Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I was in Senate Chamber trying to prevent a hold on H.R. 7217. I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on rollcall No. 434.

Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 7217) to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to provide States with the option of providing coordinated care for children with complex medical conditions through a health home, and for other purposes.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the Record on the bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, we are here today, the culmination of a 6-year journey. The IMPROVE Act is a combination of three bills. One bill is a bill that allows Medicare to follow the patient; another bill is a bill for spousal impoverishment, to prevent that; and the third bill, and the primary bill in this package, is a bill that we call the ACE Kids Act.

Mr. Speaker, there are, luckily, not a large number, about 2 million children in this country, who have multiple complex medical conditions that are life-threatening. These are the sickest of the sick of our young population. About 500,000 of these children are Medicaid eligible. In other words, their families qualify for low-income health insurance called Medicaid.

Mr. Speaker, under current law, the parents of these children have to create the healthcare network on a case-by-case basis for their child. They also cannot seek healthcare across State lines that is covered by Medicaid. So current law makes it very difficult on these sickest-of- the-sick children.

The ACE Kids Act changes that, Mr. Speaker. It allows the creation of a medical home that can cross State lines, that can coordinate care.

It is optional. The States do not have to participate in this program. The parents of the child do not have to participate in this program. But if they do wish to participate, you create a health home for the child wherein everything is coordinated.

In the pilot programs that have been run using this model, you get better quality healthcare at lower cost. We think the pilot programs show that, over time, if we adopt this model and if the States adopt it and the families adopt it, we get a lot better healthcare at a lower cost. So this is a win-win, Mr. Speaker.

As I said, we have worked on this for 6 years. It is a bipartisan bill. In the last Congress, we had a majority of the Congress that sponsored the bill. In this Congress, we have more than 130 cosponsors on a bipartisan basis.

We have had a hearing in the committee of jurisdiction, the Committee on Energy and Commerce. We have had a markup in subcommittee. We have had a markup in full committee. Now, Mr. Speaker, we are bringing it to the floor.

We hope the House, later today, will vote affirmatively to pass this on suspension and send it to the Senate. We have preconferenced it with the Senate, and we have every reason to believe, if the House passes it today, the Senate will take it up expeditiously and pass it, and this is a bill that will become law.

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

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. Walden), who is the current chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee.

Mr. Speaker, before I yield to Dr. Burgess, I echo what Congresswoman Castor just said about the staffs that have worked so hard. We couldn't have done this bill without all the individuals she just named.

I also thank her. When she said I have been tireless, she makes me look like a snail, and she is the rabbit working every day to make this possible.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Burgess), the distinguished subcommittee chairman of the Health Subcommittee, my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, I yield an additional 30 seconds to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from Michigan for her kind words. I appreciate the nice gift I got yesterday from her and her husband, his new book, ``The Dean.'' I look forward to reading it over Christmas.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Guthrie).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Upton), the former full committee chairman and the current subcommittee chairman of the Energy Subcommittee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Bilirakis).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Carter), a strong supporter.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Washington (Ms. Herrera Beutler), one of the tireless supporters of this bill from day one, who herself has a medically complex special needs child, who went through the nightmare of having to create her own network for her child, and who has been a cosponsor since day one.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Zeldin).

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

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

Mr. Speaker, before I close, I want to set the record straight on one thing. There has been a report that this bill, the ACE Kids Act, expands Medicaid. That is factually incorrect.

The children that qualify for the ACE Kids Act are already covered by Medicaid.

There is no expansion. We do not create a new program. We do not expand an existing program. We do not change the definitions.

We simply make it possible, if this bill becomes law, for parents of children that qualify and that are already covered under Medicaid, they can choose a healthcare home for their child, and that healthcare home can cross State lines. But as Dr. Burgess pointed out, it is not coercive. The States don't have to participate in the program, the families don't have to participate in the program. It is all voluntary. But the pilot programs that have been done on this model, they save money and they give better care. It has been proven.

CBO has scored this over time that it saves money, but we put pay- fors in the bill. If it did cost some extra money, it would be paid for. There is a 2-quarter, 6-month increase in the FMAP, the Federal matching that the Federal Government gives to States that choose to participate. I think it is about 15 percent extra money for 6 months. That is the only cost.

Now, to close, I am going to read a list, and Congresswoman Castor read a lot of these, but these are the national groups that support our bill: the Adult Congenital Heart Association, America's Essential Hospitals, American Academy of Pediatrics, American Association of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, American Board of Pediatrics, American College of Cardiology, American College of Surgeons, American Heart Association, American Psychological Association, American Society of Echocardiography, American Thoracic Society, Amicus Therapeutics, Association of American Medical Colleges, Association of Medical School Pediatric Department Chairs, Autism Society, Autism Speaks, ChildServe, Children's Cause for Cancer Advocacy, Children's Hospital Association, Epilepsy Foundation, Family Voices, Foundation to Eradicate Duchenne, International Pediatric Rehabilitation Collaborative, March of Dimes, Mended Little Hearts, MomsRising, National Association for Children's Behavioral Health. There are about seven or ten more.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the staff, especially Krista Rosenthall, Jeannine Bender, committee staff Caleb Graff, Josh Trent, and Ryan Long. And, again, I thank Kathy Castor and Gene Green.

Mr. Speaker, this has been a bipartisan effort. I ask for a strong ``yea'' vote.

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

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

Mr. Speaker, before Congressman Hensarling leaves, I just want to commend him for his service and tell him what a privilege it has been for me to serve with him and to know him as a friend. We are both retiring, and we are both, so far as I know, going to move home to Texas. And if we don't see each other anyplace else, we will see each other at some Texas A&M football games. So I thank my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, in January of 1985, at the ripe old age of 34, I stood right here in the well of the House with my 2-year-old daughter, Kristin, in my left arm, held up my right hand, and took the oath to defend the Constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the best of my ability. I was one of 43, I believe, of that year's freshmen. I think we had a little over 30 Republicans and a dozen or more Democrats.

As soon as I took the oath, I walked over to the hopper--and, yes, there really is a little wooden hopper here in the well of the House, as I look out, on the right-hand side, as the audience looks in, on the left-hand side--and I dropped the Barton Tax Limitation/Balanced Budget Amendment into the hopper.

That constitutional amendment in 1995 was the number one item in the Contract with America, which, when the Republicans took over the House majority for the first time since 1954, we voted on this same floor the first day that we were in session in January of 1995 on my amendment. It failed. It didn't get the two-thirds vote necessary.

We stripped out the tax limitation requirement and brought it back up for a vote, and it did pass by a two-thirds margin. That amendment went to the Senate, and it failed by one vote in the Senate.

Since that day in January, Mr. Speaker, in 1985, as I stand here on the

House floor tonight, I have voted over 19,700 times on behalf of the people of the Sixth District of Texas. I have an attendance record of 94 percent. I have had a large number of bills that I sponsored become law. I will talk about some of those in a minute.

In this current House, in the 115th Congress, I am number eight in seniority. There are four Republicans ahead of me and, I guess, three Democrats. In the all-time history of the House of Representatives, the House historian is not sure where I stand seniority-wise, but I am in the top 100.

In the Texas delegation, we have had about 250 Congressmen represent the great State of Texas, and I am tied for eighth place in seniority in Texas. The folks ahead of me are an all-star list of former Congressmen: Sam Rayburn, who was Speaker of the House; Wright Patman, who was chairman of the Ways and Means Committee; George Mahon, who was chairman of the Appropriations Committee; Bob Poage, who was chairman of the Agriculture Committee; Jack Brooks, who chaired the Judiciary Committee; Henry Gonzalez, who chaired the Banking Committee; and Jim Wright, who was majority leader and Speaker of the House. That is not bad company, Mr. Speaker, for service from Texas.

Some of the bills that I am proud of that have become law that I was the leader on or the chief sponsor of, we started with the Tax Limitation/Balanced Budget Amendment. That did not become law, but it did pass the House. It did go to the Senate, and it did fail in the Senate by one vote.

I sponsored a bill that reformed the National Institutes of Health. That was the last bill that passed the House and Senate in December of 2006. In January of 2007, the Democrats took the House back, and Congresswoman Pelosi of California became Speaker. Then-Speaker Denny Hastert kept the House floor open until, I believe, 3 o'clock in the morning so that my NIH bill could clear the Senate and come back.

That NIH bill created a common fund that has been utilized to form some of the cutting-edge research that is now bearing fruit. The immune cell therapy that is helping in some cases cure cancer is one result of that. Some of the stem cell research that is going on is another. I am very proud of that NIH bill.

We passed an FDA reform bill that, again, has helped reduce time to bring new drugs to market. It has cut some of the red tape in getting new drugs and medical devices approved by the FDA.

In the energy sector, as a young Congressman, I sponsored a bill to decontrol wellhead prices of natural gas. That bill was signed into law as a part of a larger bill signed into law by President George H.W. Bush, who just passed away.

In 2005, I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and I led the effort to pass what was called the Energy Policy Act of 2005. That bill included a reform in the review of import-export facilities, which we are now using to permit LNG facilities to export our natural gas overseas.

That bill also had a number of authorizations for renewable fuels and alternatives that have led to wind energy becoming a significant factor in this country and solar power becoming a significant factor in this country.

It authorized some subsidies and protections for corn-grown ethanol, and that has led to the ethanol industry becoming a significant factor in some parts of the country.

It also protected hydraulic fracturing from Federal EPA jurisdiction except in a few limited circumstances. That one thing, if we hadn't done anything else, has led to the boon in oil and natural gas production in this country that is the envy of the world.

Three years ago, with Congressman Henry Cuellar, my good Democratic friend from Laredo, we sponsored and passed the bill that led to the repeal of the ban on crude oil exports, Mr. Speaker.

At the time, people kind of pooh-poohed that bill, but as I stand here on the House floor this evening in this month of December 2018, there are going to be days this month that we export more crude oil than we import, and that is a huge, huge accomplishment, and we are doing it based on market principles.

The U.S. is now the number one producer of crude oil in the world, surpassing Saudi Arabia and Russia. We are producing in the neighborhood of 12 million barrels of oil per day, and that number is going to go up. Literally, the sky is the limit.

The Lord has blessed the United States of America with great natural resources, and with the energy legislation that I have helped to lead the fight on and helped to get passed, we have the human resources and the capital resources and the natural resources so that the United States is going to be the leader in energy production and energy innovation for the foreseeable future, for the next 40, 50, 60 years, and I am very proud of that, Mr. Speaker.

So I could talk for quite some time, Mr. Speaker, about my legislative accomplishments, but you really don't run for Congress just to legislate. This is the people's House. You are expected to be an ombudsman for the people you represent, in my case, the Sixth District of Texas, which has changed because of redistricting three times since I have been elected, but the core is kind of south central Texas: Ellis County, Navarro County, Tarrant County, and at various times we have gone as far south as Montgomery County. I have gone up into Tarrant and Parker County to the west, and Hood County and Hill County. As it is currently configured, there are a little over 600,000 people.

When you run for Congress, Mr. Speaker, you really run because you want to help people. You want to be their spokesperson on the House floor, but also with the bureaucracy, with the executive branch, and in some cases with the private sector to make sure that they get a fair shake.

In any given year, we have over 1,000 pending cases in the district and a success rate of around 80 percent, but some of these cases stand out more than others, and I want to give you a few.

As a young Congressman back in the late 1980s, we still got a lot of what I call real-mail letters, handwritten letters from people. One night I was in my office in Longworth going through the mail and jotting down responses or looking at draft responses that my staff had prepared, I came across a letter from an 11-year-old boy, Mr. Speaker, in Burleson, Texas. His name was Garrett Roper--Garrett Roper, 11 years old.

I am going to paraphrase his letter, but it was:

Dear Congressman Barton: My name is Garrett Roper. I am 11 years old. I live in Burleson, Texas. I had a good friend, Adam Settle, who was also 11. He was riding a three-wheel ATV on his grandparents' farm, and it flipped over, crushed his chest, and killed him. What are you going to do about that, Congressman? What can you do?

I thought about it and I thought, I don't know that I can do anything about it. But he had a phone number in his letter. Every Congressman has a phone on his desk, and I picked up the phone on my desk and dialed the number in Burleson, Texas. It was probably about 9 o'clock at night.

In any event, the little boy's mother answered the phone. I said: I am Congressman Joe Barton. I am calling from Washington, D.C. Could I talk to Garrett Roper?

And she said: You are who?

And I said: I am Congressman Joe Barton.

And she said: Are you sure?

And I said: Yes, ma'am. This isn't a joke.

She said: Well, he is in the bathtub.

I said: Well, I hate to bother him, but could you ask him to come out of the tub and talk to me?

And she did. He came on the phone. I identified myself and I said: Did you write me a letter?

And he said: Oh, yes, I did.

And I said: Well, I am here to tell you that I have read it. I am not sure what I am going to do, but I am going to try. What do you want me to do?

He said: Those three-wheelers are unsafe. It killed my friend. And, if you can, I want you to prevent them from being used, so that other little boys and adults don't get hurt or killed.

And I said: Well, that is a pretty big order, but let me see.

To make a long story short, Mr. Speaker, I started the work. That issue was in the jurisdiction of the Energy

and Commerce Committee. I was the junior member of the minority party. The chairman was the great John Dingell of Michigan, one of my very best friends to this day. But, at that time, he was the powerful chairman, and I was the junior member of the minority.

The ranking Republican on the committee then, I think, was Norm Lent of New York. So I went to Mr. Lent, and I went to Mr. Dingell. They decided that it needed to be investigated.

We did an investigation. We had a number of hearings that the Justice Department came to, and the ATV industry and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The little boy who had been killed, his mother, Anne Settle, who today is one of my best friends and still lives in Burleson in the same house, she came and testified.

Over a 3-year period--I believe it was 3 years--a consent agreement was formed among the Justice Department, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the ATV industry, and the Congress. That consent agreement was signed and ratified, and three-wheeler ATVs, Mr. Speaker, were taken off the U.S. market.

It was a 10-year agreement. When it expired, I don't know if the agreement was renegotiated. But, in any event, the three-wheelers did not come back, and the industry really moved to four-wheelers, which are much safer and not nearly as dangerous.

Mr. Speaker, that one letter from that one little boy, who was 11 years old, to his Congressman made a huge difference. It saved hundreds of lives per year, thousands of injuries, hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars, and it made the country safer. It took that little boy writing that letter to his Congressman, and then that Congressman, who in this case was me, doing something about it, picking up the phone, calling the little boy, then calling a Congressman. And people in the executive branch and people in the industry made a difference.

I will give you another case of a young woman, I believe she lived in Waxahachie, Texas, named Robin Benton. She was a nurse. Her mother became ill. She quit her job and moved, I think down to Houston, to take care of her. She took out insurance on an individual basis instead of a group basis where she had worked. She moved back after her mother improved, and Robin developed breast cancer--double. She had cancer in both breasts.

The insurance company that she had been covered by dropped her coverage, returned her premiums, and told her that they wouldn't cover her. Her doctor said she needed a double mastectomy, and she needed it immediately.

She didn't write a letter. She called my congressional office in Arlington and asked for help. My staff looked into it, touched base with the insurance company, and got the answer that the insurance company had checked their files and they didn't believe that they had made a mistake, that they had the right to cancel her coverage.

My staff brought the file to me. This was a desperate situation, Mr. Speaker, so I checked with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation in Dallas and got their take on it.

Then I picked up the phone, and I called the president of that insurance company. I explained the situation to him. I said: It is my opinion that your internal review has made a mistake. I think this woman should be insured by your company, and I think her surgery should be covered. I would sure like for you to take a look at it. If I am not factually correct, then I won't pursue it. But if I am, if what I say is factually correct, I would ask that you reinstitute her coverage.

To his credit, the president of that insurance company checked his facts and checked the case file. He called me back and said: You are right, Congressman. We should cover her.

They did. She had the surgery. And to my knowledge, Mr. Speaker, she is alive today.

That is the power of the Congress, the power of the people, the power of an individual asking their Congressman for help, and the Congressman trying to help, and, in this case, the private sector checking the facts out and agreeing that the facts dictate that the woma should have been insured.

I will give you one more example. When I was chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, we got jurisdiction over the internet. We had an investigation in the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee of child pornography in America, Mr. Speaker. We had a number of witnesses in and a number of hearings.

The FBI had set up a special task force on child pornography. We had asked if they could send someone, one of their agents who was involved with that task force, to testify. The FBI said their policy was that their agents didn't testify before Congress.

We went back and forth, the staff to the FBI staff, without any resolution. Then I saw that the particular individual from the FBI who we wanted to testify, Mr. Speaker, did an interview on a national news show. When I saw that, I said, well, if that agent can appear on national TV, that agent ought to be able to appear before Congress and testify.

I picked up the phone on my desk, and I put in a phone call to the FBI Director. I was told that the FBI Director was unavailable. So I called back and I said: Well, where is the Director?

``Well, the Director is on travel, and he is out West.''

And I said: Well, I need this agent to testify. I checked with the ranking member, Mr. Dingell, and if he is not willing to testify voluntarily, I am willing to issue a subpoena that the minority will support to compel testimony from the FBI.

I got an agitated phone call that you couldn't do that, that it wasn't proper. The President at the time was my good friend President George W. Bush. So we said: Well, just check with the President of the United States and then let us know whether you are going to send your agent or not.

Well, sure enough, later that afternoon, I got a phone call from the FBI Director. He was very cordial, what could he do to help, that there would be no problem. I said: Well, I really appreciate that. I am just curious why the change of attitude.

He said: Well, we called over to the White House, and the President said that Congressman Barton was a good man, meant business, and, if it was not totally impossible, the FBI should cooperate.

The agent came the next day. We had good testimony, and that hearing led to a renewal of purpose in terms of the task force against child pornography. The FBI went on and did some really good work, and we passed some legislation that has tightened the law and the laws against child pornography on the internet.

Mr. Speaker, what is the point of all that? The point of those stories is that any Member of Congress who is given the privilege to have the voting card has a great opportunity. There are 435 phones on the desks of offices in the Rayburn, the Longworth, and the Cannon office buildings, and every Member has the potential to pick up that phone and call to help somebody in their district or their country or the world: the power of the people in the United States of America through the Constitution, delegated to the Congress, delegated to the House and Senate, delegated to individual House districts, given to Members who win elections.

And every Member who walks on this floor, Mr. Speaker, comes because they have won an election, not because they have been appointed by the President or the Speaker or the Governor, but because they have won a free and fair election in the congressional district they wish to represent, and a majority of those voting have said: You are the person. You are the man, you are the woman, to come to Washington.

So we are allowed to come up here and take the oath, be sworn in. Then we represent for a 2-year term, Mr. Speaker, our constituents, and we have an opportunity to help people.

In the 34 years that I have served here, I have done some great things legislatively. But the thing, Mr. Speaker, that I will miss the most, that I will really miss, is, every now and then, when I see something that is injurious to a person in my congressional district that I represent, I will not have the ability any longer to pick up that phone and call on behalf of that person. I will miss that. It is not an entitlement. It is a privilege won by being freely and fairly elected.

I have stood for office 17 times. I have won 17 primaries, one primary runoff, 17 general elections. I had the privilege to serve the people of the Sixth District for 34 years. As I said, I

think, earlier, in the history of the House, we are not sure where I stand in lifetime seniority, but it is in the top 100. I am tied for eighth in terms of senior service from the great State of Texas.

I have had the privilege to meet great people. John Dingell, the dean of the House, who served longer than any other person in the history of the House, is a role model for what a Congressman should be. Newt Gingrich, who was a backbencher bomb-thrower from the Conservative Opportunity Society and rose to be Speaker of the House, is probably the most brilliant person I have met who served in the House: inspirational, innovative, and a visionary. It has been a real privilege to get to know him and call him a friend.

Phil Gramm, who was the Congressman before me for the Sixth District, got elected to the Senate and represented the great State of Texas in the Senate until his retirement a number of years ago. He is another absolutely brilliant man who really has been a role model and a mentor for me.

In the current House, our current Speaker, Paul Ryan, I think has done yeoman's work to move this country in the right direction.

The incoming probable Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, we have different views philosophically, but she and I, when she was a junior Member and I was a junior Member, we worked together to pass the Chinese Student Asylum Act that let all of the Chinese students who were here in the country when Tiananmen Square happened, they were allowed to stay in this country legally until it was safe for them to go back to China.

Most of them did eventually return home, but some of them did choose to stay here. That is a bill that I worked on, and I am proud that she and I were able to get it passed.

The current chairman of my committee, Greg Walden, I think he is doing a great job as chairman. I had the privilege to meet wonderful people, like the immediate past chairman, Fred Upton; senior Members like John Shimkus of Illinois, who has worked so hard on Yucca Mountain.

On the other side of the aisle, Bobby Rush from Chicago, a former Black Panther, and I have a bill that passed the House and is standing in the Senate, to reform the strategic petroleum reserve.

This afternoon, Mr. Speaker, on this floor, Congresswoman Kathy Castor from Florida and I passed a bill called the IMPROVE Act, but within it are the ACE Kids Act. That bill passed the House 400-11. And if the Senate can pass it this week or next week--and I think they will--that bill will transform the way we provide healthcare for the poorest of the poor children who are already Medicaid eligible.

Mr. Speaker, it has been a privilege to serve the House of Representatives for the great people of Texas in the Sixth District for the last 34 years.

I consider it the highest honor of my life to have had the title of United States Representative, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is a measure of President George H.W. Bush that we all think of him as a personal friend. It is literally true that he had tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of men and women who considered themselves personal friends.

I felt I was very close to the President, although obviously not as close as Mr. Williams, who went to Kennebunkport and really knew the family.

I knew the President first as Vice President. When I was a White House Fellow, it was Vice President Bush who had a reception in the White House and gave my class their White House Fellow certificates.

As a candidate, one of the reasons that I am here today is because he took a personal interest in me. We had an event that we had planned for myself in Fort Worth, but the NRCC decided that I couldn't win, and they gave that date and that time to Dick Armey. They did the event in Denton, Texas, instead of in Fort Worth, for Dick Armey.

I was so mad that I crashed his event. I went up to the security checkpoint and they wouldn't let me in. I asked to speak to the events team, and the head of the events team was a gentleman named Ron Kaufman. Ron knew me. He said: Well, Joe, that is pretty unusual. This is really for Dick Armey.

But he went and talked to the Vice President, and the Vice President said sure. So I got on the stage with Roger Staubach and Dick Armey and the Vice President. I was only there for about 3 minutes, but my picture and the video was in the TV market that night.

The Vice President asked me to go to Houston. I had Montgomery County, and so I went. He flew, but I drove, and I got to be in the rally that night.

When he was going to Texas A&M as President, I represented A&M. I got invited to fly on Air Force One with Senator Gramm to Texas A&M, and I wore my Texas A&M tie.

As we were sitting up in the Presidential cabin of Air Force One, I noticed that the President had on a handwoven, beautiful silk tie, and I noticed that Senator Gramm had on an old, cheap polyester tie. Senator Gramm looked at me, and he said: Joe, you ought to give your tie to the President.

I volunteered to give my Texas A&M tie to the President, which I did; but then Senator Gramm took the President's handwoven silk tie, and I ended up with Gramm's polyester tie. The President said: Well, Joe, you are the junior man here. You just have to suck it up.

Later that week in Fort Worth, Senator Gramm and I were at a fundraiser for the Republican women, and I noticed he was wearing the President's handwoven silk tie. So at the end of the event, I stood up and I said: Now, ladies, we need to raise some more money.

We auctioned off the President's tie. Phil Gramm had to be a good sport, and I think we got $2,000 for it.

When Bush was President, he was a strong supporter of the Super Collider project in my district. I invited him to come to Ellis County to tour it, and he did. I got to ride on Air Force One, and I got to ride on Marine One and show him the project. He had on a hard hat that said ``President George Bush.''

When he went back to the helicopter, as he got out of the Presidential motorcade, he threw his hat on the back seat. I said: Mr. President, can I have that hard hat?

He said: Well, keep it for me until the next time I come down here to open the SSC.

As we all know, he got defeated for reelection. President Clinton didn't strongly support the SSC and it was killed, but I still have that hard hat.

After he left office and a decision was made to put the Bush library at Texas A&M, I put a bill on the floor that got $15 million to set up the Bush Fellows at Texas A&M, and I am very, very proud of that.

The last story I will tell is that in my reelection in 1986, I was the number one target in the State of Texas and one of the top 10 targets in the country. The Vice President called me and said: Would you like me to do an event?

Of course, I said yes.

We did that event in Fort Worth. Fran and Eddie Chiles hosted it, and we raised, I believe, over $200,000, which in that time and era, for me, was a lot of money.

The Vice President spent a lot of time there and was very gracious to my family and to my parents. He invited my mother and father to the White House when he was President for the White House Christmas Ball, and that was one of the highlights of their lives.

So to the Bush family, thank you for sharing the President with us all these years.

As I said at the start, it is a measure of an individual when he has so many people who consider themselves to be personal friends. My guess is that President Bush has more of those types of individuals than just about anybody else in the country.

God bless the late President Bush.

Madam Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6511) to authorize the Secretary of Energy to carry out a program to lease underutilized Strategic Petroleum Reserve facilities, and for other purposes, as amended.

Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and insert extraneous materials in the Record on this bill.

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

Madam Speaker, in 1995, President Ford signed a bill to ban the sale of crude oil overseas. Two years ago, we repealed that ban, and, last month, we were exporting some days 3 million barrels of oil per day.

We have gone from a nation that was importing up to 80 percent of our oil to a nation that, today, if we absolutely had to, could be totally energy independent.

Because of the Arab oil embargo in the early 1970s, a little before President Ford signed the bill that said you couldn't export crude oil, we established a Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The idea was that we wanted to store oil in underground caverns--crude oil--so that, if there were another supply disruption, we would have the crude oil even if the OPEC cartel cut off oil shipments to the United States.

We have authorized up to a billion barrels of crude oil in this reserve, and there is currently a little under 700 million barrels. But, Madam Speaker, we don't need 700 million barrels of crude oil today because, as I have just pointed out, when we allowed crude oil to be exported, we unleashed a drilling boom in the United States that has driven our oil production on a daily basis from around 6 million barrels of oil per day to, this past month, 11 million barrels of oil per day.

So, hence, the idea embodied in H.R. 6511, cosponsored by my good friend from Chicago, Democrat Bobby Rush. It is pretty straightforward.

We have quite a bit of excess capacity right now in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. We have authorized the sale of about 300 million barrels between now and 2028. If that oil is actually sold, we will have almost half of the SPR without any crude oil in it. So why not set up a program and authorize the Department of Energy to put that vacant space up for bid?

Oil producers all over the United States are scrambling for ways to store all the oil that we are producing while it is waiting to be refined or shipped overseas.

This is not a mandatory program. We are not mandating that the private sector has to lease the space. What we are saying is, if the private sector wants to negotiate with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve managers, and it is a good deal for both sides, they can.

We currently--now, this number may not be exactly right, Madam Speaker, but we spend about $200 million a year, I believe, to store the oil that we are storing in the reserve, that is owned by the taxpayers.

If you have vacant space and you allow the private sector to use that vacant space and you charge whatever the market rate is for the private sector to put oil in the reserve for a short term, those funds will offset the cost of storing the government-owned oil. They will also offset the cost of maintaining the reserve, and they will offset the cost of improving the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Again, this is not a mandatory program, so we believe that this bill, H.R. 6511, is a win-win. It helps the taxpayers because it might generate some revenue that could be used to offset the cost of maintaining the reserve as it exists. It might save the private sector some money if they decide to utilize it.

And it might--and I would say, probably will--make our energy sector more efficient because the private sector, should they choose to participate in this program, doesn't have to go out and build above- ground storage and maintain the above-ground storage. They can use the existing capacity that has already been hollowed out on the Gulf Coast of the United States that is very conveniently located adjacent to our refineries and/or to our export terminals; and that will, overall, lower costs of the whole system and end up being a win for the consumer both in the United States and overseas. So I would hope that, when the time comes later today, we will pass this unanimously.

I want to thank, again, my original Democratic sponsor, Congressman Rush of Chicago, Illinois. I want to thank the subcommittee chairman, Fred Upton of Michigan; the full committee chairman, Greg Walden of Oregon; and the full committee ranking member, who is on the floor, Mr. Pallone of New Jersey.

We have all worked on a bipartisan basis to pass this, and we think that is why we have put it on the suspension calendar.

As you know, Madam Speaker, suspension bills have to get a two-thirds vote, and I am hoping that this bill gets a 100 percent vote. It is a good bill. It is a win-win.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I have been in Congress for 34 years. I am about to retire at the end of this session. I have been on the House floor with many tumultuous battles. I have watched the fight over the Keystone pipeline, drilling in ANWR up in Alaska. My good friend, Senator Markey of Massachusetts, when he was in the House, would come to the floor with his chart, an oil well drilling into the Social Security trust fund.

It is refreshing, Madam Speaker, to be on the floor today in the spirit of bipartisanship where we are all for something which I think really is good for the American people, good for the taxpayer, and good for the consumer.

This is on suspension, so, obviously, we have to have a huge vote. I hope we get it. It looks like we will since we don't have any other speakers.

I would urge a ``yes'' vote, Madam Speaker. Let's do something good for America. Let's vote for this bill. Please vote ``yes'' on H.R. 6511 when the vote is called.

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

Madam Chair, I rise in strong support of H.R. 4606.

I want to compliment Congressman Johnson for his leadership and, also, on the Democratic side, Congressman Cuellar. I don't know if he is in the room. I compliment him for being an original cosponsor. I am kicking myself that I am not an original sponsor. I don't know how that happened, but I am proud of them.

This is a straightforward bill, Madam Chair. It simply says, as long as you are below a certain threshold, 0.14 BCF a day, you still have to file an application with the Department of Energy to export natural gas, but it shall be in order to be approved. So you still have to apply, but it is specific in the law that the answer will be ``yes'' as long as it is below this threshold.

You might think: Well, that is not very much. Why even bother?

Well, we still want to make sure that we know where it is going, so that is a good reason to do it. And the good news is that there is a market for small-scale LNG, certainly our partners in the Caribbean and South America. And who knows, if this works, maybe we can increase the number later on if we make sure that we don't do any environmental damage.

This is a good piece of legislation. I am proud that it is bipartisan. I hope that, when we pass it, it will be taken up very quickly in the other body and the President will sign it. I am strongly supportive, and I urge a ``yea'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, as dean of the Texas delegation, I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from Texas, the Honorable Michael Cloud, be permitted to take the oath of office today.

His certificate of election has not arrived, but there is no contest and no question has been raised with regard to his election.

Mr. Speaker, it is my honor to introduce to the House of Representatives the new Congressman for the 27th Congressional District of Texas, the Honorable Michael Cloud.

Michael is a husband and a father. His wife and three children are either in the gallery or on the floor. He lives in Victoria, Texas. He is a graduate of Oral Roberts University, so the Oklahomans will enjoy that.

He has been a Republican county chairman in his home county for 7 years. He has been a member of the State executive committee of the Republican Party of Texas for a number of years.

He won a primary of six people. He got into a runoff and became the Republican nominee. He won the special election against nine people. He is the 10,949th Member of the House of Representatives. He is the 264th Member to represent the great State of Texas. He is the 23rd Member to represent Victoria, Texas, and he is the third Member to represent the 27th Congressional District of Texas.

I want to introduce to Mr. Cloud the House of Representatives. This is the greatest legislative body in the world, whether you are Don Young, who has been here for more than four decades, or Debbie Lesko, who has been here for less than 4 months.

You now have a voting card. You have an equal vote to all other Members here. You are part of a group that has to be elected.

Not one Member is on this floor because they were appointed. They were all elected by their constituents to represent the greatest Nation in the world.

Congratulations, and welcome to the House of Representatives.

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

Mr. Chairman, we have a great piece of legislation before us today. Chairman Walden and Ranking Member Pallone have been great leaders in shepherding dozens of opioid-related bills through the Energy and Commerce Committee.

This particular bill, H.R. 6, is the crown jewel of all that legislation. We all know what a scourge the opioid epidemic is. Since 2015, more Americans have died annually from opioid overdoses than from the AIDS epidemic at its peak.

The amendment that is before us today is very simple. It requires the FDA, after consultation with all the stakeholders in open meetings and workshops, to develop some opioid prescription guidelines based on hard evidence.

This amendment gives the FDA 2 years to develop these guidelines. It requires the FDA to post the guidelines on their web page and to send the guidelines to the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House and to the Education and Workforce committee over in the Senate.

It is a bipartisan amendment. Congresswoman Annie Kuster of New Hampshire and Congressman Mark Meadows of North Carolina have both worked with myself and other members of the committee to develop this amendment.

Opioids are a little bit different than some of the other drugs that are abused and lead to addiction in that most people are exposed to opioids the first time because of a prescription. They have some sort of acute pain that opioids can help manage and in prescribing these opioids the doctors are trying to help alleviate the pain. But everyone reacts to opioids somewhat differently, and sometimes what is acceptable in terms of the dosage for one individual is not acceptable with another individual.

These guidelines will, again, be based on facts, be based on evidence. They are advisory only. We are not trying to intervene in the doctor/patient relationship. It will still be up to the doctor to determine what is best for the patient. But at least the doctor will have some fact-based guidelines with which to make the decision on what level to prescribe these opioids if, in fact, opioids are necessary.

To quote the head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb: ``Without evidence- based dosing recommendations at the point of care to support and inform rational prescribing, we're at serious risk of both undertreating some patients who could benefit from opioid therapy, and overtreating a lot of patients who are then placed at a higher risk of addiction.''

I will say that the amendment has drawn some concern, or at least interest, from the stakeholders, the chairman, the ranking member, myself and others are committed to working on this as it goes through the process. If we can fine-tune the amendment in some way, we are willing to at least consider that.

But as it is constructed today, Mr. Chairman, this is a good amendment, and I hope that the body will adopt it.

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

Mr. Chairman, can I inquire how much time I still have.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from New Hampshire (Ms. Kuster), who is an original cosponsor of the amendment and has worked very hard on it.

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

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of the pending legislation before us. I believe it is very important that we show that we do want to address this issue, and I think the Goodlatte-McCaul bill does that in a humane way.

Now, we have this issue of separation of children that has arisen at the border just in the last week or so. The Trump policy is not any different on paper than the Obama policy was. What is different is the way it has been covered, and President Trump has realized that something needs to be done differently and has signed an executive order yesterday to that effect.

I personally think that we ought to go back to the original policy where, if you wanted political asylum, you applied at the embassy or the consulate in your home country. And if you bring your children, and you march them across the deserts of Mexico, and you bring them all the way to the Texas border, you do get a court hearing, but I would say that we give that court hearing back in their country of origin. And if we have to send them back at taxpayer expense, we deduct the cost from existing aid packages that we are giving to those home countries. That way, they don't have to come all the way to the Texas border or the California border or the Arizona border or the New Mexico border in order to get their day in court. They wait in their home country, and then they get their day in court there.

Nobody wants to separate families, but it is the parents who bring the children with them. It is not the United States Government that is forcing those parents to try to come to this country illegally and bring their children.

The Goodlatte bill funds border security. It begins to solve some of the issues of the lottery system. I personally think it is much better to have a merit-based immigration system than a lottery system where you just happen to, luck of the draw, get a come-into-the-United-States card.

I think this is a good piece of legislation, and I hope we pass it this afternoon.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in honor of the new head football coach at Ennis High School, Coach Sam Harrell.

Coach Sam Harrell was born in 1975 in Seminole, Texas. He went to high school in Brownwood, Texas, where he was valedictorian. He became, the first time, the high school coach at Ennis back in 1994. Over the next 15 or 16 years, he won three State championships, went to the semifinals twice, was Texas High School Coach of the Year in 1999, became head of the Texas High School Coaches Association, and was in

the Texas High School Football Hall of Fame.

But in 2005, he came down with multiple sclerosis, which was not treatable by conventional therapy. He had to go out of the country for some stem cell treatments. Those were successful. He moved back to this country, continued to live in Ennis, Texas, and stayed active in the community. And about 2 weeks ago, the school board and school superintendent named him, again, to be the head football coach at Ennis High School.

He is a very great coach, but he is also a greater man. He is very Christian. He is good with the kids. He is just an absolute stellar individual.

Congratulations to Coach Sam Harrell, who is, once again, head football coach for the Ennis Lions, who have five State championships in their history.

I thank Congressman Olson for his leadership as vice chairman of the subcommittee and a tireless leader on behalf of energy in this country.

Also, I want to thank Congressman Johnson for his strong efforts and also compliment him on his playing in last week's Congressional Baseball Game. Congressman Duncan was also on the team and played well as shortstop.

Oil was discovered in Pennsylvania back in the mid-1800s. As the oil industry began to develop, they more and more would run into what we would today call associated gas. Every now and then while drilling for oil they would hit a well that didn't have any oil, but all it had was what today we call natural gas.

They didn't know what to do with it. They used the oil to make kerosene, lubricants, and home heating oil and things like that, but they didn't have a real purpose for natural gas. So they would just flare it, just literally in the field, light a match, put a flare pipe up and flare it. As time went on, they discovered that it had a fairly high Btu energy content, and they discovered a way to contain it, to store it, and to transport it through pipelines. Because it was a gas, it was not a liquid in its natural state, so while it was not as valuable as oil, it had enough value that it was worth looking for and worth keeping.

You rock along and you rock along, and in the 1950s and 1960s, we began to set price controls on natural gas in interstate commerce. The Federal Government would regulate the price and as a consequence people stopped looking for it, because it wasn't economic to find it unless you could find a well that you could sell in intrastate commerce, within the State.

When I ran for Congress in 1984, I ran on the platform of repealing what was called the Natural Gas Price Act of 1978 where Congress had set a price control on interstate natural gas in some cases as low as 2 cents per 1,000 cubic feet. Gas in the intrastate market, deep gas, was selling as high as $15 per 1,000 cubic feet. There is a big difference between $15 and 2 cents.

One of my first accomplishments in Congress under President George Herbert Bush, the first President Bush, was to see the NGPA repealed. The Natural Gas Policy Act of 1978 was repealed, and it was my amendment that did that. So I was very proud of that.

Rock along a few more years, and in 2005, I was chairman of the Agriculture Committee, and we were doing a major energy bill, the Natural Gas Policy Act of 2005. We did a lot of things in that bill. We felt at that time that there was going to be a shortage of natural gas in this country. Some of the States, States like Massachusetts, California, and New York, were trying to prohibit import terminals for natural gas, for liquefied natural gas, LNG, being built. The States would not give the permits.

So in the infinite wisdom of the Congress, we passed, as a part of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a section, an amendment to the bill, that gave ultimate decisionmaking authority to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC. Because we thought we were going to need to build these import terminals to import natural gas and the States were going to try to thwart it, we required a consultation with the States. The States had to be involved in the process, but the ultimate decision would be made by the Federal Government under the auspices of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

A funny thing happened, Mr. Speaker. Some oil producers and gas producers down in Texas--one of them was a Texas Aggie, a guy named George Mitchell--decided that you had all these shale formations, and there were hydrocarbons in them, but they were like rock. Literally, if you look at a core sample of some of these shale formations, which you all had mentioned today in this Special Order, it is just like solid-- it is solid rock.

George Mitchell and others decided, by golly, we can get natural gas out of that if we fracture the rock under pressure and create tiny little cracks where natural gas can escape from. Come to find out it worked. Then they also decided: Do you know what? Instead of drilling the classic vertical well, what if we bent the drill bit at a 90-degree angle and drilled horizontally?

Son of a gun if that didn't work too.

So the combination of hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling made all of these shale formations economic, and the result was an absolute bonanza of natural gas available at economically recoverable prices in the United States of America.

Congressman Johnson has mentioned some of the formations up in his part of the country, the Marcellus and the Utica. Of course, Mr. Olson talked about the Eagle Ford shale down in Texas, the Barnett shale in my part of Texas. All over this country--Pennsylvania, even in New York, California, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Ohio, and Kansas--there are shale formations--literally almost everywhere in the United States--and in most of those shale formations, it is economically recoverable

to drill for natural gas--and in some cases for oil also--but tonight we are talking about natural gas.

Funny things happened. We didn't need to import natural gas. We had so much of it, we could export it. We used that provision we put in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to begin to license, not import terminals but export terminals. Congressman Olson, Congressman Johnson, and Chairman Walden have talked--and I am sure Mr. Bucshon and Mr. Duncan will talk later--about the economic consequences of that. We are exporting or going to export about 2 billion cubic feet a day this year of liquified natural gas.

We are going to quadruple that in the next few years. If you look at the economic value of that, if you assume that you are selling it overseas about $4 per 1,000 cubic feet, this year we will export three- quarters of a trillion dollars--a trillion dollars is a thousand billion. And not in the near future, we are going to be exporting several trillion dollars worth of natural gas every year, hundreds of thousands of jobs, just an economic--I don't know what you would call it--a bonanza. It is not a windfall because it is not luck. It is hard work. It is American ingenuity and American technology. It is revolutionizing the energy markets.

As has been pointed out, we are also beginning to export oil as a consequence of the ban being repealed for crude oil exports. That is a story for another Special Order.

The future for natural gas in this country as a source of fuel is unlimited. The economic benefits are obvious, but there is another benefit, and it is the ability to export freedom. When we export our natural gas, in many cases we are exchanging the source of the supply from a totalitarian--not quite totalitarian, but certainly not a totally democratic country like Russia--with a free country like the United States.

Now, it has been mentioned that Qatar, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia are also large exporters of natural gas, and they are allies of the United States, friends of the United States. But they don't have, as of yet, the purely democratic institutions, the totally free markets, and the free market capitalistic system that we have here.

So when we send our natural gas overseas, we are also sending to the countries that use it, economic, and in some cases, political freedom. They cannot be held hostage to sources of supply that don't have the same democratic values that we do.

So, as Congressman Johnson pointed out earlier, the World Natural Gas Conference is here in Washington next week. A number of us will participate in that conference. It is really a tribute to the natural gas industry in the United States that they have used the American innovative spirit and American technology to create a product which brings benefits economically not only here but overseas, and it really helps, in my opinion, put freedom in the driver's seat.

So this is a great Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Congressman Olson for leading it and the other members of the Energy and Commerce Committee for participating. I am proud to be a part of this group.

Mr. Speaker, when I was a little boy, I used to read comic books, and one of them I read was Superman. In the Superman comic books, way back in the 1960s, Superman had an alterego that lived on Bizarro World.

In Bizarro World, everything was a little bit off-kilter. When I listen to my sincerely good friends on the minority side, I think they are on Bizarro World. I know they mean well, but they are not seeing the same planet I am seeing.

I have told this story a number of times about my brother John at the age of 40 having liver cancer. He had exhausted all conventional therapy. He was given less than 3 months to live.

Being a Member of Congress and on the Energy and Commerce Committee, I had access to the National Institutes of Health and the FDA. I called, and I said: Are there any experimental programs that you could get my brother into that might help him?

They checked, and they had a clinical trial, I believe, in San Antonio, Texas. We called down, and they got him into it. But they told him: This is experimental. It has helped a lot of people so far, but it doesn't help everybody. And if it doesn't help you, it accelerates your disease.

He and his wife prayed about it, and his mother and myself and his brother and sister, and we all decided, why not?

They put John in the trial, and it didn't help him, but we were at peace because we had used every available remedy that we could to try to help him.

This bill--which has passed the Senate, and if we pass it today, it goes to the President and it is going to be signed this week--gives patients, if their doctors approve, the right to try.

It has to be an investigational drug that is in an FDA clinical trial that has passed phase one, which has proved that it is nontoxic.

It gives them the right to try. There is no downside to this. This could become law. It would give a statutory right to try at the Federal level.

Why in the world my friends on the minority side have a problem with--it passed the Senate unanimously, which means, under the current Senate, 49 Democrats voted for it by a voice vote.

There is no downside to it. The FDA is still in control of what drugs are passed through this phase one clinical trial. And the doctor has to recommend it, and the patient has to accept it.

So I hope we will vote ``yes.''

Mr. Speaker, the bill has already passed the House on a bipartisan vote. I think I am right that it passed with 261 votes the last time we sent it.

The House bill is a little bit better bill than the Senate, but the Senate bill is better than no bill. So please vote ``yes'' when the time comes this afternoon.

Mr. Chairman, I can't think of a more unrewarding, difficult, fruitless issue to be asked to be the leader on than trying to find a solution to high-level nuclear waste. Can you imagine if, when you get elected to Congress, you are called into the Speaker's office or the minority leader's office and said: Now, I know you are young and bright and everything, but we want you to take the lead on something that we haven't been able to solve in 30 years.

Well, that is what John Shimkus and Congressman Tonko have been tasked to do. There is not a more unpleasant issue in the 30-something years I have been in the House than this issue.

Having said that, it is probably one of the most important issues to solve. We have, at one time, over 100 operating nuclear reactors. They generate electricity every day, and they use and eventually consume their nuclear fuel rods. And when they have been used up, you can't put them on the curb and tell the trash to pick them up.

Now, Mr. Tonko and Mr. Shimkus have worked, not just this Congress, but the last Congress, and in the case of John Shimkus, probably the last six Congresses, seven Congresses, to try to solve this.

We have a bipartisan bill today. I predict it is going to get in the neighborhood of 260 to maybe 300 votes. It solves the problem. And the key, in my opinion, to what they have done is that they have allowed for an interim storage facility in a State that approves it beforehand.

You are going to have States compete to accept this high-level nuclear waste on an interim basis, and you make a path forward to finish the licensing process, or make a negative determination in Nevada at Yucca Mountain.

You are going to have a way to begin, if this bill becomes law, to get the waste that is now stored on-site at deactivated, in some cases, nuclear power plants, consolidated to interim storage, make a decision on Yucca, ``yea'' or ``nay,'' and if it is ``yea'' then begin that process.

This is a very good effort. It should pass the House, it should pass the Senate, and the President should sign it. And then we will finally, after almost 40 years, begin to solve high-level nuclear waste issues in America.

I thank both the leaders on this bill, and I hope we get a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Mr. Speaker, almost 34 years ago, in January 1995, I stood right over there, held up my right hand with my 2-year-old daughter, Kristin, took an oath to defend this country and this Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And as soon as I had taken the oath of office to be a Member of the House of Representatives, I walked over to the hopper and put in the Barton tax limitation balanced budget amendment. It was H.J. Res. 33, I believe. That was almost 34 years ago.

At that time, the national debt was less than $2 trillion. Today, it is over $20 trillion. In the time that I have been in the House, we have had three or four balanced budgets on a cash flow basis, so that means we have had 30 unbalanced budgets. We have piled almost $19 trillion on our children and our grandchildren's backs with no hope to ever repay.

The balanced budget constitutional amendment is not a panacea. It doesn't solve all of our problems, but it is a step in the right direction.

I have a few issues with this particular balanced budget amendment. It is not as strong as I would like it to be, but I commend the chairman of the Judiciary Committee for bringing it to the floor for a vote. It is a positive first step.

It is not compassionate, Mr. Speaker, to spend money we don't have and keep adding deficits that we will never repay. There is always an inexhaustible demand for more Federal dollars. At some point in time, we have to start the process of living within our means and, believe it or not, repaying what we have already borrowed.

This constitutional amendment, again, it is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. I urge its passage by a two-thirds vote to send it to the Senate, hopefully, for a similar two-thirds vote.