Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today in support of House Resolution 364, which will name HVC-215 after Gabe Zimmerman.

January 8, 2011, was a dark day in our country's history. Six of our citizens lost their lives, and Congresswoman Giffords and many others were severely injured during a senseless act of violence. There is nothing this House can do to ease the pain of the families and friends who lost loved ones that day. For them, Tucson's painful memories may never fully recede.

What we can do is continue to honor those we lost--Gabe Zimmerman, Christina Taylor Green, John Roll, Dorothy Morris, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorwan Stoddard--and make sure they are never forgotten.

The loss of Gabe Zimmerman affected this body deeply. We all know staffers like Gabe--tireless public servants who work long hours and weekends for modest pay. Congressional offices wouldn't be able to function without people like Gabe. Yet they rarely receive the credit they deserve.

Shortly after the shooting, Gabe's friend C.J. told the Los Angeles Times about a visit he and Gabe made to the Lincoln Memorial. He said, ``When we went to the Lincoln Memorial on a cold, damp January morning, the wind whipped through the place, and it was freezing cold, but Gabe had to read every single word of the Gettysburg Address . . . He put his all into his work. He put his all into his life.''

Madam Speaker, Gabe's life was cut too short, but his life will be forever honored. Years from now, when young interns and staffers visit HVC-215, they will be reminded of Gabe Zimmerman's story--of his passion, of his service to his State and country, and of the example that he set.

Madam Chair, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I want to thank my friend and colleague from North Carolina for bringing this bill to the floor, and I want to thank our friends on the other side of the aisle for working on this important bill as well.

Madam Chair, this is a commonsense amendment that will make it easier for American companies to raise capital, to expand, and to hire more workers.

I support the gentleman from North Carolina's legislation, which removes an unnecessary barrier to allow start-ups and small businesses to raise capital through individual investments of up to $10,000, or 10 percent of an investor's income. My amendment would simply index this individual investment cap to inflation.

Entrepreneurs and new businesses play a vital role in advancing both job creation and innovation in our country. Over the last three decades, new businesses have created nearly 40 million jobs and have been responsible for nearly all net new job creation. Unfortunately, the environment for new businesses has grown increasingly unfavorable. In the past 3 years, the number of new businesses launched has fallen 23 percent. Capital investment in start-up companies has decreased, and far fewer small companies are holding initial public offerings.

Madam Chair, too often when legislation is not indexed to inflation, Congress must go back and amend current laws. For instance, $10,000 in 1980 would actually be $27,535 today. The need for small businesses to have access to capital is constant. It makes sense that, as the value of the dollar fluctuates over time, we should adjust the investment cap accordingly.

This amendment will promote economic growth at no cost to the taxpayer. I support H.R. 2930, and I urge my colleagues to support this pro-growth amendment.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1904, a bill authored by my good friend and fellow Arizonan, Congressman Gosar, that will create thousands of jobs in Arizona.

I want to commend Chairman Hastings for his work on this and for bringing it to the floor today.

What we see right now is a jobs crisis that we have in America. We need to be able to unleash the ingenuity of our job creators. We also have to make sure that we're not putting up barriers for people to actually start companies, expand companies and hire new workers.

H.R. 1904 will have broad economic impacts, not only for Arizona but for the country as a whole, because it will create 3,700 jobs equaling nearly $220.5 million in annual wages. These are good, high-paying jobs right here in America. It will also generate nearly $20 billion in Federal, State, county, and local tax revenue.

This is a win-win. Not only is this legislation completely paid for, but it also ensures that mining is done in a responsible manner because H.R. 1904 requires full compliance with NEPA and because it requires tribal consultation prior to mine construction.

Now, Mr. Chairman, copper is a vital mineral that we have in the United States and across the world. It's going to continue to be vital because it's a critical mineral that is widely used in construction, telecommunications, electricity, and transportation. Copper is also extremely conductive, which makes it very important in power generation and utility transmission.

Our actual desire and demand for copper is just going to continue to go up. That's why we've actually started to import close to 30 percent of our copper from foreign countries. Now, if we actually open up this mine and allow this land swap to happen, this project alone could provide us with enough copper to meet 25 percent of current U.S. demand. By taking advantage of American sources of copper, we can prevent supply disruptions and decrease our dependence on foreign imports. Most importantly, Mr. Chairman, this bill will create thousands of American jobs in a responsible manner at no cost to the taxpayer.

I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

I want to thank the chair for his excellent leadership in this because it's taken 5 years too long, but finally the House will have the opportunity to vote on the three pending free trade agreements.

We have to understand that America competes in the global economy; and if we ignore this, we ignore it at our own peril. And while these free trade agreements have been languishing on the President's desk for 5 years, we have actually lost market share to the EU, to Canada. And those are the things that are going to keep our country from growing again.

Now, if you look at just the Colombia free trade agreement, since we have actually drafted that agreement, $3.85 billion in unnecessary tariffs have been put on American products. When we actually have these free trade agreements in place, we're going to actually add to our economy and add to the jobs here in the United States.

In my home district, we have a very robust high-tech sector, and it's very heavily on trade. Last year, we had $10 billion of trade going out in exports, and a lot of them have been going to countries that we actually have free trade agreements for. And 35,000 jobs are directly related to that.

So I think that this is a jobs bill. I urge my colleagues to support all three free trade agreements, and I urge their passage.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, September 20, 2011, I missed rollcall votes numbered 712, 713, and 714. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on H.R. 2944, the United States Parole Commission Extension Act of 2011, ``aye'' on H.R. 2189, the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2011 and ``aye'' on H.R. 2646, to authorize certain Department of Veterans Affairs major medical facility projects and leases, to extend certain expiring provisions of law, and to modify certain authorities of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, July 18, 2011, I missed rollcall votes numbered 601 and 602. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on H.R. 33 to amend the Securities Act of 1933 to specify when certain securities issued in connection with church plans are treated as exempted securities for purposes of that Act and ``aye'' on approving the journal.

Madam Speaker, last Friday's jobs report was incredibly disappointing. We only added 18,000 jobs to the U.S. economy. Our unemployment rate went up to 9.2 percent. Not to mention the fact that we had a downgrade, a revision, of last month's, of May's job report to only 25,000 jobs. The deeper you go into that jobs report, the worse it gets, because for those who are underemployed, that's about 16 percent to 17 percent of the United States population, and that is not even including the 250,000 people who went off the rolls of the unemployed because they just stopped looking for work.

We've been talking about jobs for a long time. You hear it all the time in

the halls of Congress. But what have we done? The House has passed a number of bills that would immediately open up a marketplace for job creation and job growth, but unfortunately our friends on the other side of the Capitol in the Senate have done nothing to advance these pieces of legislation. And it's not like they've had anything to do. I mean, they haven't even passed a budget in over 800 days. So I would ask our friends in the Senate to start to push these pro-growth economic policies so we can get Americans back to work.

But it's not just our friends on the other side of the Capitol who are holding us back. It's the administration who has pursued policies that have hurt job creation and economic growth. To be a good manager, to be a good executive, you have to be able to do two things well: One is to be able to analyze and pinpoint a problem, and the second part is to find a solution for that problem. Unfortunately, we have an administration that doesn't even do the first part well. They actually pinpoint problems that don't exist, or problems that aren't problems at all, so you can't even get to a solution that will get Americans back to work.

Let me give you a couple of examples of this. Recently, the President said that one of the problems we have with job creation is with ATMs and kiosks at our airports. I didn't know about the scourge of ATMs and kiosks, but apparently those are what are holding back our job creators. This is called innovation. This is called efficiency.

It reminds me of a story of when the famed economist Milton Friedman went to China. He was witnessing some excavation for a canal, and there were thousands of people who were digging with shovels. Milton Friedman asked: Why aren't you guys using bulldozers or excavators, those things that will make this more efficient?

The Chinese officials said: Then we couldn't put these people to work.

To that, Milton Friedman responded: Why don't you give them spoons?

Innovation and efficiency make our economy stronger, they're net job creators, so we should be going after what is really holding our country and is really holding back economic growth, and that is the NLRB who is attacking American companies who want to create American jobs. That is the EPA, who is going after numerous pieces of regulation that will in the near term kill jobs, in the medium term kill jobs, and in the long term kill jobs. We should be going after the FTC who is now going after Captain Crunch and Tony the Tiger. Those sorts of things are the ones that are holding our country back and holding back economic growth. We should be looking at those burdensome regulations and removing that and letting our entrepreneurs and our job creators unleash the ingenuity that they have within them.

There is one area of agreement that I do have with the President, and that is with the free trade agreements. The free trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama need to be passed through the House. But we've got to agree on something. They have been sitting on the President's desk since he has been in office. I urge the President to send those free trade agreements without any additional spending attached to them, because those are job creators. For every billion dollars worth of exports, it is 10,000 jobs here at home.

So I really hope the administration starts to pinpoint and look at the real problems that our country is facing so we can get America back to work and we can lead to more economic growth and prosperity, because it starts with the American worker.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Madam Chair, I rise in support of H.R. 1249, and one of the reasons I do is because it encourages innovation and entrepreneurship by reducing costly litigation within our patent system. Innovation is the key to America's immediate and future economic growth; and right now, many American innovators are being held back by an onerous and backlogged patent system. In order to unleash their job-creating potential, we must reform this system which hasn't been reformed in almost 60 years.

One way this bill tackles patent reform is by creating a business method patent pilot program in which administrative patent judges will review the validity of these patents if a challenger presents evidence showing that a patent is more likely than not invalid.

Business method patents were not patentable until the late 1990s and have resulted in frivolous lawsuits which have cost between $5 million to $10 million per patent.

These types of patents cover a ``method of doing or conducting business'' which includes printing ads at the bottom of a billing statement, ordering something online but picking it up in person, tax strategies, or getting a text when your credit card gets swiped.

The tort abuse created by these patents has become legendary. Section 18 of this bill has broad bipartisan support in the Senate and is an alternative to costly litigation that will save 90 percent of the costs incurred in civil litigation.

I support Chairman Smith's work in creating a less costly, more efficient alternative to this abusive litigation and oppose any effort to strike section 18. As part of the Republican Conference's overall effort to spur job creation and economic growth, I urge passage of this important legislation.

Offered By: Mr. Quayle

Amendment No. 15: Page 12, line 17, insert after the dollar

amount the following: ``(increased by $144,000,000)''.

Page 31, line 17, insert after the dollar amount the

following: ``(reduced by $144,000,000)''.

Mr. Speaker, earlier this week, President Obama made a joke about his so-called stimulus package. Remember those shovel-ready projects we heard so much about? They were one of the major selling points for the package. Well, the President now says they ``were not as shovel-ready as we expected.'' I am sure some got a good chuckle out of that line, but there is nothing funny about a $1 trillion failure.

The economic policies this administration has pursued have failed to create jobs, and they have made matters worse for our economy. In many of our home States, the economic situation is bleaker than the national picture. In my hometown of Phoenix, Arizona, our unemployment rate is higher than the national average, and we have lost thousands of manufacturing and retail jobs over the last 2 years. We also have a housing market that has collapsed.

Mr. Speaker, we will never get our economy growing again unless we see drastic improvements in unemployment and our housing sector. Our country is at our best when we unleash the ingenuity of the American people. The Republican Conference has a real and actionable jobs plan that will put America back to work, that will give our entrepreneurs and innovators freedom from the regulatory burdens and high taxes that are holding them back.

We must take action to get this economy going again, and that is what our plan does. President Obama's speeches, policies, and council meetings are not enough.

Mr. Speaker, today, I would like to recognize Jessica Boland, a third-grade teacher at Rose Lane Elementary School in Phoenix, Arizona, who on April 28th, 2011, received the 2010 Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science. This honor is recognition of teachers with an exemplary record in both mathematics and science. Ms. Boland is one of only 85 recipients of this celebrated honor.

Ms. Boland always knew she wanted to be a teacher. The goal of all teachers should be to do everything possible to encourage, support, and promote excellence in the classroom, and she eagerly takes on this challenge every day. Ms. Boland has proven that she is up to this task, and while she is humbled and honored by this award, the satisfaction she gets every day when a classroom of eager students ``get it,'' is by far her greatest reward.

Jessica's day does not begin with the first bell, nor does it end when her class is dismissed. She provides before and after school assistance to students who are struggling with their school work, offering a greater opportunity to succeed. She facilitates math academies for parents so that their children have more than just one teacher to help them understand. Her belief is that if a parent can help at home, then the child never runs out of opportunities to learn. She also works with student teachers who will soon be entering the field of education. This allows for each new generation of teachers to have a greater feeling of comfort when entering the classroom for the first time. Students then receive a quality education, regardless of the experience of their teacher.

Few awards offer such esteem and honor as the Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science. This award is testimony to the gratitude that our nation shares for teachers like Jessica Boland. I am proud today to enter this recognition of Jessica's achievements into the Congressional Record, and hope that all teachers across our great nation share in the responsibility that she has undertaken. It is with great joy and honor that I recognize Jessica Boland, and thank her with never-ending gratitude for giving her students the greatest opportunity to succeed.

I thank the gentleman from Arkansas for yielding and for talking about these important issues, and one thing that I do want to talk about is something you just said: kicking the can down the road. We can no longer afford to do that because every year we do not address and solve the problems related to our mandatory spending, they add close to $10 trillion each year to our unfunded liabilities. Those are the liabilities that are going to be put on the backs of our children and our grandchildren. So kicking the can down the road is no longer an option.

Now, I want to get back to something the gentleman from Arkansas talked about earlier, and that is about making America competitive in the global marketplace. We live in a global economy. Nothing is going to change that, but what America has to do and what we have to do here in the House is to make America the most competitive country on the face of the Earth. We need to make America the best place and the safest place to do business, and that's what we were charged to do when we came in in this 112th Congress, and that's what we've been doing from day one.

Because when we came in here, we said we were going to do two things. We were going to get the American people back to work by creating jobs and pro-growth economic policies, and we were going to rein in our out- of-control Federal spending. And we've been doing that.

Since day one, week by week, we have been addressing our problem with out-of-control government spending. Sometimes it was millions of dollars here, other times it's billions, and still other times it's been trillion dollars of savings to be able to make our country prosperous again. That right there is the charge of my generation and our generation to return America's prosperity. That's what we're doing here in the House. That's what the Republican House majority has been doing since day one of the 112th Congress.

One of the things that we did just a few weeks ago was we passed a 2012 budget plan that sets our fiscal course on the right path. It sets us up so that we will have that prosperity, so that the crushing burden of government spending is not passed on to future generations. Immediately, practically before the vote was even cast, we heard from our friends on the other side of the aisle that we were starting to end Medicare as we know it. Funny thing how short their memory is, because Medicare as we know it was actually ended by the previous Congress when they passed ObamaCare.

And Medicare as we know it was ended in two different ways. First, they took over $500 billion out of Medicare to fund their government takeover of health care, and the second thing and the most dangerous thing that they did was they established the Independent Payment Advisory Board. What this is, a lot of people don't really know what it is, but it's a bureaucratic 15-person panel that will actually determine how we are going to provide health care to our seniors. Now, these are not elected officials, these are appointed by the President, and they will be making decisions on how to reduce our Medicare costs by actually preventing certain treatments to our patients, to our seniors. This will get in the middle of the doctor-patient relationship, which is one of the most important relationships that there is. We need to have the trust between our doctors and patients and not taking dictates from a 15-person panel of bureaucrats here in Washington, D.C.

The great thing is that there's really no oversight. Now, Congress can go in and say, well, we don't agree with the independent advisory board, but you know what it takes, it takes an act of two-thirds majority in the House to override one of their decisions. Now, I've only been here 4 months, but I can tell you, two-thirds majority is almost near impossible.

So this is what we have to do: we have to educate and tell everybody and get the facts out to the American people because, like the other gentleman from Arkansas said, after the 2012 budget was passed, I, too, had a teletown hall and one of my first questions was from a caller in my district who was on Medicare and asked, Are you really getting rid of Medicare for me because I rely on it. That's when I had to tell her the facts that, no, absolutely not. Those who are in or near retirement, their benefits will not change because they have planned for those benefits to be there. However, we are going to save Medicare from the implosion that will occur if we do nothing because in 9 years, 9 short years, Medicare will be bankrupt and the 2012 budget that the House Republicans passed will save Medicare bankruptcy, put us on strong fiscal footing going forward, and return America's prosperity to future generations.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I thank the gentleman.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today because I support this bill.

And I do have a fact. The fact of the matter is that we have a gas crisis going on right now, and the fact of the matter is, when I go home and I fill up my tank, I cringe at how expensive it is. Our friends on the other side of the aisle, their so-called solution is to increase our taxes and to demagogue oil corporations, because that's the classic bogeyman approach that they go to.

But that is not a solution to get our people back to work, to get our economy moving again, because right now we are having some anemic growth in our economy. And if we start to increase taxes and have an energy increase in costs that is happening at the pump, that is going to have a negative effect on economic growth.

Instead of actually having solutions where we can get the people in the gulf back to work, where we can get our economy moving again, where we can actually tap the energy sources that we have in the United States, we have an administration that only pursues moratoriums on gulf drilling, moratoriums on actually having energy supplies.

I thank the gentleman.

If we actually started to look and invest in those sorts of thing and get our energy independence going, we could have charts down on this floor that show job growth.

According to CBO, if we pass today's legislation, we will generate $800 million in revenue over 10 years. Combined with the energy initiatives that the House passed last week, these three votes will create an estimated 250,000 jobs in the short term and 1.2 million jobs over the long term.

So I urge my colleagues to support this bill and get our economy and our American people back to work.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to honor a man who lived a life that epitomized the American Dream--a man who put his family and country first, yet never asked for anything in return. We here in Washington talk a lot about the American Dream. Unfortunately, we often talk about this dream in abstract terms. Yet, every day there are people all across this great country who are living this dream without any recognition.

And for many of them, that's exactly how they like it. They don't want accolades or praise. They simply want to live a happy life and be surrounded by the people they love. They believe that building a strong family and serving their country is nothing special. They believe it's ordinary. Madam Speaker, that mindset and that belief is what makes these people extraordinary, and that is what made Dale Everett Crane extraordinary.

Dale Crane came from humble beginnings in southern California. After he graduated from high school, Dale briefly attended college until he found another calling. Instead of furthering his education, Dale joined the marines and went on to fight for our country in Vietnam. After being honorably discharged from his beloved corps, he met the love of his life, Shawn, and married her. Dale went on to be a successful small businessman. He scraped and he saved; but in the end, he built up one of those small businesses that make our country strong.

Although Dale built a tremendous small business, this was not his greatest accomplishment. In Dale's mind, his greatest accomplishment was his family. His marriage to Shawn and his four children were far and away the most important thing in his life. I don't know this because I read a story about Dale in a newspaper. I know this because I felt it firsthand. Dale Crane was my father-in-law. The love he knew for his family knew no bounds--and if we all embraced this love of family and country, we would be in a better place.

Madam Speaker, on February 19 of this year, Dale Crane's family and friends mourned his death. But more importantly, we celebrated his life. We will never forget the sacrifices he made for his family and his country.

Mr. Speaker, next week we will celebrate the centennial of the Theodore Roosevelt Dam; I rise today to recognize the important role this structure has played in Arizona's history.

Drought and floods often plagued the first settlers of our area. In 1902 the National Reclamation Act was signed into law paving the way for a unique public-private partnership that formed the Salt River Valley Water Users Association and later the Salt River Project (SRP). Soon after the Act was signed, residents in the area pledged their land to the Federal Government in order to build the Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River.

Completed in 1911, just one year before Arizona gained statehood, the Roosevelt Dam helped our area flourish, first as a farming community and then as a growing population center. As the Valley landscape changed, SRP also adapted to the changing needs of the community by delivering water to both city treatment plants and farms.

The history and growth of our area all began 100 years ago with the dedication of the Roosevelt Dam--it helped transform the Valley into one of the largest metropolitan regions in the country. Roosevelt Dam services an area covering more than 375 square miles and a 13,000 square mile watershed. I wish to honor this structure for the important role it plays in meeting Arizona's water and power needs, both in the past and into the next century.