Floor Statements

Offered By: Mr. Carter

Amendment No. 528: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Carter

Amendment No. 165: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I want to commend the chairman and his committee for the hard work they're doing here today.

While we look at bad rules, Madam Speaker, already on the books, let's not take new, worse rules on in the future. With a split House and Senate, it will be a tough job to repeal existing regulations in light of the Senate requirement of 60 votes to bring something to a vote in the Senate. It will be very difficult, but we have a special parliamentary tool to block new rules with the Congressional Review Act, which mandates a Senate vote on blocking new regulations of just 30 Members of the Senate. So we can have closure in the Senate with only 30 Senators joining us.

Today, we face new EPA attempts to shut down the Portland cement industry in our Nation, costing thousands of jobs. We face an EPA grab to take away Texas' ability to issue emission permits, undermining the economy of Texas and destroying job growth in our State.

We face an HHS scheme to kick small health insurers out of the market because they can't match the administrative cost ratios of their mega- insurer competitors.

But if we use our majority in this body to disapprove these bad rules, we can then convince just 30 of our Senators to join us and go along with it to bring it to the floor of the Senate for a vote, a straight up-or-down vote. I think we have a very good chance to stop these new rules that are in the pipeline.

Madam Speaker, I urge all Members to join our effort to use the Congressional Review Act to fight bad rules and save jobs. I thank you.

I thank the Speaker for allowing me this time. I am pleased that I can bring up some issues that I think are important.

The title of this is ``The EPA's War on Texas,'' but this is about a lot more than Texas.

I think that most people probably don't realize that a lot of the rules and laws that, especially if they're in business, but even in your own personal life, that seem to touch closest to home, you would think they were done by a vote of this Congress in some form or fashion where we decided that this is good for whatever the rule is for your life or for your business or for the good of our Nation. But, in fact, many of these rules actually come from regulatory agencies. These agencies are given rule-making power, and those rules actually have the power of law.

And so a body of employees of the United States--and a few of them are political appointees, depending on the agency. Some of them are appointed each term by the administration, but most of these people are civil servants who work for civil service and these agencies. There are agencies across this land that take certain sections of our lives and make rules about them--the rule-making authority is given to them by Congress--and the EPA is one of those agencies, the Environmental Protection Agency.

A situation has arisen in Texas which is not only about Texas, but it's about America. The last couple of years I have been talking about the rule of law and the fact that we try to set up a system in this Nation that has basic fairness and that there are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong. When we do that, we don't expect one group to impose its will upon another group inappropriately; but what has happened to Texas, I would argue, is an overstepping of a regulatory agency.

To talk about this, I'm going to have to start off by giving you--so that you understand it not only affects the lives of Texans, but it directly affects the lives of 13 other States immediately, and potentially every State in this Union.

In the last 4 years we have been having an ongoing debate and discussion, both at committee level and on this floor, about the effect of carbon emissions upon the environment. There has been an ongoing debate as to whether or not there is such a thing as global warming. That term now, because the globe doesn't seem to be warming up very much, has turned to climate change, and also because of some kind of falsely manipulated facts concerning global warming, the term has gone to climate change.

But there are those good-meaning people in this Congress who believe that carbon emissions are the new deadly medicine for this country; and if we don't do away with them, it's going to destroy our ability to live on this planet. Al Gore and others are the lead folks on this, and they think it's very important. That debate has been going on now for 4 to 6 years in this Congress, and an attempt has been made to pass what's called cap-and-trade legislation. In fact, by one vote, I believe it was, cap-and-trade, under the Democratic administration of the last session of Congress, was passed out of this House. Cap-and- trade went nowhere in the Senate, and so it never became law. But its purpose was to cap the emissions and tax folks accordingly. That's very simplified; it's much more complex than that. But basically this Congress, made up of the Senate and the House, rejected as a unit the concept of cap-and-trade.

The Environmental Protection Agency decided that even though pretty much America had spoken that carbon emissions were not something that they wanted to impose harshness upon folks about, they decided, well, we don't care what they want, we want the carbon emissions.

So they, starting in December, I believe, of last year, they started issuing new regulations about carbon emissions. And then they started passing them on through the Clean Air Act to the various States.

Now, I'm telling you this because it's going to have a direct effect on your life. Every Member of Congress here and every person that might be watching this discussion someplace else will see that when you start talking about what is maybe happening in Texas, you have to realize that as you watch the price of gasoline go up at your pump, you have to realize that there can be a direct relationship between what's going on in the market and what happens to the prices for the American consumer.

Here's what has happened in Texas. When they created the Clean Air Act, they gave the EPA the ability to promulgate rules and standards for air quality. But the act specifically says that the local authority and the States have a better means of policing up this act than the Federal Government. So the implementation of the rules, of the standards set by EPA, will be done by the States rather than the Federal Government, and each State is to come up with a plan.

And that bill was passed, I believe, in 1974 or 1976, something like that. Anyway, it was in the 1970s, and it had nothing to do with carbon. It had to do with noxious gasses and other really bad things that were getting into our air and reducing the air quality, and the standards were important.

And each State had the ability to structure their permitting system to fit the needs of their State and then submit that permitting system to the EPA for approval. And the EPA would say, Yeah, I think that's a good system, or, No, we don't think it is a good system.

One of the things that happened when they put together this Clean Air Act and set these emission standards was what they call a grandfather clause. And companies that were already in existence long before the time of the passing of this act were grandfathered out of the act. So basically some of these big refineries, electricity power plants, manufacturing facilities, automobile plants had been around long enough that they would be grandfathered in some certain areas on these emission standards and the requirement for permitting under the law. That was just the way this act was written.

So Texas had a lot of--Texas is the largest energy producing and energy manufacturing State in the United States and has the largest refinery capacity in the United States. I used to be able to name the refineries in Texas, but I'm afraid I'd fall way short today. But needless to say, there are a multitude of refineries and chemical manufacturing facilities just in the Houston area alone and in Corpus Christ and in other parts of our State, both great, gigantic refineries and midsize and small refineries and manufacturing facilities. And they're all dealing with, basically, the petrochemical industry. The oil and gas industry is the base product that they are refining, manufacturing things from and so forth.

So in Texas, looking at what it would take not only to clean up the industries that would fall under the act, which would be the newly permitted industries, but also would start to police up the grandfathered--the folks that

could get out under a grandfather clause--police up those facilities, too.

The people in Texas got together and they came up with a concept called flex permitting, and here's the way it works:

Let's just take a refinery. Baytown has a gigantic refinery that I have visited. They passed a rule that says there's lots of sources of emissions from some form or fashion inside of a refinery--comes from a little thing the size of a faucet to great big smoke stacks can be emitting something into the air. So what we want them to do is take that site and reduce their emissions down to the standard that is required by EPA. And so we're going to let them, so long as their site reduces emissions and meets the goals set up by the Clean Air Act--not every individual place that emits will have to have a permit, but just one permit to cover the whole site. And then as the site reduces its emissions, it all falls under one permit, and it's called a flex permit. So it allows the refinery to go in, fix this first and then fix this second and this third and this fourth; and find the big bad ones first and fix those, and then work down to fix the plant.

And by the way, there is a recent letter from the EPA saying that Texas has met and exceeded the standards under this flex permitting.

But then along comes greenhouse gasses, and they passed the rule about carbon emissions. And they say, Now you have to put that under your permitting systems.

And the other 13 States plus Texas were kind of taken aback by this. But Texas said, No way. We don't think you should be imposing carbon emission standards on us when the Congress refused to impose these standards. And they, as I understand it, started contesting this in the court.

So here's where the rub comes in. The EPA then announces to Texas, We don't approve your flexible permitting system, and every industry in your State is now out of compliance, and you are going to have to have a new permitting system, and we're taking over how that's going to work--even though the act says Texas, or any State, shall be people who administer there.

Now, you may say, Well, that's not too bad. There's a kicker here. Texas created this permitting system in 1994, and since that time, they have been asking EPA to tell them yes or no. Do you approve it or you don't approve it? And tentatively, they sort of said, Well, we'll approve it, but we're going to study it and look at it.

Fifteen years this flexible permitting system has been in place.

And now as the dispute over carbon emissions comes along, to batter Texas into compliance, they have depermitted the whole State. They've announced they depermitted the whole State. Now, the State went to court and at least got a stay on that temporarily.

But think about that. If you had something that you were doing that the government said, Now we'll have to approve that to do it, and you say, Fine, here's what we're doing; would you please approve it or disapprove it, and they waited 15 years to do it, and then when they announced they're disapproving it they say, Oh, by the way, we plan to go back and fine you for the last 15 years for carbon emissions--that's what I understand it's going to be--something is wrong with this picture.

I'm joined by my good friend and fellow judge, Louie Gohmert from Texas, and I'd like to hear his take on this. And if I got anything wrong, he can tell me about it.

And you know, this flex permit's whole purpose was to use common sense and meet the environmental standards without shutting down facilities and losing jobs. That's why they came up with the flex permit. It allowed them, if they met the standards, to do the repairs and fixes in integral parts and not stop until the whole thing is in compliance and have a permit for every faucet in the building

that needs to be adjusted or fixed. But rather let them fix the problem as it goes along.

And we are the model for meeting the air quality act, the model. I mean most States aren't in as good of compliance as the State of Texas under the flex permit system. And yet exactly as my colleague has pointed out, because of this carbon emissions dictatorship and because they're saying you will do as I say or else, the position that's being taken by this czar from the EPA, Texans are sort of the kind of people that just bow up when people say that like that, so we said ``no,'' and we are in this fight. And I think we are in the fight to win. Because I think anybody would say it would be totally unfair for EPA to sit and ponder their duty to approve a plan and spend 15 years looking at it and not do anything with it, and it's meeting its standards, and all of a sudden, bingo, because of this they're taking over our permitting.

I am very pleased to be joined by a gentleman that is probably the most knowledgeable man in Congress about the workings of this particular act, Mr. Joe Barton, former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee and a ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and now our Texas expert on all things energy and all things environmental. Mr. Barton, I yield you so much time as you choose to use.

I thank you for coming here. Joe Barton really has been dedicating his life to these types of issues for his long tenure in Congress.

But I always wonder if sometimes people back home are sitting around saying so what does this mean to me. Well, I am speculating, okay, I am only speculating, but let me say something that I think everybody agrees.

The last time we had a spike in the price of gasoline, it started, I think, everybody points to how it started, it started when they had a refinery fire in Illinois.

And all of a sudden, the speculators said, whoa, we've got to reduce refining capacity in the oil and gas industry right now. They shut down about half that plant in Illinois. And all of a sudden, we started to see the futures start to move on oil. And that was the kickoff of $5 gasoline in some parts of the country. Why? Because the speculators say, well, if refinery capacity is reduced, gasoline is going to be in more short supply. Futures, I can buy now, sell later. I can make money off this commodity. And the price started up. Other things happened then, speculators, all of that can be talked about. But it started. Everybody says that there was a fear of reduced refining capacity because right about that same time we had the hurricanes, which reduced refining capacity over in New Orleans.

Now, what's happened since this whole thing started right here which could reduce--remember that Texas has the largest amount of refineries anywhere in the United States. Joe, Mr. Barton, if I could ask you, what percentage of the refining is in Texas? It's a pretty good percentage of the national refining. Do you know?

Two-thirds. Two-thirds of the refining capacity is in Texas. And all of a sudden as this dispute between EPA and Texas rises its ugly head, and we see that the EPA is taking over this permitting, and industry itself is saying, look, we just want to know what to do. We are at a loss of what to do. And we are willing to work. Industry is saying to them, tell us what the new permit is. Tell us how to do this. What's going to happen? And there's a lawsuit pending, and all this stuff. Now the speculators, I think, are starting to say, oh, the price may be going up again. You tell me. Has the price of gasoline gone up in the last 3 months? Does it look like it's going to continue? I'm not saying this is the cause, but I think I can argue it's one of them.

What Texas does with industry is the perfect example of government and industry working to fix a problem together. That's what we thought we were going to get from the Obama administration when he started out. Instead, we have government working against industry in this present administration, and because of that we start to see it at every level. And by the way, if you think it's just in this particular area, just a little fact: 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 the new rules last year were major rules. A major rule is a rule that will result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more, a major increase in cost or prices for consumers, or significant adverse effect to the economy. And we had, just last year, 78 of those rules, plus an additional 3,000-plus more rules that were passed.

I bring this all up, and I will yield to my friend in just a moment, because I want to talk about one of the solutions that we are looking at. It's a little known thing that is now coming to the forefront. It's called the Congressional Review Act. Back in 1996 under the Contract With America Advancement Act of 1996, as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act, they created the Congressional Review Act, this is Public Policy Law PL 104-121. It allows the Congress to review every new Federal regulation issued by the government agencies and by passage of a joint resolution overrule that regulation. The process is the Federal agencies shall--note that word, that means they have to, although I don't think they all do--submit to each House of Congress and to the Comptroller General a comprehensive report on any major proposed rule. Congress has 60--that's legislative--days to pass a joint resolution of disapproval of any rule. The Senate must--must--vote on the CRA resolution of disapproval if 30 Members of the Senate approve having a vote. Only 30 Members are necessary to have a vote in the Senate.

So this is a tool where we can, in our small way, be a part of this fight on behalf of Texas. And we will be following this procedure that is set out in this act, and we will be attempting to have, and will have, a vote on this House floor on this rule. And I think when people hear the ``taint fair'' factor in this particular rule, it's going to be a strong vote.

I now yield the time to Mr. Gohmert that he wishes to take.

I yield to Mr. Barton.

That's right.

Reclaiming my time, I believe the Governor pointed out that of the million new jobs created in America in the last 5 years, 3 years, something like that, 850,000 of them were created in Texas. We are a dynamic economy; and we are a dynamic economy because we have had the foresight of all working together to make jobs, to improve the environment by using logical, commonsense methods of doing this regulation.

Reclaiming my time, that is exactly what is going on, Mr. Barton. They are all indications. You can stop your new neighbors and ask them why they came, and they will tell you because Texas is where things are happening. It is where you have a tax structure where we can prosper in business, and yet it is a fair tax structure.

You are doing things right so that rather than throwing up roadblocks to new businesses, you are throwing up enhancements to make it easier for new businesses to come and prosper. Not the big monstrous refineries, the little bitty mom-and-pops. Some of those mom-and-pops are a chain of mom-and-pop stores that are all over the State and soon to be all over the Nation. Texas makes sure that we follow basic rules and we don't turn people loose, but we come up with methods where government and industry work together to solve problems.

California.

California.

As we fight this fight, this fight is not just an oil and gas

fight. This is going to affect power plants around the country that are operating under natural gas, coal, oil, any kind of hydrocarbon. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what is going to happen in this arbitrary decision by the EPA against the will of the Congress and the American people.

We have had 2 years of doing things against the desired will of the American people, and the American people spoke in the last election. It is time for us to make commonsense decisions and do what makes sense. It makes no sense to let people operate under a system that works for 15 years and then come in and say implement this immediately. We are not giving you 3 years to implement it. You will do it now. And when we said, no, wait a minute, let's play by the rules, they say, Fine. We never did get around to giving you the official letter approving your flex permit system, so here is your official letter. It is denied. Because you are not doing anything about it, we are going to come in and take over your permitting system.

I don't think the average American thinks that is the way anybody ought to operate. It is not the way that I think anybody ought to operate. I would be surprised if it is not the way that a majority of the people in this House think these agencies ought to operate.

You know, we always hear the idiot, crazy things and they come out in the newspaper and you will see some of them. But just to let you know it is not just in this industry where new regulations are going to be going strange; there is a proposed regulation that is going to be affecting Texas for sure and a whole lot of other States in this unions: they want to regulate dust.

So, if you've got a dusty road, driving up to your ranch house or to your personal house, they want to come in and regulate the dust that kicks up in the summertime, when it's hot, behind your car.

The solution they came up with for this in California--California, the place where they have the drought in the Central Valley, a shortage of water--is to water down your road every day. Take the water you need for the plants and for people, and squirt it on the road to keep dust from going up in the air.

Like Mr. Gohmert said, we used to laugh and say, someday, the government is going to regulate the air we breathe and the food we eat. Lo and behold, they are. It's going on right now.

So this is just the beginning. As Joe said, this is just the beginning of bringing this to the attention of the American people-- this regulation, what they're doing to Texas--and of standing up for our fellow Texans, who are standing up for our State's compliance record and standing up for our State's ability to create an environment where people can have a job and where they can pay their own way--and good industry jobs. We're standing up for those people. We're making sure that we don't lose those great jobs in Texas because of this regulatory agency.

This is only the beginning of the fight. There is more to come. We're going to fight, not only this regulation, but many, many more. We'll be bringing them up to let the American people see that the regulators can be dictators.

I just want to correct one thing Mr. Gohmert said. We're no longer having a moratorium on drilling. I was told today by one of my constituents that we're having a permanentorium.

They said, Oh, yes. Where the moratorium's lifted, you just have to get a permit.

So far, there haven't been any permits.

I thank you.

At this time, I yield back what little time I have, and remind everybody that the stars are still big and bright deep in the heart of Texas.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 44 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, January 25, 2011, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to find that the President has finally found common ground with the conservatives. The President wrote in The Wall Street Journal yesterday that he issued an executive order calling for all agencies to identify job-killing and costly red tape that could be eliminated. We should help him resolve this by eliminating thousands of new regulations that will be dumped on individuals and businesses over the next 4 years by this bad health care law. The Federal Register contains 6,123 pages of requirements for the new health care rules created by this law.

The Center for Health Transformation lists 159 new Federal agencies created by this law.

We can replace this bad bill with bipartisan reforms that can let the people both keep their job and their health insurance.

Mr. Speaker, let's support the President's initiative and reduce bad regulations by repealing this bad law.

Mr. Speaker, I come over here today because about 3 weeks ago, 4 weeks ago, on a plane coming back from Washington, DC. flying to Dallas, where I changed planes and also Gabrielle Giffords changed planes, was my first opportunity to interact with this young lady. I watched her visit with the fellow travelers on the plane. She espied a couple of her constituents and talked with them. She visited with me. And then as we shared a cart to our changing gates, I was just touched by what a really, really nice person she was.

We interact in this building and we have our debates and so forth, but I got a chance to just ride and talk about family and talk about life with a charming, intelligent and quite honestly captivating young lady. And that's why I came down here today, because you don't cross paths with individuals like that very often. And when you do, it's a blessing that comes into your life.

And then when I turned on the television and discovered that this blessing had been attacked by this vicious, vicious attack that took place in Arizona, and not only was this sweet life placed at risk but a 9-year-old child was killed senselessly, others were murdered, others were wounded on the streets of Tucson in the United States of America at a congressional event.

It makes you stop and pause and think. We have to get back together and work on these issues. We have to get civility into the world.

And I am concerned about the violence. Violence has entered our House and injured one of our own and killed one of our own. I hope justice is swift and I hope justice is severe. But as we go forward, we need to work together to secure not only this House, but to secure this Nation.

Thank you, Madam Speaker.

We've been talking for a couple of years now about the rule of law and how the rules that we set up for ourselves are rules that glue our society together. But there are times when there are rules that people have a misconception about. This happens more and more when you're back home, somebody will come to you in the business community or even in their personal life and complain about something or some way that the government was interfering with their lives.

There are times when, at least in my office, where people come in griping about it and unfortunately it's not the Federal Government. It's rarely not the Federal Government, but sometimes it's not the Federal Government but it's the State government. But almost always people presume that the law that is intrusive upon their life, and these are people that are not in the regular course of dealing with Washington, those laws were passed by Congress. So, therefore, Congress did this to you. And, in a way, it's true.

Tonight, I want to talk about Federal regulatory authority. Federal regulations. We're at a time right now that some would argue is at least equal to the Great Depression in a time of joblessness and in a time of economic stagnation. Some would argue we're second to the Great Depression. Whichever it is, we have literally hundreds of thousands and millions of people in this country who need a job. They need to work. They want to work. They want to be out there and be productive members of society. That's the most important thing in their life.

Feeding your family. People go to great strains to try to make sure that they can provide for their families. And I think all Americans feel that way. Nothing hurts more than to realize that whether it's your fault or the fault of the economy or what, you can't find a job in the town you live in, or maybe even anyplace within driving distance of where you live. You hesitate to move all the way across the country to someplace where you hear there are jobs because it's so disruptive to your family. The pressure is tremendously bad on people in this country right now. There are folks that are trying to create jobs, and they have things that are interfering with their lives.

There's all kinds of reasons why you get stagnation and you get companies that are fearful to create jobs, that people are, as we hear, quote, hoarding their profits. One of the reasons we talk about all the time is uncertainty--``I don't know what's going to happen and until I know what's going to happen, I'm holding onto my money.'' That might be actually some pretty good planning in many ways. But there's also that ``I can't explain it'' factor that is in people's lives. ``I can't explain it; I just don't feel good about things right now.'' I believe that a lot of the ``I can't explain it, I just don't feel good about things right now'' feeling that a lot of Americans have, actually you could go back to what FDR said: ``The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.'' We can't define what causes us to be afraid in many instances. But there are things that go on that we create in this Congress. Through acts of Congress, we create authorities, agencies, boards, commissions, departments, all kinds of entities that have career Federal bureaucrats that work for them, and we give them what's called regulatory authority. Regulatory authority basically gives them authority to write additional rules to implement the overall plan of what the Congress perceived to be a need of the country and passed in the form of a piece of legislation. From that standpoint, I guess all rules are the resulting fault of the Congress. But in the vast majority of instances, the regulations are never addressed by the Congress.

Tonight, some of my friends are joining me and I'm really proud to have them here. We're going to talk about the fact that this is not the first time this has been recognized as an interference in the ability to create growth and create jobs in this country. Back in the nineties, back in, I believe it was right after the 1994 Republican takeover of the House, the Contract with America, there were a lot of pieces of legislation passed. Some of the things they tried to do were things that would get some of the regulators off the backs of small and large businesses which would prevent the creation of wealth, prevent the creation of jobs. They passed something called the Congressional Review Act. It was signed into law by President Clinton. The Congressional Review Act requires all Federal agencies to submit any new major regulation--that's what I was telling you about; agencies have regulatory authority and those regulations are like laws written by bureaucrats--to Congress for 60 days prior to the enactment of that regulation, during which time Congress can vote to block the new rules.

With President Obama in the White House and Reid still throttling the Senate, the CRA, the Congressional Review Act, gives the House the potential to look at these things and to realize that probably the largest concentration of regulatory rules that will ever be written in the history of this country are probably going to be written, or are in the process of being written on ObamaCare right now.

You hear all these many things that are going on, if you just watch your television, about the Secretary has come up with a new rule and has granted a new waiver to rules, a temporary waiver, a permanent waiver, a 60-day rule; a rule forever. Rules are actually epidemic. 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 were major rules. A major rule is any rule that may result in an annual effect on the economy of $100 million or more; a major increase in cost or prices for consumers; or a significant adverse effect on the economy. We are already seeing that ObamaCare seems to be the mother of all rules.

The Congressional Research Service reports that ObamaCare gives Federal agencies substantial responsibility and authority to, quote, fill in the blanks, fill in the details, for the legislation that was passed by this Congress and submitted for regulations.

There are more than 40 provisions in the health care overhaul that require, permit, or contemplate Federal rulemaking. We have this tool called the CRA. And I've got a board here that tells you a little bit about it, and I told you some of it. So it passed as part of the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996, part of the Contract for America Advancement Act of 1996. The purpose was to allow Congress to review every new Federal regulation issued by the government, government agencies, or passed by a joint resolution and overrule that regulation.

The way it works is the Federal agencies shall submit to each House of Congress and to the Comptroller General a comprehensive report on any major proposed rule. Congress has 60 days to pass a joint resolution of disapproval of any rule. The Senate must vote on the CRA resolution of disapproval if this House votes to disapprove the rule. So that's the way it works. This is a tool that I have a lot of questions with.

My first job out of law school when I was a young, stupid lawyer and had a lot to learn was to be drafting legislation for the Texas Legislative Council. And I didn't learn a lot there, but I learned one thing: When the word ``shall'' appeared, it meant you do it. If it said ``may,'' you had other options you could take. But if the legislation says ``shall submit,'' you shall submit it. You shall do it. You have to do it. But interestingly enough, I don't think that this tells you what happens if you don't. So there are a lot of questions in this bill. This bill needs some further work.

A good friend of mine, Representative Geoff Davis, has actually been looking into putting a little bit more teeth into the Congress' power to oversee these regulations. So, at this time, I'm going to yield as much time as he wishes to consume to my friend, Geoff Davis, to tell us about what he looked at when he started with his REINS Act that he proposed and tell us about it.

Take the time you need.

I thank the gentleman. My good friend, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) is here, and I want to let him make the comments he wishes to make.

That is right.

You will need to have a water truck in front of you to get to your house.

Recapturing a little bit of my time here, talking about the Portland cement issue, when I started looking into this, and first off to make this very clear, we are not talking about company called Portland Cement, we are talking about a process for making cement. It is kind of interesting. Cement is the second most consumed product globally in the world. The first is water. So honestly, just about everything that is constructed, buildings and roadways, has something to do with cement. And the projections on what this is going to do to the Portland cement industry, the people who make the concrete that we depend on, you know probably 90 percent of the skyscrapers of the world use some form of pre-stressed concrete to build a skyscraper. It is a major building material for a thriving economy. What they are telling us now is that construction spending amounts to about a trillion dollars annually, and that is about a fourth of the gross domestic product. The cement industry has declined in relation to the national economic downturn, and so has the construction industry.

If they do this, this could cost us around 153,000 jobs nationwide. That is lost jobs. We are trying to figure out a way to create jobs in this Congress; that is lost jobs. The cement industry generates $7.5 billion annually in wages and benefits. According to the Minnesota Plan, about $27.5 billion of America's economic activity, gross output, occurred in the cement manufacturing industry, and almost $931 million in indirect tax revenues were generated for State and local governments. The economic footprint for the cement industry is a trillion dollars. It is very important.

Now what can happen. According to a study done by SMU, which happens to be in the great State of Texas, they have looked at what this regulation that is being proposed by the regulators, and when we say regulators, remember, nobody elected these people to this job. Most of them work under the civil service idea that once they are here, unless they commit armed robbery, you can't get them out of their job. So they are employees for life. They sit around in little offices and come up with all of these new ideas, and they expand upon the thoughts that Congress had when we created these agencies. And I would argue that EPA has expanded beyond anybody's imagination the things that they can do. And they don't think about the fact, like blowing when you are crop dusting or spraying your roses in your yard if the wind is blowing, you're in violation of the EPA regulation they are proposing. They don't realize what the impact is on human beings.

What will happen to us on the Portland cement industry is right now our major competition is overseas anyway. I mean, China and Japan are importing, mainly China now, are importing tons of concrete into the United States every year. If we put our manufacturers out of business because of this extremely expensive regulation that would cause them to be noncompetitive in the world market. Even if they tried to compete, their increased costs would be such that they would be put out of business from a market standpoint. Other people would just have a better price. Even with shipping costs, they would have a better price. But more so, you lose all of the jobs that are created around here for the cement industry if you pass these regulations.

These are the kinds of things that Congress ought to be looking at because we are responsible to the people of the United States. This House is called the People's House because every 2 years we have to look our neighbors in the face and answer those questions that your neighbors ask you about why in the world did you guys do this?

Well, we're getting blamed for it anyway. We ought to at least look into it, and if we can do something about it, we ought to do something about it.

I see Congressman Davis is back. I'm glad to see you. We're talking about what this Portland Cement case is going to do to the cement industry. Quite honestly, it's disastrous.

Reclaiming my time for a minute, it is very clear from the cameras that this is basically a TSA employee doing a leg search of a nun.

Go ahead.

Reclaiming my time for a moment, this morning, in an airport, as I was coming to Washington, I was on one of the earliest flights going out of Austin, Texas. We're a midsized city, and I've never seen so many lines in my life. I mean, they were a good half mile long. They were back and forth and back and forth. All I could think was that I got there early enough that, by the time I got through, I could just sit and watch the rest of those lines build up. They built up, built up, built up. It was unbelievable.

A guy sitting next to me said, well, there are going to be a lot of people missing their flights today, they're not going to make it-- because these were all the people, I guess, who were coming back from Thanksgiving and instead of flying on Sunday when the cost was more they waited until Monday to get a cheaper flight. Well, what is that going to do to the airline industry? They are going to have planes flying empty. They are going to have people demanding refunds. It's going to hurt the airline industry. Before we turn around, we're going to have somebody coming in here and saying, holy cow, TSA put together this regulation, and now we're causing all these airlines to get in serious financial problems and we're going to have to buy the airline industry like we bought the automobile industry. I think we should get out of that business. That's why this Congress, or somebody who must respond to the American people, needs to be involved. That is why I think putting teeth in the Congressional Review Act through the REINS Act is good.

I will yield as much time as Mr. Westmoreland needs.

All right, let's go back to it.

Reclaiming my time, what you just described is part of the American frustration factor that is part of what has got Americans frustrated in this economy right now. It is the unknown. It is the what is the government going to do to me next that's out there that has got businessmen, job creators standing around, scratching their heads, then they hear this story.

I want to tell you a story from my youth. I was working for the legislative counsel, and then when I left that job, I got hired as the attorney for the Ag Committee of the Texas House of Representatives. I will make this short, but it is a great story. The Federal Government passed a new meat-cutting law, and it was going to affect all these mom and pop sausage makers all over the State of Texas--at that time we had literally thousands of them. We were having hearings from these people complaining about what these new regulations were doing to them, and in comes two people from the Department of Corrections with a guy in a prison uniform. They put him on the stand in the Ag Committee and said, what are you here to testify about? And he said, me and my brother were the best sausage makers in east Texas, we were the best. And this fellow comes in our door one day and says, I'm from the Federal Government, I've got some new regulations. You're going to have to tear out all your equipment and buy new equipment. He said we went to the bank and we borrowed $25,000 because he said we made the best sausage in east Texas and we put it all in. Six months later that same fellow came through our door and said we've got new regulations, you've got to have a drain and a cement floor and you've got to have all stainless steel, so all that stuff has got to go. He said, me and my brother, we went down and borrowed another $50,000 from the bank and we redid all that. He said, about 1 year later that same fellow walked in the door and said, I've got bad news for you, so I shot the guy, and now I'm in prison for attempted manslaughter. That is a true story.

That is how frustrating regulations can be.

I yield to my friend, Mr. Davis.

I'm glad you're here with me, and I hope you'll join me again because we're going to be talking about this a lot this year because it's something that matters to the American people. I encourage them to contact us if there are regulations that are of their lives that are driving them crazy because we want to talk about these things. And we need to get to work getting the teeth put in the previous act so we can actually get this accomplished and start fleecing out these, I would say, intrusive regulations that are costing us jobs when our job here today and every day until this country is back on its feet is to create jobs, not cost jobs.

I think it's time for me to call it a night tonight. So we're going to rein this thing in. And I thank you for joining me tonight, Mr. Davis, and we will visit some more.

I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank my friend for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of House Concurrent Resolution 319 commemorating the 1-year anniversary of the terrible shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas.

On November 5, 2009, a gunman entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Ft. Hood, Texas, and mercilessly opened fire on military and civilian personnel who were preparing for deployment or who had recently returned from being overseas in a deployment. Thirteen people were killed in this attack, including 12 soldiers, one of whom was an expecting mother and one former soldier. Thirty-one people were wounded. Some of the wounded, like Staff Sergeant Patrick Zeigler, have required months of care and rehabilitation, and that is an ongoing situation.

But wonderful stories come out of this. One story that I heard, as a young soldier saw his sergeant get shot the third time, he jumped between his sergeant and the shooter and took the rest of the rounds into his body because he just was afraid his sergeant wouldn't be able to survive any more.

At the time there was a graduation ceremony going on at Ft. Hood from college, and a bunch of young soldiers were graduating from college right next door. When the call went out for medics, multiple members of that group threw off their cap and gown before they graduated and took off next door to the processing center to work with the wounded. Without regard to their own safety, civilian and military law enforcement personnel, including Sergeants Munley and Todd, acted swiftly and courageously to neutralize the threat, using the active shooter training program they had recently completed.

Army medics immediately reverted to their combat-honed training and began treating the wounded, greatly reducing the loss of more life. Fellow soldiers from everywhere descended upon this area and, while the shooting was going on, risked their lives to evacuate their brethren safely to Darnall Army Hospital.

Fort Hood regional communities, the State of Texas, military service organizations, and countless Americans united in support of Fort Hood victims and their families, collecting millions of dollars in charitable donations. My office has worked hard to ensure that the Fort Hood victims receive all the benefits to which they are entitled as combat victims. Additionally, we are working with the Department of Defense to overcome regulatory obstacles that have prevented the victims and their families from receiving charitable donations. I am hopeful our Senate colleagues will agree to these legislative adjustments included in this year's defense authorization bill to ensure that Fort Hood victims and their families receive every benefit to which they are rightly entitled.

I want to thank the House Armed Services Committee and the House leadership for working with my office to swiftly bring this resolution to the floor.

I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring the Fort Hood victims and their families by passing this House Concurrent Resolution 319.

Mr. Speaker, I intentionally did not discuss the accused shooter in an effort to protect his right to a fair and impartial trial when that trial occurs.

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Mr. Edmund G. Schmidt of Hutto Texas. ``Mr. Hutto'', is what they call him. Mr. Edmund G. Schmidt has served the Hutto community in countless ways for decades. First being elected to city council in 1961, Ed served the city for 29 consecutive years, 9 as city councilman and 20 as mayor of Hutto. A World War II Veteran, and small business owner for over 50 years, Schmidt has also continued serving with several groups, including the Hutto Lions Club, where he is in his 54th year of perfect attendance as a charter member, and Hutto Lutheran Church where he has served for more than six decades. Schmidt served as the first President of the Hutto Economic Corporation.

Schmidt grew up on a farm outside of Taylor. ``God's country,'' he calls it. Looking for a way to a way to provide for his young family after returning from the war, some friends convinced him to open his own grocery store in Hutto.

Signing a 5-year lease for $25 a month, Schmidt transformed a big, open building on East Street into his own grocery store, Red & White, with his wife Julia. They opened their doors on Friday, July 13, 1951, with three other groceries in the area to compete with. Ed proved himself to the community of Hutto and 2 years later, in 1953, he bought and expanded into the space next door. When his lease expired he purchased his first building. He owned and operated his grocery store with Julia on East Street until 1990. With the store closed, Schmidt had the opportunity to get in the insurance business with his son Dennis, so he sold some of his building space and kept enough for an office where he still works with his son. As an established resident, small business and property owner in Hutto, in 1961 Schmidt learned of a place on the council through a good friend from church who was also council member. When an opening came up mid-term, Schmidt filled it and then kept getting re-elected, never spending a cent on a campaign. ``I never thought, and no one on council, thought of ourselves as politicians,'' he said. ``We were serving the community. We just had to pitch in.''

At this time, the city assessed and collected its own taxes; it had one elected marshal who was replaced with a one-person police department, a distant thought from the Hutto we see today, with a full police force, and new neighborhoods and schools being built to keep up with the rapid growth. On Friday, October 20, 2007, the city honored Schmidt, renaming County Road 119 after him, for his contribution to Hutto's growth. Ed Schmidt Boulevard links Hutto to Pflugerville's FM 685.

Though he continues to work hard every day without any sign of slowing down, Ed cherishes his time spent with Julia. Married 68 years, the Schmidt's have raised four children and now take great pride and joy in their 12 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren who all live between Austin and Rockdale.

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be here tonight. I guess everybody is just really pleased to be back in Washington, DC and having to leave those wonderful districts we live in and come up to this place.

But you know I am blessed. I live in Texas and I am glad to be here tonight so we can talk about something, again, about a subject I have been talking about in various degrees for about 19 months now and that is we do have a rule of law that is the underpinning of our society. We started, when we decided to create this great Republic, we started, decided that we would codify that rule of law and one of the best written documents on the face of the Earth, I happen to have a little copy of it right here, in pocket size form, the Constitution of the United States.

In this Constitution of the United States, we not only set out how the newly formed union of the States would operate with a newly formed national government, but it set out how this body would operate, how the executive branch would operate, how the judiciary would operate.

In my lifetime, I have been blessed by my neighbors because we elect our judges as well as our Representatives. In Texas, I have been blessed by my neighbors to serve in two branches of our government, because with the basic Constitution of the United States establishing a legislative branch, an executive branch and a judicial branch, all the States basically follow that same general guideline and now, around the world, democracies that have sprung up from this longest lived democratic process called the United States Government, the Republic that we created for the United States. Others have, using various forms of democracy, have followed the general pattern.

When we talk to a young kid like a, let's say, an elementary school, kindergarten, up to sixth-grade student, talk about the three branches of government, you talk about the legislative branch that writes the laws, the executive branch that enforces the laws that the legislature wrote and the judicial branch, which enforces the law and interprets the law. Now that's basically what we talk about here. It's very simple, and it's very real, and that's really what we are supposed to have here.

One of our jobs, as guardians of this document called the Constitution, and this system we call the United States of America, and its Federal Government, one of the things we have a responsibility to do is we have a responsibility to stay in check and balance on the other part of the three branches of the government. The judiciary has got checks and balances on both the executive and the legislative. The legislative has checks and balances on the judiciary and the executive. The executive adds checks and balances to the appointment process on the judiciary and the legislative.

So our Founding Fathers said not only are we going to have these three branches of government, but it's the responsibility of those branches to make sure other branches aren't going haywire, because they come from the place of government where the branch of government went haywire all the time and they were fed up with autocratic kings and the royalty of the various nations that they had come from to come across the oceans of the United States, and they wanted to make sure that nobody dominated, stepped on each other's toes.

I have been talking about the fact that all of this falls under that great category that we sort of envisioned, now the world needs and adopts, and that is the rule of law. A civil society cannot operate without rules, not only that police the society, but that the society can count on as they move through commerce or through interaction with other human beings to be the rules that you play by.

Just like Americans love our games, baseball, basketball, football, not necessarily in that order, and other games, we love our games, and we want to make sure, and we are the first ones to jump up and scream, they are breaking the rules, because you can't play the game without rules. This body here has a real responsibility to create those rules. We write laws which are the Big Brothers, the rules, and we give rulemaking authority to people, but authority comes from this Congress.

So having that glue the whole society, now you ask me well, yes, that may sound good for America but not everybody needs that. Well, let me ask you something, if you are going to go make a deal with your neighbor over the boundary line between your property in some country in Central America, and you are trying to make, to determine where this boundary line is and you find out you don't have any rules about titles to property, so nobody really knows where the boundaries are, how do you solve that problem?

Well, you could solve it by whoever had the biggest stick and go beat each other's brains out and whoever won will get to decide where the property

line is. But that's not the rule of law. That's the rule of terrorism or the rule of violence.

Now it's that one simple thing of a way to register property in a country gives people a place to go to discuss where something simple like is that tree in my yard or is that tree in your yard, between neighbors, and they don't have to bash each other's brains out over the issue. Now that may be simplistic, but that's about as easy as I can make it. Yet, believe me, people bash each other's brains out if they don't have a place to go to resolve something simple like that. All you have got to do is be a municipal court judge in a city in Texas and you might find out a little bit about that.

So my point is the reason we have these rules is so that our society can function in a civil manner, and the reason we have responsibility to police up the other branches of government is to settle these debates.

And we have had these fights for a long time. They are part of our constitutional law of the United States.

We have a poster here just on the Cherokee issue, and, whether or not to the right or wrong of the Cherokee issue, this came down to a dispute between the Supreme Court and the Executive, the President. In this particular situation, Chief Justice Marshall, John Marshall, one of the most famous, if not the most famous Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, had ruled in a way that Andrew Jackson, the President of the United States, didn't like. And the big issue was Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.

Now why is that something we ought to start talking about? Because this is the reverse situation of what I'm going to talk about tonight. The President of the United States is basically saying, ``I am not going to enforce the law. The courts have determined what the law is and what the law means, but I'm not going to enforce it. I'm going to do it my way.''

And basically, Worcester v. Georgia settled that issue. The President of the United States has the obligation, from his oath of office, to enforce the law. Andrew Jackson was famously stubborn, and it was a big problem in its time.

Now, one of the things I want to talk about today that I think worries me a lot about the rule of law is that various Congresses over various years have written a whole body of law concerning the immigration and naturalization laws of the United States of America.

These days, our media, in an attempt to give their own definition to people's intents, the minute you want to start talking about issues like this, there is going to be somebody that is going to try to call you a racist or a bigot or whatever. I'm talking about the facts. We have a set of laws about immigration. And I'm not talking about immigration from any particular country. I'm talking about immigration from all countries.

And we have a way to become a naturalized American citizen and have the rights of an American citizen imposed upon you; and those laws are set out in statutes, and they tell you there are things that are against the law. And one of the things they tell you is it's against the law to enter the United States without permission.

Now, in an attempt to get away from my heritage, where I come from, I'm from Texas. We have the largest amount of border of any State in the Union with the country of Mexico. We have a long and sometimes rocky history as a State. And prior to being a State, as a Republic of Texas and, prior to that, as a colony of Mexico, we have a long and sometimes rocky history with the country of Mexico. But today, in today's present 21st century, most Texans, either born or those who have moved there, consider the northern parts of Mexico like home. I mean we have a very, very solid, strong relationship with the people of Mexico.

This is not about Mexicans, or it's not about Hispanics, or it's not about the Irish. There were people up here that wanted to free the Irish. It's about the law. We have written laws that say if you come into our country illegally or if you overstay a visa that got you here legally but when it expired you then had to leave and you didn't leave, if you did those things, then you have broken our laws. Now, some people think that is too strict; other people think it is not strict enough. But the bottom line is it has broken the law.

The President of the United States, Barack Obama, in the very recent past, by Executive order, basically decided to tell the courts and the judicial system established to enforce the immigration laws, the immigration judiciary system, that they were to ignore or dismiss, and they are dismissing approximately 17,000 cases that the administration has determined they shouldn't go forward on.

Now, what does this do? A good friend of mine has joined me today, Mr. Bilirakis from Florida, and he is one of the people who stood up when all this happened and said what I have been saying on a lot of issues in this House: Wait a minute. What is going on? What about the written rules? What about the immigration naturalization laws?

I believe Mr. Bilirakis is on the committee that is responsible for looking into those things. So I'm going to recognize my friend from Florida to make at least a small comment on how he views this issue, starting off with the issue of the President's announcing certain people, they would no longer enforce the law against those people.

Thank you, and I reclaim my time.

The point is legislation is the proper way for us to deal with this problem. This Congress is the place where we make decisions on how we change our immigration laws. They are written by this Congress, and they should be changed, if they need to be changed, by this Congress.

I don't understand why the President of the United States thinks he must arbitrarily grant what turns out to be a de facto amnesty because his party controls this House and will until the end of this year control this House. We still have weeks left on this session of Congress, and there is a possibility we can come back after the elections and have another session of Congress before the end of this year. If this immigration issue needs to be taken up, it should have been taken up by the Congress. But there seems to be this idea that the President of the United States has the type of powers that he can, with the stroke of a pen, set aside contracts; and with the stroke of a pen set aside the laws of this country; and with the stroke of a pen ignore orders of our court system. I just don't think the world or our laws allow the executive branch to be able to do that. It is not like this thing wasn't telegraphed before.

Recently, we had one of the worst oil spill disasters in the history of our country. And the President of the United States declared at one time a gulf-wide moratorium on drilling in the gulf. At that time, there were hundreds of drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico operating. And at that time, both shallow water and deep water, they shut it down by the President declaring a moratorium.

Now how do we learn how we do things in this country? We either read them in our laws, we are instructed in the precedents that are set by the courts, and we ought to look at the history of how we operated in the past. That would make common sense. So before we look at whether the President overstepped his individual authority by declaring a moratorium, the question would come, has anybody that was President of the United States ever declared a moratorium on drilling before? And the answer is, yes. His name was Richard Nixon, a Republican.

Now let's look at how Richard Nixon went about getting a moratorium to stop drilling off the coast of California. Did he make an individual dictate from his own pen and say, I hereby declare you can no longer drill? No. What did he do? He went to the Congress of the United States and said to the Congress, we need to have a ban or moratorium on drilling off the coast of California. And this deliberative body held hearings, I assume. I haven't delved into it that much, but I do know that the Congress and the President issued a moratorium on drilling off the coast of California. And to my knowledge, that moratorium is still in place. And whether or not it was tested in the court systems, I have no idea. But I would assume it was, because if there was anybody drilling at the time, they probably felt like their contract rights were stepped on. And I am sure the court ruled on it. And the court must have ruled in favor of the Congress and the President because the moratorium is still in place.

So what does that tell us about the right way to declare a moratorium? Well, the right way is to go to the Congress, and with the Congress put forth the Congress declaring a moratorium and the President enforcing that moratorium. That is the way it is supposed to operate. If you read this little book, the Constitution of the United States, that is what it says.

This is not what we did. The President of the United States unilaterally said we are declaring a moratorium. He was joined by his Secretary of Energy, I believe, but it was taken to court and a Federal judge overturned the Obama administration's initial 6 months of moratorium and rejected the government's bid to have the court challenge thrown out. The government lawyers argued that the lawsuit filed by several offshore service companies on the May 28 moratorium was moot because the Interior Department imposed a new drilling moratorium. What is the Interior Department? Is it a creation, is it a department of the Congress? Nope. It is a department of the executive branch of the Federal Government. Who appoints the Interior Secretary? The President of the United States appoints with the advice and consent of the Senate. That is how we get the head of the Interior Department.

Now I can't speak for the Interior czar because the Interior czar doesn't have to go through that vetting process; he must answer only to the President of the United States, but we have now approaching 40 czars, and I don't know what they do except draw a paycheck. But they answer to the President. But U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman rejected that argument, saying the second moratorium arguably fashions no substantial changes from the first.

Now, when a judge grants an injunction and says, one side over the other, this side is right to seek relief from the court in the form of an injunctive process, and you are enjoined, you are stopped from doing the behavior you were doing. And that is basically what this court said to the President of the United States. It said you can't do this. But they did it anyway. Where that is in the court system, I don't know. But it is blatantly standing forward. Not only is it bypassing the legislative process, which is the normal way by precedent to get a moratorium on drilling in America, because that is the way it has been done in the past, but then when the court says hey, you can't do it, they did it anyway. And now by playing regulatory games and giving favors to some and maybe not favors to others, and I don't know anything about that part of the game playing; I know that some people seem to be getting permits and some people seem to be not getting permits, and whether or not there is a moratorium in shallow

water depends on who you talk to. But I can tell you, the deepwater folks seem to still be shut down.

Now, there is a reason we ought to go to the Congress. One of the reasons is that every seat that you see in this House of Representatives is filled with a person who represents at this time 652,000 Americans. So that person speaks for and votes for 652,000 Americans. If a choice is going to be made to shut down the production of approximately 20 percent of the oil and gas production a year in the United States, which is what the gulf produces, approximately 20 percent, then the American people probably would think this could have an effect on jobs, that it could have an effect on the cost of fuel and that it could have an effect on their standard of living. It may be they would like their Members of Congress to be able to have something to say about shutting down 20 percent of the production of petroleum and natural gas in the United States.

Especially in light of a recession, I would think they would want their individual Members of Congress to be very vocal about how their Representatives have represented them and would ask, What's this going to do to my job? What's this going to do to this economy? How much is this going to hurt us? How much more dependent is it going to put us on foreign oil? With these questions, that's why Nixon went to Congress for a moratorium, because the people in Congress spoke for the people of the United States. That's the way it's set up. The House of Representatives represents the people.

We didn't go through that process for this moratorium. We had the White House and President Barack Obama basically declare a moratorium.

You will do what I say. You will not drill in the gulf.

The court said, You can't do that, partner.

So then he had the Interior Department saying, You can't drill in the gulf. I assume the concept behind the Interior Department is that the leases that they were drilling on were Interior leases. That's the way I understand it.

Then wait a minute. If you paid for that lease and if part of the contract you made with the government was, if you paid them money for their lease--sometimes millions of dollars for a lease--and then you went out there and drilled on that lease and you didn't find any oil, the Interior Department would kind of say, Well, better luck next time. Thanks for your million bucks. If you find oil, then the Interior Department is supposed to say, Well, congratulations. Although, there are those in this body who would say, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Now, if you've found oil, you've got to give us more money; but the laws of contracts have something to do with that--once again, the rule of law.

So we were talking about this problem with drilling offshore. We had sort of a one-man show of a moratorium, and the courts have disputed it.

Now the President of the United States is taking off, and the Justice Department is going after one of our States by taking it to U.N. Human Rights Council and arguing that a law in the State of Arizona should be taken before some body that should have no authority over this country, and they'll ask them to call us human rights violators and call the State of Arizona human rights violators. They have also taken the State of Arizona to court for a law that they wrote, which tracks almost identically a Federal law that the Department of Homeland Security is supposed to be enforcing but is not. Therefore, Arizona got tired of the invasion of their State and said, if the Feds aren't going to enforce this law, then we'll write it just like the Federal law, and we'll ask our folks to enforce it because somebody has got to stand up for the people of Arizona.

I'm not here to debate that. I'm here just to point out that all of this type of thinking comes down to the concept that the executive branch of the government can do what it wants to. It doesn't have to consult with Congress. Sure, Congress wrote laws which state it's illegal to come into this country without permission, but we think that there are at least 17,000 first-time cases. There may be more. Though, starting with around 17,000 people, we're just going to decide to dismiss the cases against them.

Now let's think about that. There is a judicial process where the folks who come into this country illegally get caught. There is a judicial process that can determine whether or not they should be deported from this country. It's very similar to the judicial process you're all familiar with in this House and all over the country about what goes on in the courtroom.

You have a trier of fact who determines what the facts are in the case, and you have law that is written and precedents that are established which tell you what the remedies are to resolve the issue. Then there is a trier of fact, the trier of the law, who comes up with a resolution of the issue. Whether it be an immigration judge or whether it be a Federal district judge, there is an issue that is resolved.

True, true, the prosecution can dismiss a case, but to have the executive branch of the government direct the Justice Department, which is supposedly our lawyer, to randomly dismiss cases and then make the statement ``we're only going after criminal aliens,'' well, let me tell you something about criminal aliens so you've got a really clear picture of this. I have tried to talk with the Homeland Security Department about this because I happen to serve on the Appropriations Committee for Homeland Security.

If your definition of a ``criminal alien'' is someone who is a felon, then you can't under the Constitution of the United States declare someone to be a felon until that person has been convicted of a crime by a court. Otherwise, there is something called the ``presumption of innocence,'' and until a court declares you guilty, you are innocent. So, even though somebody walks in here and shoots everybody in this room on national television, that person is still innocent until a court says he's guilty.

So you're saying we're going to go after criminal aliens. If you're going to call them ``criminal aliens,'' they have to be convicted by a court. Now, if they are convicted by a court, it's a pretty good chance they're in prison.

Now, let me ask you--and you don't have to be a legal scholar; you don't have to be a former judge; you don't even have to have ever served on a jury. By just using the good old American commonsense, if all of the criminal aliens--or let's just say 95 percent of those convicted of a crime as criminal aliens are in jail or are in prison, how hard are they to find? I mean is it really a task to find out where they are?

I come from Williamson County in Texas. We have a great big jail in Williamson County. I promise you that you can pick up the phone and call our great sheriff and ask, Sheriff, how many convicted illegal aliens have you got in your jail?

He'll say, I can give you a list of people I think are illegal, but I haven't asked them.

So let's just assume that the sheriff's wise ideas are even inaccurate a little bit. You're still going to pick up a number of them. How hard is it to catch them? Go to the jail; go to their cells; unlock the doors and take them. That's how hard it is to catch them. They're in custody. They've dedicated the entire program of ICE to one proposition--deporting illegal aliens who are criminals. They don't have to go out and chase anybody. They've got them all incarcerated.

It's not that hard, but that's what the target is for this year. And it sounds great on television, but the truth is, I think anybody that is a normal American wouldn't even consider releasing somebody that has been to prison for some serious crime. Of course if you have the chance to deport them, you want to deport them; but here's something that's kind of interesting: there is a sector of the border--and the Homeland folks and the border patrol divide the areas up by sectors, and this is called the Del Rio sector. And in the Del Rio sector, we started a thing called Operation Streamline with the cooperation of the judges and the courts and the prosecutors. And let me tell you, this isn't easy, it's hard work, and these people are to be commended for what they do.

But they set up a process that those people caught coming across our border

in the Del Rio section of the border would go before a judge and have a hearing, every one of them. Now, you say why is that a big deal? Well, because the President of the United States and the Homeland Security Department just declared 17,000 people will never go before a judge, not on that issue. Unless they re-file the cases--which is done with prejudice so they can come back and re-file the cases--but unless they re-file the cases, these people will never answer to a court.

But why would you want them to answer to a court, courts are so crowded? Sure, but some judges who are willing to work hard to do what's right by the law in the Del Rio sector have made the Del Rio sector the least border-crossed area on the border. Why? Because there is something about looking a judge straight in the eye and they tell you, Sir, or madam, you have violated the laws of the United States by coming across our border, that makes those people say I'm not going to see that judge again, I'm going to cross someplace else.

Now, maybe we should be setting up a system like that to cover our whole border, maybe that would help a whole lot, and we should provide the resources to do it.

But the real point comes back to at least 17,000 people will never look that judge in the eye based upon the actions of the Obama administration. And some of those people may have gone back across and applied to come in legally. We are the only country in the world that brings in 1 million foreigners a year into our country illegally. There isn't anybody who can match us; nobody can even come close in the entire world. The United States opens our doors to 1 million people that follow the rules and come into this country, yet you can call it compassion, but it is random compassion. Who said these people, determined by the White House, are more deserving of compassion than these people over here because we've got, according to most of the estimates, between 12 and 20 million of these people in our country? So who decides we pick 17,000? And are we starting a policy that everybody that is awaiting a hearing in an immigration court will just be excused. Is that the new policy? So 17 is just a start? Well, I don't know, we don't have an answer to that.

But the real question we have to be concerned about is, who made the executive branch so independent to operate that they can shut down things like drilling in the gulf and turn loose people who have pending court cases on their say so without any consultation or action by the legislative branch of the government or any declaration for enforcement by the judicial branch of the government? I think that's a rule-of-law question that we in this House ought to be talking about. I don't think, when we wrote this Constitution of the United States, we ever envisioned giving that kind of power to any individual person or even to any branch of the government.

And I think we have reason to show real concern when we read something like this in the Houston Chronicle: ``Culling the immigration court system dockets of noncriminals started in earnest in Houston about a month ago and has stunned local immigration attorneys.'' I'm sure it stunned them because they are no longer going to get a fee. But in addition to that, they got benefits they never even sought because they weren't seeking dismissals. They were seeking probably things like--well, I won't go into that--other remedies in the court. They got the cases dismissed without even knowing they were going to be dismissed, and they are as confused as everybody else is.

Now, I'm not saying it wasn't done for the right reason. I don't know why it was done. I don't know who makes the random pick of 17,000 people out of 20 million. Who makes that choice? Is that the choice that one individual we need to have make? It is the immigration czar that decides who gets that and who doesn't? Or is it the Secretary of Homeland Security? Or is it the President of the United States? And under what authority do they have the right to do this? And is it the kind of world you want to live in where one person has the ability to make a decision that basically sidesteps the judicial system in the country because they like you? Or whatever they do; we don't know why they did it.

Do we want the President of the United States coming into the judicial system of the country and saying, you know what? We've got so many criminal cases pending, they are just too crowded, the docket, we're going to dismiss all but the murder cases because we really think the only thing that is really serious is murder. So wipe out the rest. I mean, that seems ridiculous--and it is ridiculous--but at what point does that authority, not granted by any other source to one man, what curtails it unless we ask about it and we ask what law allows this to happen? Who gets to make these decisions to circumvent the written law of the United States and why do they get that decision-making process?

There may be a good answer; I haven't heard one. And those who have questioned it in the press and those who have questioned it with letters, such as Mr. Bilirakis and Marsha Blackburn--another great Member of Congress--have asked that question and it's my understanding have not received any answers. By what authority is this done?

And I may be the only voice talking here tonight, but every country ought to have somebody and every State ought to have somebody standing up and asking these questions because the only supreme authority other than God Almighty is this Constitution of the United States. In this document and the offshoots of this document lies the power of the people who serve up here in Washington, DC and around the country. So this is serious stuff we are talking about, the rule of law, and it's stuff we ought to worry about.

Finally, I want to say that the really sad thing that is being reported in some of these newspaper articles is that this is deferred action, which really concerns me for those of us who have been trying to actually come up with real solutions to be fair and yet be just to all Americans, and just have possibly one of the tools that could have been used by this Congress established by the written document called the law, possibly taken away from us because of the bad taste it's going to leave in the American public's mouth.

I'm very concerned about that because, quite honestly, it was one of the possible solutions we could deal with. But I'm not going to go into that other than to say I hope that when we do finally sit down and do a compassionate solution to the immigration problem that takes into consideration not only the invading immigrants, but takes into consideration the rest of the country that it has invaded to come up with a solution to this problem, that we haven't in some way, by the actions of the White House, tainted one method that might have been used to start to correct some portion of the problem.

Finally let me say, the reason there's passion in my State on this issue is because more people died in the war run by the cartels across the border. Right across the border, a hundred yards from American citizens who live among the border, there have been, I think it's something like 25,000 people murdered, which is way more than the casualty rate for our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Police officers and police officials, mayors, anyone who stands up and says, ``We ought to enforce the law over here,'' is killed, maimed, butchered, beheaded. And anarchy reigns--not because of the good intention of the Mexican Government; because of the evil that permeates the lawlessness on the Mexican-U.S. border.

And we have to be concerned about what's happening on our borders. All of us in this country have to be concerned, because that evil is there, and it's just, in Texas, a swim across the river away; in Arizona or New Mexico, it's one footstep away from being in one of our States and then across the country. And some of these drug gangs now have agents in every major and minor city in this country. MS-13 and other gangs like that, the study shows they have spread across the Nation.

So when we're talking about, yes, we've got lots of issues that have to do with good folks who live good lives and they're here illegally, we need to work on that. But don't ever forget, if you give up a portion of the law, you could lose it all. And when you lose it all,

who's going to stand between you and the bad guys?

And that's why we've got to keep talking about the rule of law is the glue that holds our society together. And if we give it up, whether it is for what is viewed today as a compassionate, goodwill reason or not, if we give up the strength of the law that keeps our society together, we weaken our society. And then ultimately those people who would do you harm through violence and terror will be able to control the world we live in.

That's why our soldiers go to war to fight across the ocean to prevent that from happening in our country and to help countries where it is happening to establish rule of law so they can prevent the destruction of their society. That's why great American soldiers go fight those wars. That's why we have the police force and the fire department and all of these other departments that protect us.

But if you take away the tools by some group deciding we can just, by the stroke of a pen, eliminate a certain bunch of rules we don't like, where does it stop?

This is a serious issue of the rule of law. I raise it for discussion among the Members of this House and among the people of this country. Is this the way we make it better for our lives?

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 15 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, September 15, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I request that my name be removed as a cosponsor on H.R. 5081.

Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi became the first elected female Speaker of the House in the history of the United States. On November 16, 2006 she stated, ``This leadership team will create the most honest, most open, and most ethical Congress in history.'' She still serves as our Speaker and she also sits in the position in line to, in case of some horrible disaster, she is actually third in line to the Presidency.

The President of the United States said, ``I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send a message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for powerful people and one for ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.'' President Barack Obama said this to CNN on February 3, 2009. So that was the stage that was set for the Democratic administration in this House and for the Democrat administration in the White House.

I've been on the floor of this House now for about 18 or 19 months talking about lots of things, about how we have rules for a reason, and we believe, as Americans, in the rule of law. It is as sacred as anything that there is of a secular nature in this country, that we believe that law and fairness is so important to us that we have laws, and that each person is treated fairly under those laws. And there are no exceptions. And as the President said, we want a world that we live in that says everybody in this country is not only created equal but is going to be treated equal under the law. And we've had lots of examples where that didn't happen, and that's part of the turmoil that has moved around this Nation for over 200 years. But the average American citizen down deep in his soul, in his heart, he wants that world, she wants that world, the American citizen wants the world that says the law treats everybody equally and fairly. And when we go to our court systems under the rules that we operate under, we expect others to follow those rules the same way, and we expect that those who are in a position of enforcing those rules are seeing that that conduct is policed up when those rules are broken. We expect them to treat everybody equally and accordingly.

We've got a volume of rules for this House of Representatives that's about that thick, and it is written in such fine print that you have to have reading glasses to read it, even when you're young--and when you're my age, you certainly need bifocals and trifocals just to read the fine print. But we also have people that have served in this Congress for decades and dealt with these rules. And they understand them, they know these rules, the Speaker being one of them. And when we make a promise to this House that we will have the most honest, open, and ethical Congress in the history of the Congress, that kind of promise is important to the American people because that's exactly what they were looking for from this Democratic administration.

Many times I stand here all by myself on the floor of the House talking about these things, occasionally somebody comes forward and joins me. But I think the Members of this House in their souls expect that. I think every American citizen expects that. And we are now at a point where after I've been talking for 18 or 19 months almost every week about the former chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Charles Rangel, and the issues that he had, we have finally, finally reached a point where the Ethics Committee has moved off high center and launched forward in this case. But just so we get an idea of why I've been standing up here, why my colleagues come and join me and stand up here, let's just go through the timeline that we're dealing with and how long it's been going on.

September 24, 2008: The House Ethics Committee votes to open an investigation into soliciting funds for the Charlie Rangel Center for Public Service, occupying rent-stabilized apartments, soliciting donations on congressional letterhead, and not disclosing or paying changes on rental income from a Dominican villa. September 24, 2008.

November 6-9, 2008: Mr. Rangel leads the Citigroup-funded congressional junket to the Caribbean.

December 9, 2008: The Ethics Committee expands the investigation to include Rangel's efforts to preserve tax breaks to a donor to the Rangel Center.

January 28, 2009: Representative Carter, Republican from Texas, introduces the Rangel rule, a bill to eliminate all IRS penalties and interests for paying taxes past due, the reason for that rule being that's the way the IRS treated the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and I took the position that that was only fair.

August 12, 2009: Rangel amends his financial disclosure forms for 2002 to 2006, effectively doubling his wealth that he now acknowledges to the country.

October 6, 2009: Representative Carter introduces a resolution demanding that Rangel step down as the Ways and Means chairman.

October 8, 2009: The Ethics Committee expands the Rangel investigation to all 2009 financial statements.

February 26, 2010: The Ethics Committee admonishes Rangel for accepting the Caribbean trip.

March 3, 2010: Rangel steps down as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee after Representative Carter prepares to introduce another privileged resolution.

July 22, 2010: The Ethics Committee announces that its subcommittee investigating Rangel alleges House rules violations and that they will be made public on July 29.

So from September 24, 2008 to July 29, 2010, this House dealt with the issues concerning Mr. Rangel. What's not on this board and should be is that on the floor of this very House--and really what launched us into realizing this was going on--was Mr. Rangel stepped before the House and told us every one of these things, every one of them, and said he had turned himself in to the Ethics Committee. Well, I'd like to explain that those of us that deal with the law have a saying, ``justice delayed is justice denied.'' And that's one of the reasons why we have speedy trial acts in many of the jurisdictions in this country because justice delayed is justice denied.

Now, when we're talking about justice, we're not talking just about justice for the individual defendant, we're talking about justice for everyone involved.

If it's a criminal case, we're talking about the kind of justice where the State, representing the people of a State or of this country, is desiring justice on behalf of the people, and the defendant is desiring justice on behalf of the defendant. It doesn't really matter who it is or who is being denied this

justice, whether it be the people as represented by the State or the government or whether it be the individual who may be the defendant who is looking for individual justice. Any undue delay in dealing with a problem like this is justice denied.

So we are in July. We are just 1 month and 20-some-odd or 30-some-odd days--let's just be honest and call it 2 months--we are just 2 months away from 2 years of dealing with the situation with Mr. Rangel. He stood right there at that microphone and told us about it for over an hour on the floor of this House.

Now, having seen some very unusual releases by the Ethics Committee about the scope of their investigation, I will say they have done a very comprehensive and a very effective investigation of this case. I want to say that from the outset because I am certainly not in any way demeaning the work ethic of that committee. But when we have the leader saying that we have to deal with this, you have to ask: How does this compare with other cases? How does this compare with the kind of justice we were seeking at other times?

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when one whole half of this House, the half that was in the majority at that time, was accused by the minority--and this was every one of us on the Republican side-- of being involved in a culture of corruption because of certain issues that very validly were dealt with both by the Justice Department, with some people ending up in prison, and by our Ethics Committee.

It is the duty and the responsibility of the leadership that leads this House of Representatives--and that leadership is headed by Nancy Pelosi--to make sure that we are going forward, that we are going forward in a very effective way and that we are getting to the root of the problem as quickly as possible.

I would argue that after this 2 years, less 2 months, that we have been dealing with the Rangel case, it is still not resolved; and now there is at least some speculation that there will be no resolution of this issue until after the November elections or at least until after the New York primary elections. You know, the primary voters ought to know the resolution of this problem. They ought to know what is going to happen as they go to vote in the New York primary, but it doesn't look like we are going to resolve it even by the time the voters have had a chance to express their opinions one way or the other against any of the candidates that are involved.

I think that is justice denied.

We're moving forward. I'm not rushing. I've had people ask me questions about resolutions and so forth. I believe in the system, and I am hoping this system is now off high center and is moving forward with haste, but sometimes it takes somebody like me just down here, talking and talking and talking, to remind folks we have a duty to everybody in this House, to everybody in this country and to the individuals who are accused to resolve the issues. This issue has been on the forefront for a long time; but if we don't get through this, just look at what has happened in this period of time.

Mr. Rangel was in charge of the committee. There have been major pieces of legislation that he has ushered through this House. Maybe it's appropriate. Maybe it's not. We don't know. We haven't resolved this issue. We don't know whether any of these allegations have been actually addressed. We don't know what the outcome is going to be, and we are probably not going to know before the people of New York have a chance to go vote in their primary. I don't think that's the right way that ought to be. I don't think the average American thinks that's the right way it ought to be either.

Here is a fairly recent statement. I don't have a date on it. I apologize for that. It is from the Congressional Daily: ``Massa Case still hangs over Dems,'' meaning Democrats. ``For House Democrats, how soon will the other ethics shoe drop--and how hard?''

``A House Ethics subcommittee's finding last week that Representative Charles Rangel, Democrat of New York, violated congressional ethics rules comes at a politically awkward time in these months before the November 2 midterm elections.''

So I guess this is very current.

``Little word has emerged from another Ethics panel reviewing whether Speaker Pelosi and other House leaders or their aides mishandled initial complaints of sexual harassment against former Representative Eric Massa, Democrat from New York, by male staffers.''

So here we have another issue that's hanging out there, and you ask: Well, what's the big hurry on this? When did this happen? What is the timeline?

Well, let's compare this timeline to a timeline we know, because we had another event in this House where there were allegations of sexual misconduct, and so we are going to talk about both of them and compare them and see where we are.

The Mark Foley case. This is back when the Republicans were in charge of the House of Representatives:

On September 29, 2006, Representative Foley resigned after allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior with House pages. On October 5, 2006, which was in a week and a half, the Ethics Committee launches the investigation. On December 8, 2006, the Ethics Committee concludes the investigation. Foley's resignation and the investigation totals 70 days. The accusations were: What did the House Republican leadership know ahead of time about Mark Foley and about the allegations against him?

We have the Eric Massa case:

What are the allegations? What did the Democrat House staff know about the allegations against Mr. Massa? At what time did they know it? How far before it was actually reported? On March 8, 2010, Representative Massa resigns. On April 21, 2010, the Ethics Committee launches the investigation. The Massa investigation today is 141 days and counting. It is not resolved.

Let's have a comparison. By our little example right here, it takes twice as long under the Democrats as the Republicans--and still counting. Heck, if you look at the Rangel case, it may be 2 years before it's resolved, and maybe it will be next week. I don't know when it's going to be; but the point is that, already, we are 141 days into exactly the same kind of allegations. What did the Speaker and the majority leader know? In the case that involved the Republican-led Congress, it was resolved in 70 days. In the case under the Democrat- led Congress, we are at 141 days and counting.

So there is a responsibility here when you are in the leadership of this House of Representatives. The committee has to move, and it has to move at a pace. Believe me, even though the committee has exactly the same number of people--of Democrats and Republicans on the Ethics Committee--it still has a chairman and a ranking member. The chairman is in charge of the majority, and the ranking member is in charge of the minority; but the chairman leads the committee, and the chairman is appointed by the Speaker.

So here we are. Let's compare the two Ethics Committees: one Republican-appointed chairman and one Democrat-appointed chairman. I have nothing against the chairman. In fact, I happen to like the lady a lot--I really do--but the facts are they're not moving at the speed they need to move to get justice done. There may be absolutely nothing to this. There may be a slight mishandling. It was resolved in 70 days under the Republicans. We are at 141 days and counting right now.

I think that's something we need to think about. I think it's our obligation as Members of this House to point this out to people, point this out to the Members of this Congress, point this out to the American people. Because why should we do it? Maybe we wouldn't have such an obligation if the Speaker of the House hadn't told us that this was going to be the most honest, open, and most ethical Congress in history. In 200-plus years, it's going to be the most honest, open, and ethical Congress. With that kind of declaration by the leadership here, that kind of promise to the American people, then that promise ought to be kept.

People are tired. They're tired, and that's why nobody likes this. I told somebody today, I said, You know, when your congressional approval is 11 percent, you've got to worry if folks at church and folks in your own family even like you.

That's not the way it's supposed to be. This is supposed to be an honorable

group. And I think it is. I honestly think it is. But it's this kind of justice delayed, this kind of not letting us know what's going on that is not open and it's not honest, and I think I could almost argue it's not ethical.

So if you're going to promise those things, you've got to deliver. And if you need to go down to the committee and say, I'm here to tell you what I know, step up and do it. Don't wait to be subpoenaed. Resolve the issue. It's fair to all involved, both the American people and the individual involved.

That's what I have been saying for 18 months on the floor of the House. There are those who think that I am a hatchet man against Charlie Rangel. I am not. I have said it every time I have spoken. He is owed the right to have this matter resolved, just as much as the American people are owed the right.

Now, the extent of the investigation was complex. The alleged occurrences against Mr. Rangel were more difficult than the average stuff, because a lot of it dealt with stuff you have to deal with taxes and tax lawyers and CPAs and who else, no telling what else.

But still, we've got to break this cycle of accusations that die or go to sleep in the Ethics Committee. Somebody shouldn't believe, if they turn themselves in, the thing will go into a bottomless pit, a dark hole, and disappear in the slow, snail's pace movement of the Ethics Committee. And every member of that Ethics Committee, both sides of the aisle, are honorable people, so do not misunderstand that I am in any way defaming any of those people. I am not.

But we have had lots of other things come up in this Congress that really haven't been addressed. Now, I'm not saying that every time somebody puts something in the newspaper that that makes it automatically something that ought to go directly to an accusatory situation, but these are just some of the headlines that have happened in the last couple of years:

New York Daily News, ``The FBI joins Massa probe of sexual harassment, hush money, and coverups.''

``Norm Dicks is about to go from Mr. Boeing to Mr. Spending,'' The Washington Post. I am not sure that should be in there.

CQ says, ``Representative Waters calls TARP meeting for her husband's bank.'' Has that been looked into? I don't know.

Landmark Legal Foundation files House ethics complaint against Conyers. Has anything been done about that?

Roll Call, Mollohan charity got a rental deal. Allegations that Mr. Mollohan made some special realty deal to his charity. And the voters took care of that problem.

Weekly Standard, ``GOP proposes earmark moratorium in wake of the PMA scandal.'' The PMA scandal was a scandal that involved--let's see, who was that? Please forgive me. I am a little under the weather tonight.

``Congressman Pete Visclosky has less than half the cash on hand for reelection bid than he did this time 2 years ago, but his legal bills keep growing.'' This is from the Associated Press in 2010, July 19. It points out that he has spent $100,000 on legal fees since April. The Times of Munster reported Saturday that the new amount brings to more than 400,000 the total Visclosky has spent on expenses related to the Federal investigation of the PMA Group. PMA is suspected of making straw donations to lawmakers that concealed the true source of the money. PMA represented defense clients, including several Visclosky donors who received Federal earmarks. So that's what that's all about. The Republicans decided to have a moratorium on earmarks in light of the PMA scandal because, I guess, the way we Republicans looked at it was enough's enough.

``Geithner tax woes examined.'' Now, this is an old story. But the Secretary of the Treasury, who we saw on the talk shows this weekend talking to us about the economy and how we should believe that things are getting better and how we should trust that things are getting better, he received an extra payment with the taxes included in a separate check, the way I understand it, to pay his taxes, and he didn't pay his taxes. And when he got appointed to the Treasury, to be the Secretary of the Treasury, it came out that he hadn't paid these taxes. So he paid the taxes, and he may have even paid the interest, but I don't think he paid a penalty. So he's about half the Rangel rule. Rangel didn't pay penalty or interest.

You have a taxpayer who pays both penalty and interest. And, you know, here's the problem with all this stuff about whether you paid penalty and interest, whether you paid your taxes on time. Were you treated differently than the average guy?

There is a lady, and I am not going to mention her name, but she's at our grocery store where we shop back home in Texas, and her son failed to pay some taxes, and he was just a guy. He did the best he could to try to explain why he didn't pay the taxes. The taxes were not as sizable, anywhere near as sizable as the ones either involved in Geithner or Rangel's case, and that young man spent 3 years in the Bastrop Federal Penitentiary in Bastrop, Texas. And his mother told us this at the HEB grocery store in Round Rock, Texas.

A lot of people come to judges, former judges like me, and tell them stories about problems that their family's having, I guess because we used to be in the business and we maybe could give them some compassion, I suppose. But the point is I'm not saying anybody deserves to go to the penitentiary in these cases. That's up to the Justice Department. If the Justice Department fairly and equitably does its job, which seems to be in some question right now, then they will deal with it. And I still have faith in the justice system of the United States, and I still want to have faith in the Justice Department.

But going back to where we started, most importantly of anything, Americans want to be treated equitably by those who enforce the rules; and, arguably, Mr. Geithner and Mr. Rangel got special treatment.

So at some time later on this week, we're going to have the beginning of a resolution of Mr. Rangel's case. The White House, which certainly this Congress's Ethics Committee doesn't have anything to say about the workings of the Secretary of the Treasury, there doesn't seem to be anything being dealt with at all by the White House on Mr. Geithner.

There's other accusations about the White House, Mr. Rahm Emanuel served on the board of Freddie Mac while these so-called fraudulent lending practices were going on, and he just says he didn't notice them, I guess. It doesn't seem to interfere with what he's doing at the White House, even though he came to this Congress with $25,000 worth of Freddie Mac donations, and the White House is now giving $200 billion to Freddie Mac. And in the meanwhile, Mr. Emanuel was living rent free in the home of one of the basement's of one of our other Members of this Congress.

These things have been raised but they've disappeared because he's no longer under the House Committee. And so I guess it's up to the administration to give us justice on those issues or even look into it.

Now, we're leaving out the Senate money trial of former Illinois Governor Blagojevich and possible involvement of House Members, and allegations against Mr. Conyers of Michigan, the fact there was a conviction of former Congressman William Jefferson, the sex payroll scandal of former Congressman Tim Mahoney. And we can review these cases for a long time, but there is no reason to go into those things.

But all of these things have to be brought up because we are not the most open, ethical Congress in the history of this United States. It was promised, and that promise has not been delivered upon. And I think that we have a duty, as Members of this House, to examine that and wonder why the leadership of this House has not delivered on that promise.

I don't expect the Speaker to know or be in charge of every private life of every Member here. God forbid. Nobody wants that. That's way beyond the pale. But there are duties and responsibilities that leaders have.

And I would argue that we saw what happened when other leaders had accusations against them because in the Republican Congress they went there, gave their side of the story, got it resolved in 70 days. We're still waiting to resolve an almost identical case. The

question was what did the Speaker of the House, Hastert, know about the Mark Foley case. The question here is what did the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, know about the Massa case? Why 70 days versus 141 days? That's a question we ought to be asking ourselves. I don't have the answer. I have the question. I can make some presumptions. The answer is maybe failure to cooperate. Maybe not. Maybe I'm too busy to talk to you today. Maybe not. Who knows what the reason is. But there's 70 more days in one investigation than the other. The other's resolved. The one that's 71 days older is not resolved.

Justice delayed for anybody is justice denied. A reasonable amount of time to prepare your case, of course. Making a proper investigation, of course. I cannot fault any of those things. But especially when it involves those who are in leadership of the House, it would seem to me they should give an extraordinary effort to go do what they can do to move the investigation along to a conclusion. If it means volunteering to go before the committee at the very soonest possible time and setting aside other things like fundraisers in San Francisco or trips to Chicago and going before the Ethics Committee and resolving the issue, it seems to me that's the way it ought to be done. That's what the American people would expect.

I want to commend the Ethics Committee for coming forward with the Rangel case. I take the position at this time that the process is moot now going forward after over close to a 2-year investigation. I for one, still believing in the system, believe that the system will do the right thing and move with haste to conclude this issue that is still hanging over Mr. Rangel's head and still hanging over the House of Representatives' head, still hanging over the American people's head.

This is the people's House. Everybody in here was elected by people. There was nobody in here appointed, ever, to this position. Everyone who ever served in this Congress served because they were elected by people. You can't say that about the Senate. But you can say it about this House.

So when I say the House deserves an answer, the American people deserve an answer, it's because they do. They deserve an answer. And I hope this thing will be resolved. And it would be very appropriate if we resolve at least some of the issues, if possible, before the people of New York are asked to cast a vote in a primary later on in the next few weeks. I'm not sure that's possible because we're about to go into recess. But it's a shame that we're not giving the information to the people of New York that they should have.

I want to thank the Speaker for allowing me to come in here in as many weeks and do this talk, and I will probably be talking about other things in the future.

But we have so many things that we, as people, can disagree on, which is fine. That's what democracy is all about. But overwhelmingly Americans agree that they want a justice system that works, and they want folks to follow the rules, and they want everybody to be treated or given at least the equal opportunity to be treated fairly. And as long as I feel like there's people not being treated fairly or others being treated more special than others, I think it's my job and the job of every Member in this House to step up here and say, That's not America.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 17 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, July 27, 2010, at 9 a.m., for morning-hour debate.