Floor Statements

Mr. President, where are the jobs? You spent nearly $1 trillion on a stimulus bill that failed. Now you want to spend another $450 billion on another stimulus bill. This is simply repeating the same action and expecting a different outcome.

Solyndra is an example of the waste and failure of your stimulus bill. This company in the solar industry is a crony of your administration. Solyndra's backers were friends of your Presidential campaign, and the company received friendly treatment from your administration. Solyndra was supposed to create green jobs, but now more than a thousand are laid off. They got a $535 million taxpayer- subsidized loan, but they are now bankrupt and their officers are taking the Fifth Amendment.

We must help the American economy create jobs by freeing job creators from regulations that stifle growth, expand production of competitive and affordable energy, stop threatening job creators with higher taxes, and stop wasting taxpayers' money.

Mr. Speaker, no more Solyndras.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Mr. Speaker, this evening is a moment in history. Very few times does this House vote to advance an amendment to the United States Constitution, but we did it today. And the gentlelady from Ohio, she just talked about what Americans talk about at home. It's about balancing your checkbook. It's about not spending more than you take in. We don't have a problem with too few taxes here in Washington. We have a problem with too much spending. Mr. Speaker, we still borrow 41 cents out of every $1, and we're borrowing a lot of that money from the Chinese.

What this bill we passed tonight will do is put us on a track to pass a balanced budget amendment--what Americans are calling for: permanent accountability from Washington. No more spending tricks, no more budget gimmicks. Just do what every American family and business has to do. Just balance our budget.

Mr. Chair, on rollcall No. 658 I was unavoidably detained, and could not be present for the rollcall. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''

Amendment Offered by Mr. Dicks

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 601, I was unavoidably detained from arriving before the close of the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I will try to be brief because this amendment follows up on an amendment that was adopted by a voice vote by the Committee of the Whole just 2 days ago.

This amendment is the second part of the amendment I offered on Monday of this week. That amendment reduced funding by $6 million from the EERE, and that would be enough to cut the funding that this amendment limits that would reduce funding for the international programs of EERE. It was an amendment endorsed by Citizens Against Government Waste.

The international programs are a subset of the EERE budget and do not have their own line item in an appropriations bill, so because of that, this limitation amendment would be required to properly implement the

spending reduction amendment, again, passed by the committee on Monday.

This amendment clearly states that no funds may be spent on the international program activities of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, with the exception of the activities authorized in section 917 of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. So we removed $6 million in funding on Monday, $8 million was recommended by the committee, therefore leaving $2 million in the program. The United States Government has $1.5 trillion in debt, borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar, and now is not the time to take our hard-borrowed dollars and spend them overseas.

This program literally--and I will read the programs funded under the international program--assists manufacturing facilities in China and India to reduce their energy use. Mr. Chairman, we should be keeping that money to help our factories reduce their energy use, not our international competitors. Improving energy efficiency in the Chinese building sector. Mr. Chairman, we should be improving our energy efficiency, not the Chinese building sector. Partnering with the Kazakhstan Government to provide training on industrial efficiency. Mr. Chairman, when we're borrowing this amount of money, we should be using it to promote our industrial efficiency, not the Kazakhstan Government.

Furthermore, it does things like help build windmills in Mexico. Now Mr. Chairman, we don't have the money to build windmills here, we have to borrow the money to do that. We shouldn't be borrowing money to build windmills in Mexico.

Again, this amendment implements the spending reduction already adopted on Monday.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire as to how much time I have remaining?

Mr. Chairman, just so we dispel any misconceptions that the committee might hold about what these programs are, let me read from the EERE Web site, because we were saying these are developing countries. Well, China is not a developing country, Mr. Chairman. This is what it says: ``The U.S. Department of Energy today announced $1 million in available funding to train energy assessors who will assist manufacturing facilities in China and India to reduce their energy use.'' Mr. Chairman, those aren't my words; they're the words of the Department that is asking for funding, for us to borrow money from China so that we can go to China to ``reduce their energy use.''

It goes on to say, ``The EERE engages in multiple technology and policy efforts to improve energy efficiency in the Chinese building sector.'' These aren't my words, Mr. Chairman; these are the words of the DOE that wants us to borrow money from China to spend money in China to improve energy efficiency in the Chinese building sector.

Let's go further on. It says, ``EERE partnered with the Kazakh Government to provide training on Save Energy Now industrial efficiency.'' In Kazakhstan. I would offer that if we want to do foreign aid, that we do it in the Department of State budget.

With regards to these cooperative programs, they're not zeroed out. The chairman should know that these programs are partially funded through the Department of State, and we don't affect the Department of State budget in this appropriation. What we do say is the Department has egregiously spent American taxpayer dollars. They are wasting taxpayer dollars. And with regards to wind power and windmills, I don't know what they're building in Mexico, but let me read from their Web site--not my words, their Web site: ``EERE is involved in several projects currently underway, including wind energy in Mexico.'' Now Mr. Chairman, unless there is something else beside windmills that uses wind energy, the Department says they are involved in projects involving windmills in Mexico.

This country can't afford to make Chinese factories energy efficient and to build windmills in Mexico when we are borrowing 40 cents out of every dollar.

Mr. Chairman, I urge adoption of this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, another week, and another week that our fiscal problems in this country are unsolved. We saw the jobs report-- 18,000 jobs created when we need 350,000 jobs created in order to get our unemployment rate back down to 5 percent. And who can blame our job creators when all the

talk in Washington now appears to be about how we can raise taxes on those job creators?

I don't care whether we call it expenditures in our tax code or revenues, what they are are taxes on our job creators, and our job creators have responded by not creating jobs. Mr. Speaker, what they want is they want to know that Washington understands how to solve this problem. They want to know that we know that we can cut our spending, we can cap our future spending.

Mr. Speaker, it's time for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Forty-nine of the 50 States have it. We should have it here in Washington so that we never have to face again the question of how high to raise our debt ceiling and how far to put our children in debt.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, my amendment will reduce funding for the international programs of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy by cutting $6 million out of their $8 million budget and transferring it to the spending reduction account to reduce our deficit.

Now, first, Mr. Chairman, I want to commend the committee for doing excellent work in cutting the EERE budget by an overall total of 27 percent, but this program was cut less than that. It was cut by 20 percent. Mr. Chairman, as I go through the district, the number one area that I hear people say let's cut that to attack our deficit is foreign aid; and basically, this program is foreign aid. It takes scarce American jobs and sends them overseas.

Now, Mr. Chairman, as you know, our unemployment rate here jumped to 9.2 percent last week. We created 18,000 jobs, and here in front of us we have a program, this international program, that creates jobs. It sure does. The problem is they're all in foreign countries. So it takes those scarce American jobs and sends them overseas.

And I agree with the ranking member: Our actions today should have jobs as our focus, American jobs. That is why this amendment is essential.

The United States Government now has a $1.5 trillion debt. We borrow 40 cents out of every dollar spent. We borrow money from China to finance our Federal spending and our national debt. And through this program, we spend that money in China to make Chinese manufacturers more energy efficient. Yes, that is hard to believe, but we do that. We take a million dollars and spend it in China to make their factories more efficient so they can compete with us so we can lose jobs, lose our revenues, and then borrow more money from China to do it all over again. We have got to end this vicious cycle, and we have to end it with this amendment.

As chairman of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee in the Science, Space and Technology Committee, we held hearings on this specific subject. Let me tell you about some of the programs this international program funds. It assists manufacturing facilities in China and India to reduce their energy use. Well, that's great, but why are we helping our economic competitors with hard-earned dollars that we borrow from them and then use to make their industries more efficient.

It gets even better. Then we improve energy efficiency in the Chinese building sector. Great. Let's strengthen our economic opponents with money we actually borrowed from them. In fact, the DOE just announced a $25 million project over the next 5 years to support the U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center. Now, why isn't it a U.S. energy research and

development center? Why are we spending hard-earned, hard-borrowed dollars overseas?

Even more programs:

One to promote energy efficiency in Indian software companies; unbelievable. Why aren't we promoting energy efficiencies in American software companies.

Partnering with the Kazakhstan Government to provide training on industrial efficiency. Now, I like those auto jobs in the United States. Maybe we should, in fact, train our own industry to be more efficient and not go to Kazakhstan and spend our money to do it.

A renewable energy center and solar power project in Chile; energy efficiency centers in Peru and Costa Rica; windmills in Mexico. Yeah, we are taking this money and we are actually building windmills in Mexico. Renewable energy strategy development in the Caribbean, and windmills in the Dominican Republic.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have gone throughout my district. They are begging for us to cut the deficit. The President said, he promised he would go line by line through that budget and find some items to cut. Ladies and gentlemen, this program is ripe for that cutting. We shouldn't be sending this money overseas. This doesn't eliminate the program; it cuts 75 percent of the funding. It goes a little further than the committee.

We clearly have to allocate America's hard-earned resources to higher priorities. Again, I commend the committee for making a start in cutting here, but we've got to go further. When we're spending money on making Chinese factories more efficient to compete with us and when we're building windmills in Mexico with our money, we've gone too far. That's why the Citizens Against Government Waste has endorsed this amendment. It hardly gets more wasteful than taking hard-earned dollars, borrowing from overseas, sending it back over there, and creating jobs overseas when we have a 9.2 percent unemployment rate here.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Let me just briefly address this so that we can move on.

We only cut $6 million out of the $8 million. There is actually budget language further on that protects a cooperative agreement between the U.S. and Israeli Governments, so it does not eliminate all the funding; it protects that program, and there will be another amendment offered later that will make that quite specific.

I understand that there is some possibility of actually getting a benefit for partnering--and I thank the ranking member for offering assistance--but honestly, I'm not sure what we're going to learn from Kazakhstan by sending money over there to provide training on industrial efficiency. I thought that we were the powerhouse of the world in industry. I thought we were the leader of the world. It's fine when we have a lot of money, but the fact of the matter is we borrow 40 cents out of every dollar, and the largest program expenditure outside of the joint program with Israel is that expenditure in China.

Now, I want everyone to understand there is still money available. It's in the Department of State budget. This doesn't eliminate these programs. This just removes the Department of Energy's contribution. I will remind the body why the Department of Energy was formed years and years ago. It was to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, and it has failed to do so. It has existed for decades, failing to do the mission for which it was established. In my district, people in private industry tell me, if they had a division or a department that failed to do its job for decades, they wouldn't be cutting it back--they'd be eliminating it.

So, again, I thank the chairman and I thank the ranking member, and I urge the body to support the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

The doctor from Georgia is absolutely right. We held a hearing in my subcommittee on this very topic, and it was very instructive because for the last several weeks we have heard a lot about, oh, my gosh, these giveaways to corporations and

how we have to look at them critically. Well, here is a program where we can put $25.5 million back into our deficit reduction by reducing corporate subsidies.

The doctor is right, GE doesn't need a subsidy, but they get it through this program. UPS doesn't need a subsidy; they get it through this program. They all make money, millions and billions of dollars, but this program gives them another subsidy. Verizon doesn't need a subsidy, but they get it through this program. They make a lot of money. They make a lot of money. This program subsidizes it.

And the gentleman is right, E85 is probably a bad choice. Why are we spending money--money that we have to borrow from the Chinese every day--in order to put E85 pumps around or to convert vehicles to E85 as part of this program? Mr. Chairman, it makes no sense.

This is another little contribution we can make. Our constituents have sent us here to deal with the Federal deficit. The doctor makes a contribution, $25.5 million. We held a hearing on this. You know, their press release on one of these was ``green beer for St. Patrick's Day'' because they actually spent money for a beer distributing company to upgrade their trucks.

Last I looked, that business made money. We shouldn't be subsidizing it.

This is a good amendment. The body should adopt the amendment, help cut our deficit, and stop sending money to corporations that simply don't need our help.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Harris

Amendment No. 53: Page 62, after line 2, insert the

following new section:

Sec. 609. None of the funds made available by this Act may

be used to fund any portion of the International program

activities at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable

Energy of the Department of Energy with the exception of the

activities authorized in section 917 of the Energy

Independence and Security Act of 2007 (42 U.S.C. 17337).

Mr. Speaker, while marching in parades and town festivals all over my district during the 4th of July weekend, I spoke with concerned parents, job creators, seniors, and folks who have been out of work for a long time. The one message I heard loud and clear from all of them: Reduce government spending so that businesses can create jobs again.

That's why I signed onto the Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge, which calls for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. I know the idea that the government should have to actually balance its budget every year is strange to some here in Washington, especially to entrenched bureaucrats and the special interest groups that fill this city. Imagine if the Federal Government had to run a budget like we do in our homes.

It's time for the Federal Government to live within its means, and it's time for us to reduce spending so that businesses will have the confidence to create jobs again.

Cut, cap and balance. Let's make sure we put America back on the path to prosperity, not on the path to unemployment and bankruptcy.

Offered By: Mr. Harris

Amendment No. 3: Page 62, after line 2, insert the

following new section:

Sec. 609.

``None of the funds made available by this Act may be used

to fund any portion of the International program at the

Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy of the

Department of Energy other than the U.S.-Israel energy

cooperative.''

Offered By: Mr. Harris

Amendment No. 4: Page 23, line 4, after the dollar amount

insert ``(reduced by $6,000,000)''.

Page 62, line 2, after the dollar amount insert

``(increased by $6,000,000)''.

Madam Speaker, I rise to report some distressing economic news from my district.

To add to our country's rising unemployment, plummeting home values and a steep drop in retail sales last month, Allen Family Foods filed for bankruptcy last week. A well-known name in the poultry industry and a longstanding Delmarva family business, this closing could cost thousands of jobs.

The reason for Allen's collapse: soaring grain prices, energy costs and overbearing government regulations, especially from the EPA.

The chilling signal sent to potential job creators throughout America right now is that the bureaucrats in this administration are now the central planners of our economy--and they are not doing a very good job. We have tried to create jobs their way, and it hasn't worked. Overtaxing, overspending and overregulating cannot and will not create jobs.

It is time to head in a new direction. It is time for a new economic policy. If we stop the spending spree in Washington, businesses will, once again, create jobs in America. It is up to us to restore confidence and certainty and to send a signal to the private sector that the United States is, once again, open for business.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

I thank my colleague from Ohio for introducing this amendment and, once again, for this dialogue on an important issue.

I will remind my colleague that, although he brings up the fact that this has been decided in the Chamber twice already in other similar circumstances, it's not really the same because, last Friday, of course, we found out that our unemployment rate is rising in the country. It's now 9.1 percent again. We only created 54,000 jobs, not the 200,000 jobs we'd hoped we would create and certainly much fewer than the 150,000 jobs we need to create in order to get back to full employment. That's how many we need to create every month.

What this amendment means, very simply, is that we are going to have to spend 10 to 20 percent more on every single project that ends up in a project labor agreement--and more projects will. If more projects wouldn't, then the advocates wouldn't care about whether we put this provision in. It clearly will result in project labor agreements, so let's review what a project labor agreement does.

First and foremost, it increases the cost 10 to 20 percent on every project. Now, Mr. Chairman, if you or I or people in my congressional district were going to contract to build something around their homes, they wouldn't put a provision in normally that says that we're only going to hire union contractors.

They will go out. They will get the bids. They will go out. They will seek to find out what the reputations of the bidders are, and then they will make the decision based purely on price and quality and value whether or not to make that deal, not whether someone is a member of a union or hires union laborers; but that's what a project labor agreement does.

So let's talk about jobs a little bit. What is our important role here in Congress? Our role in Congress is to try to get our unemployment rate up. Well, if we save 10 to 20 percent on every job, we certainly can do more construction jobs. I just met over lunch with one of the people in my district who is an electrical contractor and he's not unionized, and he asked me to come down here and he said, please, go to the floor today and ask so that those 80 percent, or 7 percent, of us who are contractors who are not unionized can get a piece of that pie so that we don't have to fire our employees.

Mr. Chairman, it's simple. If we can save 10 to 20 percent on every project, we can hire 10 to 20 percent more people to do more projects. And again, the sad fact is our unemployment rate is 9.1 percent. It's going up, not down. The number of new jobs created last month, 54,000, going down, not up. We've got to reverse that, and we've got to do it by being efficient and being smart with our dollars, and one way is to not require project labor agreements.

Finally, let me address the issue of local citizens. I want these contracts to go into the First Congressional District of Maryland; but, Mr. Chairman, I don't have a lot of union contractors in my district. There are a lot of districts that don't have a lot of union contractors. So if we want local contractors to be employed, if we want local citizens to get jobs, our local unemployment rates to go down, Mr. Chairman, I would suggest we defeat this amendment, which will frequently require that in order to qualify for a contract you have to hire out of district. You may have to go to another State. That's not good for anyone, certainly not good for the folks in the First Congressional District of Maryland.

Mr. Chairman, again, I want to thank my colleague from Ohio for bringing this issue up, but we do need to revisit this issue because we don't live in the same world we lived in one week ago. We live in a world where the talk of the double-dip recession is sincere and it's serious and our unemployment rate going up, not down; the number of jobs going down, not up. The last thing we should do is to take those hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to use them, and I will say to waste them, in some circumstances, on project labor agreements.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, with Americans feeling pain at the gas pump, I am so glad that the House remains focused on lowering the cost of energy and creating an environment for positive job growth.

American energy production has been handcuffed by a moratorium that the President has placed on new oil, natural gas, and coal production right here in the United States. Mr. Speaker, there is simply no reason that a country with the largest fossil fuel reserves in the world should be suffering through another energy crisis, a crisis that has already cost America thousands of jobs, forced manufacturers to relocate overseas, and made a gallon of gas unaffordable.

The folks that get hurt the most are our seniors on fixed incomes, small businesses, and the poor. This administration apparently thinks the best way to help these folks is to raise their energy taxes and then lend Brazil billions of dollars to drill for oil, while our workers and our factories stand idle.

What we need is a dose of common sense when it comes to our domestic energy policy. We have to use our own oil, natural gas, and coal to create jobs and stop the pain at the pump.

Mr. Speaker, as if businesses weren't struggling enough with the worst recession since the Great Depression, some Washington bureaucrat decided it was a good idea to distract the real job creators of our country from doing what they do best--create jobs.

To the gentleman from New York, that's what this debate is about, whether that hypothetical family actually has a job. But whether they should be distracted from creating jobs by requiring them to fill out mountains of 1099 paperwork. Obviously, the individual who came up with this brilliant idea has never had to meet a payroll or deal with the day-to-day operations of a small business.

Small business owners all over my district have told me that the 1099 provision would hurt their business. Trish Date, who co- owns Rittenhouse Fuel Services with her husband and Perry Hall, said it would be ``an administrative nightmare that would cost me thousands of dollars to implement.''

Last year, she used over 250 individual vendors that will now require 1099 forms to be printed, copied, mailed, completed, and sent to the venders and the IRS. Her small family-owned business simply does not have the resources or capacity to handle this onerous regulation.

Another business owner, Karen Oertel, whose family owns and operates the Harris Crab House on the eastern shore, said this 1099 mandate would be ``overwhelmingly burdensome on my family business.''

Mr. Speaker, the 1099 provision is simply a job-destroying regulation that wastes precious time, labor, and money. If we want to create jobs tomorrow, I urge my colleagues to join me in repealing this awful provision now by supporting H.R. 4.