Floor Statements

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

Mr. Chairman, this amendment would decrease the allocation of the Department of Science and the Department of Energy budget by $10 million. And let me give you an example of what $10 million is used for, by way of example, in this department. There's $10 million for appropriating money to methane hydrate research and development.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I was once a capital projects manager and I understand the impulse to invest in technologies that are going to have a payback, that are going to provide a return. But to do that, not only do you have to be able to figure out whether or not it's possible to get that payback, but it has to be a viable alternative when compared against other competing alternatives. And that's what I want to speak to here.

The government here in the U.S. has already spent $155 million on research and development commercialization for this technology, for methane hydrate, over the last 5 years. Taxpayers do not need to subsidize the gas hydrate industry to find equivalent alternatives to replace oil. We are at $100-a-barrel oil. There is already enough financial incentive in the commercial market to research methane hydrate if it, in fact, were a viable energy option. I just have to tell you, no one has tried to extract methane hydrates in a commercial way because it is not economical.

Think about this for a moment: It is only found in the Arctic. It is only found offshore. It's essentially methane gas compressed under high-pressure conditions at great depths. And basically the point here would be, you'd liquify it.

The reality is there are real hazards of developing gas hydrates. And because it's such an incredibly hazardous substance, I can't foresee gas drilling and production operations adopting this scenario, especially when you consider all of the other fossil fuels that would be utilized first before such a technology would ever be deployed. You've got oil shale. You've got oil sands, tar sands. You've got the existing conventional deposits of oil under capped wells.

Now, with every one of these challenges, a solution could be found much more economically in terms of extracting energy than you would ever find by producing energy from natural gas in this particular methodology. So the government has spent 10 years researching and developing ways to extract methane hydrates. We are still at a very primitive phase.

As I have shared with you, it is very hazardous if we were ever to deploy such a technology. There is a long list of alternatives which we certainly would go through first before we ever got to this. So it is time to eliminate the funding that can be appropriated toward methane hydrate research and development and use that more productively.

And let me make one other observation about this. We are in a situation now where we're borrowing 40 cents of every dollar we spend. When we identify an area of the budget where we can make these types of savings, we should

be cognizant of the fact that this type of borrowing, this sheer amount of borrowing has an impact not only on job creation, on economic growth, but also basically on the long-term solvency of the government.

If we're running up debt at these levels and we find areas in the budget to slice off these sums, we can bring down that deficit. The impact on the market is such that the market sees us ratcheting down expenditures to come back into compliance with economic reality. And as a consequence of that, we avoid some of the adverse impacts that come with the overborrowing--as I indicated, 40 cents on every dollar--the overborrowing that is creating the kind of uncertainty in this economy today in which employers are reluctant to go out and hire, in which the impacts are not just felt in the jobless rates that we just saw climb up here in the United States but are also filled in the way in which we are perceived internationally in terms of our capacity to deal with our debt.

Now is the time to make some commonsense decisions here, and here is $10 million that can be saved.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Broun. I will only take a minute here to close.

You know, I am also for pure research in science. I am for scientific research where we can drive progress in the United States. But as I shared with you earlier, I am a former capital projects manager, and one of the things you learn is to identify those projects which have some ability conceptually to have a return on investment. All right? When you run into a project which is not only on the face of it uneconomical, but one which is hazardous, and on top of that you see a listing of all the ways in which you would extract energy at much less cost than you would ever get to this, and it would be the very last resort on the list, you would not keep that on your list of capital projects to entertain. And I can tell you this. If you were constricted in your budget, especially if you were going out and borrowing 40 percent on the dollar for your budget, you would certainly take this off the list of capital projects that you would commit to.

So I commit to you, it is only logical at this point that we pass this amendment and we incrementally at least make progress where we know we can on reducing the borrowing and send back a little vote of confidence to the market that all of us here, when we see an opportunity, are going to shave back Federal expenditures in areas where there cannot possibly be a return on that investment for the taxpayers of the United States.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 67: Page 62, after line 2, insert the

following:

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

may be used by the Department of Energy for a methane

hydrates program.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 68: Page 28, line 13, after the dollar amount

insert ``reduced by $10,000,000)''.

Page 62, line 2, after the dollar amount insert

``(increased by $10,000,000)''.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much.

A couple of quick points here. One, the administration is actively considering resuming food aid to North Korea. And I understand the humanitarian impulse here, but the unusual circumstances of North Korea make this a mistake--and make it a very bad mistake, frankly--which this amendment would correct.

I remember the words of one North Korean defector, Kim Duk-hong. I had a chance to talk with him. He said actually in testimony here before the committee, we must not give food aid to North Korea because it is, in his words, the same as providing funding for North Korea's nuclear program. Why is that so? Because what invariably happens is they redirect these resources into support for the regime.

This week we had reports that North Korea is making miniaturized versions of its nuclear weapons--ones that could fit atop ICBMs. That makes his statement all that more dire about the redirection of these resources into the regime's hands.

The situation in North Korea is heartbreaking. I've been up there. I've seen the depravation. But this is a disaster made by the dictatorship itself. And let me say unequivocally, the food we send does not reach the hungry.

So, who benefits from our good will? Well, the inner circle does and their military industrial complex does. We've had hearings in which the French NGO Doctors Without Borders--we're all aware of their good work around the world. They testified before the International Relations Committee that the vast majority of refugees they interview say they had never received any food aid. None of the children they had ever met had ever seen food aid during the years they worked up on the border.

And this testimony is backed up by a survey of 500 North Korean defectors in which 78.2 percent of them never saw foreign food aid. And the reason for this is because it goes, again, into the black market. It is sold for the hard currency that the regime needs for its nuclear program and other programs.

Some could argue that what we need is more oversight and maybe better monitoring on this food.

Let me tell you about the testimony we've heard on that, because the North Koreans, I don't think they've got a word for ``transparency.'' No matter how airtight any monitoring protocol may be, they cheat. We had a Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission hearing where a North Korean dissident told us how the regime would mark all the houses that had received bags of food and would return to collect them after the monitors had left. So North Korea is always going to cheat.

Some assert that the North is holding food, holding food for the future, hoarding a million tons of rice. That's the charge we hear from South Korea, from members of their Parliament. But the fact is that it's an asset that is converted by the North.

So I urge my colleagues to support my amendment for the sake of the North Korean people. Providing this aid not only allows Kim Jong-Il's oppressive regime to divert scarce resources towards its military program, one that has grown increasingly threatening, but it also delays the day when real structural reform will come to North Korea.

There is a Korean saying that ``pouring water into a cracked pot is worthless.'' Sending resources to Kim Jong-Il is even worse. It's enabling a regime with one of the world's worst human rights records but also with an atomic bomb.

North Korea has played us like a fiddle for years. Conditions for North Koreans have only worsened. It's time for a new North Korea policy. Let's start now.

I ask my colleagues to support the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 24: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Sec. 7xx. None of the funds made available by this Act may

be used to provide assistance under title II of the Food for

Peace Act (7 U.S.C. 1721 et seq.) to the Democratic People's

Republic of Korea (North Korea).

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

Mr. Chairman, this is an amendment supported by Chairman Lamar Smith, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. The reason he and I are in support of this is because this amendment reduces the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management account by $1 million and increases funding for immigration and customs enforcement by $1 million in order to facilitate new agreements under the 287(g) program. This bill, this amendment, will provide for better enforcement of our immigration laws.

287(g) has been very successful. It allows State and local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with the Department of Homeland Security to enforce immigration law. It was enacted back in 1996, and Congress implemented this program to give local communities help with illegal immigration in their area.

A couple of points I would like to make, Mr. Chairman. There are maybe 5,000, 6,000 ICE agents in the United States. There are 650,000 State and local law enforcement officers--650,000. So the 10 million to 12 million illegal aliens in the country are much more likely to come into contact with local law enforcement than they are with an ICE agent. And for local law enforcement, it's important that they be properly trained so that they don't profile, don't discriminate, but properly identify those here illegally who are breaking our laws.

Now, there is a backlog of cities that want 287(g) agreements, and what this legislation does is assist in covering that problem. One of the reasons so many cities want to be involved in this is because criminal alien gangs generally victimize people in the cities, often are victimizing other immigrants, often victimize legal immigrants. And, frankly, law enforcement should be trained in how to identify and remove criminal aliens, and this assists in that.

It's a great force multiplier for ICE. It provides ICE with assistance such as following up on leads and performing investigative research and surveillance. It's had a positive effect on the workload for ICE by identifying removable aliens, and it gives ICE greater flexibility in directing its immigration law enforcement resources.

Now, I want to make another point here. The CBO scores this amendment as costing zero in budget authority. Also, I think we should reflect on the fact that given that one of the 9/11 hijackers, Mohammed Atta, was pulled over in traffic 2 days before the 9/11 attack, there is a significant benefit to checking the immigration status of all individuals who are arrested. Had the officer inquired about Atta, he then could have found out that Atta was in the country illegally and may well have prevented his participation in the attacks. That is one of the benefits of having local law enforcement trained in this area.

I also want to make an additional point. This brings tens of thousands of local law enforcement to help enforce our immigration laws. There are now 70 jurisdictions with these agreements, but many more communities want help. The 287(g) program also provides training to State and local police, giving them additional tools that they can use to prosecute crimes committed by illegal immigrants, especially gang violence and document fraud.

Over the last few years, the open borders lobby has been successful in getting the administration to curtail the use of this program. Well, the 287(g) program is a solid improvement in terms of enforcing immigration laws. Particularly with the gang activity that we have today, with the drug lords sending local gangs across the border in order to participate in crimes here, it is very clear that we need this kind of a program.

Before it was created, many illegal immigrants stopped by State and local law enforcement went free. Immigration laws were not enforced. Since the program was developed, it's helped the State and local law enforcement not only fight crime, as I've indicated, but get the gang leaders, get the serious criminals off the streets and enforce our laws.

So instead of curtailing the program, we should be promoting the expansion of it. I urge my colleagues to support this amendment and help local communities to enforce our immigration laws.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 40: Page 2, line 10, after the dollar amount,

insert ``(reduced by $1,000,000)''.

Page 16, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,000,000)''.

Page 17, line 10, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 40: Page 2, line 10, after the dollar amount,

insert ``(reduced by $1,000,000)''.

Page 16, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,000,000)''.

Page 17, line 10, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,000,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 2: Page 2, line 10, after the dollar amount,

insert ``(reduced by $1,000,000)''.

Page 16, line 24, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,000,000)''.

Page 17, line 10, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $1,000,000)''.

Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 310, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Stated against:

I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

The bipartisan deficit reduction commission has looked at the work of the GAO on this issue. The GAO has tried to get Federal agencies to look at reducing their vehicle fleet. They have put out studies, and one of the interesting examples was where the GAO found automobiles in a parking lot that had not even been used for 3 years that had been purchased.

Their point is this: With 650,000 vehicles that the government uses now, there is a way to put in place, if you followed the recommendations of the GAO, a way to reduce that fleet and save money. And the Government Accountability Office has said that the government agencies are badly managing their vehicles.

Now, we know that with one government agency, the Department of Energy, that decided to put in place these recommendations, they reduced their fleet. In their budget going forward, they can reduce their fleet by 35 percent.

What we are saying with this amendment is we are following the recommendation of the GAO. The Heritage Foundation endorses this. It certainly was supported by the bipartisan deficit reduction commission.

We have got a deficit of $1.5 trillion and growing. This is a way to shut it down and a way that has been recommended to us by the GAO to move forward. We support this bipartisan amendment.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 534: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 76: Page 321, line 7, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $17,676,000)''.

Page 359, line 20, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $17,676,000)''.

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 77: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Royce

Amendment No. 73: Page 321, line 9, after the dollar

amount, insert ``(reduced by $10,716,000)''.

Page 359, line 20, after the dollar amount, insert

``(increased by $10,716,000)''.