Floor Statements

Glad to be with you this evening.

I thought it was interesting. You just raised the issue where the President

said that costs would necessarily skyrocket. I actually carry that quote around in my back pocket. So I pulled it out, my little folded-up version that I have, and what he said was:

When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know,

under my plan of cap-and-trade system, electricity rates

would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say

about whether coal is good or bad because I'm capping

greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas,

you name it, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry

was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will

cost money.

And you know what he said next? Exactly what you've been talking about. That they, talking about those plants that would have to retrofit, will pass that money on to consumers.

But it's not just the higher cost to the consumers, the moms and dads that are going out there shopping, trying to make ends meet, trying to look at their grocery bill getting bigger, their gas bill getting bigger, et cetera, et cetera, but it's also the impact on the families. Because no matter what they say about we can do this with jobs and we can create jobs, that's not been the case, particularly in my district, which is a natural gas and coal-producing district.

I was at a Remote Area Medical program this weekend in my district. Senator Kaine was there. I was doing intake and helping folks get those documents filled out. One of the people that came through was there because she needed some help, her husband needed some help, and her daughter needed some help. Her husband lost his job in the mine. This is happening all across my district, all through central Appalachia. They're laying off people. Every month, we're losing more and more jobs. A lot of folks don't know that those jobs are bringing in money to the community and that these are big-paying jobs. The estimate is somewhere between $75,000 and $95,000 dollars a year. That's what these jobs bring into the community.

So here's a lady that needs help because they've lost their job because of the policies of the administration that have killed those jobs. But as the gentleman previously stated, it's not just the jobs in the coal mines, it's not just the coal operators. It's the people that sell the cars to the people who used to work in the mine. It's the people who sell the mine safety equipment to the people who run the mines and work in the mines. It's the people who haul the coal. It's the people who work for the train companies that haul the coal. And it's the cost of making goods in the United States of America, where those costs are going up and up and up compared to other parts of the world.

In fact, there's an article just recently that says that Southeast Asia, even though natural gas is available to that Asian market, is choosing coal over and over again because per Btu, it's better for them to use coal. And a lot of times people talk about the low cost of natural gas in this country. I have to tell you, it's a great boon to us in many, many fields and lots of areas. But you have to remember, at $4 per million Btus created, coal and natural gas are equal. Anything above $4, coal is more efficient. It's cheaper to use. But guess what? This year we've been over $4. Right now, today, it's at $3.83. This year we've been over $4.

So what we're doing is we're passing these costs on. We're taking our jobs and we're shipping them overseas. And I know you all have heard this before, but Mr. Speaker, I want everybody in the country to know that we send these jobs overseas. They're making the goods that we used to make in this country; they're getting the money that we used to have in this country for our jobs, our employees. And according to a NASA study, it takes 10 days for the air from the middle of the Gobi Desert--that's in central China--to get to the Eastern Shore of my beloved Virginia. The air is coming back over here.

So what we need to be doing is we need to be looking for things that resolve this issue of the pollutions and so forth on a global basis, and we don't need to be killing jobs in the United States of America while we look for those solutions. We need to make sure we're encouraging those jobs in the United States of America.

I believe if we use our energy sources-- which I believe can be a bipartisan issue and it is in my part of the world in central Appalachia--but if we use our energy resources, I am convinced that the United States of America can remain the number one economic Nation in the world well into the next century--recognizing we've just started this one--well into the next century. But we have to make sure that Washington doesn't get in the way and completely stop that economic engine.

Mr. Speaker, I would say that tonight has been interesting. We have talked about ObamaCare and we have talked about clean air and having these things; yet what we have are two different things coming out of the administration.

On the one hand, approximately 2 weeks ago, the administration proposed large, new increases in the regulations on coal. As one of his aides said, ``The war on coal is something that we need.'' Obviously, coming from southwest Virginia and representing central Appalachia and the coalfields there, this is not a good idea.

Then, as we were about to leave town, the President came out with a new plan on ObamaCare, and that was to delay the employer mandate--not the individual mandate, but the employer mandate--because they haven't been able to make the program work.

That's not the only thing. On Friday, right after the Fourth of July, the President's folks came out with 606 pages of new regulations, and in there there was delay, delay, delay because they can't seem to make the program work.

ObamaCare was drafted poorly. How do we think these new regulations on coal are going to work? They're going to be drafted just as poorly.

Mr. Speaker, we should do away with ObamaCare, and we should do away with the regulations and the war on coal.

I thank you so much for the opportunity to speak this afternoon on these important issues.

It's true that offshore in Virginia is something we've been discussing since 2004. What's interesting is that a lot of the folks said, You don't really want to do that in 2004. It's not going to really help gas prices. Do you know why? Because it will take 7 to 10 years to get it developed.

Guess what? If we'd have started in 2004 drilling off the coast of Virginia, we'd be getting that natural gas, and we'd be getting that oil off the coast of Virginia right now. It would be creating jobs. It would be creating tax dollars that could go to schools, roads--you name it--whatever the legislature in Virginia decided it wanted to spend it on. It could be going to increase the revenues of the United States of America as well. Likewise, this Congress could then be debating the expenditure of those funds and what we wanted to do with those moneys.

Instead, the naysayers keep saying, Well, not now, not now. I say to them, If not now, when? When are we going to do this? We know it's out there. We know it's a huge resource for the United States of America.

Then yesterday, on top of blocking our ability to get from the other side of the State the natural gas and the oil that is there and that we know is there and that we want to get to, the President of the United States declared what I call the ``war on coal--phase 2.'' He has already been involved in phase 1 for some time, but in his comments yesterday, he made it clear that he's not going to wait for science to get us a solution--because it's coming. There is research that's being done on chemical looping and on other ways to use coal cleanly, where you end up with coal ash and carbon dioxide--no SOx, no NOX, no mercury. It's coal ash and carbon dioxide, and you can recycle the iron pellets that they use. I mean, it's really a wonderful process, but we have testing left to do on it. It has already been working at Ohio State University. They are building a facility in Alabama, and they are going to be doing testing beginning later this year that will end next year on a bigger project than what they did at Ohio State, but still it's got another phase to go even after that.

If we wait just a few years and if we do reasonable things now and if we wait for science to catch up, we can, in fact, accomplish what the President wants to accomplish on the environment and not destroy the jobs of southwest Virginia, the central Appalachia region and all other coal-producing States. There are more than 20 of them that are coal- producing States. We will be damaging their economies if we go forward.

It's interesting that the President noted in his speech and said:

Now, what you'll hear from the special interests and their

allies in Congress is that this will kill jobs and crush the

economy.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's exactly what you'll hear. Do you know why you're going to hear it? Because it's true.

And if being a special interest means you have to be one of the people that lost their job in the coal fields of southwest Virginia or Kentucky or West Virginia or any of the other States where jobs--we've been losing them monthly. We get reports of another 25 here, another 15 there, people who've been laid off in the coal fields. And it's not just the coal fields. It's the railroads that haul the coal. It's the people at the manufacturing centers that make the equipment for the mines. It's the car dealerships that used to sell cars to the miners, who used to have jobs.

Let me make something clear, folks. Being in the mine is a hard job. There's no question about it. And we want to make sure health concerns are taken into consideration because it does have dangers to it. There is no question about that. But the workers in those mines are making somewhere between $75,000 and $95,000 a year if you add in their benefits. You take a district like mine, the Ninth District of Virginia, where the average household income is around $36,000 a year, and you start laying off 15 $75,000 to $95,000-a-year jobs here with health insurance included, you lay off another 25 jobs here and 30 jobs there, and ladies and gentlemen, you want to talk about destroying the economy, you're darn right you're going to destroy the economy. And if standing up for the special interests of the people who work in the mines, the people who work in the equipment factories, the people who work at the car dealerships, the people who work at the restaurants in southwest Virginia is a bad thing, then I guess I'll just keep doing a bad thing because I will continue to fight for southwest Virginia and the jobs in the coal fields.

The other thing the President went on later to say was that this issue didn't used to be partisan and now it's partisan. Guess what? The President is wrong. This is a bipartisan issue. And I'm going to look at the Bluefield Daily Telegraph and read you some quotes from some of my Democrat colleagues because it's important for the people of America to know that the President may want to divide, but in the coal fields we understand exactly what this is going to do to our jobs and our economy, and ultimately to the economy of the United States of America.

U.S. Representative Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia said:

Obama's climate change plan is misguided and could cost

millions of jobs.

That's not a Republican. That's a Democrat. He goes on.

The misguided, misinformed and untenable policy that the

President put forth this afternoon puts at risk the energy

security of America and the jobs of millions of our citizens.

Rahall continued saying:

Locking away the fuels that power our Nation behind

ideologically imposed barriers will drive up costs for nearly

every business and manner of industrial activity while

driving jobs overseas. Households already struggling to make

ends meet will see energy bills skyrocket.

That's Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia. He goes on to say:

The administration should be advocating new clean-coal

technologies as opposed to crippling regulations.

Isn't that really where the President has been going the whole time? He said in the San Francisco Chronicle interview of 1-17-08:

When I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, you know

under a plan of cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would

necessarily skyrocket.

Nick Rahall:

Households already struggling to make ends meet will see

energy bills skyrocket.

The President is doing what he said he was going to do. He declared war on coal, and now he's going to try to see if he can't finish it by devastating the American economy and the economy of southwest Virginia and central Appalachia. It's just not right.

Mr. President, let's look at the science that your administration has invested money into. Chemical looping may be the way that we can both have what we want. I want and my colleagues want jobs for America, tax dollars coming in off of coal severance, natural gas, offshore drilling. We want to see those tax revenues coming in because then we can use that to help Americans. We want to help all Americans. You want to clean up the environment, and so do we. We can do it, but we have to be reasonable.

Let's go forward and look at another Democrat, and that would be Senator Joe Manchin, and he touches on this point in his comments in the Bluefield paper. U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, said:

Obama's plan will have disastrous consequences for not only

the coal industry, but also American jobs and the economy.

Democrat Manchin goes on:

The regulations the President wants to force on coal are

not feasible. And if it's not feasible, it's not reasonable.

It's clear now that the President has declared a war on

coal. It's simply unacceptable that one of the key elements

of his climate change proposal places regulations on coal

that are completely impossible to meet with existing

technology. The fact is clear: our own Energy Department

reports that our country will get 37 percent of our energy

from coal until the year 2040. Removing coal from our energy

mix will have a disastrous consequence for our recovering

economy.

These policies punish American businesses by putting them

at a competitive disadvantage with our global competitors,

and those competitors burn seven-eighths of the world's coal,

and they're not going to stop using coal any time soon. It's

only common sense to use our domestic resources, and that

includes our coal.

Senator Manchin is absolutely right because let me tell you that when we burn coal here and we create jobs here in the United States of America, as you well know, that means we're not sending those manufacturing jobs overseas to another country. Particularly if those countries are in Asia or in some of the emerging economies, they don't have anywhere near the regulations we have. They don't have the regulations we had in the year 2000 or the year 2005 to comply with.

So we can create the goods here, create jobs for Americans, create tax dollars which will help us deal with the national debt and deficit problem. We can do all of that here, and we can do it by burning coal more efficiently and cleaner than the countries that we're competing with. But instead the President wants to ignore all that. He wants to ignore those facts and go forward and say, No, we can't do that.

I go on with the quotes from the San Francisco Chronicle because right now he's not singing the same tune. He goes on to say after the ``skyrocket.''

Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or

bad, because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants,

you know, natural gas, you name it, whatever the plants were,

whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their

operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money

on to consumers.

Who are the consumers? I believe the consumers are the average family out there, the single parent trying to raise children, the elderly, the folks trying to struggle with that $36,000-a-year-annual-household income, the miners and the workers in the factories that produce the goods that help the miners do their job who now don't have jobs, they're still going to have that electric bill coming in.

You know, it's interesting that the President actually cut in his budget proposal the LIHEAP money, which is the program to help the people who can't afford to pay their heat bill. So at the same time we're creating more unemployment, we are also going to take away some of the benefits that helps those folks. It just doesn't make sense. The President's policies don't make sense, and I submit to you all that the President needs to rethink this. He needs to look at clean-coal technology because that's the winner for America, for American jobs, for American prosperity and for America to go forward into the future, leading the way.

Ladies and gentlemen of the House, I too am here to discuss the President's war on coal.

The President would have you believe that we must choose between the environment and affordable, reliable energy, but that is not the case. There is a better way, and the President could even take some credit.

Based on research that is currently out there, there are technologies that the Department of Energy has invested in on clean coal which will make a huge difference and will allow us to use our abundant coal resources and protect the environment. But instead of focusing on those possibilities, and focusing on that, the President, instead, wants to regulate coal out of existence.

The timelines that will be set up will not allow this new technology to take place in a timeframe that will work for the American public and for our economy. So, folks, there is a better way, and I urge the President to stop the war on coal and seek the better path.

I would ask the gentleman if he doesn't agree with me that we would be much better off as a Nation if we focused on a way to have affordable energy, clean coal technology, and not just have a war on coal, and thus create those jobs that you were speaking of. Would you not agree with that?

I would say it is interesting that the President has taken this action to have a war on coal when his Department of Energy has been investing in some clean coal technology, maybe not as much as some of us would like, but some clean coal technology which right now appears to be on the cusp of actually yielding benefits. They are working right now in Alabama on a plant to test out a chemical looping formula. That chemical looping formula would produce coal ash and pure carbon dioxide. There's no carbon capture, it's just right there. There's no SOX, there's no NOX, there's no mercury, and there are a lot of jobs. While it is a little more expensive than conventional plants using coal to produce energy, if this technology works, which the administration has already invested in, we could have both clean coal, affordable energy, jobs, and still protect the environment.

One of the problems that I have, Mr. Speaker, is that so often people say you can't have one and have the other. I believe the United States should be the leader in making sure that we develop and have available not only for companies in the United States but the entire world clean coal technology, because if we don't look at this as a global problem, if we just say we're going to shut coal down in the United States, what we do is we send our jobs to places like India and China and Russia and Kazakhstan, and the list goes on and on. And they don't have the regulations that we even had in the year 2000 on the burning of coal. And all that stuff goes into the atmosphere. And guess where it goes? According to a NASA study, it takes 10 days to get from the middle of the Gobi Desert to the eastern shore of my beloved Commonwealth of Virginia.

So ladies and gentlemen, when we talk about this, it's not a matter of choosing the environment versus coal; it's a matter of choosing America first and making sure that we make America's coal affordable, usable, and clean. And we can do it.

Let me say briefly that one of the interesting things I note is that when we were talking about this at the Energy and Commerce Committee, Lisa Jackson was in there and we talked about regulating greenhouse gases and how that was going to make the cost of energy go up and people wouldn't be able to heat their homes in my district, and she said we have programs for that. But in the President's budget request this year, he cut the LIHEAP program, which is the assistance to folks who are having trouble making their heat bills and paying those bills.

So while on the one hand the administration is going to make our electric bills go through the roof, on the other hand they want us to cut the assistance program that would help the poorest of the poor. That doesn't make any sense. I don't understand it, because they're really going to hurt American families.

I can't wait. What did the study say?

Are you saying it's just as safe as the oil that goes through pipelines in hundreds of thousands of miles already across the United States of America?

Let me follow up on that, if I might, real quick. In one of my counties, when you take away the money that comes from Richmond and take away the money that comes from Washington for education, 70 percent of the tax dollars in that particular county are derived from the coal and natural gas severance tax. You eliminate coal, they don't know how they're going to be able to fund their schools. So we're not just talking about big business. We're talking about the schools and the classrooms and the students.

Well, it's a war on everything that we hold dear when you get right down to it. Because the truth of the matter is, when you're the number one nation in the world, everybody else wants to be where you are. Right now we're the number one nation in the world, but this administration wants to throw away what has helped us get there, and that is an affordable, reliable energy plan.

And we can't just throw it all out and expect to still have the standard of living that we have. That means we won't have the money for education, we won't have the money for roads, we won't have the money for so many things that people think of today as just automatically being there. But the money has to come from somewhere, and it just can't come out of thin air. I'm sorry, Mr. President, money doesn't grow on trees.

That is one of the problems that we see in my district. I have a lot of counties that are really hurting. And it's not because we couldn't have jobs, it's because Washington is getting in the way. Every month we're having layoffs in some coal plant here or some coal plant there, or a company that makes things for the coal plant--or the railroad that hauls the coal, or the trucking company that helps move the coal. So while they've remained internally optimistic, it's really hard when that layoff slip comes to your house and you know that you're no longer going to be able to have that job.

That's why this war on coal affects each and every one of us, but it affects folks in my district maybe a little bit more because we're on the front lines and we're getting those layoff notices now. I have people that I know who are casualties in the President's war on coal, and I'd like to hear from them at #AffordableEnergy. And I hand it back off to you, Madam Chair.

I stand here today on the floor of the United States House of Representatives, and I come to talk about matters of import to this country and what should be important to each and every one of us.

I often look, as I'm sitting on the floor getting ready to cast votes, down here at the front. You see ``tolerance'' and ``justice.'' And you see the word ``liberty''--you may not be able to see it at home, but there they are carved into the wood here.

Liberty is extremely important to this country, and liberty is a fragile creature which can easily be extinguished if we, as citizens of the United States--and particularly those of us who are Members of Congress--do not take the opportunity to defend liberty, even when it sometimes may seem to be unpopular.

Now we have, of recent, heard in the press reports that certain agencies of the United States Government have been accessing all kinds of information--phone records, et cetera. I think this is wrong. I think that the approach that has been taken is an overreach under the PATRIOT Act--although I believe that, when written, there were gray areas of the PATRIOT Act which could have been anticipated that there would be an overreach by the government. But some have interpreted that it's okay that you gather information even if it's just in the megadata on millions and millions of American citizens. I do not take that position. I believe that it is wrong, And I believe it cuts to the core of liberty in this country.

Let me explain.

To understand why we do things that we do, we have to look at the history of this country and, many times, of other countries, particularly Great Britain. When we look at our right not to have the government intrude into our homes, into our thoughts, into our very beings, it goes back to before the American Revolution. I would point to the 1760s as being instrumental.

As a student of history at Emory and Henry College, I learned under Professor Raiser there that there was a fellow named John Wilkes. Now, John Wilkes was a rake of a man, and many times his actions I would not have approved of. But whether by design or just by circumstance, John Wilkes weighs heavy in both America's history and in the history of Great Britain.

John Wilkes was from London. He stood for Parliament, was a member of Parliament. He began a secret printing on things that he didn't think that George III was doing correctly in the 1760s. One of those he printed in what was called the paper, the North Britain.

In North Britain 35, John Wilkes actually inferred that George III may have acted dishonestly in reaching a treaty with the French. Needless to say, George III was incensed that this happened, and he issued, through his ministers, what was known as a general warrant-- that meaning that they could go, even though they didn't have a specific person, they didn't have a specific place, they could go into parts of London and search house to house, seizing papers, property, whatever they thought might lead to the conclusion of who was printing the North Britain and responsible in particular for North Britain No. 45.

Needless to say, after rounding up roughly 50 people and going into a number of houses, they did arrest Mr. John Wilkes, along with a number of other people, and it was ultimately determined that Mr. Wilkes was in fact responsible for the writing that the King found so inappropriate.

It's also interesting to note that, as a part of this, in his legal defense, John Wilkes raised the issue of whether or not general warrants were in fact legal. The courts would later rule that they were not. The courts would later rule that they were not.

Now, it's interesting--and I'll pull out a wonderful treatise on British history, just hits the highlights, the History of the English- Speaking Peoples by Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill, in talking about--and he acknowledges the faults of Mr. Wilkes, but he also points out the court's reasoning on this matter.

The question of general warrants became a big issue. The radical- minded Londoners welcomed the rebuff of the government. It goes on to talk about what Wilkes did, but it also goes on to tell us what the courts ruled.

Let me see if I can find it here, if you will bear with me for just a minute. I appreciate your patience as I look for the exact quote. Here is Churchill talking about what the justices said:

The officials pleaded--that would be the government officials of George, III--that they were immune from a suit by Wilkes because they were acting under government orders. Churchill says this large and sinister defense--the defense would be that they could use the general warrants--this large and sinister defense was rejected by the chief justice in words which remain a classic statement on the rule of law, quoting now the Chief Justice Lord Camden:

With respect to the argument of state necessity or a distinction which has been aimed at between state offenses and others, the common law does not understand that kind of reasoning, nor do our books take notice of any such distinction.

Wilkes was heralded as a hero of liberty. And there's a great controversy in history as to whether he was a true patriot, a true lover of liberty, or one who merely happened to fall into the circumstances at the time. I prefer to think he was a hero of liberty.

Notwithstanding the fact that he ultimately prevailed in England, he was also seen across the pond in what would later be the United States, in the Colony--particularly in Massachusetts, but in other Colonies--as a hero of liberty. He was in communication with Sam Adams and the Sons of Liberty.

At the same time, almost identical to this, there was a thing called Writs of Assistance. Now, those were writs that were used in naval terms dealing with trade. They said that whatever the King's people needed to do for assistance, they could have, very much like a general warrant, and some would argue that they were the same.

In Massachusetts, about this same time, there was a James Otis, Jr.-- this was pointed out, I must let you know, earlier today to me by Congressman Nadler. Mr. Otis argued the same things that were being argued in the Wilkes case in Great Britain. Sam Adams was present for those arguments, so he was communicating with John Wilkes and he was listening to the arguments against general warrants or writs of assistance made by Mr. Otis.

What this ultimately led to was the fact that in our country we have long held it dear that we do not issue general warrants. And to read the Patriot Act, to say that you can obtain the phone records of millions of Americans--if, in fact, that be true, and it appears to be the case--that you can use that act to sort of back door a general warrant on information on most, if not all, American citizens, is to forget that we have a right against search and seizure because of the reasoning of our Founding Fathers and the work of Mr. Otis and the work of Mr. Wilkes. They cannot be seen just in a vacuum on that.

Churchill later goes on to acknowledge that the work of Wilkes-- because Wilkes was pushing the issue of ``freedom of press''--that the entire Wilkesite movement not only led to an expansion in Great Britain of the freedom of the press but also underscored for the Founding Fathers of this Nation that ``everyone should have the right to speak their mind, and that they should be able to do so without having to worry about a government that finds their actions just for speaking their opinion to be intolerable.''

So, ladies and gentlemen, I have come here this evening--because I think it's important that we understand--that notwithstanding this interpretation or that interpretation of the Patriot Act, if we allow the government to have the right to collect even the megadata--as they call it--on each and every one of us, that is a violation of the spirit of our Constitution, and I would submit to you a violation of the Constitution itself.

I, for one, cherish our liberties. And in that balancing act that every government must face between security and liberty, I say we side on liberty, because we can never make society completely safe. The only way a government can guarantee you complete safety, ladies and gentlemen, is if they assign each and every one of us a padded room to live in: We're only allowed out in the Sun a certain amount of time so that we don't end up getting skin cancer. They determine what we eat, they determine what we breathe, they determine what we do. That is not a society that I choose to live in, nor one which I will stand idly by and allow it slowly to creep in on us. And while I don't think anybody in the administration would want to go that far, anyone who argues that we must have all of this information in order to be secure forgets that having security may not be worthwhile if we don't have liberty.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask that you study the issues, you study the history, you study this carefully. Do we really want a government that knows all about us? Do we really want a government that can take away our freedom to converse with other people who may not agree with the government? I'm not talking about people who are plotting schemes against the government, but I'm talking about the right to talk to people who may have different ideas. In fact, many would argue we should do more talking here on the floor of the House.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I ask you to study these issues. I ask you to go look at the arguments of Mr. Otis, look at the arguments of Mr. John Wilkes, look at the arguments that were made at a time when people understood that liberty was precious and it could easily be extinguished. I hope that you will join me in doing a little illumination on our country by talking about these issues everywhere you go, and making it clear to people that liberty is worth fighting for, and being willing to say--when I say fight, I mean stand up and say your peace--and that it's worth us taking a little bit of risk in order to preserve those liberties that have been fought for and won throughout the ages, beginning in the 1760s, culminating in the Constitution, and forward to this day.

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

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 5 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, June 12, 2013, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this is a simple little amendment. Currently, any expenditures for flag officers' general housing on base has to be reported if there is an expenditure in excess of $35,000. This lowers this number down to $15,000. It doesn't mean they can't do the work. It just means that if they're going to spend more than $15,000, they have to file a report with Congress before they do so.

In this day and age where we're trying to make sure that we're spending the taxpayers' money wisely, this seems to be appropriate. My wife and I put a roof on our house a couple of years ago for about $15,000. If they need more than that, that's fine, but make a report to Congress. If there's something terribly wrong with the flooring and it costs more than $15,000, they can report it. But most repairs to a home can be done under $15,000.

This is just simply saying, hey, tell us what you're doing so that we can have a more transparent expenditure and a more transparent government.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Offered by: Mr. Griffith of Virginia

Amendment No. 1. Page 18, line 8, strike ``$35,000 per

unit'' and insert ``$15,000 per unit''.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Ladies and gentlemen, let me tell you why people would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. It has become very, very clear that no matter how well-intentioned it may have been, it will not work. Time after time, we are finding that the things that they told us just aren't panning out to be true; and Senator Max Baucus, one of the law's main architects, recently described ObamaCare as a huge train wreck coming down.

We have a chance to save Americans from being casualties of the train wreck. We can yank them off the tracks. Today, I voted to show that I am trying to do just that.

I call on the United States Senate and the Senators to join us in rescuing the American people from the tracks of health care destruction.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding for a question.

I am looking at the report that you have referenced that people can go look at online for themselves, and I notice that your home State of Texas has a projected 23 percent premium increase; is that correct?

And I also notice that the report says, from the data that was obtained from the insurance companies, that my home State of Virginia is going to have a 31 percent premium increase in the small group; again, not talking about the large group rates, while they will be affected by the taxes.

Now, I'm just kind of curious. How come Texas is getting off light with only a 23 percent increase and Virginia is getting hit with that 31 percent increase? Can you explain that, or is that just another one of the mysteries of ObamaCare?

I will yield to the gentleman.

If the gentleman will yield further, perhaps for a colloquy, I would ask the gentleman if he suspects that this is because up to this point in time this has always been a State- driven market and, therefore, there are some differences between the States, but that the vast majority of States, according to this report, in the small-group market are going to be facing significant double- digit increases? Is that his understanding from the report?

And I would further ask the gentleman if it makes him a little nervous that the folks who are going to be trying to get out there and get records and make sure that folks are doing what they're supposed to, either paying the tax or buying the insurance, are in fact the IRS? That would be the same IRS that we found out for political reasons slow-walked and made it difficult for some conservative groups, particularly from Texas and other parts of the country, to actually get their tax exempt status. Does that make the gentleman a little bit nervous?

I would say to the gentleman that I'm sure some of those things have played out, not necessarily the differences between Texas and Virginia, because Virginia has a longer history with medical malpractice caps. And we, too, have seen that it has helped us in many ways in the State of Virginia.

I would point out to the gentleman, and I doubt that he is aware of this, and I don't know the truth or veracity of it, but it is reported in the Courthouse News Service, which is a service for lawyers and press folks, that in California the IRS has actually been sued because they had a search warrant to go in to look at a specific employee's financial records. And in the process, according to the allegations made by the attorney, Robert Barnes, when they went in, it happened to be an insurance company or a company that had medical records--we're not sure because it's called a John Doe company--but it had medical records for something like 10 million Californians, including everybody in the judicial system in California. And notwithstanding the fact that they were told those were not financial records of the individual but personal medical records and that they were probably violating some HIPAA rules, they seized these records and they have now been sued by, as I said, the attorney's name is Robert Barnes in the State of Texas.

That gives me some concern that perhaps what we are seeing in regards to the IRS's callousness towards political parties and political philosophy and the Constitution of the United States groups that were trying to promote that, they may also just have a callous disregard that they can be untouched by anybody, when you see that this lawsuit actually was filed in March, and I don't think it got much attention because people probably thought it was not part of their regular pattern.

But now that we have seen what has happened in other parts of the country in regard to those exemptions, that may also be of some concern to people that they're out there compiling all of these records. And, again, we don't know whether it's true. But some of those records that they got from some of the Tea Party groups allegedly, and alleged by a left-leaning or a liberal group, the IRS gave them the information as to who their donors were, is the IRS also going to give out our medical information to folks that we don't necessarily want to have it?

That's the question that we have to ask when you have a scandal like this at the IRS and it directly impacts ObamaCare. Because right now, before ObamaCare comes into effect, the gentleman, I think, would agree with me the IRS really doesn't have anything to do with your medical records. But now we are opening up the door and taking those 16,000 agents, and they are very likely to be looking at your medical records and your company's medical policies as well as the medical records, and that causes me some concern, and I suspect it may cause the gentleman some concern also.

I yield to the gentleman.

I would ask you in that regard, if someone sees these premium increases that we've been talking about and they decide that they don't want to buy the insurance, what then happens from the IRS's standpoint, or from the government's standpoint in general?

Will the gentleman yield for a question?

I would say to the gentleman that it was very interesting when you talked about the cost of the insurance, and while he said overall that he thought the rates were going to go down, my recollection was--and correct me if I'm wrong--that when you were asking him those questions, part of his position was, Well, we don't know for sure, but we think they'll be lower than what they would have been if we hadn't passed the law, but they're going to be higher than what they were when we passed the law. Wasn't that pretty much his reasoning?

I would also have to point out that, with everything that we've gotten to so far, it appears that their numbers have not been right. They told us that they could produce a long-term care insurance plan, and they backed out of that because they couldn't make the numbers work as they had originally thought they would work on long-term care insurance.

Then we had the whole situation with the catastrophic illness fund that, from the time the bill was passed, was supposed to get folks who had catastrophic illnesses, it was going to cover all of them until ObamaCare came into effect in 2014, but they ran out of money March 1. Do you recall that?

So those numbers weren't right, and they apparently thought they had enough money built into the budget and gave the Secretary large latitude to take money out of various funds to make things happen, but now she seems to be going around the country asking the very companies that she's overseeing as part of her job for money because they didn't calculate how much money they were going to need to sign everybody up to get into ObamaCare.

So every time we turn around on the committee, it looks like we're finding something new where their numbers were always funny money numbers, Monopoly money, however you want to look at it. And it seems to me that your point is exactly right, that it's not only going to cost the people of southern Ohio, but it's also going to cost the people of southwest Virginia and every part of these United States more money than was ever projected, and it's going to come right out of the pockets of the working poor and hurt them the most.

Well, we once had a political party known as the Know-Nothings. We now have a President who wants us to believe that he knows nothing. He wants us to believe that he knows nothing about who decided to blame the terrorist attacks in Benghazi on a video. He wants us to believe that he knew nothing about the IRS scandal until he read the same press reports that you and I have read. He wants us to believe that he knows nothing about the Department of Justice subpoenaing 2 months of the Associated Press' phone records.

What has happened to the days in America when Democratic President Harry Truman proudly placed a placard on his desk that said: ``The buck stops here''? Perhaps, sadly, we have returned to the days where the question to the President of the United States ought to be: What did you know and when did you know it?

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to send my thoughts and prayers to Virginia State Police Trooper James Lawson of Gate City, Virginia.

On April 9, Trooper Lawson was injured during a high-speed pursuit in Scott County, sustaining a spinal cord injury. He was transported to Holsten Valley Medical Center in Kingsport. Trooper Lawson is now receiving treatment at Atlanta's Shepherd Center, which specializes in treatment and rehabilitation for people having sustained spinal cord or brain injuries.

Trooper Lawson is a dedicated member of the Virginia State Police, having served in law enforcement for 18 years. He is also active in serving the area as a proud member of the Gate City Volunteer Fire Department. He is now Assistant Chief, serving in the Gate City Volunteer Fire Department since he was 16.

Trooper Lawson is married to his wife Aimee, who is employed by the Scott County Sherriff's Department. He also has two children, Ashley and Trey. Trooper Lawson and his family are friends to many in the Gate City area, including members of my staff.

Thank you, Trooper Lawson and Aimee, for your service to the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Gate City community. I think I speak on behalf of all Scott County residents in wishing Trooper Lawson the very best as he continues working to recover.

Mr. Speaker, each year, the McGlothlin Foundation of Bristol, Virginia awards one kindergarten through fifth grade teacher and one sixth through twelfth grade teacher from selected areas of Virginia, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Kentucky with its Award for Teaching Excellence.

I am pleased to say that both 2013 award recipients teach in the district I am proud to represent, the Ninth District of Virginia

Today, I extend my congratulations and also my gratitude to Pamela MacDonald, a fifth-grade teacher at Pearisburg's Macy McClaugherty Elementary School, and to Steve Ahn, a biology and earth science teacher at Abingdon High School.

For their efforts in the classroom, both of these educators won a monetary prize, a portion of which must be used on an international trip so they can ultimately bring the world back into their classrooms. Reports indicate that Ms. MacDonald intends to travel to Europe with her winnings, and that Mr. Ahn will head to Norway and Finland.

On behalf of other parents in our area, thank you, Ms. MacDonald and Mr. Ahn, for all that you do for children of Virginia's Ninth District, and congratulations on receiving the McGlothlin Foundation's 2013 Award for Teaching Excellence.