me to support the bill before us.

But evaluated on its merits, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit included in the bill before us is a good and useful measure. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit (WOTC) is a successful federal tax credit that encourages employers to hire eight persons belonging to one or more of eight targeted groups of job seekers by reducing employers' federal tax liability. The credit limit is $2,400, and the targeted groups include veterans, ex-felons, high-risk youth, and welfare recipients.

Mr. Speaker, government data show that 7 out of 10 welfare recipients who obtain jobs in the private sector are using WOTC, and that placing workers in private employment is highly cost-effective compared to State-funded public service jobs. Under the WOTC, employers pay the bulk of job costs, so the average cost to the Government is about $900 per job per quarter (with a ceiling of $1,560 annually) while the cost of a State-funded public service job at $7 per hour averages $3,700 per quarter with no ceiling. Thus, WOTC enables States to economize their welfare and training block grants and saves money that can be used for child care and transportation.

And what are the benefits to the less-skilled and disabled workers WOTC is intended to help? Virtually every study of jobs credits by the Government Accountability Office and independent evaluations funded by the Department of Labor have shown that employment and skills of these workers are increased. In fact, in one study, GAO reported that WOTC workers achieve gains in real wages as a result of their jobs.

Mr. Speaker, the WOTC provides a market incentlve to employers to hire and train less-skilled and disabled workers. To continue this human capital investment in workers who might otherwise be left out of the job market--some 20 million high school dropouts, less-skilled high school graduates, single parents on welfare, disabled workers, and returning combat veterans--we need to extend the WOTC. By extending the WOTC, many more employers, especially small businesses, will have an incentive to look for and offer jobs to people who at first glance may not appear to be good job prospects.

Mr. Speaker, the job site is the place where the most effective learning occurs for a young worker or slow-starter. Because the growth of the nation's labor force is slowing, future economic growth will depend on raising productivity by upgrading skills and making every worker count. Extending the authorization for WOTC will advance this goal. That is why the legislation before us, H.R. 976 is worthy of our support.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, let us also remember how important that the minimum wage be increased. Today's minimum wage of $5.15

today is the equivalent of only $4.23 in 1995, which is even lower than the $4.25 minimum wage level before the 1996-97 increase. It is scandalous, Mr. Speaker, that a person can work full-time, 40 hours per week, for 52 weeks, earning the minimum wage and would gross just $10,700, which is $5,888 below the $16,000 needed to lift a family of three out of poverty.

Mr. Speaker, since 2000 the cost of college tuition has risen 57 percent, which is only slightly less than the increase in the cost of gasoline. Health insurance premiums have skyrocketed by 73 percent and inflation is up 13.4 percent. But during that time, the minimum wage has not increased one cent. That is unconscionable and downright un- American.

Mr. Speaker, today more than ever America's hard-working families are feeling squeezed, living paycheck to paycheck. I can tell you Mr. Speaker that record prices at the pump, skyrocketing health care costs and the rising cost of college in the face of falling or flat wages, are squeezing hard-working Texans in my Houston-based Congressional District as they struggle to make ends meet. That is why ensuring that the minimum wage is increased to $7.25 per hour is one of the nation's highest priorities.

For Texas workers the basic cost of living is rising; it is only fair that the pay for hard-working Texans does too. Nearly 890,000 hard- working Texans would directly benefit from raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, and 1,774,000 more Texans would likely benefit from the raise.

Raising the minimum wage is vital for Texas families. At $5.15 an hour, a full-time minimum wage worker in Texas brings home $10,712 a year--nearly $6,000 below the poverty level for a family of three. An increase of $2.10 an hour would give these families a much needed additional $4,400 a year to meet critical needs such as rent, health care, food and child care. The increase in the minimum wage before us today will not allow workers to live as large as the typical CEO, who now earns 821 times more than a minimum wage worker, but at least it will allow these low-wage workers to make a little better life for themselves and their families.

Mr. Speaker, 89 percent of Americans favor raising the minimum wage. Americans know that the minimum wage must be increased. They know low- wage workers, many of whom live in your district and mine, badly need the money and have been waiting for it for too long. That is why I urge all members to support H.R. 976, which is inextricably linked to the minimum wage increase.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 161 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz- Balart). All time yielded during consideration of the rule is for debate purposes only.

I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Mr. ARCURI asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 161 is a rule to provide for consideration of H.R. 976, the Small Business Tax Relief Act, under suspension of rules at any time on the legislative day of Friday, February 16, 2007.

This rule is necessary because under clause 1(a) of rule XV, the Speaker may entertain motions to suspend the rules only on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of each week. In order for suspensions to be considered on other days, the Rules Committee must provide for consideration of these motions.

Mr. Speaker, let me begin by saying how honored I am as a member of the distinguished Rules Committee to manage the rule for consideration of such an important piece of legislation that will provide $1.3 billion of tax relief for our Nation's small business.

This legislation, the Small Business Tax Relief Act, is strongly supported by a host of business organizations, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the NFIB, the National Association of Manufacturers and the National Restaurant Association.

Small businesses are the backbone of this Nation's economy. Every day we as Americans utilize the services of small business owners, whether it is dropping off our dry cleaning, grabbing a bite to eat at a local diner or pizzeria, or waiting in line to pick up a prescription at a local pharmacy. We depend on our small businesses.

It is a constant struggle for most small businesses just to keep the lights on. Utility costs continue to skyrocket, and larger companies continue to expand services, pushing out the mom-and-pop stores in cities and towns across the country. My constituents in Upstate New York have experienced this loss of economic activity firsthand, but that trend has continued.

The Small Business Tax Relief Act would help small businesses grow and hire new workers by extending and expanding tax provisions that encourage investment in new equipment and promote the hiring of disadvantaged workers, and it does so in a fiscally responsible way that meets the pay-as-you-go requirements. Small business owners have to balance the books and stay on budget each month. It is only fitting that we do as well.

Specifically, the bill would help small businesses invest in new equipment by extending and expanding expensing options for 1 year and increase both the amount small businesses can deduct from their taxes and the number of small businesses that can take these deductions.

The bill would extend the work opportunity tax credit, which provides incentives to employers to hire individuals that frequently experience barriers to work for 1 year, and expand it to cover disabled veterans. In other words, it helps those who need jobs by giving employers tax credits for creating jobs.

It would enhance the current tip credit for small businesses by maintaining the current tip credit that small businesses take for the Social Security taxes they pay on their employees' tips, instead of allowing it to drop with the long-overdue increase in the minimum wage this legislation will help achieve.

The bill also contains a provision that would simplify tax-filing requirements for businesses owned jointly by a husband and wife, providing much-needed relief for the many small firms throughout this country.

Right now, there is a glitch in the Social Security tax law which only allows one spouse, most often the husband, to get credit for paying into Social Security. This leaves women who work as equal partners in an unfair situation. The Small Business Tax Relief Act fixes this glaring inequality by ensuring that both partners, equal members of the team, receive their justly deserved entitlement benefits.

Moreover, this legislation does not only help small businesses. It is a win-win, because passage of the Small Business Tax Relief Act is also a critical step in finalizing an increase in the Federal minimum wage for 13 million hardworking Americans.

I made a promise to my constituents that I would go to Washington to fight for a long-overdue increase in the Federal minimum wage. Passage of this measure takes us one step closer to fulfilling that promise.

I want to be clear. I support a stand-alone increase in the minimum wage, like the legislation we passed a few weeks ago with overwhelming bipartisan support. However, 10 years is too long for any hardworking Americans to wait for a wage increase. Let's not force them to wait any longer. The time to act is now.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Bean).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my good friend, the distinguished gentleman from Florida (Mr. Mahoney).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Ellsworth).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to my friend from North Carolina (Mr. Shuler).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Matheson).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the hardworking gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Donnelly).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to my colleague from New York (Ms. Velazquez), the chairwoman of the Committee on Small Business.

(Ms. VELAZQUEZ asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee).

Mr. Speaker, I first of all would like to thank my fellow New Yorker and the dean of our delegation, Chairman Rangel, for his very hard work in bringing this very important bipartisan bill to the floor. I think it shows the depth of his knowledge and understanding of the issues, and I think it is very critical that we address this bill today.

Mr. Speaker, $1.3 billion in tax relief for our small business owners is the kind of sensible, responsible tax relief I am proud to support. Let's help small businesses do what they do best, and that is create jobs and strengthen our economy.

During the debate at the Rules hearing, some of my colleagues were asking the question why we had to move so quickly on this bill, why we couldn't wait until Congress came back in session.

I couldn't help but think of the old adage, why put off until tomorrow what you can do today. People who earn $5.15 who want the minimum wage raised have been waiting for 10 years. People in small business who pay more than they need to want tax breaks. It is the sensible thing to do, and it is the sensible thing to do right now.

As I said earlier, this is a win-win scenario, because passage of this bipartisan fiscally responsible legislation will also clear the way for a much-needed and well-deserved increase in the minimum wage. America's workers have been waiting far too long for a pay raise. Let's not make them wait any longer.

I urge a ``yes'' vote on this rule and on the previous question, because our small business owners need some relief and American workers deserve a raise.

The material previously referred to by Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida is as follows:

Amendment to H. Res. 161 Offered by Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida

On page 1, line 6, strike the period and insert ``, and the

bill (H.R. 60) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to

make permanent the deduction of State and local general sales

taxes.''.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my friend from New York for the time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 161 provides that it will be in order at any time on the legislative day of today to consider H.R. 976, the Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2007, under a suspension of the rules.

The passage of these tax cuts for small businesses across the country is very important. Small business, Mr. Speaker, is the engine that drives our economy. Small businesses employ over half of all private- sector workers and pay approximately 45 percent of all United States private payroll.

Over the last decade, small businesses have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs each year. Hispanic small businesses now number over 2 million, Mr. Speaker, and their number has been growing at three times the average of non-Hispanic businesses.

But we must not take the extraordinary performance of small businesses for granted. They still face considerable hurdles, so it is appropriate that steps be taken to ensure that small businesses are able to continue to grow and employ more and more Americans.

The Small Business Tax Relief Act will provide extraordinary savings to small businesses in the United States through targeted tax cuts. The bill increases the amount that small businesses will be able to deduct for equipment purchases and extends the deduction to the year 2010. It also extends the work opportunities tax credit for another year and expands three categories of the eligible workers to encourage employers to hire disabled veterans, high-risk youth, and individuals with disabilities.

Under this legislation, Mr. Speaker, businesses will be able to use their FICA tax tip credit against their regular and AMT liability, saving small businesses over $500 million over 10 years.

The Small Business Tax Relief Act also allows spouses who operate a business together to file as a sole proprietorship, without penalty. It allows both spouses to claim Medicare and Social Security taxes. This is an important piece of legislation, Mr. Speaker. It will help our small businesses continue their admirable growth and job creation.

I would like to commend the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, and the ranking member, Mr. McCrery, and all of those who, in a bipartisan manner, have worked to quickly bring this important bill to the floor for debate.

I look forward to the debate on H.R. 976. However, Mr. Speaker, we could have done more. On Wednesday, at the hearing of the Rules Committee and the markup of this rule, Mr. Sessions, my dear colleague from Texas, the gentleman from Texas, offered an amendment to the rule that would have allowed us to consider H.R. 60 under suspension of the rules today.

H.R. 60, authored by our colleague, Mr. Baird, a Democrat, would make the local and State sales tax deduction permanent. This sales tax deduction is set to expire at the end of this year. Without passage of this bipartisan legislation to extend the deduction, millions of individuals and States without an income tax, such as Texas, Washington, Nevada, Tennessee, South Dakota, Wyoming and Florida, will face an unnecessary and unfortunate tax increase. However, the majority in the Committee on Rules voted against allowing us to debate and pass this widely supported bipartisan piece of legislation.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 4 minutes to my distinguished colleague from Florida, who has worked so hard to make the sales tax a deductible and who is obviously extremely concerned about the fact that we cannot vote on it today, Ms. Brown-Waite.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I have the pleasure of yielding 5 minutes to my colleague, who, in the Rules Committee, made the motion for us to debate today the sales tax deduction to allow us to consider legislation by Mr. Baird, a Democrat. Unfortunately, the majority of the Rules Committee did not allow that motion to go forward, voted it down, that amendment.

But it is my pleasure to recognize for 5 minutes not only a distinguished member of the Rules Committee, but a great leader in this House whom I am honored to serve with, Mr. Sessions.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank everybody who participated in this debate and all of those who worked so hard to bring forth this legislation in a bipartisan fashion.

I will be asking for a ``no'' vote, Mr. Speaker, on the previous question, so that we can amend this rule and allow the House to consider H.R. 60, a bill by our colleague, Mr. Baird, under suspension of the rules.

As I stated before, Mr. Speaker, Congress passed last year the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, which included State and local sales tax deductions.

Over the last 2 years, the sales tax deduction has resulted in billions of dollars in tax savings to millions of hardworking taxpayers throughout the United States. These tax savings have meant a boost to the economy of seven important States affected by the deduction: Washington, Texas, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, South Dakota and Wyoming. However, that important tax deduction will expire at the end of this year. Failure to extend the sales tax deduction will mean that our constituents may face an unfortunate tax increase.

By defeating the previous question, we will give Members the ability to vote on H.R. 60. Without passage of this important legislation that extends the sales tax deduction, millions in States without an income tax, Washington, Texas, Florida, Nevada, Tennessee, South Dakota and Wyoming, will face a tax increase.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment and extraneous materials immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from the Rules Committee from Miami, Florida (Mr. Lincoln Diaz-Balart).

Mr. Speaker, on Wednesday evening at the Rules Committee, we met to bypass regular order once again, which seems to be a new regular order for the 10th time under the new Democrat leadership. I brought forth the ability to discuss a small tax item with the germaneness to the tax bill that we are debating here today. I wish that we were considering this rule under regular order that the Democrat candidates, out on the campaign trails, promised voters this last election cycle. I believe that the tax bill will end up enjoying bipartisan support on the House floor today. So since we are already bypassing regular order to consider this legislation, I offered an amendment to bring another tax bill to the floor that would enjoy also broad bipartisan support, making the State and local sales tax deduction permanent for residents of non-income-tax States.

This issue is a matter of fairness. It is quite simple in its honesty. It enjoys support from a huge number of Democrats and Republicans and would allow taxpayers a deduction for sales tax in lieu of income tax for taxpayers in States that do not have a State income tax.

Nine States currently have no income tax: Texas, Florida, Washington, South Dakota, Tennessee, Nevada, Wyoming, New Hampshire, and Alaska. The 1986 Tax Reform Act eliminated the sales tax deduction from the Federal Tax Code but maintained the State income tax deduction. That change has a disproportionate impact on States that do not use a State income tax.

A 2-year sales tax deductibility provision was signed into law as part of the American Jobs Creation Act. This law restored fairness to those in States with no State income tax for the first time in nearly 20 years and kept an estimated $3.6 billion in the hands of taxpayers that choose to deduct State sales tax in all nine affected States. This critical tax relief is said to expire at the end of this year and must be extended, or my constituents in Texas and taxpayers from eight other States will see a massive, unavoidable tax increase.

H.R. 60 would permanently restore fairness to taxpayers in the nine affected States. I am disappointed that the amendments did not include this one and it was defeated by the Rules Committee Democrats along a party-line vote.

While I support the legislation for continued tax fairness for small businesses that we are about to consider, I am sorry that we were not allowed to have this amendment on the House floor today as a golden opportunity for taxpayers to finally find this tax disparity and this loophole closed for good.

I appreciate the gentleman's extending the time to me. He also is from the State of Florida, which is hugely affected by this unwelcomed tax.