Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Carter

Amendment No. 1: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Madam Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, this is an amendment to extend whistleblower protection for American soldiers for the protection of American soldiers both at home and abroad. The bottom line is this amendment would extend protected communications covered under the Whistleblower Protection Acts to include ideologically based threats or actions; that if a servicemember reasonably believes that the actions of an individual could be counterproductive or detrimental to the United States' interests or security, they would be able to report these under the Whistleblower Protection Act.

The Fort Hood shooting, which unfortunately was in my district, taught us that servicemembers are becoming increasingly afraid to report questionable incidents for fear of reprisal. Despite numerous red flags concerning Major Hasan and his dangerous tendencies, no negative personnel action was taken. He was promoted to the rank of major, and he was allowed to provide psychological counseling to battle weary soldiers.

Our military personnel asserted that because of Major Hasan's Muslim heritage, that they feared adverse actions would be held against them and that they would be accused of profiling Major Hasan.

Coming forward about potentially dangerous situations should never be considered profiling. While no one should be targeted solely on their religious affiliation, all servicemembers should feel free and safe to report dangerous behavior.

And I will tell you that it was reported to me by more than a dozen soldiers in the training command and in medical school that this dangerous behavior was discussed constantly, and they were all concerned about reporting it.

The Whistleblower Act already provides for guidance on what should be reported in terms of violations. It extends to military personnel protection from negative reporting. It protects the servicemembers on their ability to communicate dangerous behavior, mismanagement of funds, abuses of authority to Congress and to an IG or to the chain of command.

This amendment would further extend protective communications to include ``ideologically based threats or actions'' that the reporting servicemember ``reasonably believes could be counterproductive or detrimental to the United States' interests or security.''

This amendment does not target any specific belief, religious or otherwise. This amendment seeks to instill the confidence necessary to protect our Armed Forces from further attacks from within.

I reserve the balance of my time.

I would point out to my friend that 13 American soldiers died, 13 people died, 12 American soldiers and one civilian, and 43 people were wounded by an individual whose ideological preaching was well-known in the medical community, in the school community where he studied and at Fort Hood. To almost every soldier that he talked to, he preached his ideological belief about the wrongness of the American action.

But it's clear that each of these servicemembers were concerned enough to talk to other servicemembers about it, but they were afraid to go up the chain of command strictly because of the nature of the environment we function in today, and we need to make it clear to them.

It doesn't matter what the ideological bent of anybody is, if they are talking about things that are detrimental to the American serviceman, they have a duty to report that--and know that the Whistleblower Act will protect them. They knew about the Whistleblower Act, but they were afraid it would not protect them because there happened to be a politically correct, if you will, faction in this whole issue that they were afraid would change the view of their superior officers on their promotions.

I don't like the idea of having to do it this way either, but I also don't like the idea that there are dozens--and I would say more than dozens of American soldiers--that could have prevented this if they had stepped forward. And all of them feared, because of the environment of political correctness that seems to be rampant in this country, they were afraid to come forward.

Therefore, I think we ought to clarify it, and I don't care who you are or what your background is: If you are talking something that's detrimental to the American soldier or his mission, it has to be reported, and there will not be sanctions against you.

That's the purpose of my amendment.

Mr. Speaker, with all the issues that we deal with here in Congress, the American people deal with other issues at home. Some of those issues are connected, and some of those issues they don't see the connection. But they do wonder about something.

They wonder about the fact that gas prices in some places in this country January of 2009, when the President came into office, were unleaded $1.32 a gallon; mid-range, $1.42; super range, $1.52. Gas prices in April of 2011 over here somewhere in this country, looks like it could be Texas because our numbers are about there, $3.99 for regular, $4.09 for mid-range, $4.19 for the super, the ethyl, as they used to say in the old days.

So since the President has taken office, something that affects every life in this country: the price of gasoline. Because whether we like it or not, whether we come up with alternative energy sources or not, whether we have new ideas about high-speed trains, subways, elevated railways, buses, the majority of the people in the United States move around by automobile; and the majority of those automobiles are driven using one of two fuels, either gasoline or diesel.

Now, neither one of these charts shows a diesel price; but amazingly enough, back when I was a youngster, diesel was the cheapest fuel we had available. But diesel prices are no longer cheap. Diesel prices are competitive, usually around the mid-range price of gasoline. But there are people who have good reasons to drive diesel vehicles. And so whether we like it or not, whether it fits our congressional legislative program or not to have gasoline and diesel being the fuel that moves people around this country, it is a fact. And you may think otherwise all you wish, but it is a fact.

There are no wind cars where you hook a sail up and hope that the wind is blowing towards Washington, DC tomorrow morning at 8 o'clock so everybody can get to work. It is not happening.

So everybody gets up and everybody goes out, and most everybody, unless they have one of the brand-new electric cars, starts their vehicle with gasoline or maybe diesel, and they go to work or they go on vacation or they travel to see their relatives, or whatever the purpose of their trip.

So let's be frank. Until we come up with alternative sources that move people from point A to point B in the United States of America, we are bound to gasoline and diesel. And in the 3-year track record of this administration, we have seen, I understand it is reported, the highest gasoline prices in the history of the country, even higher than the famous Jimmy Carter days when Jimmy Carter had us waiting in long, long ration lines and paying extremely high gasoline prices. At $4 a gallon, I think we topped even the numbers that came under President Carter almost two decades ago.

So here we are, we have gone full circle in a Democrat Presidency, and here we are back with the issue of gas prices.

Now, why are gas prices so important to people? Because it is how we get where we are going to go. If you are taking your kid to soccer game or to baseball practice or football practice or lacrosse up here in the East, or track and field, or whatever your young people are doing, you have got to get them there; and in most instances they can't walk and they can't ride a bike. They have to go in an automobile. And when you move them from game to game, they go in automobiles. And when they go to take their tests for entry into college, they have to go to an independent location. Many times they travel there by automobile.

You have to pick up the laundry. You have to pick up the groceries. You have to do a million things; get the kids to school on time, get the kids home from school, take the wife out on a date. Unmarried people are dating, and that's part of their date costs. And at a time when we have some of the highest unemployment in modern times, we bumped back above 9 percent, I understand now, so there is a lot of people out of work.

Those people who are out of work, some of them are drawing unemployment, and some of them are just trying to figure out a way to make do until they can find another job. And to have a roughly $3 increase per gallon in the cost of their fuel to move them around the country, people feel that immediately. It is literally sticker shock to go in and start filling up your tank.

I have a fairly small tank in my car. My wife's got a little larger tank, so more of a sticker shock. I drive a hybrid, so I'm getting some pretty good gas mileage. But still, I watch that thing go up to $54 to fill up my tank and watch my wife's go up to $65, $70 to drive.

I have a daughter who is working part time and going to college. Sometimes she has to go for testing; in fact, today she went for testing in a town about 40 miles from where we live to take a test, and it is a full tank of gasoline up there and back for her in the little car she drives, or almost. And she works hard. She will work all day and maybe 2 days at her job to pay for a tank of gasoline. So it immediately affects your budget.

But it is not just the cost of this fuel to the individual. It is the fact that it is killing the recovery in this country, this new increase in gasoline costs and fuel costs.

Now, we move goods from one place to the other. In Texas we are blessed to have the Rio Grande Valley where we produce wonderful fruits and vegetables, and we compete around the country with our fruit and vegetable crops. But the prices of those things are going up, and they are going up very quickly. All of a sudden, you are seeing tomatoes are $2.50 a pound.

Now, you say how do you know this? One of the great questions they always like to ask a Congressman is, what is the price of bread in your town? What is the price of milk? Because they think that we don't know. Well, I can assure you, my wife will back me up on this, I have shopped for our family in the grocery store since the day I got married, and I continue to do so.

We live away from town, and usually I would be leaving my work in town and it was easier for me to grab the groceries than for my wife to drive 8 or 10 miles from where we live out in the country into town. So I can honestly say I watched avocados go from $1 apiece to $2 apiece in 2 days in Round Rock, Texas, at one of the better stores where the prices are kept low where we regularly shop. I'm fortunate enough to have a job, but there are people who don't. And avocados may be a luxury to some people. That's just an example that I noticed because it shocked me to see them double in price in a 48-hour period, and so I thought about it.

But that's not all. The price of everything is going up. Now, why is that? Transportation costs. We move our products to market and we move our products to wholesalers, retailers, and it all takes transportation, and that transportation has now almost trebled in costs in a very short period of time.

People say, why? We hear from our Democrat colleagues here in the Congress, the ``why'' is the evil oil companies, the evil major oil companies, and they name names; ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, Chevron. I will not use all the names. There are a bunch of them, and they get used every day in this Congress. They are making horrendous profits and they are the cause of gasoline going up. But the price of oil is going up, and that is part of why prices go up.

The thing is we don't know. We all speculate to some extent. But I think it is a pretty easy, commonsense position to take that the more supply we have with the demand, and we are the demand capital of the world on burning gasoline and diesel. We outshine anybody else on the face of this globe in the use of those products. And we have relatively cheap prices as compared to the other countries, especially those countries that have no production. They can get very expensive very quickly.

Until very recently, there was no oil or gas at all to amount to anything in what we now call Western Europe. Today, there is. They have found it offshore. They have found it on the land in Holland, in Norway and other places. Norway is, I think, something like the third biggest producer of offshore oil in the world now. They are doing extremely well and running their economy in a very frugal manner. They are very smart people and they should be commended. We should do so well.

I happened to go to Norway with Chairman Obey with the Appropriations Committee when the Democrats were in control, and we went to see the offshore production in Norway. They are doing a good job. But the prices for gasoline are probably three times as much in Europe as they are here, and in other places even more.

But it makes sense that the law of supply and demand always works. It's kind of like gravity, the law of gravity. If you drop something, it's going down. Well, the law of supply and demand has been proven over and over and over to be what drives the market for anything. So if we have the opportunity to increase our supply in this country and we have the demand, then why wouldn't that have an effect on our price? I think that is a reasonable thing to talk about.

The Obama administration has, I would say, a dismal record in assisting us in finding oil and gas. Of course, we are all familiar with the fact that we had a bad oil leak in the gulf, and nobody in any way is saying that was good. In fact, that was a terrible, terrible thing to our environment, a terrible thing that panicked the country to some extent, especially some of the southern States that border on the Gulf of Mexico, and it messed up some beaches pretty nastily and probably had some effect on the wildlife and sea life in the ocean. We will probably be learning in the future how much.

As a result of that, we put a moratorium on drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. But oil and gas is found in the Gulf of Mexico, especially oil, but to some extent natural gas, in abundance in some places, and many of those places are deepwater. Deepwater drilling is extremely expensive. The rigs are $1 billion, with a ``b,'' piece of equipment, and the cost of drilling those wells is very expensive. But they are successful. We have had wells, even the BP well that blew out was putting out a phenomenal amount of oil. If that had been sealed and that production had been put into play, it would have had an effect on the availability of oil in the United States. Just that one well would have had an effect. But they put a moratorium on that, and the decrease in oil production from this decreased the amount of production by 360,000 barrels of domestic oil per day.

The Obama administration has leased less offshore and onshore acres for energy production than any other President since Ronald Reagan. In 2009, the administration indefinitely delayed leases for oil shale in the West, which kept these resources off limits. Over 2 trillion barrels of oil from oil shale are currently sitting idle due to these delays. The Obama administration has kept all new offshore exploration off limits until at least 2017. That is over 80 billion barrels of oil in the Atlantic, Pacific, Alaska and Gulf of Mexico.

The Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which could be transporting 2.2 million barrels of oil per day, is running at less than one-third capacity because companies cannot get permits to produce oil in Alaska. The administration has essentially shut down production in the State by withholding the necessary permits. The Keystone XL pipeline, which could eventually bring 1.5 million barrels of oil per day to America, is being prevented by endless delays by the State Department.

America is the third largest oil producing Nation in the world. The above actions are a clear sign to the world that we are closed for business. If we are closed for business and we are number three, then how much more valuable does that make the product that number two and number one and those behind us are producing, therefore driving up the cost of that product? The less you have in the market, the higher the cost, if there is a demand, and there is clearly a demand worldwide.

In fact, one of the things you are seeing on the price of oil is the fact that at one time we were the biggest market by far. In fact, the Europeans really didn't even come close to being the market for oil and gas that the United States is. But today these booming new upcoming economies, China, the fastest growing economy in the world right now, do you think they can have that fast growing economy without energy? Of course not.

Energy is the driving force behind manufacturing. It is the driving force behind development of a nation. Those folks need to get where they need to go just like everybody else does, and they have many of the innovative things that America is starting to talk about today.

The Secretary of Transportation has just let out a bunch of money to build some high-speed rail. China already has high-speed rail, the highest speed rail in the world. They have speeds of up to 250 miles per hour. We are not even going to come close to that on our rail projects. But they are still now the biggest competitor for trying to make forward purchases. They are trying to buy future purchases so they can ensure they have the fuel they need in the future to meet their demands.

We have a product that we sell for that. They are called ``futures'' on the exchange, and you are buying oil to be delivered at a later time at a set price. And when futures become in big demand and when the price of oil in the future is looked at by countries and by industries to make these purchases ahead of time to get cheaper fuel to

run your industry, then it drives up the costs in the market. The market goes up. Something is in demand and the market needs it not only today, but sees a projection to need it in 6 months, in a year, in 5 years and in 10 years, and they are willing to pay for the right to purchase it at a certain price, the prices go up.

That's the market. So I think that, first off, we're not ever going to get anywhere if we don't have an energy plan that is about all energy in the United States. And I would argue that with the use of the regulations and the failure to lease and the failure to lift moratoriums, and even after you lift moratoriums, failure to give drilling permits, all the things that this administration has done, it has been an anti-oil and gas industry--and I'm sure coal, also--and anti-hydrocarbon administration. They don't deny that at all. They are anti-hydrocarbons. They don't like coal. They don't like oil and gas. They are opposed to them. And through regulations and through failure to do the necessary leasing they are keeping closed natural resources that are available to Americans. And, hey, let's get this straight. Before the Middle East; before Russia, and the Soviet Union prior to that; before offshore Norway, before onshore Holland; before the North Sea; before the Gulf of Mexico; before Indonesia; before all these places where we now produce oil and gas, we started out by producing oil in Pennsylvania. We later made a huge gigantic oil find in Texas. And Texas is now defined by oil and gas by many.

We are the pioneers of oil and gas in the world, the United States of America. All the improvements in drilling procedures and in closing down wells, in saving oil without blowouts, in fighting oil fires, in any category you can come up with to do with oil and gas, the United States of America has led, as it usually leads in all things, but it has led in the oil and gas industry. We are the experts. In fact, when we went to Norway and asked the Norwegians what they would do if they had a blowout like the British Petroleum blowout, they said, We'd call the experts; the people in the United States. The companies that are drilling the wells, they're the experts, not us. Then why all of a sudden in this administration have we decided that a major industry in this country is of no consequences because you want to change the way the American people get around, and you want to change the way we do business in this country? So you hold votes on the floor of this House, whether it's something called cap-and-trade, and it fails--passes the House; can't get through the Senate. Dies. So you do it with regulations. Just get the regulators to shut them down and that will do just as good as passing cap-and-trade.

You want to know what this does to you folks that are looking for a job. Well, Texas, at one time in the very near past, within the last year, had the lowest unemployment in the Nation until we shut down drilling offshore and along the gulf coast, and we lost tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands of people, that are connected with this industry. And it's not just the greasy drillers that drill the oil wells. It's the food service people that bring it out there. It's the helicopter people that transport people. It's the shipping industry that transports the fuel. It's the pipeline industry that puts it in the pipeline and delivers it. It's the refining industry. All of these people are affected when you shut down the local source, which is what this administration has done. And then we say to ourselves, Why has the price of gasoline gone up? Well, it seems to me part of the problem has got to be an administration hostile to this very industry. It's awfully hard when the regulators, EPA and others, have painted a target on your back to prevent you from producing.

We've made a phenomenal natural gas find in this country. We have found, which if I had told you this 4 years ago that we would bust up rocks and find natural gas, you would say that I needed to have some serious psychiatric examination, because it makes no sense to anybody that you can bust up rocks and produce natural gas. But we've discovered shale gas. And now, although we've got shale gas in Texas-- and we're mighty proud of it--this shale gas now touches multiple States in this country. It goes right up through the South, right up through the Midwest, right up into Pennsylvania, where they have already done some serious shale oil work. And I know there's some up in New York State, although they don't seem to be interested in producing it.

So a belt of product stretches all the way across our country. Natural gas. And yet immediately there's some people who are telling you, I can smell that gas in my water well. Well, I've got news for you. Natural gas doesn't smell. So if you smell that gas in your water well, you've got a city gas line leaking someplace in your house, because you put the smell in the gas when you sell it to the retail customer so you can smell the gas if it's leaking in your house. But there's no smell of natural gas. But people have come up here to Congress and said, They drilled a well right around the corner from me, and now my water smells like natural gas. It doesn't make sense because natural gas doesn't smell. I can tell you that from personal experience it does not smell because I have dug up the machine on a job I had that smells. That was one of the nastiest jobs I ever had, because you got that smell all over you, but that's a different story. We need an energy policy that works, not an anti-energy policy.

Let's look at an anti-energy policy. Year One, 2009. February 4, 77 Utah oil and gas lease areas withdrawn from development. One of the things we talk about is Alaska, we talk about Texas, we talk now about Pennsylvania, we talk about many other places where there is now production. But what we don't talk about because we haven't been able to get in there to do it is the basin which Utah sits in the middle of, but it goes up into Idaho, it goes over into Wyoming, it goes up into Montana. There's a large potential field and discovered field in North Dakota of oil and gas. But the Utah oil leases were withdrawn from development. February 10. These were all actions of the administration. Offshore leasing plan delayed for 6 months.

February 25, shale oil research and development leases delayed in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah. March 30, 3 million acres of Federal land removed from energy production by Omnibus Public Lands Management Act passed by a Democratic Congress. June 29, 29 million acres of Federal land removed from solar energy development plans, leaving just 670,000 solar acres. So even the so-called clean energy is having roadblocks by this administration.

Uranium mining blocked for 2 years on 1 million acres of land in Arizona. That was in July. August, 24,000 acres in Wyoming oil and gas leases withdrawn. September, new Outer Continental Shelf lease plan postponed until 2012. October, 60 of the 77 Utah oil and gas leases permanently canceled. November, Obama administration found to have approved the least oil and gas leases annually ever recorded in the United States history. So in the first year of this administration they started out with a clear policy of getting rid of our energy, not going after our energy. Even solar.

Year Two. January 6, new regs issued to restrict oil and gas development on Federal lands. January 26, Virginia offshore leases delayed.

January 28, restricted shale oil lease terms, cutting industry offers 85 percent. February 1, $40 billion in oil and gas industry tax and fee increases introduced in FY 2011 budget proposal. February 17, the administration unilaterally shuts down Yucca Mountain, the Nation's only repository for spent nuclear fuel, jeopardizing the future of nuclear energy.

That's not oil and gas, but that's energy.

March 12, 61 Montana oil leases withdrawn. March 31, majority of Outer Continental Shelf closed to future production. May 6, ban on all gulf drilling over BP spill. July 12, President defies Federal court order overturning the gulf drilling ban. October 12, the President finally says gulf drilling ban lifted, but refuses to issue new permits, keeping a de facto ban in place in contempt of Federal court. November 18, Interior Department plans no new gulf leases until 2012. December 1, the administration reinstates the illegal gulf

drilling ban to introduce the entire Pacific/Atlantic Coasts, Eastern Gulf, and parts of Alaska.

So they reinstated the ban to cover the whole coasts of the country. Oh, yes, we've got one more here--year three, 2011.

January 14, revoked West Virginia coal mine permit, costing 250 American jobs. February 2, a Federal judge finds Interior Department in contempt of court over de facto drilling ban. February 15, announced further delays to U.S. oil shale production by deciding to re-review the current rules for commercial oil shale leasing. February 28, continued the de facto drilling ban while issuing a token deepwater permit. March 4, the President appealed the Federal court ruling to issue stalled deepwater permits.

When I saw that shale oil, I saw my friend from Pennsylvania stand up. I yield to my good friend whatever time he may need to talk about the great things that are happening in Pennsylvania.

If my friend would yield just for a minute, what is the unemployment rate in Pennsylvania right now?

It's because of those new jobs that were created by this marvelous find in Pennsylvania.

Reclaiming my time for just a moment, a lot of people don't realize that, when you're talking about the production of oil and gas, there is much more to putting up a rig on a piece of land than just driving out there and putting it up. You build roads. You build fences. Road builders don't drill a single drop of oil or gas, but they build the roads. That's a job. That's multiple jobs. In Louisiana, in the marshy parts of the country, they used to build wooden roads to get out to these rigs. All this creates jobs for all the side industries of the oil and gas industry. Just like any other industry, there are side industries that feed the big industry, and they all create jobs in a country that dropped below 9 percent but has now jumped back this month above 9 percent again, after one of the longest stretches of high unemployment in the country. I'll just use my family as an example.

My daddy was born in Kentucky, and my mother was born in Tennessee. In fact, where my mother lived may be pretty close to being underwater right now. In fact, she lived right close to the river in Tennessee. In the Great Depression, there were no jobs in their part of the country, but there were jobs in Texas because of the oil industry, so they both came down to Texas to get jobs in the oil industry. Now, they both ended up in the oil industry, but they started out where my mother was in the secretarial pool for business and my daddy was a teacher, an accounting professor; but they got jobs in the oil business, and it was always good to our family.

I don't lay any bones about it. I was raised in an oil and gas family, and my dad was a gas man. I've seen it make our State prosper, and of all the producing States that I've ever visited, they've prospered. Look at what it has done for Alaska. Look at Louisiana. Look at New Mexico and Oklahoma and what it has done for those States and those economies. To take and target an industry and go after that industry the way this administration has done--but not only that, I don't even understand the Yucca Mountain deal. I don't understand the no uranium leases. Now the President, in a couple of speeches, said we'll switch to nuclear. I think that may have changed now since the Japan disaster.

But we can't do it without uranium. There's a new process, you maybe could, but that's a different story. Historically, you can't do without uranium. You've got to have the location to store spent fuel. Americans need to wake up and say, wait a minute, we need energy.

I just was talking to people today that said the EPA was going to try their best to shut down wood-burning fireplaces. My gosh, I mean, how are we going to get warm? You guys up north, how are you going to get warm in the winter time if you're going to take away your coal and your natural gas and the price of oil is going to be through the roof and you can't afford that? You can't even burn wood in your own fireplace? What's wrong with this picture?

The great surge in the cost of gasoline that we were just talking about, that surge was the result of basically two things. You named one of them. The other one was they had a small fire in an Illinois refinery, but the speculators look and they say, we're fighting capacity shutdown and we have a limited refining capacity because we haven't built a major refinery in this country in 25 years.

Because of the burdensome rules we've come up with and the fact that we can't permit them. So they look at refining capacity and they look at the other issue, and they say, wait a minute, if there's not a shortage now, there's going to be, and they run the price up. Then when that opens up, hey, the market gets back to normal again, and every time that happens the driving public of America suffers. They're suffering today, and they're suffering on top of the highest unemployment, longest period of high unemployment in modern times just about.

This is one of those what we call kitchen-table issues, when the family gathers around the kitchen table to figure out how they're going to make the budget work especially if Mom or Dad are laid off. One of the things they're looking at is the cost of that fuel, fuel to heat their homes or cool their homes. Down where we come from, we want it cool. They look to see how much it's going to cost them to get to and from school, to and from work, how they're going to conserve energy, maybe they're going to car pool. They're making these kinds of decisions, and yet the government seems to be making these gigantic decisions to shut off supply and then wonder why we have an energy crisis in this country.

This is not rocket science. This is the law of supply and demand. We have the biggest demand. If we can't meet our demand, we've got to go to foreign oil. If there's a fight in Libya, we may not use much of that foreign oil right now, but somebody else does; and if it's at risk, then they are going into another market to get their oil and that makes our market go up. It's all worldwide market in our oil and gas.

I don't understand why people think they're gouging you. They're making excessive profits, and I understand the payment on CEOs and I am not defending any payment on CEOs in any industry. It's not just the oil industry that pays big bucks for CEOs; but if you look at the history of the oil and gas industry, their percentage on investment is lower than most average manufacturing facilities, somewhere between 6 and 8 percent return on their investment. And you say what investments? Well, I think I said earlier, those offshore drilling rigs that drill in the Gulf of Mexico and now have all been moved off the coast of Africa, Indonesia and off the coast of Brazil, those rigs cost $1 billion, and they can cost you operational-wise in a 24-day period almost $1 million to operate. They are expensive. And if you hit nothing but dust when you get down to the bottom of that well, you have blown a whole lot of money out the door, and that's just lost. Then you drill the next well to try to get it back. We've gotten better at looking for it and finding it, but it's still a gambler's business when you get down to it.

But this is caused by the government to a great extent. You can't create an environment of uncertainty in any market, I don't care what the market is. If you create the idea of uncertainty, it affects the market. It also affects the psyche of the people, and that's kind of what I don't think they're getting.

So their solution is to tax it. If it moves, tax it. The problem with that is do you really think the CEO of Exxon is going to pay the taxes if we increase taxes on the oil and gas industry? No. You and I are going to pay those taxes when we fill up our tank. If you go and ask the question, they will tell you at your local filling station. They used to publish it in Texas on the pump how much of a gallon of gasoline was taxed. It's a whole bunch. Direct and indirect tax make up a large amount of the cost of gasoline, always have, and I come from a time where we used to have 19 cents a gallon gasoline in Texas. Try that on for size. I could go buy a dollar's worth of gas and drive all week.

I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, I agree with you 100 percent. It's the same thing when we took over this House floor 3 years ago in the dark because they turned out the lights on us, turned off the mics, and we talked for about 2 or 3 weeks on, what we want is all of the above. We are for every energy resource that is available, but we want that energy resource to be as available as possible to be competitive in the market. I mean, everybody's got their own little bailiwick. And corn farmers love ethanol, but it's got to compete. Sun has to compete. Wind has to compete.

They invariably call us oil and gas guys ``anti-wind people.'' Wrong. Texas has the largest wind farm in the United States. There's no State with more of those wind turbines than the State of Texas because out in the West, the wind blows all the time. It's like a gold mine for wind. What do you think Boone Pickens is talking about when he's talking about all that wind energy out there? And his idea of putting natural gas-burning cars on the road is a good idea. I support it. Because when we hear that now with the discovery of shale gas and the ability--we just started to tap it. It is just a small part of the future.

By the way, it would be real interesting to find out if some of our colleagues that are so opposed to natural gas, if they knocked on his door and said, Sir, we would like to talk to you about making a lease for a share of the profits on drilling for natural gas on your property. And I wonder if they would say, Oh, no. I wouldn't take that, those hundreds of thousands of dollars that I might make from you developing that resource. No, I don't believe in that stuff. I don't think so. Whenever you produce wealth, wealth enhances a nation. And your natural resources are a part of the wealth of the Nation, always have been and, my friend, they always will be.

Within the last 3 years, I have met two different individuals--one of them very recently--who have a scientific plan to refine garbage at your garbage dump, solid waste, normal throw-it-in- your-garbage-can stuff, go out there and, through a multiple process, produce gasoline and capture all the CO2 to be used--in Texas we take CO2, put it back down in the ground in old wells, and reenergize those wells to bring more oil to the surface. And the leftovers, after this burning process to create the gasoline, refine the gasoline out of garbage, leaves an ash that is good to plow into fields in certain parts of the country to refurbish the fields.

That's the kind of thinking we want. That's great. That's a good idea. And because we're talking energy and we're having energy policy, those good ideas come to the fore. That's what we want. That's how we're going to solve this problem. But we're not going to solve it by shutting down what we have now in hopes that there is going to be this miraculous overnight discovery that's just going to make everything great, like we find some kryptonite or something, and it runs the whole country. Wrong. It ain't going to happen.

This is a frustrating time for those of us that are in energy- producing States because we have people that literally don't like the production of energy, but they complain about the production of energy. They want to tax it.

By the way, the majors, the big boys, they don't get subsidies on their stuff. That's for wildcatters. They drilled, but most of their production is overseas. And we, to some extent, by having bad energy policy in the United States, we have driven people to the benefit of other people in the world. Nobody thought about drilling off the coast of Australia or drilling off the coast of Indonesia, which is a very unstable volcanic area over there, until they were kind of pushed out of American waters. And then they started looking in places like the North Sea, off the coast of Africa, Nigeria, Indonesia; and these are now major production fields. They've benefited from our lack of foresight under some administrations to continue to enhance our native industry. More power to them. That's good for them. But we have it here too.

I still think there is plenty of oil in Alaska and lots of it. And they haven't even started looking for natural gas up there. They probably have got as much natural gas as anybody. There's an international thing going on; most people don't even know about it. I learned it from the Coast Guard. Because of the receding ice from the North Pole--and I won't get off into global warming here today, if that's it--whatever it is, because it's receding, there is now a waterway. There is now a northwest passage across the top of North America. You can sail from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Also, if that water stays open, you can drill for natural resources there. The unclaimed international water gets claimed by who puts the most activity in that water. And one of the questions is, the Russians are pouring in ships and trawlers and other things into that whole area up there, the part we claim is so much. The Canadians claim so much. But there is a lot more that seems to be developing. And why are they after it? It's not for fish, my friend. It's oil and gas.

I thank my friend from Pennsylvania for joining me.

Mr. Speaker, we just got off two weeks of working in our districts around this country. At least I held about 10 town hall meetings, and I am sure many of my colleagues held more. We talked about the debt, we talked about the deficit, but one of the things that almost every one of these town halls insisted upon talking about was the high price of gasoline.

Let's start with this first exhibit we have here. This just gives the comparison of what the gas prices were somewhere in the United States, I can't tell where. January of 2009: Unleaded, $1.32; mid-range, $1.42; super, $1.52. Here is a picture taken in April of 2011: Regular, $3.99; mid-range, $4.09; the high powered stuff, $4.19 a gallon.

Mr. Speaker, the only party that can be blamed for this, unfortunately, is the Democratic Party, through the leadership of Barack Obama, President of the United States, because a vicious combination of the Obama administration's moratorium on offshore drilling and the devaluation of the American dollar through the administration's quantitative easing have resulted in the highest seasonal gasoline prices in U.S. history.

We have reached a point where if we don't pay attention, we are going to

give up our ability to produce our own natural resources and be, as the President said to Brazil when he loaned them $2 billion or more, ``We will be glad to be good customers of yours when you find some oil out in the Gulf.''

Mr. Speaker, this is a broken energy policy. In fact, this is no energy policy at all. We are quite aware now that we have found substantial reserves that were unfound in the area of natural gas. In fact, there are those who report that the production of shale gas in the United States could result in us having enough natural gas to operate in this country for at least 100 to 150 years at present or projected usages, and yet we seem to have roadblocks thrown up in front of that production at every step.

We had a deep water accident, a terrible deep water accident, in the Gulf of Mexico. The President and the Energy Department put down a moratorium on drilling in the gulf, both deep water and shallow water. Even though the shallow water, they had had no massive oil leaks in the shallow water, it was included. So the Gulf of Mexico, one of the largest potential oil and gas fields in the world, was shut down for American production. Not for Chinese production, not for Brazilian production, not for anybody else who had an ability to make a deal with Cuba to get a lease offshore to drill, but for American production.

But he promised that after they got all of the cleanup done and after they examined what happened in the BP case, that they would lift the moratorium, and with a lot of outcry from the Gulf States, because for the first time, at least in the State of Texas, until the moratorium on drilling in the gulf, the State of Texas was looking pretty good on unemployment. We were still in the 6 percent range as the rest of the Nation was in the 10 percent range. But when you shut down potentially 250,000 jobs that relate to the drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, I don't know how many of those jobs are actually lost, but those were the ones at risk. And as a result of that and other factors, we're now up in the 8 percent unemployment range, which is still better than the rest of the country, but still a really direct cause of the moratorium in the gulf.

When the moratorium was lifted, they refused to issue permits. But first, because the Federal court told them to lift the moratorium, they lifted that moratorium and issued a new one the next day, or maybe 2 days later, which was, I would say, fairly much in contempt of the order of the Federal court in Louisiana. That Federal judge, in turn, made several comments about contempt of court. And so, finally, after years, the moratorium was lifted and another 6 months later, or 8 months later, a few permits were issued so that drilling could begin.

Remember this: Barack Obama, when he became President of the United States, President Obama promised that he was going to open up offshore exploration and enhance nuclear energy. He's failed to do both. The only energy policy that he's dealt with is one that we certainly need to develop. And no one here doesn't want to seek alternatives that are economically viable to make this country run. This country is an energy-driven country. Just look at the lights in this room. Think of the amount of windmills it would take just to power up this room almost 24 hours a day. But we're for--and, in fact, I would say the great State of Texas has the largest wind farm in the entire United States.

So when it comes to energy, we don't shy away from any kind of energy in our State. We are an energy State. We have been producing oil and gas in the State of Texas for I guess close to a hundred years, clear back to Spindletop. We are not the experts, but we're as close to experts as you're going to run into because we've been doing it through generations of Americans.

I remember when I was 17 years old, my big desire was to go work on an oil rig because the great pay those people got paid. My daddy wanted me to keep all my fingers so he told me I couldn't do it. But I always wished I could. It is something we grow up with. We don't think oil and gas are evil products, and we don't think that they are the curse of this country. We think they are the primary clean power source in competition with other power sources of the petroleum age. We think we do a good job of producing clean energy--and energy, we think, that is the cause of the great modern expansion of American Government.

Remember, when we're talking about petroleum products, we're not just talking about power for your automobiles and power for your trucks and power for your power stations and all the other things that we use with oil and gas. We're talking about plastic, we're talking about lifesaving chemicals, we're talking about clothing. There's a list of a hundred different products--I can't even list them all--that have come from the production of petroleum. And now, for some reason, we have an administration that treats petroleum and treats petroleum products like natural gas as if they were some kind of horrible evil poison because of this issue which is unresolved of carbon dioxide.

So we are sitting here on the verge of something that will ultimately shut down our economy. I can tell you from personal experience, because my wife sent me to the grocery store three Sundays ago and one of the things on her list was avocados. And this is in Texas. We're pretty close to Mexico. We're pretty close to California. Two avocados cost a dollar and a quarter. The next week she sent me back to get two more and they were a dollar apiece. So I started watching those things, and holy cow, they have gone up three times since that first purchase of avocados. And you wonder why. Maybe it's weather; maybe it's crop failure. Maybe it's the fact that the cost of energy is going up daily to power the fleet of trucks, to power the diesel-driven trains, to power the automobiles of America. As gas prices go up or diesel prices go up, so do the prices of food. And now the two inflationary prices that we see going forward are food and energy. This is serious stuff.

I'm very pleased to have a fellow Texan join me here today, Blake Farenthold. He's a new Member from down on the Texas gulf coast in a city that grew up with petroleum surrounding it, Corpus Christi, Texas. I'm going to yield to my good friend, Mr. Farenthold, whatever time he needs to talk about his views on energy.

I thank the gentleman.

And reclaiming my time, as an expansion of what you just said, let's talk about some of the things that the Democrats in this House and the President have talked about as the solution to the high price of gasoline. And that is they're going to cut the tax breaks for the oil producers, and they named Chevron, Exxon, BP--what they call the majors. They're going to cut those tax breaks. Therefore, they're going to make sure that those billion dollars worth of profit are not going to be there because they're going to reduce these tax breaks they have given, which they say are billions of dollars.

Well, let's just stop and look at what these tax breaks are about. All the oil and gas produced offshore in other countries is not subject to American taxation, and that's where the majors now produce somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of all their production. In fact, those drilling inside the continental United States, almost all those people drilling shallow water offshore and a few of those people drilling deepwater offshore, none of those people are majors. They're all from, as you were talking about, the entrepreneurial spirit of the wildcatter and the small producer who is going out in an attempt to expand domestic production. By the way, they're the only ones that take advantage of any tax breaks that are there, and they're not billion dollar companies that we use as examples.

So the cuts, the way I understand it, are not even going to affect ExxonMobil or affect Chevron or these big producers from overseas because those tax breaks don't pertain to that production. They only pertain to production in the United States. And those are done by independents. Almost the vast majority are done by independents.

So the only people that get hurt again by the tax policies of the Barack Obama administration are the small business men. Just like everything we see coming down the pike at us seems to be targeted at the small, independent entrepreneur who is trying to make it go.

So don't be misled to think that the majors, where we see all these massive amounts of money they're making, are the targets that are really going to be hit by the shot that our colleagues on the Democrat side of the aisle have proposed that we should take in getting rid of, as they call them, subsidies, which are really tax breaks, to the producers of domestic production.

By the way, all production offshore, they've shut it down. Just recently, Shell Oil Company, after dumping a couple of billion dollars in an offshore operation off the coast of Alaska, pulled out completely because, before they could even get started, after dumping a couple of billion dollars, with a ``b,'' into that production field out there, the EPA came in with more and more stops and stop orders and other things, and they finally threw up their hands and said, We're going someplace else. We're not drilling in American waters anymore. It's not worth it.

So right now where we know we have production for oil and gas, we have an administration that is fighting that production tooth and nail. This has cost jobs in the industry, as we pointed out. This has made our dependence on foreign oil bigger.

Here's the skyrocketing price of the Obama administration since he's been in office. Here is another chart that shows you the offshore field production of crude oil, thousands of barrels per day. And look at this. This is where that production was: 250,000 barrels up to 400,000 barrels; down again, and I guess that was in 1999 during the Clinton administration that it went down;

and back up in the Bush administration. The end of the Bush administration, down to 100,000 barrels of offshore production today. From 400,000 to 100,000 since the Obama administration.

Nobody can argue that the Obama administration is anything but violently opposed to the oil and gas industry. And they are doing everything they can to throw big roadblocks in front of production.

Then you wonder why the speculators are saying the price of a barrel of oil is going up. Because they're speculating. Do you know how many millions of gallons of aviation fuel a company like American Airlines or United Airlines or Continental Airlines, any of these major airlines, burn every week? Do you know what they have to do in order to stay ahead of increasing prices on fuel? They have to speculate on futures on the cost of fuel. And I'm not blaming the airlines. There are plenty of other people that are speculating because they say, Let's see, what's going on in the world? We're finishing up a war in Iraq, which is one of the major producers, but it's been out of the market for years and is barely getting back in. We're sitting here with a moratorium on all the offshore domestic production. We're not opening up any Federal lands for production anywhere in this country. The Obama administration has shut down the leasing practices on any public lands.

By the way, Texas is the only State in the Union that didn't turn their public lands over to the Federal Government. But the rest of the country, in areas like Idaho, Utah, we know there's production up there, up in Wyoming, up in Montana--all that stuff that the Canadians are now producing across the border, the fields on our side of the border are being curtailed by the administration. They just don't want to produce oil. They just want to buy it from foreign sources.

And about these foreign sources, the people who study the market say, My gosh, Libya is not available anymore; Iraq's not available, and what happens if we've got no production at home?

The market looks shaky. We better buy futures on oil. And guess what, the price goes up. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to say they see a shortage coming down the pike, that competing with India and China, two of the biggest competitors we've got for any kind of energy that's out there, and then we're going to sit here and we're not going to buy the chance to buy fuel at a cheaper price now than what it might be 6 months down the road? Of course, speculators are going to do that. Of course, industry is going to do that.

So as my friend, Blake, was pointing out, the lack of production, the lack of faith in what this government is going to do to this industry, and the fear that the shutdown will be complete, it just sets up any situation for the price to go up. When the price goes up, then the price of gasoline goes up; and by the way, if you either add more taxes to the cost of the oil production or you take away the tax breaks for oil production, who do you think's going to pay that increase in cost for the oil industry? Well, I will tell you. It's going to be the guys and the gals that are filling their cars up with gasoline at the pump.

To the extent that any business has an increase in cost of their production, they do the very best they can to pass that cost on to the consumer. That's the way any company whether it's steel, whether it's widgets, whether it's buggy whips, whatever it is that you do produce, if your cost goes up, the manufacturer passes on, to the extent that he can and still stay within the price limits that are set not by the government but by the demand of the consumer, then the price goes up.

So you're not going to lower prices by taking away subsidies to the oil and gas industry. The only thing you can do is raise prices. They don't want more prices to discourage production. That's ridiculous. If you have the law of supply and demand and we've got a short supply and you are discouraging production, the price is going up. You learned that in the eighth grade, as Blake pointed out. This is not hard stuff. This is easy stuff to figure out. Sometimes I think some of these folks that don't understand the oil business, the only oil they know is what's on the end of their dipstick in the crank case.

But the facts are this product is a major product of the modern society of the American public, and I think the American publics know it, and I don't think they're going to get fooled by demagoguery on these prices.

Does my colleague wish to have more comments?

There are consequences to any action that you take in this town.

I wanted to point out something I said in a committee hearing one time when we were having this debate. I said those people who want to do away with oil and gas and have a wind industry as the solution better strap a sail on their Volkswagen and hope the wind is blowing towards Washington, or tomorrow morning we're going to have a severe employment shortage in the U.S. Capitol; but, seriously, it's more than that.

Look at this quote from the Heritage Foundation. How many jobs does the anti-drilling agenda of this administration cost? The cost in jobs is startling. A new analysis by Louisiana State University Professor Joseph Mason projects national job losses at 19,000 from the drilling moratorium with wage losses at $1.1 billion. About one-third of those jobs are located outside the gulf region.

So not only did the people in the gulf lose jobs and do they continue to lose jobs, but these jobs, believe me, there is somebody somewhere within a hundred-mile radius of where we are right now that is producing something that

goes into the production of oil and gas because it is a nationwide and a worldwide industry. And all of the machinery, and all of the other complicated gauges and all the modernization of the production of petroleum, all of that is far beyond just the State of Texas and Louisiana and the other Gulf States. It actually circumvents the whole globe.

So jobs is another important reason why we have got to do something about this whole concept that this administration seems to have that we are evil because we produce oil and gas; and yet, guess what, States that were criticizing us for production of natural gas 2 years ago are dancing around campfires in their States now that they learned they've got shale oil in their States and some of our Midwest and eastern friends seem to all of the sudden be really excited about the fact that they've discovered they've got shale gas beneath their land and they can produce good, clean natural gas.

I say, more power to them. And I hope they can, and I hope their States and this Federal Government don't throw up roadblocks to the production of that shale gas because it is safe. This fear of fracking is a hoax because we have been doing fracking in the oil industry for 50 years. It's just amazing how all of a sudden a process that is almost normal to production, to get the second round of production out of almost any oil well that was drilled in Texas is using some form of H2O fracking, water fracking, to get that second round of production out of a well. And people rework and rework and rework existing wells with all types of processes like fracking. Fracturing is what that means.

But are there solutions that can bring the price of oil and gas down? Yes, I think there are.

Here is one that my good friend Doc Hastings has proposed: reversing President Obama's offshore moratorium, establishing a national domestic oil and natural gas offshore production goal to ensure a continued development of America's offshore energy sources. That's H.R. 1231. Hopefully, we are going to have that bill on the floor of the House this week or next week. This is important. This is showing real leadership in real energy production. And you see, nothing on there says let's shut down windmill production or let's shut down solar production or let's shut down nuclear production or hydroelectric or anything else. It's saying, let's produce energy in the form of petroleum products.

Another real gas price solution, Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now, H.R. 1230, Doc Hastings again. Require the sale of specific offshore leases within set time limits instead of continued administration delays. It is proposed: central gulf leases in the Gulf of Mexico within 4 months, western gulf within 8 months, offshore Virginia within 1 year, additional central Gulf of Mexico by June 1, 2012. This bill sets out a road map to leasing for production in what we consider our Gulf of Mexico.

You know, when it comes to producing products offshore, the first place it ever happened was offshore Texas. And we have considered that gulf to be sort of our little saltwater lake out there ever since. That's not exactly true. In fact, it's not true at all. But the point is, to stop the production that's been going on in the gulf, oh, since I was a small child--and I am no young whipper snapper--well, this starts us back to doing what we do well, producing offshore.

Another Doc Hastings bill: this is one, Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work, requiring new safety permits to prevent and combat blowouts before drilling. No one in the industry--and I have talked to literally hundreds of people from the industry--everybody agrees. They were very proud of the fact that until the BP oil spill, oil spills looked like they were going to be a thing of the far ancient past because that Mexico blowout was, what, 20-something years old.

It would require the Secretary to decide on issuing a permit within 30 days of the application with two 15-day extensions possibly being allowed and provide drilling companies with speedy Fifth Circuit Court access if the government violates the law in denying or ignoring the permitting process.

Those are good solutions because not only does it set a standard that the Congress should impose upon the Secretary. In addition, it gives a recourse, the kind of recourse we're supposed to have on these issues of whether or not to drill, and that is to go to the courthouse and let the justice system prevail. So let's go to the Fifth Circuit, who has already spoken once, pretty loudly, and let them speak again.

There is one more that I don't seem to have and that is, we need to open up the leasing for our public lands in the West. The States of Utah and Idaho and Wyoming and Montana, we are well aware and are very knowledgeable about the amount of a certain kind of heavy petroleum that is available in those areas, North Dakota, probably South Dakota. We are already finding a lot in North Dakota.

But all of a sudden, it too is struggling to get permits to continue to drill on federally owned public land. And let's always remember those words ``public land.'' It's not the U.S. Government's land. The U.S. Government is holding it for the American public. And if we need to lower our prices and have efficient production, we should go where the oil is.

I had one of my colleagues one day who said, I don't know why you Texans always just want to drill anywhere. If you want to drill, why don't you just drill in your own backyard where you have a say about it? Well, if there was oil down beneath my backyard, you could bet your soul I would drill back there in a heartbeat because I am not worried about--in fact, I would be glad to cut the grass around a producing oil well all day long in my backyard. It won't hurt my feelings at all. And I don't think anybody that knows anything about the industry would feel any way other than that.

It's almost a comment on the industry. When you pull out of Dallas/ Fort Worth Airport, the DFW Airport, at the entrance, right to your right is a pumping oil and gas well that was drilled within the last 3 years. Right there, practically downtown Dallas, because they have discovered a field out their way. So we know it can be done and done safely. We have to get on it.

The New York Times--certainly not any bastion of conservative values--has a little article here: U.S. consumer prices are up 5 percent, pushed mainly by food and gas. They will reaffirm they are going to finish quantitative easing--that's this dollar thing I was talking about--but the central bank would remain concerned about the inflation expectation of consumers who would demand higher wages for businesses. And it could raise prices and perhaps cut spending.

What that's all about is, one of the price gauging things that you got that they are accusing the industry of doing is the fact that we have dumped trillions of dollars into our economy for this quantitative easing of the economy.

You know, as you've heard from this very House floor, is how much this body has spent in stimulus and in TARP and in other things in the last couple of years, trillions and trillions of dollars. More money has this organization spent, the Congress of the United States, signed by the President, than in the history of the country. And yet besides that, our Treasury has been printing money to supposedly ease the economy; and they are literally putting more dollars in circulation which, in turn, devalues the value of the American dollar.

When the value of the American dollar goes down, the price goes up because an apple has a worth. There is a worth, a cost to that apple, and there is a value to that apple on the market. And if the value before we dumped cash into the system was $2, and you dump all this, then it will be $3 or maybe $4, not because the apple's changed but because the dollar's changed, and the dollar is worth less.

Why do you think--and by the way, nobody goes to Mexico in Texas anymore. But if you did, and you went across the border, like some idiot who got shot by the terrorists over there--but if you did, you would find that they won't even take American dollars in border towns anymore in Mexico. This was written up in some of the border papers. The American dollar is not wanted in Mexico because they are concerned about it losing its value. It used

to be the peso that we worried about losing its value. Something has gone haywire.

But as we devalue our dollar and we create a shortage of our gas and oil, it's no surprise at all that the byproducts of those two products, which is gasoline and diesel, is going up. And it has gone up. And if we don't do something about getting back into domestic production, it's going to go up some more.

And if the world perceives that the greatest consumer of energy on this Earth is going to have a huge demand when the supply goes down, and they've bought futures on that supply, they're going to get rich. That's not the oil companies we're talking about; that's the people who speculate and the people who cover their energy needs. And by the way, these same speculators are buying futures on oil and gas from China, from Russia, from India, and from other people and from Western Europe to compete for the world market.

We have the golden opportunity to at least produce what we can produce. And I'm not in any way cutting down any other energy source. I'm saying all of the above is the solution. But drilling anywhere that it is effective, and drilling now is the important thing.

And those people who think that anywhere you stick an oil well down there's oil just don't understand oil. They think there's natural gas under any ground; they just don't understand natural gas. And by the way, when Blake was talking about these independents that drill an oil well, the average cost of an oil well that is not that deep is about a million bucks. So when you go out and gamble $1 million and come up dry, and you have to drill another well and gamble another million dollars, you know, these guys are the true entrepreneurs of this country, and they can lose their shirt and then get lucky and find an oil well and get their shirt back, but that's the world they live in.

That's the world of exploration for energy. And we're not ashamed of it. We're proud of it. We're proud that we still have people who are willing to take the risks that it takes to prosper in America. Our economy, our world of commerce in this country is built upon the risk takers. It's those who invest their capital and their labor into trying to produce a product and how they, between those two, they have some successes and they live through their failures. And, unfortunately, we've become a world that thinks anybody that slips up on any form or fashion, we need to bail them out. I've got problems with that.

Finally, another newspaper article. The Examiner says: oil imports spike as Obama oil ban decreases domestic production. This was April 29, 2011. This isn't very far past. While oil production in the gulf is down more than 10 percent from April 2010, it estimates net crude oil imports are up by 5 percent. More imported oil also means higher prices at the pumps. So direct result of the actions of the Obama administration.

We have the price of oil going up. So tomorrow morning, when you go out there and you fill up whatever you're driving, whether it's a SmartCar or a hybrid that runs on both electricity and gasoline, or whether you're filling up your Suburban, you know, we've got fleets of Suburbans in this town. This is supposed to be the conservation capital of the world. Look around Washington, D.C. There's a black Suburban on every corner. Sometimes a whole parade of black Suburbans goes by. Not picking on Suburbans. I've owned five of them. Good cars, but they burn a lot of gas. And you fill one up you'd better have a pretty good size pocket because you fill up an empty Suburban at $5 a gallon gasoline and you're going to need a bank loan because that sucker will take $100-something to fill that thing up.

And that's the consequences of trying to curtail one industry to enhance another. And that's not the way Americans are supposed to operate. Let's take our going concern and keep it going, and let's build up these alternative energies, and when they are competitive in the world market, turn them loose, stop subsidizing everybody and let them compete. And may God bless every one of them. That's the way Americans are supposed to operate.

Until we get back to operating that way, we're going to find ourselves in this up-and-down world of shortages. And we're going to find ourselves also in a final world of unemployment because since this recession, there's only one place on Earth in the U.S. where jobs are increasing, and that's right here where we're standing. Federal employment is up 11.7 percent, and the private economy is down 6.1 percent. These are changes of employment since 2007.

So the only people creating jobs are Federal jobs. And I would argue that's not the way it's supposed to work. It's all part of a policy which is misdirected. And I would say, because they don't understand the nature of the industries they're dealing with and they really don't realize how many BTUs of energy it takes to run these lights in this building, but it's a ton of them. And I could tell you, my daddy sold natural gas for 40 years of his life, and he sold it cheap. If he was alive today, he'd crawl out of his grave. If he knew about the price today, he'd crawl out of his grave and start selling natural gas. But that price has been driven up by the demand.

We've got this resource. This resource, we can use it cleanly. We can protect our environment. We can live a good life, and we can live the American Dream. But you can't do it by trying to kill one industry to enhance another. And I would argue that that is what we've been doing under the Obama administration. And I have a fervent hope that they see the light and back off and let us go back into production of oil and gas and the other natural resources of this great Nation so that we can maintain our status as the best country on Earth and the best country that cares about the average guy and tries to keep prices affordable to the average guy.

The price gouging that they are accusing of is nothing more than a misinterpretation of the law of supply and demand. And that misinterpretation is hurting the little man in America. It's time to change the policy, and let's all hope and pray that this administration wakes up to many things, but this is one of them. And if they'll wake up to an energy policy that makes sense, we will see the future bright.

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 8 o'clock and 38 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, May 4, 2011, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Madam Speaker, this past week or so ago, we had the NCOs of all the Services come in to appear before the MilCon Subcommittee. The question was asked, I believe, by my friends on the other side: What is the number one concern of the United States military, of those who are fighting our wars today--our wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and now in Libya? What is their number one concern?

The top NCO of every Service said: Losing their paychecks and not being able to care for their families back home.

Now, the Democrats are holding our poor troops hostage so that they can have this agenda that is going to result in shutting down the government. Let's make this clear. What we are offering today is to continue the government in action for the next week but to make sure that our troops know that their pay is going to be solid because we are going to fund the Defense Department for the next 5 months.

This is intolerable. We offered in H.R. 1 to fund the entire government and to fund our troops. The Democrats rejected it. We offered again today to fund our troops--to make sure that they're going to get paid and to make sure that the contracts are met and that essential training services are there. They refused it. We have a backup bill, H.R. 1297, which will just guarantee that the troops get paid. They've refused it. Now the Commander in Chief of the military in this country has announced that he is going to veto a bill that would see to it that our soldiers get paid.

The number one worry of men and women in combat today: Will my folks back home have a paycheck?

Now, that's not me saying that. That's the highest NCOs in the Army. We need to respect that and we need to pass this.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

These are interesting times we live in, and as we sit here this evening, we have a lot of things that are kind of up in the air about what's going to happen to our country and about what's going to happen to our ability to fund the government for the rest of our time. Unfortunately, we don't have answers to that question. I wish we did, but we don't. Yet there are some things that are happening that we ought to talk about because the American people are concerned about what's going on. In some ways, they're confused.

As we sit here today, we are looking at the possibility on Friday night, at midnight, of there being no more appropriated funds for the operation of the government. Some people call that shutting down the government, but that's the real term. We have no appropriated funds that are available for the operation of the government.

There's already the blame game going on up here. This blame game is confusing to most Americans, so I think it's kind of important that we start off by trying to explain what's going on up here. I'm going to give you a quick synopsis of what I think has gone on recently.

Let's start off with the fact that the Republicans fully funded the troops and the rest of the Federal Government through FY 2011, which would be the 1st of October of this year, with H.R. 1 in March. The Democrats refused that submission. The Republicans are ready again this week with a submission, that we will do today, to fully fund our troops through FY 2011, and we're ready to come back next week to debate the rest of the budget. It seems we're hearing a message that the Democrats will refuse. The House and Senate Republicans have a bill, H.R. 1297, that simply guarantees that our troops get their pay without any budget agreement. So far, the Democrats have refused. That's a bill that was put together by Congressman Louie Gohmert and Congressman Jack Kingston.

So I guess we can say that--or I would at least offer this as a submission--it seems that the Democrats want to hold our fighting men and women's pay hostage so that they can continue their runaway Federal spending, because, really, the debate here in this House today and in the Senate, which is down the way from us, is:

Are we going to continue to spend like drunken sailors, as usual, or are we going to take a hard look at what this government is doing, and are we going to turn this ship of state to a ship of state that is moving in the direction of saving the American people from this runaway spending?

The President has submitted to us a budget proposal which carries in it almost $1.5 trillion of deficit spending. What this House is trying to do is to change the mood and the attitude of where this Congress sits on the issue of spending, and it's time for us to take a long, hard look. I would argue, if people could have taken the time and watched the debate when we sent our first submission over to the Senate, which was H.R. 1, they would have seen an extensive debate that went on for hours and hours and hours on the floor of this House, with both sides participating, as to what we would and would not submit in the way of cutting certain amounts of spending, and there were multiple, multiple votes.

This was after this same idea had been vetted in other forms, like our committee system. And yet when it was sent to the Senate it was dead on arrival, and the only thing they could offer as an alternative to the submission we gave them was $6 billion worth of cuts, which they even voted down.

They didn't even pass that. They weren't even willing to take their meager little $6 billion versus our $60-plus billion that we proposed to them.

And everybody says, Where is the give-and-take? Why don't you work together, Congress? What's wrong with you people? Well, when one side does a whole bunch of work, sends it over to the other side, they say they don't like it, they reject it, and we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait for them to submit something back so we can discuss it, well, we've been waiting a long time now and we still haven't gotten it back. And we've gone through two short-term CRs to give them the opportunity to go vote on some things in the Senate. I know they're slow. I mean, we all know they're slow, but we don't even see the Democrat majority in the Senate even trying to bring things to the floor for a vote on giving us an idea where they would stand on cutting spending.

Now, they love to do press releases out of smoke-filled rooms and come back from White House meetings with the President and tell us, Oh, we've got this deal--which our side certainly didn't agree to. And actually doing this so-called ``democracy'' inside of the press instead of doing it by sitting down across the table or passing a bill that we can look at and examine and see if we can't work out that bill and maybe get the comfort to do something under normal course of business here has not been available. Senator Reid just says, Dead on arrival. Dead on arrival. Keep trying. Dead on arrival.

And what that requires is for the House Members to--first off, what they're really looking for us to do is to give up our principles because of threats of this government closing down. I want to make it very clear, I have heard this ever since this debate started. The leadership of the Republicans in the House of Representatives has stated consistently, every time John Boehner steps up to the microphone, we do not want to shut down the government. And I will tell you, if people are listening with a tight ear, they will find out that any conversation about shutting down the government has always originated from the other side of the aisle where the Democrats tell us, Watch out, they're going to shut down the government. Watch out, they're going to shut down the government. And we're saying, No, we're not. We're trying to get you to respond to us and let us know what you think is the right thing for us to do to try to do something about this overwhelming debt, this overwhelming deficit, this gigantic leap in the debt that we're going to face in the future.

Just look at this chart. And you've seen it before. It's been here. I've had it here twice. Here's 2010. So 2011 is about right there. Look at 2051. Look, 300 percent plus. And right now we are bouncing around 100 percent here. That was during the Second World War, and this is where we've been ever since the Second World War. But all of a sudden, with the projections that President Obama has given us as to what he perceives is the right path for America, bam, that red line goes up and that red block comes there, and that's what our children and grandchildren are going to have to deal with. And we honestly believe that that takes this country and changes the very nature of what makes America great because it wipes out any opportunity that possibly our children and our grandchildren can look forward to when they are overwhelmed with debt.

Have you ever heard the debate that goes on among college parents and among college students when they graduate from college these days and they're faced with $100,000 or $200,000 worth of debt to pay for these expensive college educations we've got out there; and they've borrowed all the money and how they are overwhelmed with debt to the point where they look at the salaries that are being offered them and they say, Holy cow. If this is what my revenues are going to be, my income is going to be, I will never pay off this student loan. I know that I heard it from hundreds of kids because I used to teach Sunday school at that age. And they came back from college saying, I can't believe I've got this much debt to pay off before I even start making a living. Well, that's meager compared to what this Congress, if we don't change the way we do business, is going to do to our children and our grandchildren. College debt is going to look like a walk in the park compared to that kind of accelerated debt that's going to be placed on every human being that calls themselves an American.

This is frightening. It's more frightening when you think what this Congress really needs to be about--and is about over here on our side, and I would hope on the other side, too--is finding jobs for the American people.

Now, what do the job creators think when they see this? People who run businesses, small businesses or large, they look at the projected future of the economy and they make decisions as to why they hire people for very simple reasons. You hire someone to advance your business. You don't hire them because you're a nice guy. You don't hire them because somebody gives you an incentive to hire them. You hire them because ultimately they are going to improve your productivity or your bottom line. That's why labor is infused into anything that people do. Most people who start out with their small business, it's all them and maybe their family. And then when they hire that first employee, they don't hire them just because they like that kid across the street. They hire them because that first employee is going to make their business do better.

Now, if they're looking at the accumulated debt being put upon them by this government and they look at what projected debt they have to deal with, what they have to handle, where they think their revenues are going to be, what solutions there are going to be for this debt in the way of tax increases, they have to say, Whoa. Until somebody gets a handle on this stuff, we're looking at a world that I'm not sure I want to hire anybody else in.

This is not rocket science, this is very simple. You hire to prosper. If you're afraid prosperity is not going to be a result of the hiring, you don't hire.

I would argue--and I think it's an argument that's made by many, many economists and many, many editorial writers--that the fear of the unknown and the known that you think you see by the way the government is proceeding keeps a lot of people from hiring other folks. I think that's common sense. I think anybody that knows anything about business can realize that. So this looms over everybody.

I saw a cartoon up here in Washington. Many of you may have seen it. It was a gigantic elephant's behind sitting on a scale, and it had written across the back of it, ``National Debt.'' And then on the very top of the backside of that elephant was a Band-Aid about the size that would wrap around my little finger stuck on there, and it had an arrow right there that said, ``Spending Cuts.''

The reality is what the Republicans have proposed in terms of spending cuts as they relate to the gigantic mess that we're in is just that teeny, weensy little Band-Aid. And yet, this very meager proposal of changing the way we spend money has been rejected out of hand by the Harry Reid Democrats over in the Senate and by our colleagues in the House. And it is on every submission that we've made, on every attempt we've made to negotiate, on every time we have said, so and so, how about you all getting together and come up with an alternative? And it's just, no, you're dead on arrival. We'll talk at the White House behind closed doors or we'll talk in smoke-filled rooms or whatever-- smoke-filled rooms probably dates me a little bit, but there are still some smokers around here.

Okay. Now, where are we tonight? I think where we are tonight, I am optimistic about where we are tonight. And the world may be sitting out there pessimistic, but I'm optimistic because, first and foremost, I honestly believe that we're going to do everything at least in our power to try to get us to come up with a solution for this small spending cut bill of $60-plus billion that we put forward, which, compared to that elephant's behind, is nothing. And we're going to get it done before we run out of time and we run out of appropriations and the government starts to wind down.

But I'm more optimistic than that, because I am very optimistic that the fact that Paul Ryan and the Budget

Committee of this House have put forward a proposal that is like you ought to have the Hallelujah Chorus in the background when they introduced it, singing ``Hallelujah.'' Because it was finally a budget that wasn't the same old budget--how can we jack every spending level up, and how can we figure out a way to raise some taxes to make that work? No. It's a budget that says this budget is going to be about prosperity and preserving the America we love for our generations to come.

If that's not something as we come up on this deadline--which should make us nervous, and it makes me nervous. But the big picture is our Budget Committee has put a revolutionary budget out for discussion. And that budget is worth joy on behalf of the American people, because what it does is it says to the people around us that there are some good ideas we ought to try.

I'm joined with many of my colleagues here today, and I want to give them all an opportunity to talk. So let me finish up at least this short part of talking here and let some other folks talk.

Today where we are is a very simple place. Are we going to fund our Department of Defense and make sure our troops get paid or are we going to be so--with miniscule cuts and then continue this debate so we could probably try to get a resolution next week, or are we going to reject out of hand--as now Harry Reid is making public statements to say and the President, in Atlanta, supposedly said he would veto this proposal--reject out of hand to say we want our troops to suffer and we don't care whether they're getting shot at. We don't care. We're ready to let them get shot at and do without pay, men and women who have been risking their lives for over 10 years so that we can stand in this Chamber and talk. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves to even consider not doing something.

All of us ought to be wanting to do something to make sure that those folks get their paychecks so their spouses and children back home don't suffer while they suffer the possibility of being killed or maimed on our behalf. And that's what this vote, this day and tomorrow, is all about.

The deadline is Friday night at midnight. We're asking our Senators to reconsider rejecting out of hand what we are sending over and consider it in light of that momma back home with a child on her hip, telling the creditors, We have no money to pay you. And I'm sorry my husband can't talk to you. He's over in Afghanistan, in the mountains, trying to stay alive. Or he's flying missions into Libya, trying to stay alive. So I think we really need to know that's where we are in time, and the other is stuff we're going to be talking about.

Whoever would like to step up, grab the microphone, and let's talk.

My friend from Virginia, step up. Tell us what you've got to say.

And I thank you very much for those comments. I want to point out that I have here the Ensuring Pay for Our Military Act of 2011. Mr. Gohmert is the cosponsor of this, along with Jack Kingston. I was worried about Louie. He was here a minute ago. He left. I am going to recognize Kristi Noem to discuss with me, and I will yield whatever time she needs, and then we will get Mr. Gohmert for a minute and hear what he has to say.

Thank you, Congresswoman.

I want to say that I agree with everything you have to say. As you were speaking, I was thinking our soldiers are not asking for somebody to excuse their mortgage, not asking for somebody to come bail them out. They are just asking to be paid for the dangerous blood, sweat and tears work that they are doing right as we speak today.

Right now, somebody is being fired on somewhere in the world in an American uniform. It's a frightening thing to think about, but it's true, and they just want to have the paycheck they earned. And their families back home want to be able to stay current on their bills, and they are not asking for these grandiose bailouts that this body has become famous for. They are just saying, give me my paycheck.

Now, this is not hard stuff. I want to recognize my good friend from Texas, Congressman Gohmert. He was the author of this bill. I think we got it done well.

Soldiers, might even be some of mine, Fort Hood.

You started the ball rolling. We have been talking about this for a long time. If we are getting close to this deadline, we have got to get the soldiers paid.

I want to recognize Louie Gohmert, who introduced this, along with Jack Kingston. I joined with them on this.

Now our leadership is offering an alternative submission, which would fund the entire DOD, which is an even better idea because of all the contract authority and all the things that go on that get hurt by not having an appropriations finished up with. And we are hopeful, although we are hearing signals, that it's going to be dead on arrival, and they are not going to tell us what they want us to do.

I will submit this to you, and then I will let you comment, Louie, and that is, I would submit, if anybody is shutting down the government, it's the Democrats in the Senate, not the Republicans in the House.

I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Gohmert).

Reclaiming my time. Let me point out, as Mr. Gohmert said, those of us who sat in a courtroom for years, in my case almost 21 years, you want to look at the evidence to see what the evidence shows. And just very quickly, the evidence shows first: How do we get to a shutdown for failing to fund the government? Well, you start with last year when the Democrats were in charge of the House, the Senate, and the Presidency. They passed no budget and not one single appropriations bill, although I'm on the Appropriations Committee. They certainly could have. They just chose not to. They chose not to.

They chose the date that they would have a CR go into the next term of Congress when it had already lost and knew how many of these wonderful people were going to be here replacing them the next time they showed up in the House, so they put this thing all the way to March, which they knew was going to put us under a tremendous amount of pressure to get something to do to fund the government. And we made diligent attempts to fund the government. And it didn't even last long enough for Harry Reid to say ``dead on arrival'' when it got to the Senate.

So let's see. They didn't do their job. They didn't do their budget. They set up the CR deadline. We met the CR deadline with a way to fund the government for the rest of the year for all departments. They rejected it out of hand without even coming back with any alternative of any substance. They offered a $6 billion cut and spending as usual under the Obama budget. And then now we've given two extensions to try to talk, and each time dead silence. No comment. If there's a comment, it's to the press. But to us, they're treating us like a stepchild. And then they're wanting to shut down the government when we say, at least let's protect our soldiers. Let's take care of our troops.

Before we've even got it over there tomorrow, Harry Reid and the President have both made a statement tonight. ``Dead on arrival,'' Harry Reid says. The President says, ``I will veto it.'' He would veto funds--that's what he supposedly said in Georgia. Now I may be out of school, I didn't hear it, but I was told he did, that he said, I won't accept what Mr. Boehner is going to send to us. I will reject it.

That's the bill that funds our troops. I think we've got other great people.

Yes.

It tells me that they are marching in route step to the commands of the majority leader, Harry Reid. And unfortunately, we didn't get elected to march route step in that fashion. We got elected, Senators included, to make decisions that are good for the American people.

Scott, my friend from Virginia, I will recognize you for the amount of time you need. We have 9 minutes.

Reclaiming my time, I now yield to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Hayworth).

I don't know how much time is left, but I yield to my good friend, the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Black).

I apologize for the short time. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Madam Speaker, Congressman Silvestre Reyes and I would like to take this opportunity to honor General George W. Casey, Jr., the 36th Chief of Staff of the United States Army, for his extraordinary dedication to duty and service to our Nation.

As cochairs of the House Army Caucus, Congressman Reyes and I have had the privilege of working with General Casey as he led our Army through a difficult period of transformation, simultaneously rebalancing and modernizing the Army while our Nation was engaged in two wars. After 40 years of distinguished service, General Casey will retire from active military duty in June of 2011.

General Casey is the epitome of the consummate professional, exemplifying the special qualities exhibited by all transformational military leaders: a strong sense of duty, honor, courage, and love of country.

General Casey continued the tradition of military service to his country that was started by his father, Major General George W. Casey, Sr., commander of the First Cavalry Division, who died in a helicopter crash on July 7, 1970, in Vietnam. That same year, General Casey was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Infantry from Georgetown University's Army Reserve Officers Training Corps.

He went on to excel in a variety of command and staff assignments, including notable participation in Operation Joint Endeavor in Bosnia and Operation Iraqi Freedom in Iraq. He commanded the First Armored Division in 1999 to 2001, served as the director of Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5) of the Joint Staff in 2001, and director of the Joint Staff in 2003.

Following these Joint Staff assignments, General Casey served as the 30th Vice Chief of Staff for the Army until June 2004. From 2004 until 2007, General Casey commanded the Multinational Force Iraq, a coalition of 32 countries, where he oversaw the transition of three separate Iraqi Governments. He set the conditions for transition to Iraqi-led security, which, in turn, enabled the successful drawdown of U.S. forces from Iraq. He was a powerful influence for democratic change in Iraq, steadily improving the security and political environment in the country so that, in 2005, Iraq was able to conduct open and transparent national elections.

On April 10, 2007, General Casey became the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Since assuming this position, General Casey's leadership and commitment have contributed immeasurably to ensuring America's Army remains the preeminent military force in the world. As the Army's Chief of Staff, General Casey has provided the strategic leadership and vision to complete the most comprehensive transformation of the Army since World War II, building versatile and modular units and improving the capabilities of soldiers to conduct full-spectrum operations.

General Casey has proven himself a tremendous wartime leader, demonstrating unselfish devotion to our Nation and to the soldiers he leads. Responsible for the organization, training, readiness, mobilization, and deployment of Army forces, he has worked tirelessly to successfully restore balance to a force stretched and

stressed by the demands of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Above all, General Casey has never wavered from his personal commitment to support the soldiers and families who are the heart and soul of the United States Army. He implemented the Army Family Covenant and the Army Community Covenant to expand and improve services and raise awareness about the unique challenges military families face.

Madam Speaker, during times of uncertainty and crisis, our Nation has been fortunate to have exceptional men and women who step forward and calmly lead. Such a man is General George W. Casey, Jr. He has been exemplary in his selfless service for our country through war, peace, and personal trial.

It is with profound admiration and deep respect that we pay tribute to General George W. Casey, Jr., for all he has done for the United States Army and this country. We thank General Casey, his wife, Sheila, and his two sons, Sean and Ryan, for their dedication and sacrifice on behalf of our soldiers, our Army, and our Nation.

As a personal aside, several years ago, I was on a plane that was grounded in Germany coming back from a codel in the Middle East, and here comes the Commander in Chief of the Army jogging up to the airfield just to say hello to the congressional delegation. He is a great man.

Mr. Speaker, once again we are going to talk about the fact that the regulators are kind of like the fox watching the henhouse. They just overreach everywhere. And we just heard an example of that actually. Mr. Austin Scott was just up here talking about what is going on with this pesticide. We will talk a little bit about that today.

I have been trying for the last 6 or 8, I guess, months now to talk about some of the regulations that are being imposed upon people. You see these regulations and you see how onerous they are on both large and small businesses, and then we sit around and wonder why we're teetering around 9 percent unemployment in this country. It's because not only do folks have to wonder about are we going to raise taxes. Folks have to wonder about are we going to spend ourselves into the poor house. Folks have to wonder about a $1.65 trillion deficit this year. They worry about all those things. They worry about how their children and grandchildren are going to pay off this massive accumulation of debt in this country that is coming down as a result of the policies of the last Congress, the Democrat-led Congress, and the Obama administration, and then you take that and you take on top of that the executive branch's regulations that they are putting on people, many of which are so onerous and make so little sense that, quite honestly, you wonder what's going on.

We've got a lot of things that have been going on, and we've got some tools that we're using to get rid of those things. And a tool that I have been talking about is using the Congressional Review Act to challenge some of these things, and we will talk a little bit about that. But first let's just go back and talk a little bit about what others are doing right now.

First off, tomorrow morning I am going to drop a bill, and this is kind of a nuclear weapon, if you will, of fighting regulations. Because of the continuous onslaught of regulations that seem to be designed to cause unemployment rather than to help with unemployment, I think it's time we just put a big old hold on the regulatory agencies and tell them that unless this is of major national importance, we don't think there ought to be any regulations for the balance of this Congress. So I am proposing a bill for the outright ban of all new Federal regulations through the remainder of the Obama administration until January 31, 2013.

This would remove, in this period of time when we're trying to bring our job

numbers up and bring our unemployment numbers down, this would give the country an opportunity to take, at least in one area, a deep breath and relax, that the regulators are not going to change the playing field on them halfway through a year or through a month.

There are so many regulations that we've talked about in the past few months and for the balance of this year that are surprises to everybody, and they're throwing big, big monkey wrenches in the machinery that drives our economy.

Now, if you read the newspapers or you hear people commenting on why aren't people creating jobs, why is capital investment on the sidelines, why are people holding on to their money instead of investing their money in their businesses or investing their money in some other people's businesses so we can grow this economy, they're sitting on the sideline and they're not participating.

And you will hear both sides of the aisle in this House talk about the trillions of dollars that are being held back from investment. You'll hear arguments made by the other side, by the Democrats in this House, that it's the greed of the big corporations that's doing this.

But then when you study the problem, it's not just the big giant corporations that are kind of sitting back and waiting. It's the small businessman. It's the guy that's got one shop, and he's thinking about adding on to that shop, and he may be thinking about adding one more machinist or one more salesman. But you know what? There are too many questions about what's over the horizon for them to take the chance of investing their money when they don't know what's going to happen. And as I explained as I started out, part of it is they wonder about the possibility of new taxes.

Secondly, because there's been a lot of talk from this administration about taxes, they're backing off of it now, but many of the things they do seem to change depending on which way the wind's blowing, and so they're worried about the possibility of new taxes.

They're worried about the fact that they can look at numbers, they read balance sheets, even the small businessmen can read balance sheets and profit and loss statements. And they look at this Federal Government and they say, my Lord. Just this year alone, based on President Obama's proposed budget for 2011, they're projecting about a $1.6 trillion deficit this year.

And most businesspeople know what deficit means. And most of all of us do, but sometimes we think it's some big word coming out of Washington, not realizing what it really is. It means you're spending money you don't have. In fact, arguably, every time you buy something with your credit card, you're deficit spending. You don't have the cash in your pocket to buy the new television set so you put it on your credit card. You borrow the money. You spend money that you don't have.

Now, if we were like the great State of Texas where we have a balanced budget requirement in the constitution in Texas, then the Texas legislature, they can't deficit spend. They can't spend money they don't have. They have a no-deficit spending provision in that constitution that says you get to spend what the projected revenues are, and that's it. And it's sometimes--and you ask the good members of our legislature, sometimes it's real tough to make things work. But you know what? They always somehow figure out a way to get it done. And this year is no exception.

It's tough in Texas. And they're doing the things we're trying to do here in this House. They are reducing their spending, as are States across the country. All you have to do is turn on the television. You see the issues in Wisconsin and Michigan and other places, and Minnesota--well, not Minnesota, Indiana, all these people are addressing it, New York, Virginia, they're addressing the fact that they've just got to cut back on their spending.

Well, we're addressing that fact too in this House right now. But the businessman looks at that and says, well, what's their track record? Well, our track record's not real good. In fact, our track record is such that they say odds are they're not going to do these cuts that are necessary to stop it.

Here's something kind of interesting. Right now, in H.R. 1, the Republican majority has set forth a series of cuts that total up to about $63 billion. They've agreed now to about $10 billion. So let's call it $53 billion just kind of on the table out there waiting for some kind of action from the Senate. This is attached to a continuing resolution.

Now, that business owner back home, he looks at that and he says, let's see, $63 billion--that's a tiny little bandaid on a gigantic rear end of an elephant, but that's the tax cuts that are being proposed, and they don't seem to be able to get those things. Not tax cuts. That's the spending cuts that are being proposed. They don't even seem to be able to do that. What in the world are they going to do about this $1.6 trillion?

So he says, I don't think I want to play in that ballpark. That's too dangerous for me. I have a little savings in my back pocket to invest in my business. But now's not a good time. There's way too much debt floating around out there. There's way too much uncertainty about the economy floating around out there. I think I'll wait. So my plan to create one or two new jobs to grow my profits for my business is going to have to wait. Even though I may have the money to invest, it's going to wait because I don't feel the environment's good for it. It's another one of those unknowns that's keeping capital and keeping the growing of the labor force from happening.

Finally, these regulations. When, as our friend from Georgia was just talking about--just take, for instance, the issue that has to do with this, these new regulations concerning pesticides that have come out. It came out and then it was--I think, some court has gotten involved in it.

But what they've done, basically, is told the people who use pesticides, and I think everybody knows, pesticides are to kill bugs that eat crops. That's kind of the general use for pesticides. So that means that your farmers, your ranchers, and some of your business people are going to be affected by this. And they look at it and say, wow. I used to have to have a permit. I got one. Now all of a sudden I've got to have a new permit. It's going to cost me some more money. They changed the rules in the middle of the game, and now I'm sitting here wondering what in the world am I going to do if they change the rules again.

So what am I going to do with my money? I'm going to keep it in my pocket. I'm not going to invest in my business. I'm not going to expand my farm. I'm not going to buy that new combine. I'm not going to trade for some more cattle. I'm basically going to sit where I am and hold pat. And I'm also not going to hire anybody to help me with those issues.

These are things that are typical of what causes the people who invest in the real world of private business, who employ two-thirds or more of the American public, to sit on the sidelines. So big business or small, if you don't understand the playing field, and there are people out there that can change your life at a whim, you get concerned about it. We've seen so many examples of that.

I'll just throw out the flex permitting Clean Air Act issues that are going on in Texas, which we've talked about before. After 15 years of using a flex permit in Texas, never a word said by the EPA, all of a sudden, out of the clear blue they decide, oh, you know what? I don't think we like that flex permit, so we're just going to do away with it, and we're going to change the rules.

Without going into what a flex permit is, it's very simple. If flex permit worked for your business 1 day and the next day you had to have a completely different permit with a whole new set of rules and a whole new set of obligations, you would be very concerned about the environment within which your business is being operated. And, by the way you'd be really upset when you realized that your clean air issues in your State where you're using a flexible permit, the clean air reductions have met the demands of the EPA and, in fact, probably exceed many, many States who don't go to a flexible permitting system.

For some reason, your State who is doing good has to change permits to do

like some of the States that aren't doing as good as your State. And you have to say to yourself, What is the motive for all this? Well, would you put your money into a project when something like that could happen to you?

We ask ourselves, Why have we been having unemployment in this country somewhere between 10 percent and 8.9 percent over the last 25 months? Well, part of it is the people who create the jobs, the real jobs, the jobs that make our economy grow, are the business people of this country; and for 25 months they have not been hiring because we have created a world of mistrust in what might happen to you that you couldn't even imagine as a result of actions of this Federal Government.

To me, the most important thing we have to do in this Congress right now is create jobs. It will change the very makeup of our Nation if we get our Nation back to work. And it is time for the government to get out of the way of small business, get out of the way of the entrepreneurs in this country, and give them the opportunity to create jobs. With all the playing defense that we are trying do here in the House with the Congressional Review Act and other proposals that are out there, it seems to me we ought to just say, at least for a 2-year period, just, Time out. Time out. No more regulations. Just stop right where you are.

There are enough regulations in effect right now by the Federal regulatory agencies to fill this entire Chamber to the ceiling with books, so I don't think it would hurt us too much.

If it turns out it is a national emergency and you have such an issue that it is just so overwhelmingly necessary to come up with a regulation, then maybe we will put it out and submit it to Congress and let Congress make a determination about whether or not it is of that dire importance. But right now, just quit messing with us. Just get out of the way and let us have a chance to go do what we do best.

I forget who it was. I want to say it was Calvin Coolidge, but it was one of our past Presidents who said that the business of America is business. And it still is.

Two or three Saturdays ago, I was at South by Southwest, which is a very exciting activity that takes place in Austin, Texas, that not only promotes the live music industry, which is huge in Austin--it is the live music capital of the world--but, in addition, it promotes entrepreneurship among people with new great ideas. And great people, I talked to them and they were so exciting, such great young people, many of them in the high-tech industry, but in all of the industries. And those young people sat there and told me that, The one thing you can do that would hurt us the most is tax stock options and put up regulations that would prevent me doing what I need to do in my project. So, if the government will stay out of my way and if you won't impose taxes on the very source of investment money that I am seeking as a new entrepreneur, if you don't do those two things and you stay out of the way, I have got an idea that can change this country. And many of them have just those ideas.

Some of the things we have now like Facebook, those things like that they made a movie about and all that stuff, all that was the idea of a young entrepreneur, and he got somebody to invest in it and, boom, it swept the world. So that's why I have got a moratorium on regulations.

But in addition, we have got a couple of folks that are taking off after regulations that are clearly hurting the opportunity to create jobs. The Regulatory Flexibility Act, RFA, is being proposed and requires Federal agencies to assess the economic impact of their regulations on small business. We have something like this now, but it is going to be expanded and made more clear. And, if the impact is significant, consider alternatives that are less burdensome. The agencies must balance the burdens imposed by the regulations against the benefits, and propose alternatives to the regulations which create economic disparities among different size entities.

The Small Business Committee has held hearings on the RFA and they are holding some tomorrow, on Wednesday, to discuss this agency compliance with the act. Bad regs are killing good jobs, and that is what I have been talking about, and here is the Small Business Committee looking at small business with really a focus on small business.

Now, why do you hear people talk about small business in Congress when you have got all these giant international corporations that our friends on the other side of the aisle love to talk about? Well, for one thing, seven out of 10 Americans get a job in small business. Small business creates seven out of 10 private sector jobs in the United States. Some of those private sector jobs are real well-paying jobs.

In fact, some of the people that I was talking to at this little entrepreneur group that I was with, they said, Well, the first ten people we will employ, we expect their salary range to be somewhere between $100,000 and $150,000 a year. Now, that's darned good jobs. But they are looking to hire highly skilled technical people to advance a concept they have in the high-tech industry.

What do we get from those concepts? Well, you have probably got a cell phone in your pocket. You may have the new Apple iPad sitting on your desk, or you may actually be communicating with a brand-new one which has a camera in it so you can talk to your spouse around the world or your friend around the world and both of you can see each other. These are all ideas that came from entrepreneurial thinking that began with one person with an idea.

The one thing Americans still have to sell is ideas, and we are the only innovative idea creators on Earth. Everybody else is good at copying, but we are the guys with the original thoughts. We don't want to kill that. We don't want regulations to kill it. And we don't want bad regs to keep this unemployment number above 8 percent, almost 9 percent.

Another act is H.R. 872. This is a bill about Congress battling a bad ruling by the Federal courts. The bill eliminates a costly and duplicative permitting requirement for the application of pesticides. That is what our friend from Georgia was talking about just a few minutes ago, Mr. Scott. This will now require a different type of permitting system and it will, quite honestly, place the burden on farmers, ranchers, and anybody who uses pesticides, I assume exterminators and so forth, and will put a huge burden on them. And the only thing you can do is clearly put a halt to this EPA new regulatory activity. Even though the court recently said, Well, we won't require this until October, it doesn't matter whether it is required today or whether it is required in October; whenever it is required, it is still a burden. So my friends on the Ag Committee are very, very serious about challenging the creation of this new regulation.

We have been using the Congressional Review Act, and we have got several things that we have dealt with on the Congressional Review Act. This is a law today. This law was created in the Clinton administration and has been used once, and that is the only time it has ever been used, which surprises me. But we are trying to use it on multiple bills that are out there that are creating a regulatory burden on individuals or industries of this country.

Last year, the Federal Government issued a total of 3,316 new rules and regulations, an average of 13 rules a day. Seventy-eight of those new rules last year were major rules. A major rule is a rule that may result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, a major increase in costs or prices for consumers or significant adverse effects on the economy.

If it is a new rule, it is required under the Congressional Review Act that it be submitted to the committees of jurisdiction that cover that rule in the House and Senate and that they have the opportunity within 60 legislative days, that is days that the Congress is in session, not counting the days it is not in session. And if there is a vote, and let's say the House passes it and sends it to the Senate, then it only requires 30 Senators to cosponsor the bill to bring that vote to a full vote in the Senate.

Then we will have the opportunity to send some bad regulations that passed both the House and the Senate to the President, and he told us less than a month ago that one of his goals this year was to get rid of these onerous

regulations that are costing us jobs in America. And I think that if both this House and the Senate, the Senate across the way, if both those entities feel it is a bad rule, I think the President will look at it, and I am very hopeful that he will dispose of that rule. When I say this, we are not talking just about the EPA. There are a lot of rules out there, but EPA just seems to have more than their share right now.

I talked about the Flexible Permitting Act. We have filed a CRA challenge, a Congressional Review Act challenge, to the flexible permitting program. Chairman Upton of the Energy and Commerce Committee has been or is holding hearings on the Clean Air Act and on this issue. That will be one issue that we are going to be working on trying to get done.

The FCC has a regulation for net neutrality. This rule grants the Federal Government new power to regulate the Internet, restricting access and stalling innovation. One of the things that those young people that I met with the other night, it was about 100 of them now, it is not a small group, they all said, most of them, that the Internet was a tool they were using to come up with good ideas or to promote their good ideas or to use the Internet for their good ideas; and they were very much opposed, as am I, to any regulation of the Internet.

The freedom of the Internet is a freedom of expression, a freedom of expression which creates a freedom of ideas, and the exchange of ideas creates innovation, which is the fuel to drive our economy. So Mr. Greg Walden is addressing this issue under the CRA of net neutrality.

HHS has a rule on medical loss ratio. This regulation will require all health care plans to pay a minimum of 80 percent of premiums toward health services, eliminating coverage for 47 percent of Americans in small group and individual health plans. This is an area which we have filed, my office and John Carter have filed this. However, I am going to have a lot of assistance from the medical professionals in this House in going forward on this medical loss ratio. It is a serious regulation which will seriously harm the advancement of health care in America.

Then we have a NESHAP rule for portland cement manufacturing industries. This has to do with cement kilns that make portland cement. ``Portland'' is not named after a town. It is a process whereby you make the cement that binds concrete to create concrete for this country. There are 18 cement kilns that are likely to close as a result of this. This kills good-paying jobs. The average paying job in one of these kilns starts at around $60,000 to $70,000 a year and goes up. These are good jobs.

Now, where are these jobs going to go? You have to have cement. A great number of the kilns that make portland cement have moved offshore already, and they are over in China and they are over in India and places like that where they have no regulation on particulates that go into the air. Meanwhile, we have actually reduced a lot of the things that go into the air under the present regulations. But these new regulations will move those American jobs out of the country to another country; and rather than help the air, because the same air is in India and China as is over here, it is all part of this great big place we call the world, we will still be polluting the air, but 10 times worse than we do under our current regulations in the United States, and we lose the jobs.

So we are going to seek a vote on portland cement manufacturing regulations. And the argument that this increases mercury pollution is absolutely false because we have evidence to show that mercury pollution, if it is in the United States, it is coming from offshore.

So all these things are things that are proposed right now. We have got charts over here to look at each one of them.

Here is the regulatory moratorium, an outright ban on Federal regulations. It removes the top obstacle to economic recovery. Business won't hire with ObamaCare and EPA regs hanging over their head.

The Regulatory Flexibility Act. The shaded areas indicate U.S. recessions. The 09 research--that is a word I can't read--organization. Look at this. This is what is happening from regulations. It is going up on the unemployment scale.

The RFA requires the Federal agencies to assess the economic impact on small businesses--we talked about that--to come up with alternatives, because unemployment rates are around or above 9 percent for the last 22 months, and it is time that we make these regulations be assessed, and seven out of 10 new jobs are created by these small businesses.

When you hear us talk about the Pesticide Act, very clearly there are the folks that are dealing with it right there, the farmers of America. It is duplicative. That means they already have a permit that allows them to put out these pesticides, and because of this ruling they are having to get another permit at another cost and meet other guidelines for these pesticides.

The Sixth Circuit we think with this Cotton Council versus the EPA made a bad ruling, and these higher costs to producers and consumers and the government are all built into this one bad regulation. This act that we talked about, 872, is to block this bad ruling. This is the kind of fight we have to have to prevent the regulators from getting so involved that they actually shut down our businesses.

Now, no one here, including me, I am certainly not, and I don't think anybody in this House, is proposing that we are going to do things that are harmful. It is not like they weren't already regulating that pesticide. They just came up with a new permit, new money to spend, new hoops to jump through in order to apply pesticides.

Here is what I have been talking about, the Congressional Review Act. It allows Congress to review every new Federal regulation issued by the government agencies and by passage of a joint resolution overrule that regulation. On these things I have been talking about, the House and the Senate both can go forward under this act, and we can put the brakes on some bad regulations.

Here are the ones I mentioned. The Texas flexible permitting program, the net neutrality rule, the medical loss ratio and the portland cement: those all can be addressed by this act, and many more.

But maybe we could save ourselves a whole lot of time and effort by just passing the newest proposal that I have put forward, and that is a law that says, time-out until 2013 on any regulations from the government, and let's just hold off and let's give this economy a chance to grow. And when it grows, we will prosper, we will get out of this mess we're in, and we will get back to being the America we all treasure and love.

It's not hard to imagine that if there's something really bad, of course, this House will protect it. But many of these things are people in closed rooms, some of which don't even understand the industry they're regulating, coming up with rules because they have a concept of government that is all government--all roads lead to Rome--all government leads to Washington, and that all government decisions and all life decisions should be made here, in Washington. There are people in this city, literally tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people in this city, that believe that all life issues should be resolved by the Federal Government.

The perfect example that just really upsets me is the fact that, kind of randomly, when the opposite party, the Democrats, took over in the House, they decided to get rid of all the light bulbs in all the office buildings, and they put in these curly Q light bulbs all over everywhere. These lights, you turn some of them on, it takes you a good 20 count before the light even has enough light to see. That's very uncomfortable, especially in the bathroom. But we've got them. And if you take yours out and put the old incandescent light bulb in there, the next day you'll come back and the maintenance man will have taken it out and put one of those curly Q light bulbs back in there, because the government knows better what light bulbs you ought to have than you do. In fact, they passed a law that says you're not going to be able to have anything but those light bulbs.

They fail to realize that if you accidentally drop one of those light bulbs

onto the floor and it bursts, it's got mercury vapor in it--and some other nasty stuff I don't even know what it is--and all of a sudden you've got to call the hazardous material team to come in in hoods and suits and do a hazmat removal of that broken light bulb.

Now I'm sorry. I like to say that one of the things that we have a real shortage of in America, especially the America that's inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C., is common sense. But to put a hazardous material light bulb in to correct something that you have against a normal light bulb because you think it burns too much power is really not very cost efficient.

I am very pleased to see my friend, Mr. Steve King from Iowa, drift in here. If the gentleman has anything he wants to talk about here tonight, I would be glad to yield him some time.

I will reclaim my time. I am just about through. I just wanted to point out, I don't have anything against fluorescent light bulbs. I've got a few fluorescent light bulbs in my workshop out in the garage, mainly because they just gave me more light for less money, not because of the electricity. But I made that choice. I think that's fine. If people want to choose to have all fluorescent light bulbs in their house, I think that's great. That's the America we love. But I don't think Nancy Pelosi or anybody else in this House of Representatives ought to be telling us what kind of light bulbs we have to have. It doesn't make sense. It's not fair to you. You are a person of independent will. You are granted liberty and freedom by your Constitution, the Constitution of the United States, and those are just recording God-given rights and privileges. I don't see why we think we are the center of the universe for knowledge in this House to come up and tell you what kind of light bulbs you can have. Or what kind of energy that you can consume. Unless it comes out to be against the national interest. And I would argue right now with all the alternative energy, we haven't got anything to replace what we're using right now yet. But keep working on it and then we'll let us make the choice, let the American citizens make the choice as to what they want to do. I think that's good freedom. That's good liberty. That's what we are all about in this country, and that's why we prosper, because we give the individual the right to make his own choices. If he chooses to do something that harms others, we can put a stop to that. That's why we have laws. But if he doesn't, if he just wants to live his life the way he wants to live it, we don't have any business telling the individual how to live his life. And I would argue this stupid light bulb rule is one of those things. I will argue that until it is imposed completely as a mandate sometime next fall, I think. And then I guess the light bulb police will be coming after me.

But, seriously, this is the kind of things that we do by regulation, or impose our will on others, and in many instances it is done by bureaucrats who sit in Washington, D.C., and they probably have never even seen that plow that we just saw in that farm, except maybe they've seen it on television. But they've certainly not seen anybody out there sweating on an Iowa farm or a Texas farm operating what looks like is a disc harrow that's turning the soil there. And yet they're writing regulations to regulate this man's life. Maybe they're the right thing to do, but you wonder when they have one and they come up with another one that you have to still meet the first one, stack the second one on top of it, and it clearly serves no purpose.

These are all the kind of arguments that frustrate you. They're the kind of things that make the average businessman, the average farmer, rancher, decide to hold off on investing in America because he wants to know what America he's investing in, he or she is investing in. That is the real issue that is driving the fact that we are still sitting here right around 9 percent unemployment after all these months, over 25 months, we're sitting here with the same 8.9, which is as close to 9 as I want to get percent unemployment because the Americans that create the jobs are concerned about what's next.

I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Reclaiming my time, our friend from Kentucky has been down here with me talking just about that act. I don't know if you were in when we first started this. I have just proposed, because I see this tidal wave of regulation, this hurry up and regulate everything you can in a hurry going on by the administration, I will tomorrow morning file a bill to declare a moratorium on all regulations. And they would have to come to Congress showing good cause why it's in the national interest for the good of all mankind that there be an exception to that moratorium so that we would basically just call a king's X, time out, and let's wait for the end of this administration and we'll see what happens in the next one. And by that time we can settle down and create a few jobs in this country because they wouldn't have to, at least for the next 2 years, worry about regulations. So I'll get you a copy of that. It's real simple: no regulations for the next 2 years.

Yes, I will.

I like king's X.

I thank you, Steve King. You're a good friend for coming down here and joining me. I have gone over what I have to say here tonight. I just want to finish up by saying nobody is against doing the right thing. I'm against people who are creating regulations for the sake of regulations and damaging the people who are the job creators in this country. I'm for protecting the environment, but if you're belching out pollutants in China because you moved out of the United States because of onerous regulations and you weren't belching out those pollutants in America because we had a good Clean Air Act in place before you wrote the bad regulations, then you're not helping the environment at all by sending that to an unregulated place in China or India.

So let's get real. Let's try to set up an environment in this Nation that creates jobs so Americans can go back to work. It's all about going back to work.

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

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I would like to yield such time as he may consume to my good friend, Mr. King, to talk about an American hero.

Honoring Corporal John Michael Peck

Thank you, Congressman King. That was a wonderful thing to do. He is a wonderful American hero, Mr. Peck. We are very proud to get to know him, and we wish him well. We are grateful for his spirit.

Tonight, we are going to talk again about the regulations that are going on in this country. I am very pleased to be joined by Congressman Geoff Davis of the great State of Kentucky, which happens to be my father's home State. Congressman Davis is going to join us, and we are going to talk about a one-two punch that we hope to put together for regulations.

Right now, as we've been talking about in the past, we have a tool which allows this Congress to review certain major pieces of regulation that come from the regulators, that is, from the Departments and agencies of the Federal Government. It's called the Congressional Review Act. It allows Congress to review every new major Federal regulation issued by the government agencies and, by passage of joint resolution, to override that regulation.

The process you go through is that the Federal agencies submit to each House of Congress and to the Comptroller General of the U.S. a comprehensive report on any major proposed rule. The Congress has 60 legislative days to pass a joint resolution disapproving the rule. The Senate must vote on a CR resolution of disapproval. Now, that's kind of where this thing is right now, and that's the tool we have. We've been talking about that as we've been talking about the massive number of regulations that have just inundated this country since the beginning of this administration.

So, before I yield to my friend for a conversation about the REINS Act, which will be the reverse of that and a new tool--and I'll let him explain it--just let me tell you something about the amount of regulations that have been put into effect during the Obama administration.

It is an epidemic. The Federal Government has issued 3,360 new rules and regulations, an average of 13 new rules a day--78 of those new rules just last year. A ``major rule'' is a rule that, as I said, may result in having an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, a major increase in the cost of prices for consumers or significant adverse effects to the economy. By the way, we are just getting started, it seems, with regard to what ObamaCare is doing, and it is probably going to be the mother of all rulemaking instruments.

Geoff Davis, Congressman Davis, has a new and better idea, a tool-- although this is a great tool--that I think will function even better. So I am going to yield to Congressman Geoff Davis whatever time he needs to consume to start our talking about the REINS Act.

That's not ``rain'' like we pray for over in Texas all the time, is it?

Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman for explaining this to us, and you hit on a bunch of points I think we need to keep reminding the American people about because we've all been out there living our lives, raising our kids, doing the things with our wives, and just getting caught up in living. And on the periphery, we hear of something that may interfere with our little business we formed or may interfere with a big business that we've got a job in that's going to cause issues, and we just tend to say Congress did it.

When, in reality, most of the things I believe that people hear those things about some rule that requires them to put up a barrier or like I had one guy tell me, They made me put up water retention barriers in the desert in New Mexico where it hadn't rained in 4 years. And he thought that was ridiculous; and I said, well, I kind of have to agree with that, and I guess there's some reason for it.

But the point is that wasn't done by Congress. That was done by one of these regulators you are talking about. When you write a rule or regulation that would cost this country, this society, $100 million, then that has a major effect on some human being that lives in this country; and I think we have the responsibility as the representatives of the people to take a look at that thing and decide if that's the right thing to do.

The way the Congressional Review Act is, they file it and then we have to take aggressive action to get a vote on that issue. By the REINS Act, it would be mandatory that it be filed and it must have a vote. There is no exception as I understand it.

So if something is going to change $100 million or more of your life, you would think the guy you elected or gal that you voted for to come here and speak on your behalf ought to have something to say about it. That's why I like the REINS Act; it puts a responsible party responsible for the things that bureaucrats do. Bureaucrats have the ability to make these fancy rules that they're not responsible for. They write them; but then, you know, they've got a paycheck, they're civil servants, their job's protected with what I would argue is a sort of tenure after a certain period of time. They may even be represented by a labor union.

And so they're sitting here safe and sound; and when they write that regulatory act, they don't answer to any voters back home to decide whether they keep their job, providing a good act or a bad act. They and probably a panel of people they are working with decide this is a good idea.

But here's what's going on right now that has many of us very concerned. A lot of issues that now we're facing with regulation were issues we voted on in this Congress. We discussed in committees in the last 2 years when the Democrats were in charge of this House and the Senate and the Presidency, and those things they were not able to gets passed through both Houses and signed by their President, the Democratic President, Mr. Obama, and yet now they're trying to do those same things by regulation; and the perfect example is CO2.

The whole issue of greenhouse gases, basically they could not get a vote by both Houses of Congress to support calling greenhouse gases noxious gases that should be regulated or should be eliminated. So now they just passed a rule, or they're passing a rule, at the EPA and declaring it. They got one court to make a ruling in their favor; and with that, they're going forward on it. But that issue is in debate in this House today, and it will be in debate when the REINS Act brings it before this House for a vote.

That's why if we can get this passed--and I believe we will get support, bipartisan support, by both sides of the aisle, both in this House and in the Senate, and I'm very hopeful that the President will sign it because it's a tool that works for--doesn't matter what party you're in because, hey, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that Republican Presidents or Republican administrations haven't proposed bad regulations, because they have.

And it's not a party responsibility here. It's an individual Member's responsibility to make sure that we don't write regulations that are going to in such a way hinder our ability to do the things of commerce that keep jobs being created and so forth that we let the bureaucrats run the country. We elect them to run the country. They got hired for a job, and I think that anything that has this kind of influence on the economy requires a vote of the people, who said I will take responsibility for making the voice of the people in my district heard in Washington. You're not going to get that voice heard by the regulators. It's going to have to be here in Congress.

I commend my colleague, Mr. Davis, for a good bill, well done, and a concept that enhances the liberty and freedom of the American citizens.

I yield back for your comments.

Reclaiming my time, you're exactly right. So that people understand, many of these regulations, as they look at things, they don't look at the big picture of what that regulation was meant to do. In fact, I don't think they consider just how far reaching what they're doing is going to be. I would venture to guess that when they wrote that regulation concerning that particular chemical that had leached down through a crack and gotten parts per billion or whatever it was into the dirt, that they probably envisioned some big factory dumping major chemical deposits out on the ground. They never thought of a mom- and-pop cleaners that might have a slight crack in the foundation which causes a very minute amount to fall down there and then say, You've got to remediate like a monster company who dumps all this trash in there should have to remediate. I think that the people that were writing that were thinking about the big guy, never realizing what they were doing on the little guy.

Last night, I guess it was, I had a really nice invitation from some people. There's an event in Austin. I'm going to plug for them because it's a great event. It's called South by Southwest. And many people think of it as a music festival. There's lots of bands that come in. They have lots of live music. Austin is the live music capital of the world.

But there's also a lot of entrepreneurs. High-tech innovators and all sorts of people come there to share ideas, to go to seminars about how we're going to thrive in the 21st century. It's a great, I believe, week-long celebration. It may be longer than that.

Last night, I was invited to a private meeting between--I'd say there's at least 100 to 150 people with ideas, and what they call angel investors; that is, people who are willing to look at these ideas and maybe be willing to loan startup money to get these companies started.

The first thing I want to tell you: I don't believe I've ever walked into a room where there were more enthusiastic people who thought they had a great idea. I mean, it just felt good talking to these young people. Many of them, you wouldn't be able to pick them out on the college campus from all the rest of the kids on the college campus. They look just like all the kids on the college campus, and many of them were. But they had an idea, had come up with an idea. These were the Michael Dells and the Bill Gates of the future that had an idea, and they were gathering with other people with ideas.

Of course, when we think of this, when we mention Michael Dell and Bill Gates and the people in the high-tech industry, we think everything is high tech and Internet; but, in fact, some of the ideas were just pretty simple. But somebody had a good idea.

And one of them I thought was kind of innovative was a rolling kitchen. These were gourmet chefs who said, you know, I want to cook. I've got good food, but I don't want to have to buy a facility. I want to just have a Winnebago with a full kitchen in it and a way to sell my food outside the door, and I'm going to sell gourmet food on the street like a street vendor. It's an interesting concept, and it seems to be, as it was described to me, the beginning of a very successful idea.

Now, these ideas were there, and there were people who come and invest in those things. I met one guy who said, Yeah, you know, sometimes you pick a winner and sometimes you don't, but I've picked a couple of winners. One of them was Netflix. I got in the first day on Netflix. Now we're doing pretty good.

But what this was, this was the seed corn, if you will, of capitalism in America. This is what it's all about. But most of the people that had projects there had something to do with a tool that we all are learning about, and that is the Internet.

Now, we have rules coming down from the Federal Government. The FCC is putting out rules to grant the Federal Government new power to regulate the Internet, restrict access and, thus, stalling this type of innovation of these dynamic young men and women that I met last night with their great concepts on how to improve life and create a business.

Our Founding Fathers were very smart. They realized if you give us liberty, from that will come new ideas; from those new ideas will come entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs; from that will come jobs, capital to reinvest and grow a thriving economy. We have been living on that basic system of private enterprise in this country now since the inception of this country, and these young technocrats have learned how to use the Internet as a tool to make life better for people. Yet if you ask them what they don't want, they don't want the Federal Government regulating them.

Now, the people that are wanting to regulate, they're looking at maybe some things they see as problems. I don't know what problems they are. Maybe they think somebody is using it to enhance politics other than theirs and they're worried about the other guy having access for political reasons. Maybe they're worried about some of the bad things that are on the Internet. And there are bad things. Our terrorists are learning how to make weapons to kill other people on the Internet. But they are not realizing that, as they take something that's working and stick the Federal Government in there, it probably isn't going to be working as good. The Federal Government doesn't do a whole lot to make things work well.

So the unintended consequences of that is they would basically destroy this exciting, innovative industry that's being created in this country to come up with new ideas that, hopefully, make life better and more convenient for all of us and, in turn, hopefully, generate wealth for those who have the ideas, because that's what we are all about.

Right now, using this tool, until we can get Mr. Davis' REINS Act-- which I'm a cosponsor and almost everybody I know is. We're going to try to get this thing passed this session of Congress, signed into law by the President of the United States, as a tool that all Members of Congress should respect. Until that time, we use the Congressional Review Act. And here's some things we are looking at in the Congressional Review Act.

The EPA rule disapproving the State of Texas' flexible permitting system under the Clean Air Act. We filed H.J. Res. 21, John Carter sponsors that. FCC Net Neutrality Rule, H.J. Res. 37, Greg Walden is using the Congressional Review Act to look into that. HHS rule on medical loss ratio, MLR, requirements under the Patent Protection and Affordable Care Act, H.J. Res. 19, I am going after that rule with the Congressional Review Act. NESHAP Rule for Portland Cement Manufacturing Industry, H.J. Res. 42. Again, Representative Carter. This rule is likely to close 18 cement kilns around the country and destroy good American jobs, driving them overseas to places like China and India, possibly increasing the mercury pollution in the United States from offshore pollution.

These are just examples of some things we have been working on. We have talked about them before. And I can assure you, my office right now is daily checking every service we can find to find out about every regulation that is being proposed so that we can look at the ones that we can be aggressive and take the offense on for the Congressional Review Act.

Once again, the REINS Act would shift the burden, as we say in the law, and it would mean that we would have to vote on any major regulation as by the definition that Mr. Davis has given us. So both these tools would be available to Members of Congress for us to be able to look at these administrative rules that are being passed, which are basically done by individuals and agencies, not by this Congress, and give this Congress, which represents the people, to be responsible for whether or not the rule passes. Therefore, if the folks back home want somebody to blame, that is what you take this job for. The buck stops with your vote. If you support the rule, you are going to be responsible for it. And if the folks back home don't like it, you are going to own it. But that is what we came up here for. We came up here to be responsible for our constituents, to be their voice in Washington.

Maybe my friend, Mr. Davis, would like to comment again. So once again I yield to you.

Those are excellent comments. And those light bulbs are a particular sticking point in my life. I don't like being mandated to purchase anything, quite honestly, by the government. And it is really kind of hypocritical to say everybody has got to use these lights, but we can't make them in the country because the regulators won't let us. And we create the regulators. So it is just hypocritical.

I guess what we are trying to say to folks out there and to the people in this Chamber is that it is time to take a look at this secret world of regulators. And it really is a secret to the American people.

I don't think I would make a bad estimate if regulations were printed on both sides of paper like that size paper; and this Chamber has, what, 80 foot ceilings, 100 foot ceilings, and it is probably 40 yards long and 20 yards wide? Stacking these regulations on pages like this, you would have to have at least two or three of them, probably just to cover the IRS Code, much less all the other regulations.

The voluminous number of regulations that are out there will literally boggle your mind. If there is a good reason to have the Internet, it is to have somebody help you keep track of the regulations probably better than anything I can think of.

They're there. They interfere with our lives. Some of them help and some of them don't. And the people's representatives should have a say.

The Congressional Review Act is presently giving us a chance to have a say, and we hope to bring many of these, actually all of these, to the floor of this House for a vote and to the floor of the Senate for a vote.

With the REINS Act passed and signed into law, it gives us another way to get the people of this House who represent the people of this country to cast a vote on behalf of their citizens back home as to whether a major regulation will or will not help this Nation.

As we sit here trying to take down barriers to creating jobs, if there's one thing more than anything else that we've got to do for now and for the foreseeable future in this Congress, it is help take down barriers and get the entrepreneurial spirit going again and get the environment such that people quit sitting on their money and go out and hire new people to help them make bigger profits and grow their companies by hiring people and giving them a job. That's our number one priority. It must be. These regulations, some of them are good, but many of them are onerous and prevent these jobs that we're talking about.

I thank the Speaker for his time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate being recognized.

In 1994, when the Republicans were placed in control of the House and Senate, they produced a magnificent piece of legislation, a legislative weapon against the overreaching of government. This was done in the Clinton administration, and it was signed into law by that President. This weapon hadn't been used but once during the Clinton administration and not at all during the three GOP years of President Bush.

What it's called is the Congressional Review Act. This is an act that requires all Federal agencies to submit any new major regulation to the United States Congress for 60 legislative days prior to its enactment, during which time the Congress can vote to block these new rules if the Congress sees fit.

With Mr. Obama in the White House and Senator Reid still throttling back in the Senate, the Congressional Review Act gives the House the potential to block or at least to expose the outrageous new rules being promulgated on the American people. These were done by the entrenched leftists in the Federal bureaucracy, and they are controversial rules that cost Americans jobs.

If there is one thing that the American people have told us they are most interested in, besides the fact that we are running away with spending in this Congress, it's that they want jobs. You can do whatever you want to a family, but if you give a family a job, that family has at least the security of that employment. Since by that very destructive nature these regulations have the potential, rather than to create jobs, to destroy jobs, they should be seriously looked at by this House of Representatives.

One of the things that people don't understand about how the Federal Government works--in fact, we had this said to us all the time--is ``you passed X law, and it's really affecting and hurting my business,'' when in reality the law, itself, may not do any harm to one's business at all. The regulations, though, promulgated by the authority that has been given rulemaking power on that legislation have the effect of law. Yet they're not passed by this

Congress. They're passed by the various agencies and bureaus of the country when the Congress gives them regulatory authority.

Now, if you really don't know what's going on here, you may ask: How important is that? Well, let's just take a look at last year.

Last year, the Federal Government issued a total of 3,316 new rules and regulations, which is an average of 13 new rules a day. Seventy- eight of those new rules last year were major rules. The definition of a ``major rule'' is a rule that may result in having an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more--a major increase in prices or in the cost to the consumer. It may have a significant effect on the economy, including employment.

The ObamaCare bill, which was passed by this Congress in the last session of Congress, the health care bill, it arguably is the mother of all rule creators. The Congressional Research Service reports that ObamaCare gives Federal agencies substantial responsibility and authority to fill in the details of that bill and of that legislation with subsequent regulations. There are more than 40 provisions in the health care bill--that is called the overhaul bill--that requires, permits or contemplates Federal rulemaking authority just in that one act of Congress. Forty different agencies can create rules that affect the health care of every American citizen. This House can fight back on those rules with this Congressional Review Act.

Now what is the Congressional Review Act? As I said, they filed this with the Congress. And then for 60 legislative days--and ``legislative days'' has a definition. A legislative day is a day that this Congress is available to act. So if the Congress recesses for 3 days, those 3 days are not counted in the number of days. So it's not 60 calendar days; it's 60 legislative days.

For instance, if you look at the last Congress, rules that were filed last summer, last June, in fact, which would be more than 6 months from the 1st of January, those rules are still available for review. Now, how is that possible? Well, between the 1st of June and the end of the year, this legislative body was not in legislative session 60 days. We had the longest recess in probably the institute of the Republic that took place in August because of the political world that the majority saw itself in and the fact that they felt like they needed to have 6 weeks back home to do the politics. So the majority gave us the long recess. We had a break in the 4th of July week. Then we came back for 2 weeks. Then we went back home for campaigning. And then we came back, after campaigning, in December for 2 weeks. So, in total, we didn't reach 60 legislative days. But all that counting starts over with a new Congress.

Something that most Americans don't know is, every time we have a new Congress, everything starts over. So when we wrote rules for 2 years ago that governed this body, we had to write new rules for this session of Congress. At the end of this 2-year period, we will write new rules for the next session of Congress because we are required--you've heard it's a new world every morning. Well, at least for Congress, it's a new world every 2 years because the nature of our very existence is we are the people's court. The House of Representatives is the people's House, and the people's House changes depending on who gets elected every 2 years.

So now we have started a new 60-day period. The 60-day period, the rules that were filed that would be subject to this Congressional Review Act, those rules were all filed on the 15th of February because that was the first time that both Houses were completely in session. And so these things will expire sometime in June. After that clock has run, then this House can no longer act. So the House has, right now, during this period of time, from February to June, to act on a lot of regulations. This gives us a chance to make a determination.

This is kind of the Congressional Review Act right here. I want to give you some examples of some kind of rules that are available to be dealt with under the Congressional Review Act and will be dealt with under the Congressional Review Act.

The FCC has proposed rules that would allow the Federal Government to act as a gatekeeper and prohibit broadband providers from selectively blocking or slowing Web traffic. These new FCC rules will restrict access to the Internet and stall innovation in our country, further damaging the economy and hindering job creation.

Most people think the Internet works pretty good right now, but there are those who think the Federal Government should intervene in the Internet and the agency in the executive branch should have a chance to actually regulate and decide how the Internet is going to operate. We can't affect the Internet worldwide, but we can affect the Internet in the United States. Most of us feel that we should not, in fact, be intruding on the Internet. This is now coming up for disapproval under H.J. Res. 37. Greg Walden is carrying the ball on this, and that clock expires on the 14th day of June.

The NESHAP rule for Portland cement manufacturing. What is Portland cement? Portland cement is that bag of powder that you mix with gravel and so forth to make concrete. That's what Portland cement is. Portland cement is manufactured in the United States and manufactured all over the world. There is a regulation which would require the closing of 18 cement plants in this country. These jobs from these cement plants, as a result of the regulations that are being proposed, would be forced to move to India and China if they wanted to continue to produce Portland cement because they would not be able to meet the standards that would be established by this rule.

The U.S. cement industry today provides more than 15,000 highway jobs, with an average compensation of $75,000 per year, along with allied industries that account for nearly $27.5 billion of the gross domestic product. A statement made by the concrete industry is that there is only one element in the world that is more prevalent in construction than concrete, and that's water. You have to realize that the second element most important to construction around the world is the production of cement, the production of concrete, and water is the only one that's more important. It's a pretty amazing amount of concrete that is required in the world; and yet as a result of this rule, there is a distinct possibility that we will be looking at about 70 percent of our concrete manufacturing being done outside of our country.

Now, there has been a lot of criticism of this challenge to this rule because people are saying, but look, these cement manufacturers put mercury into the air; they don't regulate mercury. Well, I just want to show you something that I think was very interesting when this argument was made.

This map, prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute. Now remember, this is the most and this is the least amount of mercury production on our chart. Now, you will notice that all of the red and these green and yellows here, they're scattered in there, is heavy concentration of mercury in the air. The source of that mercury originates outside the United States.

This is not the result of American production of Portland cement; this is the result of foreign production of Portland cement, because these are regulated industries already in this country and nobody regulates those industries outside of this country. And because of the prevailing winds from the Far East, more than half of the United States has a major mercury output. And the solution is to write a bill that will force more companies to go overseas. That means more mercury will be in the air because they will be sending them to unregulated countries.

This is a bill that wasn't thought out. This rule was not thought out well enough, and so we should stop it. We should sit down and work out a clean air set of regulations that actually work to reduce this mercury production and, in fact, bring more people to producing in this country rather than not producing in this country.

One of the things I hear every day when I go back to Texas is: When are you going to stop outsourcing our jobs to other countries? And yet we're writing a regulation right now under Clean Air that is going to outsource thousands of American jobs to other countries.

This is something that needs to be thought through. Many times these agencies, because they don't answer to the American public in any form or fashion, other than this review, these are things that they need to be sat down and we need to get their heads on straight.

This new rule, we will try to raise this rule. You say, This is how it works in the House of Representatives. How does it work in the Senate? Well, what makes this a really interesting rule is you first need to know what the rules of procedure are in the Senate. It takes 60 Senators to agree to bring anything to a vote in the Senate, which makes it difficult to bring things to a vote when more than half of the Senators have to agree just to bring something to a vote. But written into this act, signed by President Clinton into law, is the provision that this particular examination of rulemaking authority only requires 30 Senators to agree for a vote, that it can be brought to a vote.

So when it passes out of the House and goes over to the Senate, it only takes 30 Senators to agree to bring this to a vote. If it passes the Senate, then it is sent to the President's desk. Then basically he's got the only vote left, in many cases to prevent bad regulations. The President told us the last time he had a press conference that he was going to stop job-killing regulations in this country. The regulations we are going to be working on are job-killing regulations. And so we're going to give him the opportunity to do that. If he chooses to veto it, so be it. Basically, he had the one vote that could have stopped the job-killing regulation.

The Office of National Coordinator for Health Information Technology has promulgated complex, confusing and costly rules establishing what it means for hospitals and physicians to have a certain EHR, whatever that is. I don't know what that is. If not simplified, the rules will prevent health care providers from receiving incentive payments and increase the cost of EHR installations and limit the innovation in the health information technology market.

Another rule that's out there is called the boiler MACT rule. Basically, the Environmental Protection Agency is proposing four separate rules that would establish more stringent emission standards on industrial and commercial boilers and process heaters. The broad- reaching proposals could cost manufacturers over $20 billion in compliance costs and place hundreds of thousands of jobs in jeopardy. This needs to be dealt with by the 21st of June.

The Florida numeric nutrient water quality standards rule. This is also by the EPA, as I understand it. This rule mandates nutrient standards for Florida lakes, rivers, streams and estuaries in response to litigation initiated by environmental and special interest groups. The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services concludes that Florida's agriculture community will lose 14,545 full-time or part-time jobs and $1.148 billion in sales annually if this rule is approved. This is why this Congress ought to look at this rule.

HHS rule on medical loss ratio requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This regulation requires all health plans to pay a minimum of 80 percent of premiums toward health services. Larger insurers should pay a minimum of 85 percent. Industry analysis estimates that as many as 47 percent of the participants in individual and small group plans which have higher administrative costs due to economies of scale will lose their health insurance if this regulation becomes law. So this one regulation, which comes out of what we call the ObamaCare bill, could cause 47 percent of the people who have small to midsize health care plans to lose their health care plan.

We actually have a bill that is coming before this Congress. Geoff Davis of Kentucky has introduced this bill. It mandates that all new major rules must be approved by Congress before becoming law.

This one is pretty simple, and it just supplements what we're already dealing with. It uses the same definition for major rules and requires Congress to approve all major rules and Federal regulations before they become effective.

Why would we do that? To start off with, 3,000-plus new regulations were passed last year. These regulations could cause you or others to lose their jobs. And so if it is our responsibility, and I think it is our responsibility in this House, for us to come up with solutions that make jobs be created rather than make jobs disappear, then those things that have a potential to make jobs disappear, it's part of our responsibility to take a hard look at those regulations that might make jobs disappear. This is not rocket science. This is pretty easy stuff.

We who are the people's representatives, who are elected to represent the people of the United States--and remember how our Founding Fathers set up our Constitution: The Senators represent States and the House of Representatives represents people. Our districts are drawn based on the population in those districts. Their district is the whole State, and they represent the State of Texas or the State of New Jersey or the State of New York or the State of California and all the other States. So we are the direct link to the people.

We are the only branch of this House and Senate where no one can sit in these seats and be a Member of Congress unless they were elected. That's something a lot of people don't know. If we should have a Senator, heaven forbid, die while in office, that Senator can be temporarily replaced by an appointment by the Governor of the State that that Senator represents. But if we have a Member of Congress, heaven forbid, die while in office, that Congressman has to be elected before they can serve in the House of Representatives.

We are the people's House. We are the only House that depends upon the vote of the people to keep us here under all circumstances. So if that's how we get here and our responsibility in today's economy is to try to get ourselves out of the poorhouse with all the borrowing we've been doing and to help create jobs so Americans can get back to work, if Americans get back to work, we will have a solution in many instances to the problems that face our country right now as far as debt and other things, because if they are working, they are paying taxes and those taxes will help alleviate the issues we have.

If that's the case, why wouldn't it make just decent common sense that this Congress, the people's House, would have the opportunity to look at regulations that might destroy jobs? And if we have credible people that are saying they will destroy jobs, then we need to look seriously at those regulations. And maybe it's just a matter of killing the job-killing regulations so that we can renegotiate regulations that solve the problem without driving industries overseas or killing the jobs that these industries create.

Sometimes agencies are not putting priorities on people; they're putting priorities on other things. Therefore, we need to examine our priorities. Our job on the floor of this House is to make sure of the safety and welfare of our constituents back home and make sure that we do everything we can to make sure that they've got a job so they can support their families and support themselves.

Right now, with, not 9 percent anymore, 8.9 percent unemployment, which is about as close to 9 as you can get without being there, we are still in an unemployment nightmare in this country.

I can remember back during the Clinton administration when there were public service announcements made that said 5.5 unemployment was full employment for the United States. We later learned that unemployment got down, during the early part of the last decade, to a much, much lower number than that. But we certainly know we cannot continue to tolerate somewhere between the top end of 8 and 10 percent unemployment and expect our economy to be healthy. We've got to get our people back to work. These regulations are part of the issues that are going to be important to discovering the solutions to this problem.

Some would say this is controversial. Some would say that if the Congress interferes with regulatory authority then Congress is going to take on something that by plan was passed out to the regulatory agencies to keep us

from having to work so hard and getting into the weeds on all these bills. I didn't come up here, and I don't think anybody came up here, not to work hard. If they did, they probably don't belong being up here.

If the actions of a regulatory board or an individual that is in charge of a regulatory agency has a dire effect upon the employment of any American citizen, I think we as the Members of this Congress have a duty and a responsibility to at least look at it. If we don't think it's bad, we can vote accordingly. But to just ignore it and let these things be created, and I would argue without a serious due process of law, because the only people that police this up is the various agencies in the executive branch of the government, and it's generally done by career bureaucrats. And they make these decisions. These people don't answer to the American people. They don't go before the American people for a vote every 2 years. Therefore, they don't feel the pressure of the damage that can be done by some of these regulations.

Some of these regulations that are going to come before this House are going to be good regulations, and I would expect them to be voted for and upheld. But if we have the responsibility and the duty to protect our fellows, then I think we should step forward and do that job.

My friend from Florida is here. Welcome. I will yield you whatever time you would like to join me in commenting on this regulatory overreach.

I am glad you brought that up. You know, what's really interesting, Mr. Posey, is they've got this new rule, I am not sure who promulgated it, that if you are a volunteer on a commission or a board that has anything, any form or fashion that handles money, you have to pay a $600 licensing fee to get a license to serve on the volunteer board. You know, the one that comes to mind is, every city of any size has what's called a planning and zoning commission. I happened to serve as the chairman of that commission in my hometown of Round Rock, Texas. It's a hard job. It's in many ways a thankless job.

But now, in order for a volunteer to come in and serve to decide how the city's going to plan and zone its area for various construction and business, you got to pay a fee to volunteer, 600 bucks. But that's not how ridiculous it is; any board, agency, or commission. And every State has literally thousands of these volunteer positions that people do to help out their State, their city, their county. If there is any form or fashion of bonding capacity for any relative group that you serve, you have to buy a license for 600 bucks because you are considered to be in the investment business.

I yield to the gentleman from Florida.

Reclaiming my time, we're joined by the gentleman from Arkansas (Mr. Crawford), one of our new Members. We're proud to have you.

We're talking about the regulatory overreach of the Federal Government.

I thank you for your comment. I'm sure there have got to be some people that are listening to this who want to say, Did he really say ``regulate dust''?

Yes. There is a proposed rule to regulate dust. Now, that statute actually exists in the State of California, which is closest to bankruptcy of any State in this country. And the Central Valley of California has had an issue about water and the shortage of water in the Central Valley, one of the breadbaskets of the entire Nation, because of a debate over water. Until it started to rain, they've been dry as a powder keg, but they have the dust regulation in California.

So we inquired of them, What do you do if you've got a gravel road going up to your farmhouse to keep the dust down?

Well, we have to water it every day. We have to take this shortage water that we don't have enough to even

grow a clump of spinach, and we water our roads so we don't violate our local Clean Air Act in California.

And I got humorous about that because I went to school at Texas Tech in Texas. And although we have come a long way up on the south plains of Texas in reducing the amount of dust storms that have been up in the panhandle of Texas, we still have dust storms. And when I was at Texas Tech, we had dust storms that were so bad that if you drove into the wind, they would literally sandblast the front paint off of your car. Now I want to know what the fine is going to be and who's going to have to pay the fine when there's dust blowing in all the way from New Mexico and Arizona that comes blowing into your State, and who is the EPA going to punish? I haven't got a good idea. But chances are, the farmer. And that's the real tragedy here.

Certainly there are particles in the air that are bad for folks like me who have asthma, and we have to be concerned about it. And we're not going to let people overproduce any kind of disaster. But to say you can produce no dust on a farm is pretty close to crazy. Just the turn of a plough creates dust. Just the driving of the pickup to the barn creates dust. And I think it's a little overreaching.

I was talking about this $600 fee that you've got to have to be a volunteer. I tried to think of one that everybody might understand, and I thought of a good one. Everybody has got a school board in their State somewhere, a local school board. And generally these local school boards are either wanting to have a tax increase or they are wanting to float a bond issue or something like that. So they create these volunteer groups called ``friends of the school board'' who go out in the community and try to help the school board get this bond passed so they can have better schools for the children of that school district. Everybody experiences that across this whole Nation, and every Member of this Congress probably knows something about that. But under the new proposed regulation, every one of those volunteers that goes out and promotes the bond issue would have to pay a $600 federal fine to get a license to talk about the bond issue, as if they were some kind of financial adviser to the American public. And what we really have there is a new revenue source created by the bureaucrats to put more money in the coffers of their bureau or their agency. That's the kind of thing that makes no sense.

My secretary was bragging on the fact that she thought the county commissioner was going to appoint her to this volunteer board. And I said, well, you'd better get a check ready for 600 bucks. She said, well, no, it doesn't pay anything. I said, yeah, and by the way, the regulation also says that the person, the entity that appoints you to that board, cannot pay your $600 for you. You have to pay it, because you are now a financial adviser because that board has the ability to issue bonds. Now that's just a little bit too much.

I had an old cowboy back in Texas that made a comment to me. He said, we don't have very many shortages in this country, but the one shortage we got in Washington, D.C. is, we have a severe shortage, dang near a drought, as he put it, of common sense. And part of the reason we have the Congressional Review Act is so that hopefully the common sense of the representatives of the people can prevail in these issues that are going to either harm our individual constituents, cost us jobs, or drive industries offshore, overseas, as we did with the cement manufacturers if we impose these severe penalties upon people who produce Portland cement. Portland cement doesn't mean it's from Portland; it means it's the process that they use to make cement.

So today we're talking about what, I think, is something that the American people, now that they hopefully know a little bit about how much the agencies of this country and the bureaucrats and the secretaries and all the people that follow them, of all the Cabinet members in this executive branch, the kind of power they have to change the life of the individual and the life of the job producers and the job seekers in this country.

And if we are going to give them that kind of control and that kind of power over people's individual lives, over the employer's ability to make the profit necessary to hire and create new jobs, if we're going to allow them to have that power, just like anything else, someone has to have oversight over these people and take a look at what they're doing and see if it is to the good of the American people and the good of our country. And that's why we have the Congressional Review Act. And in that Congressional Review Act, we get the chance to look at it. Just because it hasn't been used but rarely does not mean it shouldn't be used when the number of regulations have grown by geometric progressions in the last 2 years.

When we create one bill, one bill, the health care bill that was created in the last session of Congress that creates 40 entities with rulemaking authority, 40 new entities that can create rules that affect the individual life and the health care of the American people--we have one particular entity that will actually be able to say what treatment can and cannot be given to certain people--surely this House would want to at least take a look at those regulations, because it might mean life or death to an American citizen if we do not allow that. So it is important.

Congresswoman Ellmers from North Carolina, we are pleased to have you here. We would like you to explain what you want to show us here today.

If the gentlelady would yield for a question, if I understand you correctly, the main reason for this route is because of the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act?

It is a mussel, you're saying?

This is the town, here, which they are going to go in and condemn basically all of the town?

Yes, I can see why people are a little upset about that.

I can understand that. So if I am a potential employer who wants to build a factory and that is one of the places I might look at, I look at this and say wait a minute, I can buy the land, build my building, and then here comes the Corps of Engineers which puts the highway right through the middle of my building?

So the builder says I think I'll wait or look somewhere else?

These regulations should be looked at by this House if they are available to be looked at. Of course, some of these may be long since on the books before we had this tool to examine regulations as they come out. But still, it is good for you as the Representative of your folks in your district to come up and speak for the people because that's our job.

I'm going to reclaim my time because I think we are about to run out of it. I want to thank the Speaker for this hour.

I thank my friend for yielding.

This law, and I understand that a point of order has been raised, but this is serious business we're talking about here. The sovereign State of Arizona is being overrun by dangerous people, that being murderers, up and down that border.

I've been to that Arizona border. I've seen the fence being built in Arizona, and I've seen the fence that it replaced, which wouldn't even hold in a pair of goats. And yet we have a flood flowing across this border.

And so what does the Governor of that State do? Steps forward and says that the Federal Government is not meeting its obligation. We are going to protect our citizens.

Now, one of the things that I have been very concerned about--I will yield to my friend in a moment.

One the things I have been very concerned about, as I've watched the judiciary and the legal system develop, is we've learned how to use our court system as a battering ram against our opponents, both our opponents in business and now our opponents in politics and in other places, just to batter them into position. The United States Government should not be battering the State of Arizona into a position that the State believes is contrary to the will of their people.

I now yield to my friend from Arizona.

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

Mr. Chairman, the U.S. cement industry is among the most regulated in the world and has long served not only as a responsible steward of the environment, but as a provider of high-wage family jobs in communities throughout this country. It competes against imported Asian cement, which has the advantage of low wages and nonexistent environmental regulations. Yet the EPA has plans to drop a bomb of job- killing, ineffective regulations on this industry which, by the EPA's own admission, could result in an increase in global mercury pollution as production moves to those countries with no air quality standards. Specifically, in September of 2010, EPA finalized the Portland Cement National Emissions Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants, NESHAP, a rule based on questionable science.

The U.S. cement industry provides more than 15,000 high-wage jobs with an average compensation of $75,000 per year, and, along with allied industries, accounts for nearly $27.5 billion of the gross domestic product. Due to the recession, the cement industry has already lost over 4,000 jobs. This bad rule threatens to close another 18 of the 97 cement plants nationwide and throw another 1,800 Americans out of good-paying private sector jobs.

Mr. Chairman, as bitter as this would be in the middle of a horrible recession, if it were to guarantee that it would reduce mercury pollution, at least this high human cost might be justified. But when the cement production from these plants is shifted to China and India with no air quality standards, we could face increased mercury pollution worldwide and in this country.

Today, 75 percent of our annual mercury deposits are already coming to the United States from outside this country. That is indicated by this map prepared by the Electric Power Research Institute.

If you look at this map very briefly, here is the regulation chart. Red is somewhere between a little under 80 percent and 100 percent of the mercury.

If you look west of the Mississippi, in fact it actually crosses the Mississippi, all this area of red, that means the Asian pollution, Asian pollution, pollutes the mercury in this part of the United States in a percentage between 80 and 100 percent.

Now, as you move across into the Midwest and the South, it is only between 60 and 78 percent that is provided by the winds bringing pollutants from Asian pollution. Of course, Florida is down here. It is in the red, so it is between 80 and 100 percent.

It is only on the east coast that you get down in this range here, which is 20 to a little over 55 percent, and the blue is below that, which is just a few dots over here on the east coast.

So right now our mercury problem is not our problem; it is from outside the United States right now. And we are going to implement rules and regulations dropped on this industry by the EPA, which is going to drive at least 18 of these plants and possibly the vast majority of these plants offshore. Where are they going to go offshore? They are going to go to Asia.

Right now we have ways to measure this and protect ourselves in our plants already in place, and most of the things that EPA is asking for are in place. But they changed the rules in the middle of the game. Therefore, we are asking that we do the right thing and force the EPA to sit back down at the table and draft a rule that actually reduces mercury pollution and saves U.S. jobs.

This is important. This is a bad rule, and it is going to be bad for our environment. And the best thing we can do is say time out on this by basically saying no funds will be spent on the enforcement of this. And we would hope that EPA would go back to the table, sit down with industry, and come up with a real solution for what they are trying to do.

This is the purpose of my amendment, and this is what this is all about.

I yield to the gentleman from Washington.

Basically, I don't have a timeframe in here.

It is basically permanent.

But what we are saying is the real issue is the mercury issue and the hydrochloric acid issue, and those things have not even been discussed.

Will the gentleman yield?

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I would like to address for a moment some of the things that were said by my friends on the other side of the aisle. It's true that there may be 1,300 new jobs, as he quoted. But 1,300 new inspectors are not jobs in the cement industry. The cost of doing the conversion, according to the industry spokesman, is about $3.5 billion industrywide, and even then they're not sure they're meeting all standards that are being required by EPA.

One for-instance in this requirement of EPA is, hydrochloric acid has never been considered a problem by EPA, and all of a sudden there's a regulation on hydrochloric acid. This is an almost $4 billion cost to an industry whose total net worth is approximately $10 billion. That is a tremendous, tremendous burden to place on this industry.

Quite honestly, what we're trying to accomplish by this before this regulation is actually implemented is to say, Time out. We're not funding this until you get back to the table and start working out a reasonable way to save American jobs and not encourage foreign jobs to take jobs away from America. That's what this does. And obviously with this thing that's going on in the port in New York, that's even more horrendous, that we are actually attacking American jobs by our own efforts.

Will the gentlelady yield?

I thank you for yielding.

I just want to point out what my friend from California was pointing out. Under the plan that's before us from the EPA, we're pretty well sure that 18 of our 90 plants are going to move offshore. So we get to add 18 plants to the people who are polluting this area of the United States at an almost hundred percent pollutant, and good scientific evidence already tells us that 75 percent of the mercury pollution, which is the argument the gentleman made, is coming from outside the United States. Now we're adding 18 new plants to the 75 polluters and we're taking 18 plants away from the 25 percent side. To me, I wonder how that balances out to make good sense for those poor sick kids that he was talking about. We're adding more pollution to the unregulated, full-scale polluters, and we're harming and taking American jobs, the fathers and mothers of those very children he was talking about. They're no longer going to have a job and somebody in China or India is going to have that job. And I think the American people are pretty fed up with us trying to constantly ship good American jobs overseas.

I hear my friends talk about, we are outsourcing. This is a form of outsourcing by regulating us out of business and sending those jobs over to where they open with open arms and no regulations and lower wages, come on in, make your cement, we'll ship it back to the United States and use that New York terminal to bring it into the United States.

I think we need to rethink this. All we're asking is an implementation that doesn't drive us out of the country. It's that simple. It's not that tough.

Will the gentleman yield?

Having raised four children and being a person who cares about children, I was a little offended that I was being accused of wanting to harm children, which is not the purpose of this.

In fact, I would argue that between 75 and 100 percent of the mercury pollutants on two-thirds of the American continent, of the country of America, is coming from foreign sources. Of those who cannot meet these onerous requirements, the only solution they have in order to stay in business is to move to foreign countries, where they do not regulate air quality. I would argue, with this amendment, we are taking it away from the polluters and are saying, Wait a minute. Let's look at this and talk it out.

That's really what we are trying to do, and so I would argue that I'm trying to save the lives of American children because the foreigners are polluting our air, and 75 percent of those pollutants were created by foreign companies where the only choice for these people to stay in business is to move there.

Will the gentleman yield for a moment?

I promise not to mention cement.

I'm a little confused on your question and I may be able to clarify.

If you're asking the question are we attempting to defund that czar, we are.

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

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Scalise amendment. I actually also have an amendment which I filed which I am withdrawing to de-fund 24 czarships, instead of czar and czarina-ships to suit the other side. But I decided that comity would be better if I joined Mr. Scalise.

I think he has a good amendment here. My chairman has asked that we move forward, and I agree.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I would like to inform the Chair and the balance of the people here that it is our intent to finish this amendment and Ms. McCollum's amendment, and then we'll be going to a vote. I thought, for information purposes, I would let everybody know our intent and what we would like to do.

If the gentleman will yield, we also will accept the amendment.

Will the gentleman yield?

We have no objection to this amendment and are prepared to accept the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order on the gentleman's amendment.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

I rise in support of this amendment. I disagree with my friend across the aisle. I don't believe this amendment will be a job killer. I believe it will be a job protector. But more so, it's a faith protector in the opportunity to have a job.

When we were debating in Congress this very issue of cap and trade, back home where I live and all across the State of Texas and in other parts of the country where I was privileged to travel, people were asking, Please, are they really going to impose this crazy legislation upon us at the cost of our jobs and jack up the cost of our energy?

A lot of small businesses said, I don't know what to do, because this thing is looming out there. If it becomes law, I have the feeling it's going to put me out of business because I'm not going to be able to afford the disastrous cost it's going to take to keep me in operation. These are just small business owners.

Meanwhile, those in the refining and power industries looked at this thing and said, Good Lord, what is this going to do to us? How many people are we going to be able to keep on? And who are we going to have to lay off so we can meet these onerous requirements?

And the people of the United States and this Congress basically said no to the President and no to the Democratic majority of the last few years. So the result was a sigh of relief, not only in my hometown but in hometowns across America; a sigh of relief, because they looked at this thing and said, This doesn't make sense. They're trying to regulate the air we breathe. It just shocks people as to what it might do to their cost.

Now I just came tonight to ask one question, a very simple question, the question everybody in my district has been asking me. What is it about the word no that these folks don't understand? Because they have been told no, and I think it should remain no.

We should support this amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 1 o'clock and 10 minutes a.m.), the House adjourned until today, Friday, February 18, 2011, at 9 a.m.