Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I love these debates about Social Security and this conversation about Social Security. But if you don't have a job, who's going to pay the Social Security? So it's really about jobs.

I had an interview today with some radio folks back in my district, and they asked a question, Have we created any jobs but government jobs? And how come we are creating government jobs that get paid more than the private-sector jobs? When did we get confused about that? They wanted me to answer the question, Where are the jobs for the folks in Texas? Where are the jobs for the folks in the other States? Why are all the jobs just in Washington, DC, growing the government?

This administration has destroyed thousands of private-sector jobs by taking over and Federalizing the student loan program and making loans harder to get and taking longer to be processed. Now President Obama and this administration have unilaterally killed tens of thousands of jobs in the gulf, in direct violation of a Federal court order.

Now, is this a way we create jobs for America? The question they want to know, Where are the jobs, so, with a job, we can pay our share of Social Security?

Madam Speaker, while these young folks are setting this up for me, I want to start off tonight by talking about what we've been talking about in this hour now for close to a year, and that is that the United States is a Nation of laws, not of men. It was designed by our Founding Fathers to be such. It is something we are proud to be a part of. It's something we are proud to step up to the plate and say we defend because we believe that the rule of law is more fair than having individuals set their own rules as kings and dictators do. And so, the rule of law is a sacred part of our institution.

We say that the people will elect representatives to represent them in this Congress and in State legislatures across the country and other legislative or quasi-legislative bodies to speak on their behalf, to vote on their behalf, and to set up laws and rules which establish what a civil society will be and what we will consider right and wrong in our world.

This is a simple concept, arguably, a biblical concept going back for centuries and centuries, in fact, thousands of years. There have been sets of rules in every society, every culture, and every religious background, sets of rules that are established that allows society to function.

The rule of law is important to America. In fact, it is the underpinning that allows me and other folks like me who are blessed to be able to serve in this Congress, allows us to do this job because we stand on that rock, that the law in this country is something that we enforce.

In fact, we take an oath to preserve and protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. And we take that oath freely because we're saying, the basis of our legal structure, the ground rock of the rule of law, is the Constitution of the United States, which was adopted by this country and formed our Nation as we presently know it.

So we've been talking about that Members of Congress, administration people, and others need to be dealt with in the light of the rule of law, and when there are questions that should be raised, they should be raised publicly.

And so tonight, as I've done on many occasions in the past, I'm going to talk about some things that are concerning me, concerning others who care about the rule of law. I hope to be joined by some of my colleagues here tonight.

But to start off with, I'm really concerned about what's being reported by the Obama administration, with the political backing of the Democrats in this House.

We are arguably seeing one of the most lawless political crusades in American history. Blatantly, this administration has violated both the spirit and the letter of the law in advancing a theory of European- style socialism on State governments and on the unwilling people.

The administration's ignored two Federal court orders that have just come out, and have ignored both of them now, saying that the drilling ban in the Gulf of Mexico is arbitrary and capricious and wrong, and ordering the United States and the Secretary to withdraw and lift that drilling ban. And yet the minute these two courts, both a Federal district court and a United States court of appeals, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, told this administration, this President and this Secretary, that they were to lift the drilling ban and save the between 140,000 and 250,000 jobs that are connected with that industry along the entire stretch of the Gulf of Mexico, that it was arbitrary and capricious to ban all drilling and it should not be done, they immediately amend and reissue another drilling ban in the face of that court.

The administration blocks Louisiana's efforts to proceed to fight their own environmental fight by trying to throw up a little small rock barrier and a sand barrier to maybe keep the oil from getting into the marsh. It's bad enough when this oil stacks up on the beach because it makes tar balls, and it makes nastiness on that beach. It makes that beach very ugly. But you know what, it just gets on your feet and gets your feet dirty, and it just picks up.

But when it goes in the marsh, when this oil goes in the Louisiana marsh, it affects an entire ecosystem that has to do with our shrimping industry, our oyster industry, our fishing industry. It has to do with the ecosystem of the entire State and the Gulf of Mexico because there is a lot that flows in and out of that marsh that has to do with the ecosystem of the gulf. And when oil gets in amongst those grasses and amongst those habitats, it kills. On the beach it probably causes some terrible environmental impact, but nothing like going into those marshes.

So Governor Jindal says let's do something about it, and our administration blocks it. And international companies call out and say we have material to help clean up, and the administration refuses to allow them to come.

The administration refused to allow the United States Senate to conduct a single hearing over the appointment of Dr. Berwick to head Medicare at the same time that this Congress and the President plan cutting Medicare by $50 billion, and putting a man in charge of Medicare that there is a lot of questions that should have been asked by the Senate. But using a recess appointment, which is legal, it's legal, but in the face of what's facing Medicare and in the face of the conversation we just had earlier with Mr. Upton about the massive burdens that are going to be created by this ObamaCare bill that has now been signed into law, and just the burdens on industry and business that are going to be put on there for really no good understandable reason, you've got to ask the question why you put a guy in there who says the things that Mr. Berwick has said and then don't allow the Senate to ask questions about that. I think that's something we ought to be concerned about.

We have a Supreme Court opinion, a recent Supreme Court opinion, that protected certain First Amendment rights of free speech, and this Congress and this administration immediately brought to this floor and shoved through on a partisan vote a bill called the DISCLOSE Act, which gives special free speech rights to some and bars other groups from having the same rights, which is in the face of a Supreme Court opinion that's taken place this summer. And so you have to say what is it about ``no'' that you don't understand? But you know, this is the way we are operating.

This administration has filed a lawsuit against the State of Arizona to try to block them from enforcing their laws and Federal laws with specific provisions against discrimination in any form or fashion, and profiling in any form or fashion, but to just try to save their State from the invasion that happens nightly and from the slaughter of American citizens that has happened over the last couple years, and the multiple slaughters across the border.

The administration's refused to defend the Republic against the most egregious violations of voting rights since the Civil Rights Act was passed. And we all saw them on television. It's kind of like we used to wonder how you were going to get the guy that shot Lee Harvey Oswald, ever get him a fair trial when the whole world saw the shooting on television. Well, the whole world saw these two guys, one with a club, standing out in front of a polling place, intimidating voters. And yet this administration says that they don't see any harm in that, and they are not going to enforce it.

So we are going to go through some of these things tonight and talk about them. And the first one I just brought up: the voting rights violations are ignored. Attorney General Eric Holder, who is right now very proud to be out suing the State of Arizona, dropped the case that, hey, I will ask you, if you can see this clearly, if you will look right there, you will see a club or a shillelagh or a baton, but it is, if you

go down to the gun store you can buy that weapon. So it's clearly a weapon.

Then if you would watch the film, you would hear the intimidating language that's going on there, and yet this is dropped. And it's a blatant voting rights violation. Refused to sentence the Black Panthers to default judgment. These guys were sued and didn't even show up. And it was a default judgment got against them, and then they dropped it. They didn't even have to work to get something against these guys. These guys lost. I mean, a fresh-out-of-law-school, brand-new lawyer can handle a default judgment and get recourse against these people. But the Justice Department chose, after these guys defaulted in the lawsuit, to drop the suit. I think this is a blatant disregard of something.

Civil rights is an issue that when we say the term ``civil rights'' of course we remember what developed in the sixties, of course we know where it came from. Of course we know it had to do with the treatment of African Americans in this country initially. But it was not written just for African Americans. It was written for Americans, every kind of American. And then an off-shoot of civil rights is the Voting Rights Act, which protects every American's right to freely vote.

Now, if two guys dressed in paramilitary uniforms, carrying clubs, are standing in front of a polling place and intimidating people and making them afraid to go up to that polling place, why in the world wouldn't it be the duty of our Attorney General, the man who is sworn to represent us in this type of law and to represent us being the American people and the Federal Government, why wouldn't they pursue this?

And that's why I say this is blatantly avoiding, ignoring, of not doing your job and doing your duty to this country to preserve the laws.

So if one man, Eric Holder, makes the determination--and maybe a couple other lawyers in the office, I don't know. There are a whole bunch of them over there. But if he made the decision not to enforce this law, is that a rule of law or is that a rule of men?

Now, you'll hear prosecutors say every prosecutor determines what's a good case. That's true. But they have a civil suit already that they already won, okay. I mean, they didn't have to do anything but take it to judgment, and they didn't do it--much less go prosecute the other violations under the Civil Rights Act.

So you have to ask yourself: Is this the rule of law or the rule of Eric Holder? And if it's the rule of Eric Holder, then it's not what this country is designed to be. It's not designed to be the rule of Eric Holder. It's not designed to be the rule of Barack Obama. It's not to designed to be the rule of George Bush or any other President or leader of this country. It's designed to be the rule of law. And this body has an awful lot to do with what is in that body of law that's called a rule of law.

And if we are going to arbitrarily and capriciously make changes or choose how we're going to enforce the law, I would argue that we're going down a slippery slope, and that slippery slope could lead to real disaster for this country, because if Eric Holder made this decision based on some personal decision that he has, what's to prevent the next Attorney General to have a different personal opinion and avoid some other law that's important to the rights of the American people? I don't know.

So it's the Office of Attorney General we need to be talking about. And what's their job? And I would argue their job is to enforce the law. And if there is any question as to whether or not this is intimidation--and I would almost guarantee you there is--that's for a jury or a judge to decide in a court of law; not for a group of lawyers sitting around a back room someplace deciding which group you want to protect. That's not the way it's supposed to work.

I would hope that the Attorney General will be taking another look at this. And if he thinks there is any way anybody could think this guy with a club is intimidating somebody under the Civil Rights Act, then let a trier of fact make that decision and do your job and present your case in court like a good lawyer should, and let's find out just what the courts that we trust with these decisions have to say about it. I'll accept that. I think that's right. That's the way it's supposed to operate.

So there's one blatant avoidance of the law.

Now, let me start off--because I like to be straight as I can be. To do a recess appointment--it's been done in the past. I can certainly tell you the last administration did it. Other administrations have done it. Using that method is not what I have a concern about because the President absolutely has the right to do it.

Now, he picked sort of a brief recess but, hey, that's okay. It's been done on brief recesses in the past. So that's all right. I'm not complaining about that.

But one of the things we've got to ask ourselves is, when the President of the United States told the American people what was in that 2,500-page bill that Nancy Pelosi said we were going to have to pass so we'll find out what's in it because she didn't know and neither did anybody else in this House, now we're getting to know what's in that bill.

But the promises that were made by the administration were a lie. And one of those promises was there are no death committees. There's nobody going to be deciding your life or death. Nothing in this bill is going to create or have someone in charge that's operating this bill that believes that rationing your health care and making decisions about whether or not you get treated--that's what we were promised. The President of the United States himself told us that on multiple occasions. And not only the President, but almost everybody that represented what was in this bill said, We're not in the business of rationing health care. This bill's not going to ration health care. That's what they said. That's what they all told us.

Now, who's this guy Donald Berwick who's now been put in charge of Medicare and Medicaid? He's a proponent of the British health care system and believes in rationing your health care and redistributing wealth. What he said, and if you watch--I know it's on FOX; I hope it's on all of the channels, his statement about how he viewed health care. He basically said health care, by its very nature, requires you to have some form of rationing and a redistribution of wealth from the more prosperous to the least prosperous. It's the very nature of the beast, he said. He told us rationing health care is inevitable.

Now, wait a minute. We were promised by the President of the United States that we were not talking about rationing health care. Why would the first guy put in charge of this be a guy who publicly endorses rationing health care?

You know, I was talking about rationing health care back home, and I was surprised to learn that people didn't get the whole concept. So let me give you an example, okay, and I've given this example before.

My wife was born and raised in the Netherlands, in Holland, where they have socialized medicine and have had socialized medicine since the Second World War. My mother-in-law, who lived a long time--into her nineties--she lived under a system of socialized medicine. And she was healthy enough and so desirous of seeing her grandchildren that, even when she was really struggling with a lot of health issues, she still flew to the United States to be with her grandchildren and to be with her daughters. She's got a daughter here and a daughter in Florida. My wife's one of her daughters.

My mother-in-law, back when she was in her mid to late eighties, was suffering from anal polyps--not a pleasant thing to talk about--and she was having a lot of bleeding issues, and she went to the health care people in the Netherlands. And when she came to the United States, she was still--she'd been treated with a drug that they gave her for almost a year, and it had not changed her situation at all. Very embarrassing for a very nice woman to have this situation.

So we took her to a Dutch doctor that we knew that worked in Austin, Texas, and spoke Dutch, and we had gotten to be friends with him. And he went in and talked to my mother-in-law about it, what it was, and when he came out he said, You know, he said, this is a shame. They're treating your

mother--he's talking to my wife--with sulfa drugs. Now, we haven't treated people with sulfa drugs since the Second World War because we have antibiotics. And sulfa drugs were our drugs of choice in pre- antibiotic days, but at a time when you're 88 years old and it costs the system a lot of money for antibiotics to fight this bug, just treat the old person with sulfa drugs because, quite frankly, she's not worth the investment. That's rationing.

So being in the United States of America, the doctor immediately prescribed two antibiotics. Two weeks later, my mother-in-law was cured after a year of suffering with this situation. That's rationing. That's a governmental agency making a decision what drug you get for your illness.

And we've got a guy that we just put in charge of the health care for our elderly and the health care for our poor, Medicaid. So our needy and our elderly are now under the charge of a man who says a health care system, by its very nature, has to have rationing in order to be fiscally able to function; in other words, in order to pay the bills. And we have been promised that this wouldn't happen.

So what rule am I saying this is a violation of? It's not a rule that--they followed the rules. But it's the spirit of the thing, that the Senate should have been able to at least ask a few questions about these statements which were promised weren't going to happen. And I think the American people deserve to have those questions answered, so that's something else.

We have had one of the worst, if not the worst, environmental disaster in the history of the United States on British Petroleum's poor management and poor operation of their offshore drilling resulting in an oil spill that is catastrophic.

We are in like the 95th day of that oil spill right now. We have a new procedure being worked on as we speak and we're hopeful it will help. But it doesn't matter. We have poured millions of barrels, not gallons but barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico; and the consequences, we are beyond thinking about.

But one of the problems is the action of the Obama administration because of this one leaking oil well. Now, it is kind of interesting that the United States has drilled, according to what they are reporting today, 42,000 plus oil wells in the Gulf of Mexico, and the United States, the United States drilling area, has had one drilling mishap, and that's the one we're dealing with today. One in 42,000 is what the record is, right now.

So the question is, what should we do about it? Well, I would argue, and this is not hard stuff, plug the well, which has got to be done a certain way and I think they're ultimately going to do it. I'm not pleased with their performance. And secondly, under the Oil Spill Act, the Federal Government took control of oil spills. We have a written law, the Oil Spill Act, and it puts one person in charge of making sure that all the resources of America, and anywhere else we can get, I would argue, are to be put in to clean up that mess. And under the Federal Oil Spill Act, the President of the United States is in charge of that. It's his jobs. BP's got to stop the oil drilling and they've got to pay damages, but the United States has got the duty under the Oil Spill Act to clean up the mess. And they have a way to try to collect on who will pay the damages. I'm not talking about a damage issue. I'm talking about who says to clean up boat number 5, go out there and clean. How about you number 10, go clean. Number 100, go clean. Number 1,000, go clean. Who says that? The Federal Government does that.

Okay. We are close to 100 days into this oil spill and the responsibility for the cleanup belongs to the Federal Government. Now what is the solution that our administration, the Obama administration, has come up with? We're going to put an oil drilling moratorium and shut down all oil drilling in the gulf. Later they tried to amend it to make it deep water only. But what happens when you do that, when you say the power of this government says stop drilling, what do the people who are in the gulf do? Stop drilling.

Now I can't tell you the number of drilling rigs we've got in the gulf, but it's a lot. Deep water, we have in the twenties or thirties or forties out there, in deep water. Those are the big expensive drilling rigs. But all of them cost a lot of money, even the shallow water rigs. We shut down drilling in the gulf, started making accommodations for the shallow water people, but interestingly enough, since that occurred, nobody, not one person, has been issued a permit to drill out there. So they may have told them they could drill but they haven't issued them a permit to let them drill, so, quite honestly, nobody's drilling.

Now what this means to the economy of the Gulf of Mexico, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, possibly portions of Florida, is that a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. The public number that they're giving out is 140,000, but that I believe is the number that was determined in Louisiana alone. I asked the question of a person very knowledgeable at the Chamber of Commerce in Houston, Texas, what they thought this--what could ultimately end up as a permanent ban out there, or at least a long-term ban--will do to Houston, and they said 250,000 jobs.

Now is this what you do in a time of recession? At a time when unemployment is at record numbers? I don't think so. But they did. They issued a moratorium. And they were taken to court. And the Federal district court said, No, lift that moratorium, this is arbitrary and capricious, and it is the wrong thing to do. Lift it. Well, of course, not being willing to take no for an answer, they took it to the appellate court, Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans. Lo and behold, the Fifth Circuit said, No. The trial court is right. It's arbitrary and capricious. Lift that drilling ban. You're doing harm by having that drilling ban.

And Secretary Salazar steps up, makes a few adjustments to zero in on some deep water rigs, floating deep water rigs, and issues another moratorium. Now first, I think there are probably a bunch of judges both on the Fifth Circuit and in the district court that ought to be asking Mr. Salazar, ``Secretary Salazar, excuse me, sir, but what is it about no that you don't understand?'' I have asked that of lawyers who argued in my court from time to time, and I think that question ought to be asked: What is it about no that you don't understand? We've told you this is an arbitrary and capricious and way beyond the scope of what you should be doing here and you're doing it anyway. Why don't you understand the word ``no'' when people you are supposed to be answering to are telling you no? I think that's a question that's valid, and I think that's a question that we as people who defend the rule of law, we ought to be asking that question. I don't think we have an answer, but I do know what they did. They issued another moratorium.

Now those who would defend the moratorium would say, yeah, but they've lightened it each time. The issue is at some point in time until the playing field is cleared, the people who operate those rigs don't know if they're in trouble or not in trouble if they start to drill. They don't know. Because this keeps in the court system.

See, one of the real crimes that happens in this country and happens in every part of the country now, even including politics, is we use our courts as a weapon, sometimes when we really have no real position in law that would allow us to do so. We used to have a saying back where I come from that any idiot can file a lawsuit. All he's got to do is have the price of the filing fees and directions to the courthouse. That doesn't mean it's a good lawsuit, but defending that bad lawsuit can be so economically depressing to whoever's getting sued that ultimately that becomes a weapon, and even though they would have won if they had contested, the cost of contesting it becomes a weapon.

Well, now in this case, they've gone to court. They've been told by the court it's arbitrary and capricious. They've been told by the appellate court it's arbitrary and capricious. They've done it a third time. Now if you're a driller sitting on a drilling rig that costs somewhere between a half a million and a million dollars a day just sitting there and not operating, if you are that owner operator of that drilling rig, do you know if you can drill the day after the district court ruled? No.

Because you've got the appellate court. Do you know you can drill after the appellate court ruled? No, because they've issued another moratorium.

Now eventually that guy that's running that rig says, you know what, this is costing me somewhere around a million bucks every 2 days. I can pick this thing up and I can go over as I believe was announced by a group, Diamond or something like that, Diamond drilling rig, Diamond offshore drilling pulled their rig out today and moved it off the coast of Egypt.

Well, why wouldn't you? Is it good business to lose half a million dollars a day? Because people are clouding the waters so much or clouding the environment so much that you don't know whether if you start drilling, they're going to come drag you off and throw you in jail for violating a moratorium. I mean, that's why the drilling rigs aren't drilling. That's why they're pulling out and moving to other places. So at least Diamond is going off the shore of Egypt. Others will move off the shore of Australia. Others will move off the shore of Europe, into north Africa. Others will move off the shore of Libya; off the shore of Brazil.

Now, what is wrong with this picture? What is wrong with this picture? We all attach to the same oceans. The rest of the world is drilling. And we have had two courts of jurisdiction say, no, you can't have a moratorium. Why do we have a moratorium? Because I would argue that Secretary Salazar is ignoring the courts and ignoring the rule of law, and we ought to be concerned about that.

It has nothing to do with defending British Petroleum. They ought to get hammered every way they can get hammered, because they actually did some very bad business practices, it is going to prove out, I think. But we will have to see the proof. But still they have to pay for the damages they have done, which they have agreed to do, by the way.

Let's talk about another issue that in Texas at least is on our minds 24/7, and that is the issue of what is going on at our borders. President Barack Obama made a speech about 10 days ago that specifically raised this issue of immigration. He talked about we needed to do a comprehensive immigration plan and that we were defending our borders better than we have ever defended them, ever; that we have improved the situation greatly.

In the interest of fairness, I would argue that maybe he should have mentioned that the day before he made this announcement that there had never been a better defense of our borders, automatic weapon fire hit the city hall of El Paso, Texas, fired from across the border at city hall. I think at least in the order of fairness, we should have known that, well, except for maybe the fact that for the first time since 1919, the City of El Paso has been fired upon from across the border.

By the way, in 1919 when they did fire across the border, the American troops went across the border and cleaned out Juarez, in fact chased Pancho Villa, and they all came from right there at Fort Bliss, and we are sitting with 24,000 experienced combat soldiers at Fort Bliss right now. I am not saying he should have called them out. I am just saying let's paint the picture accurately.

Even if it is true that we have got more resources on the border than ever, and I think there is something to that, we have also had a massive escalation of what is going on across the border from our southern border States.

The cartels that promote and sell various sorts of drugs, and being an old judge I have tried more drug cases than 10 times the number of seats there are in this room, but I can tell you that when the cartels moved to the Mexican border, especially that strip of border between El Paso and Brownsville, we have got two, arguably three cartels fighting for who will control that area. Each of the two major cartels formed hit squads, separate organizations like Murder, Incorporated, when they used to talk about the Italian Mafia, and these groups became the murder squads, going out and killing not only other cartel members from the opposite cartel, but also killing Mexican police officers and Mexican army military people, Mexican civilians, kidnapping Americans, et cetera. Now those hit squads are thinking about becoming cartels themselves, so we have a real Wild West shootout going on across the border from where we live.

Now, I didn't mean that to be humorous. But the week before the firing on the El Paso city hall, 21 people were killed in one day in Juarez, Mexico, in gun battles. I am sorry, but if you will check Afghanistan and Iraq, the number of days that 21 people were killed, there were very few, in one day. So arguably we have got a situation in a city of almost 2 million people directly across the Rio Grande River from the State of Texas that is frightening. It is frightening.

Senator John Kyl says that President Obama told him, the problem is, if we secure the border, then you all won't have any reason to support comprehensive immigration reform. The White House denies that. Senator Kyl sticks with his story. I don't know. But the issue that we really need to be talking about is defending our border, and I would say we are refusing to defend our border.

Arizona enacted a law to actually enforce the immigration laws the Federal Government has failed to enforce. Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration have filed a lawsuit against Arizona saying it has no right to enforce that law. This is going to be a question that is going to be settled by the courts. How many times have I said on this floor I respect the decisions of the court? So we will certainly see how it comes out.

But why did the Arizona legislature and the Arizona Governor put this law forward? And why, by the way, did they take this law and track, according to multiple experts, word-for-word the enforcement provisions set out in the Federal law as far as the actions of Federal agents and what they can and cannot ask someone? Why does it track word-for-word the Federal law? Why did they pass this with specific provisions saying that we will not do any kind of profiling of any sort, racial or otherwise, and it can only be done as a result of a lawful stop on other matters, can you ask a question about the immigration status of the person you are talking to, or what country they come from.

So, you say, why did the legislature pass this? Why is the Governor stepping up and doing it? Because they have been begging in Arizona, please, come help us. You guys are not stopping this flow of people.

We had a rancher brutally murdered in his own living room for standing up to these drug lord caravans coming across the border bringing people and drugs into the United States. And the guy, all he did, he was out on his landing, he told these people, you are not supposed to be here. And they killed the guy.

In Texas, we have a river between us. They have a barbed wire fence between them and Mexico, and we have got a river between us.

I have friends, I talked to a good friend of mine, a former county commissioner in my home county, who told me that at his place at Carrizo Springs down close to the border, that he leaves food and water out for people because he doesn't want them tearing the place up. He leaves the place unlocked because there used to be mostly economic people looking for a job coming through there and all they wanted was something to eat and something to drink. But now these thugs are coming across the border stealing everything not nailed down and tearing the place to shreds, these lawless people that come across our border.

Now, maybe that's why the State of Arizona has said, You know what? You guys in the Federal Government are not doing your job. We're going to help. And I haven't heard anybody say that if they ask someone, Are you an American citizen, and they say, No, I'm from Guatemala, or whatever, and they say, Well, we're going to call the Border Patrol. At that point, that's where their participation stops, the way I understand it.

Whether the Border Patrol is going to do their job, well, that's going to be a whole different issue. But it's going to be decided by the courts. But I just think really and truly the real solution to the Arizona problem is for the Federal Government to enforce the laws that are on the books. The laws are on the books right now.

And I was thinking about this coming over here tonight. I will make a slight presumption, but it's not much of a presumption, that possession of cocaine in Arizona is against the law--especially large amounts. I would make the presumption that possession of marijuana in Arizona is against the law. I think there's a good presumption by an old judge from Texas that possession of heroin in that State of Arizona is against the law. I do think under those circumstances, if those are written into the code, which I presume they are, they are probably felony cases of a serious nature. I think that carrying automatic weapons, fully automatic weapons, is both against the Federal and the State law in Arizona. I'm pretty sure. I know they are in Texas.

Now, if people are coming across our border armed with AK-47 weapons, backpacks full of drugs, marching in caravans, in many cases dressed in uniforms--paramilitary uniforms--marching into the public lands of Arizona and I guess turning over to some motorized operation they want to that takes it and spreads that filth all over the country, the State of Arizona has the right to enforce, if nothing else, the drug laws of Arizona. And I would argue if they don't have the resources to stop this epidemic of violence and drugs and prostitution and smuggling of individuals from every part of the world into our country, if there's not enough law enforcement personnel to put on the ground to enforce those laws, which they have absolutely the right to enforce, they ought to be able to call out the Guard to do it, as long as they abide by the posse comitatus laws.

So this is just after you have caught the drug dealer with a pack full of heroin and an AK-47 on his shoulder. How bad is it to ask, Oh, by the way, are you an American citizen? I don't know. First off, you don't have to call the Border Patrol. Throw them in jail and prosecute them for violation of State law. So this thing is kind of out of whack a little bit, by my way of thinking. But the real shame to me is suing Arizona.

Finally, we spent almost a year and a half talking about, dealing with, and behind closed doors, writing of the majority party's bill for health care reform. And in that bill we basically mandate that the government will tell people what product they will buy and who they can buy it from. As a result, the individual mandate extends the commerce clause power beyond the economic activity to economic inactivity. That is unprecedented. In other words, what they're saying is, If you don't buy this product for your employees, you're going to be punished with a $2,000 fine. And the question becomes: Is this commerce as the commerce clause of the United States is written?

Basically, we have expanded the Federal Government probably farther under the commerce clause than any other single clause in the Constitution. And now, using the commerce clause as an argument, the argument in here is that you can make an employer buy a product sold by a company or your choice of companies, or if they don't buy it, they get fined. And the question is, Where does that stop? If that's the law, why can't we make everybody buy a Chevrolet? I don't know. Why can't we? If we can make them buy Blue Cross or some other company's policy or be fined $2,000, why can't we say everybody that buys a car in America next year has to buy a Chevrolet or a Buick or a Ford? Let's not get in trouble with the auto manufacturers. Or, I don't care what. You have to buy one or they pay a $2,000 fine. If they can do it on health care, they ought to be able to do it on automobiles, shouldn't they? Where does it stop? That's the kind of issue we've got to ask ourselves as we look at this.

Never before has the Congress used its commerce power to mandate that an individual person engage in an economic transaction with a private company. Regulating the auto industry or paying cash for clunkers is one thing; making everyone buy a Chevy is quite another. This is in The Washington Post.

But the real question we have to ask ourselves is: How are we marching over human rights in this country, individual rights--the real thing that sets us apart from the rest of the world? How are we stepping all over people as a government. And shouldn't we be concerned about stepping all over people? And I've lost count, but I know it's in the teens of people who have filed lawsuits against the Federal Government in at least two jurisdictions, and maybe three, saying this is unconstitutional; you can't do this.

Shouldn't we be thinking about all this? Shouldn't we wonder if the rule of law prevailed in other parts of that 2,500-page document we call the ObamaCare or health care bill? Because when we wrote that bill, we created some of those laws that are the rule of law. And the rule of law has to comply with and be supported by the United States Constitution, because that's the rock we build our laws upon.

So as we finish up talking today about the rule of law, I bring these issues up so that this House and others can ponder them and say, As we continue to march down a corridor which steps all over the rule of law, where does it stop? And where do we stand up and say, Wait a minute, that's not right. Wait a minute. When a court tells you something and orders you to do something and then you appeal it and the appeals court tells you the same thing, then what is it about ``no'' that you don't understand? When Governors are trying to save their environment, why are you getting in the middle of their business and not letting them build a berm. Why aren't you helping them?

We've got issues we've got to talk about as far as the overreaching of this Federal Government, and I think we will. I think we will be discussing them this fall in a pretty serious manner.

Madam Speaker, my time is almost done. I thank you for the time you've yielded me tonight.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize and honor the life of Jose Antonio ``Anthony'' Roche, Jr. who was born in Chicago, IL, on November 11, 1976. In 1995, at the age of 17, Anthony joined the U.S. Army. As a Specialist (SPC) he served as a fuel and electrical systems repairer. He performed direct support and general support maintenance on fuel and electrical systems of wheel and track vehicles, brake system components, and on internal combustion engines associated with power generation equipment or material handling equipment. Anthony received the National Defense Service Medal/ARMY service ribbon.

After leaving the service, he was gainfully employed and hardworking his entire life. He worked for Cuttler Hammer of Puerto Rico. His most recent job was with Palau/Raytheon. On April 29, 2010, he returned home after serving one year in Q West, Iraq. He was working with many aircraft in distress and he assisted pilots as he grew in his knowledge of aircraft and skills.

Anthony had a passion for fast cars and motorcycles. On May 1, 2010, he was found dead at his residence garage.

Jose is survived by his beloved father Jose, his mother Victoria, his sister Vickie, his brothers Jose, Edgardo and Alexander and his two English Bull Terrier dogs, Rocco and Maximo, better known as his ``kids.''

I offer my prayers and sympathy to the Roche family for the loss of Anthony and appreciate his service to the United States Army.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized for this hour. I am real pleased to be joined by several of my colleagues.

I want to raise an issue that is of real concern to the people of the State of Texas, the State of Alabama, the State of Florida, those who have, for now, generations almost, been invested in and proud of that great American accomplishment of our space program.

We are an exceptional people, and there is an awful lot of people these days that seem to be ashamed of our exceptionalism. But one of the things that we have been exceptional in since its inception is our space program. I can remember, as a young teenager, when the Russians put Sputnik bleeping over the top of my house in Houston, Texas. And we all stood out in the backyard and watched that thing with its little flashing light going across and thought, Oh, my Lord, the Russians are in space and we are not there. What are we going to do?

But being the exceptional people that Americans are, we put our nose to the grindstone and our brains to work, and in a very short time we met the pledge that President Kennedy made that we would put a man on the Moon in the next decade. So we went from behind the eight ball and watching the Russians have the first satellite in space to manned spaceflight and a trip to the Moon on multiple occasions. In fact, we have had a movie about one of the Moon trips that almost ended in disaster.

We've been open and obvious that we have taken the greatest minds that we could put together in our space program. And at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, we all in Houston, Texas, and in the State of Texas

have been proud of the fact of our space shuttles, of our space station that we, along with the new free enterprise Russians, have put together in outer space. Amazingly enough, we have just finally completed the space station the way it was conceived as it was started. It's all been done in small portions, putting it together. Now it's finished.

And now we have a new administration who has decided that they are no longer interested in manned space travel. And they have basically started to say we are going to do away with manned space travel and the Constellation program, which was the next phase of manned space travel, and we are going to let some friends of ours start some new businesses and try to go and let private industry go out there and do the shuttle service and launch our satellites. And basically, they have turned over the funds that would go to NASA for the manned space program and they have plans to turn it over to a few private individuals, amazingly enough, most of whom have been fairly large campaign donors of the Democrats and the Obama administration.

In fact, I think I can make an argument--we talk about earmarks in this Congress and all these terrible earmarks that people make--this has the potential, over the next few years, to be around 6 billion, with a B, dollars that the White House is going to earmark for certain individual companies, all of whom seem to have been involved in the success of that administration. Not that there is anything in a payoff in the way. Who knows?

Just a coincidence, I suppose, but we are canning manned space under our NASA program. We are going to lay off thousands of NASA workers and those contractors that work with NASA, and we are taking a new position that we are going to let new start-up companies start over and build a space program. I'm a privatization guy. I believe in privatization in everything we do, but this smacks of some strangeness, and I think that strangeness is what we are going to talk about here tonight.

I am joined by my friend Mr. Hall from Texas. I am joined by Judge Poe, and I am joined by my good friend Rob Bishop, who really informed me a lot about the immigration issue the last time we were together, and I am sure he has great insight.

So I will first recognize Judge Poe for such time as he may wish to consume.

Reclaiming my time, the administration proposes a $1 billion cut in NASA's manned program. And at the same time, they are pushing $115 billion in new spending for ObamaCare after $700 billion in stimulus spending, which we are still looking for the stimulus.

The taxpayers have already invested $9 billion in the Constellation program, which was supposed to be the next step in the space program. It will cost $2.5 billion to shut down the Constellation program. So we are talking about $11.5 billion is going to be spent just to trash the program that we've already spent $9 billion on.

And, you know, space has always been a very glorious position for us to take. And we rose above the international bickering. We shared the space station with other nations. Recently, within the last couple of years, the Japanese on one of our shuttles took a major pod containment system up there, and they've got a piece of it. The Russians have some of it. Others have put technology on the space station to where now it is what we envisioned with all the various technologies and abilities to study long distances in space. And we've taken all that, and now, as my good friend from Texas says, to get to our space station that we put together, we're going to have to hitchhike with the Russians.

Now, we all know, as we developed the space station, we also developed the rocket power and the use of rocketry, which became a great part of our national arsenal. And, in fact, we are concerned about the ability of the people in Iran who are trying to develop a nuclear weapon to get a midrange missile to deliver it in their promised attacks on Israel. The rockets that defend our Nation came from the rockets that propelled us into outer space on our great jaunt and exploration of outer space.

So when you start hitting us in our technology, as I would argue the Obama administration is doing, and wasting $11.5 billion to shut down a program and putting us behind in the future development of these vehicles, where does this make sense? Are we just ceding the fact that now that the Obama administration is in charge of the country and they believe that American exceptionalism is a myth, they are going to prove it by taking away the things we are exceptional in? I have real issues with that. I think all of us do.

I'd like to recognize my good friend Rob Bishop from Utah to talk to us a little bit about--he is on several committees that have looked into this. He's got a good insight into what's going on. So whatever time you wish to consume, my friend.

Perfect statement, ``forfeiting the game.'' We were leading the game, we were winning the game until this administration came into the White House, and we just stepped up and decided to forfeit the game.

Here's an article from Labor Magazine. It was published on April 15, 2010: ``Obama is pushing the privatization of NASA and the turnover of the government agency to his financial supporters Elon Musk and Google owners Page and Brin.

``A full bore campaign is now being waged by the Obama administration to shut down the U.S. unionized space program and turn it over to `new age' speculators who want to build a new space program in a `regulation-free' zone in Florida.''

And the plan is by billionaire and former owner of PayPal, Elon Musk. Musk has a company called Space Exploration Technologies Corporation, and the question is, `` `Should the United States hire Elon Musk, at a cost of a few billion dollars, to run a taxi service for American astronauts?'

``In fact, the SpaceX operation like much that Musk and his backers from Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin want the U.S. to give him $6 billion in the next 5 years to build'' this operation.

Now, that's a very interesting thing. We take a program, we put $9 billion into it, it's cost us $2.5 billion to shut it down, we shut it down, and we come up with $6 billion more over the next 5 years that we're going to give to some good friends to come up with a brand new program and they are, as Judge Poe points out, way behind in developing the rocket to get them to anywhere we want to go in space.

I yield back to my friend.

Reclaiming my time, so we're just basically saying, Obama just said I want to change this program from one free enterprise group to my guys that are on my side; and, unfortunately, they're a little behind, but we'll beef them up and we'll try to get them there by spending the American taxpayers' money. It is stimulus for a new group of private companies. It's amazing.

But who else is going to be competing? This is interesting. Taxpayers have already invested $9 billion in the Constellation, which will be lost. This is sort of a comedy piece that my staff put together. Everyone there is Oriental, but it has to do with the recent announcement--you know, we had promised that with the new Constellation program, we were going to go back to the Moon just to do some additional research there.

The Chinese had announced in February of 2004 that they've started their Moon exploration program. Phase I involves orbiting a satellite around the Moon. Phase II involves sending a lander to the Moon. Phase III involves collecting lunar soil samples. China plans to complete its space station and a manned mission to the Moon by 2020.

So not only are we giving up the fact that we're exceptional, but those people who are trying to show how exceptional they are--and quite honestly, the Chinese have done pretty much a turnaround since they learned that capitalism really works, and now they're doing the Moon explorations. Now, I'm sure there are one world order folks that say it doesn't really matter as long as we all sing Kumbaya and go to the Moon.

But the reality is, remember what technology and the defense world came out of, the technology that we developed in our space program; and that's something we can never forget. We can never forget to make sure that American exceptionalism allows us to stay on top of those things that keep us breathing free air in this country. If we ever concede that to those who maybe wouldn't like us as much as we might think they do--they may like our money but they maybe don't like us and our system of human beings having rights and freedoms and protections under our Constitution, and maybe those same people who don't feel so good about that part of American exceptionalism would like to impose their will on us someday. Are we going to give up our jaunts into space and our learning from that?

We're all walking around with cell phones in our pockets, some of us two or three of them up here in this crazy place we're in. All that technology developed out of the technology that started off with the space program. Simple things like Teflon and there's a million things out there in the world we don't even know about that came out of the space program, and yet industries have come out of the production of those products. I can't even remember them all, but I remember at one time we loved to talk about it when we talked about our space program. We've stopped talking about that.

But the point is, we're taking people that have dedicated their lives to the exceptional job of exploring that great wondrous thing called space, and we've told those people, we're laying you off to the tune of 20,000 to 30,000 of you in Texas and Alabama and Florida and other places so that we can start over with a bunch of our buddies in their backyards coming up with a new space program. I've got real issues with that.

But not only is China looking at a space program; the Russians are planning a manned Moon mission by 2025 to 2030, a manned Mars mission by 2035 to 2040. My Lord, everybody else sees those frontiers that we used to see. Remember when President Kennedy talked about the new frontier, space? We watched programs on television as kids about that frontier of space that we were going at, and we did it.

You know, recently we had hearings in this House where we heard from some of those pioneers, and we heard from the first man who walked on the Moon. Neil Armstrong, a man who basically stays out of the world of politics and lives a relatively quiet life for being such a national American hero, came up here and said we cannot afford to lose NASA. It will be a serious blow to the United States of America to lose NASA. In a minute, I'm going to ask my friend Ralph Hall who was at some of those hearings or heard some of these things that were said to tell us a little bit about that.

Mr. Hall, would you like to talk to us about what some of these great American heroes talked about in the NASA program?

Thank you, Ralph.

Mr. Hall is the dean of the Texas delegation. We are awfully proud to have him. He has been working long and hard for many, many years to make sure that every time we shoot a human being into outer space we plan to bring them back.

It's easy to develop a space program where you can say, well, if the guy we shoot out there, if we lose him, it's no big deal, we at least have the technology to learn how it works. There are some that have developed space programs this way, but we've never developed it that way. Some people would say we're a great dinosaur, this NASA. This great dinosaur comes from the basic premise, a part of what makes Americans great, that every human life is important. Therefore, you test and retest and retest again, and you take another path and you find a new direction until you are assured of one thing: That that precious human life you put upon that exploding bomb called a rocket, you're capable of putting that human life out into space and bringing that human being back alive.

I would argue that we're the only space program where that has been a priority. What makes us so much more exceptional than others is because we've had accidents, but they were accidents. But our planned program didn't plan in expendability. We didn't plan for people to be expendable until we learned how to do it. We did it, we got through it, and we made it work.

It's a shame to have that kind of history of a program that has dedicated itself to exploring space and still caring about that one small, little glimmer of spark called a human life, and we do it. We have no assurance that this new direction is even going to come close to having that same basic spirit that created NASA. We are threatening a great human institution.

I want to yield some more time to my friend, Mr. Bishop.

Recapturing my time, as the gentleman was pointing out something, it just popped into my head, the old civics course that everybody in this country at least used to take in high school about the three branches of government that were created by our Founders and what they did. The laws were written by the Congress, the legislative branch, administered and enforced by the executive branch--which is the White House--and interpreted and held to the standards of the Constitution by the judicial branch. And as the gentleman pointed out, this Congress has never taken the position that we were going to trash the Constellation. In fact, we wrote specific language that said the Constellation shall remain until Congress acts.

Now, the President, without a law or a direction by this Congress, has decided to use magic tricks that have never been used before to delay to the point of disaster and to destroy the Constellation.

We just heard today, when Judge Poe got up here and talked, that at least a court of this land has pointed out that the closing down of the gulf to offshore drilling was arbitrary and capricious, and it has granted the extraordinary relief that is very seldom done in the court system by granting an injunction against the President of the United States and the White House to prevent them, by one of the whims that they came up with, from closing down drilling in the gulf. This court has said, Sorry, boys. You can't do that.

Well, now we've got a Constitution, and we've got a Congress that has got a provision and a law that has been passed as the law of this land to be enforced by the executive branch of this government that says that we will not destroy the Constellation program until the Congress decides to do so, but the President, who, I guess, didn't take civics in high school, has decided it doesn't really matter whether Congress acts or not. He is going to destroy the program. I don't think that's the way it works. I don't think that's the way it's supposed to work.

We like to say this, and we recite this in a lot of places: We are a country of laws, not of men.

It is not what man runs the White House or what man runs some position in this country. It is what the law is. The law is passed by this Congress and by other legislative bodies around the 50 States in this Union. Our executive branch is to enforce those laws and to uphold them. Our judiciary is to remind them when they don't, and they have done so as recently as yesterday.

What is kind of strange is that the Carter administration decided to cede the Panama Canal. America would no longer manage the Panama Canal. It was going to save us money to get rid of the Panama Canal. Now, it's kind of funny. There is a Chinese flag imposed on this picture because now the Chinese manage the Panama Canal. That's kind of outsourcing American exceptionalism. We built that canal. Now we're outsourcing the Moon, potentially, to the Chinese under the Obama administration, and we are outsourcing the space program and the missiles that go along with that space program, and we're outsourcing the rocketry, which makes us exceptional.

You know, this administration has been very critical about the outsourcing of jobs outside the country. It has been pointing fingers at lots of people, saying they're destroying American jobs by outsourcing. What in the world do you think you're doing with these 20,000 to 30,000 high-paying, technical jobs--the great brain trust of America? You're outsourcing them to the Chinese, to the Indians, to the Russians--and maybe to the Japanese.

Why shouldn't we be concerned about this, Mr. President? I think that's a question we've got to ask ourselves. I think we've got to start asking, With how much are we willing to say we're no longer exceptional and that we're just going to outsource everything to everyone else?

I really believe the American people want to say to us here in Congress, Hey, wake up. Give us jobs like you've always given us jobs, and we as Americans will do those jobs, and we'll do them better than anybody else in the world. We always have and we always will. I'm not ready to give up on us, and I don't think my colleagues are ready to give up on us or on the American people.

We are still the exceptional people who put a man on the Moon in a decade like the President of the United States John F. Kennedy said. We are still the people who created the first, basically, aircraft that you could fly out into outer space--the shuttle program--a phenomenon that we used, and we landed them there on the runway just like an ordinary airplane rather than parachuting them into the ocean like the first programs we did. We have done wonders with NASA.

I hope and I pray--and I think everybody else hopes and prays--that the President will reconsider and will allow Congress to discuss this and will allow Congress to make decisions as to whether or not we're going to make these kinds of radical changes to the future of man's exploration of space and whether, when we do, if we change, we are protecting the sanctity of human life. All of these things are important. All of these things are things we ought to be concerned about. Right now, we've just got to be concerned about why this administration is giving up on American exceptionalism and why it is outsourcing our space program to foreign countries.

I'll yield whatever time Mr. Bishop would like so he can make a comment on that.

In reclaiming my time, that is ironic because one of the things you hear from parents is, When am I going to be able to get my kids to have their own imaginations and to not play somebody else's video games? To me, it sounds like this is somebody else's video game.

You know, you'll remember when we diverted satellites from protecting our troops in Iraq to over the poles to check on global warming. From what I'm hearing from this administration, their plans for NASA are that we're going to have low-orbit satellite programs to check on global warming. Oh, I forgot. We don't call it ``global warming'' anymore. It's called ``climate change.'' I apologize. It turns out we may not be warming. Well, that's just a whole other debate. Yet it seems like all of the resources seem to be going towards desperately trying to confirm that debate.

I want to thank the gentleman for coming down, my distinguished friend

from Utah, Rob Bishop, who is one of the smartest guys in Congress, who is a good friend of mine, and who is a classmate of mine. We came into this august body together. We share an awful lot of concerns about the future of what we are doing. I'm really happy to have Rob Bishop looking at the scientific side of our world, because he has got great insight into it. I want to thank him for sharing that insight with us tonight.

I want to thank the Speaker for allowing us to take this time to talk about something that we are very proud of. We in Texas have a lot to be proud of. One of the things we point out that we are proud of is the manned space center in Houston, Texas. When you look on the Texas map, which tells you all the great things to come see in Texas, we highly recommend that people visit the manned space center, because we know great things were done by great men and women at that place, and great things continue to be done there.

To drive a stake in the heart of the manned space program is a tragedy, not only for the State of Texas but for the whole United States and, I think I can effectively argue, the world. Let's not outsource another of our industries. Let's not give up on American exceptionalism. Let's go back and reconsider the Obama administration's desire to trash this program. Let's go back to putting us on a path with a plan, as Mr. Bishop pointed out, to go out and explore those new frontiers we have left to explore.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I thank you for the time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank my friend from Hawaii for yielding, and I thank him for the opportunity to speak on behalf of this important honor we are bestowing upon the Army by congratulating them on their 235th birthday.

The first time that I ever realized I was going to be given the honor to represent the United States Army was when they had a redistricting in Texas and I realized that my new district was going to have Fort Hood in it. To be quite honest, it was an overpowering challenge to be called upon to represent over 50,000 American soldiers and all those who work with those soldiers. I was a little bit taken aback, quite frankly. Mr. Edwards, as he pointed out, who has been so helpful to me in the transition of Fort Hood, Mr. Edwards had represented them for many years and had done an outstanding job, and I was going to be the new kid on the block going to Fort Hood. And so I went to my office and I said, the districts are changing, we've got to go visit soldiers, we've got to be with soldiers.

I got the opportunity through the Speaker's Office before I had hardly spent any time at all in Fort Hood to go to Korea to visit soldiers who were stationed in Korea, many of whom were part of the soldiers contingency that would return to Fort Hood. I grew up as a small child with what was earlier today commemorated as the Korean War. To me it was just a map of the peninsula of Korea that I watched lines move up and down, but I know from people who came back what a terrible fight that was. And I know that that is still, to this day, to this very moment we stand in history, a dangerous place on the Earth.

When we got there, we were given the opportunity, my wife and I, to go up on the demilitarized zone, the DMZ, where ultimately, as a result of the cease fire that took place in Korea, they have set up--both sides, you're kind of across a line looking at each other. In fact, as recently as 4 or 5 years ago, there have been fatalities on that line. There is the opportunity for another war to break out, theoretically, any minute of any day, 24 hours a day and has been since the end of the Korean War back in the fifties. So it was kind of a challenge just to go up there.

Then when I got there, there were all these young-faced American soldiers. My oldest son is a football coach and a baseball coach, and as I looked at these young men and women that I was being introduced to; they looked just like the kids that were at the graduation ceremony just a few months earlier that my son coached and taught.

When it came time for lunch, they gave me an opportunity to sit down at this table with this bunch of young men and women. I tell you this because it was kind of unusual, my first time to ever sit down with just ordinary soldiers and talk to them. And you don't really know what they're going to say; you're kind of curious. Well, the first thing I found out was there was one kid there from Killeen Ellison; he played football for my son when my son coached at Killeen Ellison. There was another kid there that played baseball for my son when he coached at Round Rock High School. So I realized that these were just like those kids that had just graduated.

I went around the table, and this was all a bunch of 18- and 19-year- old soldiers. They came from small-town and big-town America. They could have been your friend, your neighbor, your cousin, could have been your brother or your sister. And there they were, standing up there, potentially in harm's way on our behalf, where it's cold and windy and kind of scary.

So that was my first contact. And I asked the question, kind of naively, Okay, so when are you guys going to be through over here in Korea? Most of them were going to be out within the next 8 months. And I said, Where do you want to go when you get out, expecting all kinds of exotic places. No, sir, we want to go to either Afghanistan or Iraq. My wife and I both were a little taken aback by that. And so my wife asked the question, Why would you want to go there? And they gave an answer that is one of the definitions I think of the United States Army, they said, Sir, we're warfighters; that's where the war is. That's what we do for a living. We are the Army.

Now, you hear that from a 19-year-old kid that probably a year and a half ago had been playing on some practice field someplace in central Texas and you say to yourself, what magic is it that we get people like this to come out and do this job and do it willingly and with such patriotism and such fervor for doing the job they're trained for?

Just recently, less than a few weeks ago--and I shared this at the birthday party for the Army last night--my wife and I got a very nice honor of being part of a small delegation of Members of Congress who were invited to go to the Memorial Day ceremony at Normandy Beach where our soldiers came ashore and accomplished the impossible. In fact, we stood on Pointe du Hoc, as Mr. Edwards was describing to you, and we looked at those cliffs and we looked at the repair being done to preserve that national treasure of our heroic effort.

We got to see that beach both at high and low tide, and we got to see the distance those soldiers had to run under heavy, heavy, heavy automatic weapon fire and artillery fire just to get to that bluff that they had to climb to get to the fight. You looked at it and you said, I don't think I could have done it. That is what I thought: I don't think I could have done it. And then you realize that that's the same kids, like the same kids I talked to in Korea. They were young people who were members of the United States Army; they had a job to do and they did it.

They told us a story about a soldier who landed there, fought his way across the beach to the bluff, fought his way up the bluff to get off of that deadly beach only to be wounded in the face--took off the right side of his face with a machine gun bullet. They wrapped him up on the top of the bluff and said you need to go back down on the beach for an aid station. And his comment was, I just fought my way off of that beach. And they said, no, you've got to be evacuated. Going back down to be evacuated he was shot four more times, the last of which took off the left side of his face. And his comment that he made when he came back to Normandy as a 90-year-old man--and they said he looked fine, he said they did a fine job on me and I looked good. I have children, I have grandchildren and I have great grandchildren, and I

did what I did for them. And I can say that I always wondered if I really ought to come to this beach because I was only here for 9 hours. True, I did get five Purple Hearts while I was here, but I wondered if I was worthy to come back and say I landed here, because I had to be evacuated.

That special something that makes up the United States Army can't be described to us in detail. But when you walk among those 10,000 crosses and stars of David in that cemetery and you realize that those heroes laying beneath that ground are exactly like those heroes who stand on the wall in the defense of liberty in Iraq and Afghanistan today, our soldiers today are exactly like those of the Greatest Generation: they sacrifice everything.

I'm proud to represent the 31st Congressional District, which is the home of Fort Hood. Every soldier at Fort Hood has been deployed multiple times, and they never complain; they just do the job. We Americans, wherever we are, in this House that we are so blessed to be able to serve or around the world, should stop every day, when we have the opportunity, and say thank you to the United States Army for the quality of human beings they have produced to defend our Nation and for the patriotic spirit that is part of what makes up the psyche of America.

Nothing is more precious to us than the United States Army. Nothing is more honorable to me than being given the opportunity to represent over 50,000 American soldiers. And so this day I am very happy to say to our United States Army, happy birthday, U.S. Army. We are proud of you. God bless you and keep you safe.

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this hour. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks on this issue of this oil spill, because we are going to get two conflicting points of view. I actually heard, I believe, that somehow this oil spill is now George W. Bush's fault. It reminds me of the game, the Kevin Bacon game that your job is no matter what actor or movie you lay out before the public, you have got to bring it back in seven cycles to Kevin Bacon. And it seems that everything that goes on in the United States, that the majority party seems to somehow think whatever goes on in the United States they can somehow track it back to George W. Bush.

And what I heard was that Mr. Bush had used a drilling rig at some point in his life, and therefore it's Bush's fault that there was a failure, or something to that extent, a failure on this BP drilling rig. It's time to really stop. It's getting a little old for the American public, for them to hear constantly that no matter what goes wrong in the Obama administration it's George W. Bush's fault. I think this is getting a little old and getting a little bit, it seems to be sort of a fantasy that seems to be prevailing.

We have got a great disaster in the gulf, and nobody's denying we have a great disaster in the gulf. Today I heard a man who actually knows something about drilling in the gulf. I haven't heard anyone stand up that has talked on the majority side tonight and said, By the way, I have drilled these, and let me tell you what has happened in the gulf.

But Trent Franks came before us today and showed us what has happened in the gulf--it is very interesting--and why the cap failed that they first started, and why the wells that are being drilled to intersect this well, the relief wells should be successful. And, you know, if you want to know how you do something, you ought to talk to somebody that's actually done it. And Trent, a Member of this body, has actually done it.

So we will find out, whenever we get this spill stopped, we will find out what happened in the gulf to cause this thing to blow out. And it may be human error. It may be the company's error. It may be shortcuts they took. It may be the inspector's error. It could be just about anybody's error. We don't know.

Now, the truth is we don't have to know yet because the presumption is overwhelming that it's BP's responsibility, and they admit it. It's their responsibility. But blame-gaming is not going to stop the oil from flowing into the gulf. Putting our resources together at every level from every source is part of what you do when you have a national emergency. I don't care whether that national emergency has the name Katrina or Rita or Ike or any of the other names, or Carla or any of the other names of hurricanes that have swept across our gulf and attacked all Gulf States at some point in time, or it has the name-- what's the name of this well? I can't even remember anymore. Anyway, just call it the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico that blew out. Blame game's not solving the problem.

What's the problem? When it's the hurricane, the wind's blowing and things are getting torn down, and we need to put our resources together to help the people and the industries that are attacked by that hurricane. Today we have animals, we have sea life, we have wildlife, sea life, human life that is threatened by this BP oil spill.

And our first job, and the job not only of British Petroleum but of those of us who have the responsibility of protecting this country, which would be the President of the United States, the executive department, this Congress, and everybody involved, should have immediately poured massive, massive support into doing something about this oil well and stopping this spill. And we should have done it through the people who have the intelligence and the technology to tell us just exactly what we are dealing with.

I wouldn't recommend you call a great white hunter in Africa to tell him how to put down this oil spill. I wouldn't recommend that you call a surgeon in Brooklyn, New York, and ask him to put down this oil spill. And I wouldn't recommend you talk to a community organizer and ask him how to put down this oil spill. I would recommend that you immediately, when this happened, approach those people who have the expertise to deal with this oil spill and do it. And quite honestly, I think we have to say that the President of the United States told us the buck stops with him, so he's the person who should have started this ball rolling when this whole thing started coming down on us.

I have got a little chart up here, the gulf spill timeline. And we are going to look at that for just a minute to see how well we did in deciding that we were, as a government, going to join the oil and gas industry in coming up with a solution to British Petroleum's disaster that they had created in our blessed Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I think I have the State with the largest amount of Gulf of Mexico coastline of any State in this Union. And it would be close, Florida would be a close second. And they may have more. I don't know. But certainly the State of Texas has a lot. So let's look at this thing for just a second.

April 20, 2010, and today is June 16. So looking back to April 20, the explosion occurred. Eleven people were killed. Right there we knew we had a problem. The first oil leak was officially recognized and revealed by the administration in Washington on April 24. So 4 days later, the administration acknowledged and revealed to us that there was an oil leak.

On April 28, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Salazar, traveled down to the BP command center in Houston. April 29, the Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano announced a spill of national significance, and President Obama made his first public remarks about the disaster. That's 9 days after it occurred. April 30, the President deployed his senior administration officials to the gulf region and makes a request for remarks about what's going on, and the Louisiana National Guard was activated to assist. That's a start. That's a first start.

The President visits the gulf on May 2. It looks like 13 days after the event. Cabinet officers briefed the Members of Congress on May 4 about the seriousness of this event.

May 11, Louisiana requests emergency permission from the Federal Government to dredge barriers to construct berms. Now, when I was about 18 years old, I worked in south Louisiana, and the whole ecology and economy of Louisiana is directly affected by what they call the marshlands. There are literally thousands of people who make their living because the marshlands in Louisiana thrive to be breeding grounds and producing grounds for numerous amounts of seafood products. And in fact, I would venture to say that there's not anybody who eats seafood in the United States, and have done so for any length of time at all in their life, has eaten seafood that was produced as a result of the overall environment of the Louisiana coastal region, which is 99 percent marsh.

Now, marsh is different from the beach. The beach is bad. If you've got a beautiful beach like they had at Pensacola, that gorgeous white sand, or anywhere in Alabama or Mississippi or anywhere in Florida, tar balls on the beach and this nasty sludge coming into the beach is going to be icky and yucky and nasty. And if you get it all over your feet, you have to clean it off with alcohol, and it can burn you and tear you up.

But if that stuff comes into the marsh, it can kill and will kill plant life, animal life, and ocean life.

So when the Governor of Louisiana, who was so unfairly criticized here tonight by the opposition, when the Governor said, look, guys, at least authorize some dredging to put some sand barriers between us, between our marsh and that terrible spill that's headed our direction, and yet it wasn't until the 27th of May that the Federal Government granted Louisiana a partial permission to dredge sand up to build sort of an island-like barrier so maybe that oil will hit the sand and not come in where all the plants and the wildlife and the sea life lives and thrives and functions.

But that was only 27 days too late, and the 28th of May, the President went down on a second visit to the Gulf States, and this is what he told us: The buck stops with me.

I agree with him. The buck stops with the President of the United States, and now we are hearing people scream about a national disaster, which it is, and the President of the United States' job was to lead, and lead means go out and if you have to, roll up your sleeves and suck oil out of the water. You certainly need to get people out there that are taking it seriously enough to follow the instructions of the man on the ground, Governor Jindal, who said it's not a solution, but it sure would help if there's a barrier between us and that oil. And he shouldn't have had to wait for the Federal Government to hem and haw and say, well, we don't know what that sand island you're going to build is going to do to the overall environment of south Louisiana. What does it matter? The oil is going to come in there and wreck it. So let's just dig up the sand. No, we had to wait.

On the 29th of May, British Petroleum did its top-kill plan to try to stop the oil, and it failed. The 2nd of June, the Obama administration finally approved Louisiana's plan to dredge and tells BP to pay $360 million for five new berms. The Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the explosion and the spill. Let's see, that's all of May and 11 days in April when nothing of significance took place.

June 14, the Senate Democrats write BP calling on the company to set up a $20 billion independent administrative escrow fund to compensate victims of the spill.

June 15, that was yesterday, President Obama makes the Oval Office speech on the oil spill and uses the crisis to push climate change legislation.

And if you heard what our colleagues were talking about in the previous 1 hour before this Congress, they were talking about that we need to have these alternative fuels to replace oil and replace petroleum products, in fact, all carbon products, coal, oil, natural gas. They talked to you about subsidies and other things, but they show you on their chart, and you see this one right here, it is algae, and next year we're going to replace all the energy produced by oil with algae if you will put the resources in algae. No, because it won't.

If you say, look at these wind farms, this is going to replace all the energy we needed to charge our electric cars so we don't even have to run on any kind of petroleum product. And that's all we need is to subsidize that and pour money into it, and it will replace it in the next 2 years. So why am I using the term the next 2 years? Because the President of the United States has put a moratorium on drilling in the gulf, and 17 percent of our consumption on oil and oil products, which includes plastic and other byproducts of oil and natural gas, 17 percent of that a year comes from deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. So, in 2 years, that's 34 percent of our fuel consumption nationwide that's going to have to be accounted for by somebody in some alternative form if we're going to give up on oil and gas.

Are any of the alternatives that are even close to replacing 34 percent of our energy consumption in this country? No. Will there be? Maybe. But the reality is, we get up in the morning, and we start our cars, and we drive to work. And generally we're burning gasoline or diesel, all of which are products of the petroleum industry. And if you're not going to use gas or diesel, then you better hook a sail up to your car and hope the wind is blowing towards work or you're not going to work.

So the reality is, to just cave in on an industry because of a terrible disaster is like saying, oh, my God, a 747 went down with 600 passengers, shut down the air industry for the next 6 months. But here's the reality: The reality is this 6-month shutdown of the Gulf is actually going to be a 5-year shutdown of the Gulf because once they pull those rigs out of the Gulf, we're not going to get them back it's estimated for 3 to 5 years. So the 6-month moratorium in effect shuts down 17 percent of our energy production in this country for 5 years, potentially for 5 years.

It is time to be realistic and say, what's the big problem right now? And it's the oil spill. Why is it a problem? Because oil is floating around on our pristine Gulf of Mexico. It is moving from State to State. It is eventually going to come ashore in someplace, and why aren't we doing everything we can to bring people over here from anywhere that will help and say we'll help?

I'm going to add one more thing. On June 16, President Obama met with BP executives in the White House--that's today--and he got his $20 billion to go into escrow. But the reality is where have we been, where has our leadership been of this country, the President of the United States and the administration, when this oil was spilling out of that well? Why didn't we answer the phone when the Dutch said 3 days after the spill started, we've got a fleet of skimmers that will come over to help you skim oil? Why didn't we respond? In fact, why didn't we say, world, we help you every chance you ask us to help you, give us a hand; anybody who's got resources that can soak up oil, please bring them to the United States and help us out?

That kind of leadership had to come from the President of the United States, and the waiving of the antique act called the Jones Act had to be done by the President of the United States.

So as we talk about this disaster, let's start by saying what's our real problem? And our real problem is this leaking oil, and we've got to clean it up. Before anything else, we've got to clean it up, but instead, we act to attack the drilling industry and shut down 17 percent of our energy resources a year at a minimum because it's very, very good and popular to attack the oil industry. But in reality, tomorrow morning, when you crank up your engine, say to yourself, what kind of fuel is driving me to work today and where does it come from?

I am very pleased to see that I'm joined by two of my colleagues, and I'm going to call on Mr. Mica from Florida to talk about this very, very disastrous situation and a bill that he has that offers some solutions.

Before you yield back, would you tell us a little bit about your Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund Improvement Act that you have proposed.

I thank the gentleman for what he has had to say.

I want to tell you that my wife is Dutch, so I took a little offense at the fact that we had an offer of help of a fleet of skimmers from the Dutch. It is my understanding we gave no response. Maybe that's different. I don't know. All I know is that I'm like Will Rogers. All I know is what I read in the newspapers. Now I'm even more upset since I've found out we have American-flagged ships waiting in the harbor ready to help, and nobody has asked for their help. The leadership that runs this country, the executive branch of the government, ought to be ashamed of themselves.

I yield back.

In reclaiming my time, let me say right off that I am very, very proud to be part of a Congress that instantly reacts to a crisis situation. Mr. Oberstar should be commended for that reaction. That is what we are asking for the entire government to do. Let's react positively. Let's work as a team. Let's quit blaming previous administrations. Let's do the job to clean this mess up.

I thank you very much.

My good friend from Texas lives in the heart of All Country USA. Houston, Texas, is, to my way of thinking, the center of the universe for the oil industry, and my good friend Pete Olson is one of the members of our Houston delegation who is very knowledgeable in this area. He has some legislation, and there may be other things that he wishes to talk about, so I yield to my friend Pete Olson, the Member from Sugar Land and all points south, to talk to us about how he feels about what is going on today.

Reclaiming my time for a moment, I asked Trent Frank, who is an experienced offshore driller, as we all know. I said, Trent, what kind of salaries do these guys make? He said, The ordinary laborer-- which in my day, at least, we used to call those guys roughnecks or roustabouts--$60 an hour. And the high-tech guys, the guys that can drive a drill bit down 5,000 feet under the water and another multithousands of feet and hit a 12-inch hole where this oil is coming out of, with that kind of skill, they're paid a lot more.

Now the question I would have for the administration, if you take the drilling away and all those people are looking for a job to replace that income, where is the guy who developed his skills through experience at the low-paying job on a well? So maybe he's got a high school education, and he learned his job on the job. Where is he going to find $60 an hour to support his family on? It doesn't exist.

I yield.

Reclaiming my time, in wrapping this up, there's a lot of things that the Republicans--we get accused of an awful lot of things around here. We're going to ignore

those accusations. Mr. Blunt has a bill. The Oil Spill Response and Assistance Act, by Mr. Roy Blunt from Missouri, H.R. 5336, requires the Secretary of Energy to develop and deploy technology for the use in the event of breach or explosion at or at a significant discharge of oil from a deepwater port, offshore facility, or tank vessel, including caps, fireproof booms, remote-operated submersibles, 24-hour response time, double liability limits for oil companies.

Mr. Blunt is addressing the issue. Mr. Schock has an Offshore Safety and Response. We have legislation. Let's do our job. And let's continue. Let's end that moratorium and continue to drill. And be safe.

I thank my friend from Texas for yielding. And let me say, that was a real eye-opener. I knew from having read some of the things previously that BP certainly was claiming big green activities both in their ads on television and in other places, and I do remember reading, I believe in the National Journal, some articles about their activities on behalf of climate change. But it didn't really sink in until this very minute when you read this to me. And I am going to bring something up that's a little tongue-in-cheek humor. But I have a question I wanted to ask because now you have talked about the difference between what we talked about, which was global warming and climate change.

When I went to school in Lubbock, Texas, back in the sixties, I remember specifically a day when a bunch of buddies and I went out to play a round of golf. It was 89 or 90 degrees. We were in a pair of golf shirts and Bermuda shorts, and we started out playing a round of golf. Before we got through with nine holes, a dust storm came up, and we could hardly see the ball, and we could hardly hit it. Then it began to rain, and it rained mud for about an hour through the dust storm. Then as the dust seemed to calm and go away, the temperature began to drop, and by the time we got to the club house, the temperature was 20 degrees.

So we had had a climate change from 90 to 20 in a 10-hour period, including a dust storm and rain. And we know that climate change is George W. Bush's fault. Now did he do that? Because that certainly was the most spectacular climate change I have ever seen in my entire life. But, unfortunately, we all know in Texas, we have those climate changes all year long. Is that the Republicans' fault and the Bush administration's fault? Good Lord, where were they in 1964? I think he was probably in junior high school or something. I don't know. What do you think, Mr. Gohmert?

If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I would argue that we enhance our cynicism quite a bit by the article that you just read concerning the relationship between the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, and British Petroleum prior to the leak, the massive disaster in the gulf. So you have to be a cynic when you see the kind of ``whose blank am I going to kick'' attitude out there. And of course everybody knew who we were talking about's blank that was going to get kicked, and that was going to be British Petroleum, as if they were the evil empire, you know, the black knights or whatever you want to call them. When you realize that they were partners on the same piece of legislation that he talked about for at least one-third to almost one- half of the speech that the President made last night to the American people because the solution to the oil flowing into the gulf is not bringing in the Dutch ships and other ships that have volunteered to come help by awaiting the Jones Act. It's not even releasing American flagships to go out there, which is no violation of the Jones Act.

No. The solution to the oil spill is cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax. Let's see if we can't come up with a whole new tax scheme for the American people. Let's see if we can't drive up the cost of the energy for their homes and for their businesses. Let's see if we can't put the American farmer out of business. Because you talk to a farmer about cap-and-tax, and he will tell you, his food and fertilizer--or the food and fiber he produces and the energy it takes to run his farm equipment is all going to be destroyed by this scheme to make money another way with cap-and-tax programs.

Well, I mean, look at how much money the former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, has made in participating in cap-and-tax issues in foreign areas, like the European Union. So get back to the oil spill, Mr. President. I yield back.

I want to congratulate my colleague for doing some mighty interesting research. It is good that we laid this kind of research out before this House and before the American public.

One of the things that people get concerned about up here is who is shooting straight. As far as Ms. Baca is concerned, it looks right now like this administration decided to put their money on the wrong horse. When we start talking about Minerals Management, that is starting to ring a bell with the American people because our interesting father and son inspection team that you have talked about on the floor of the House, isn't that part of Minerals Management?

That comment about the no vehicles also prevents those who are in charge of enforcing our border from following the drug dealers as they take their caravans of bad product

across the border and into our wilderness area, and that is a serious situation.

John Mica from Florida was with us earlier tonight, and he gave us an interesting revelation. There is an American flagship firm with cleanup capabilities that has informed our government they stand ready and willing, if they are asked, to start helping clean up.

The Jones Act has nothing to do with this. These are American-flagged ships, and they are still waiting for a response from the White House, and you don't have to waive any Jones Act. All you've got to do is say, come on, boys, get in there and start cleaning up. My Lord, if they know how and they've got the equipment, why don't we have anybody on the face of this globe that's willing to do it out there in the Gulf cleaning that water up?

So it really is almost comical. With all the criticism of the Bush administration over Katrina and Rita and some of the hurricanes, natural disasters that occurred, this man-made disaster has had this administration's hands hog-tied for 2 months, and it's a hog tying of their own doing.

And the first thing I should say is, Amen to everything you've had to say, and I want to thank you for saying it.

You know, it's become a strange world when our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, sends its Prime Minister over here and he's taken in through the back door, the service entrance, to the White House. He's told no photo ops, and he is basically slighted by the person we have elected to be the leader of the free world.

And then fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago, when the leader of the Palestinian movement comes in here, and we see photo ops, living room meetings, and a big chunk of money headed to the Palestinians promised by the President of the United States.

It's embarrassing how much of a change of policy we have towards our only--or at least our longest surviving ally in the Middle East. I was in New York the day before yesterday, and one of the people I met with said, Have you ever thought about the fact that if Israel didn't exist, how many Americans would have to be stationed somewhere in the Middle East to try to keep that cauldron from exploding all over the entire world? Remember what the Prime Minister of England told us right here before this House, the reason you have to respond is because it's your turn, you're the only real superpower left in the world.

That responsibility we're taking and we know about it, but when we have those who have stood by our side and worked with us to try to make things go--like Israel, like great Britain--why would a change of administration be so insulting to an ally like Israel? I was struck dumb by the whole thing; I think you were too. And I think you've done an excellent job of describing the possible consequences of the position we seem to be taking in this administration against Israel. I think all Americans of whatever heritage should be seriously concerned about what's going on.

I thank you for allowing me to participate in this evening, and I yield back my time to you, Mr. Gohmert.

Mr. Speaker, a recent Gallup Poll tells us that the American people rank the growing debt in this country as the single most threatening issue to the future of our country's well-being.

When the American public in their homes face a debt crisis, the first thing they do is prepare a budget so they can live within their means and start to reduce their debt burden. But this House, under the Democratic leadership, has chosen to prepare no budget. In fact, for the first time in modern budgetary history, they are telling us there will be no budget here in this House this year.

Mr. Speaker, the American people are crying out for us to get control of our spending. How can we control our spending without a budget? It's a crying shame there is no budget. No wonder we've got issues with jobs.

And by the way, when you're trying to create jobs, why do you shut down a major industry in the gulf and kill tens of thousands of jobs up and down the gulf coast, stopping drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?

Mr. Speaker, the stock market, this very minute, is dropping like a rock over the financial collapse of Greece and the pending failure of other Euro nations. They are bankrupt from unsustainable government spending under the same programs the Democrats in this body are now forcing on America.

With an overwhelming majority in the House and Senate and a Democrat in the White House, they can't even pass a budget. Heck, they're not even proposing one. Mr. Speaker, the House majority has proven it can't govern; and if we don't make a change, America will join Greece in national bankruptcy.

I thank my friend for yielding.

You know, some of the Members of this august body that are living just a normal life, they ought to be looking at this, and folks back home ought to be looking at this and thinking how can you spend all that money without having a budget? And then they think about what kind of a great deal would it be at my house if I could just say, you know what, kids, mom, I tell you what, let's do, let's just do whatever makes us happy. Let's pick up all the pet projects in the world that we favor and let's just spend our money on that. Let's go out and buy the things we want to buy. Let's go places we want to go and do things we want to do. And just throw that budget that we used to have, throw it in the trash, and this year let's don't budget. Let's spend the money. And hey, mom, I don't want you to worry that we don't have a budget because we don't need a budget. Hey, we will borrow the money to pay these bills. That's no problem. And if we can't get somebody to loan us the money here, we will go to China and get the people in China to loan us the money to pay these bills, and we will be fine.

And oh, you are worried about paying it back? Hey, let the grandkids pay it back. You know, they are going to have a good life. Surely they are going to have a good life. And they don't need as good as we got. So let's let them pay it back, and let's put it on their shoulders. And if they are smart, they will figure out a way to stick it down on their grandkids' shoulders. And we will just keep this runaway spending going forever.

I don't think that most people would see that as a way to run your household. Or the businessmen that are sitting down at the board meeting, and they are saying, you know, we had a budget last year, but this year let's throw that budget out and let's just do what we think is going to make us do well this year for ourselves personally, and let's don't worry about what's going to happen in the future because we will borrow the money from China, and then we will put it down the road, far enough down the road that we will get other people's grandkids to pay for it.

That doesn't make sense. And it doesn't make sense to the American people. It means that you are just--and you know, I get really excited when I hear like I heard the other night, when I heard some of my colleagues from the other side over here talking about what a wonderful job they had done, and they talked about PAYGO. PAYGO has saved the world. My gosh, we have just absolutely saved the world with PAYGO because we are paying for what we are spending unless it's an emergency. And so far everything we have done we have declared an emergency on. So, well, we didn't quite get PAYGO done, but that's okay, we believe in it. And it's something we believe in.

What we are hearing from folks back home is, hey, times are tough. We need jobs, and you are doing your little pet projects down there, and you are spending this money that we are never going to be able to pay back, or we are afraid we will never be able to pay back, and we don't want to be Greece. You know, poor Greece. Right now they are kind of the poster child for what happens when you don't pay your bills.

Well, if you crunch the numbers and we continue down the road that the Obama administration is taking this country, at the rate of acceleration of deficit spending that the Obama administration has given us, and by the way last night there were some charts put up there and just conveniently the deficit numbers on those charts stopped at the end of the Bush administration, so we didn't get to see that other line that the Obama administration put on there that drops clear off the charts. There you go. That one didn't happen to be on the charts when we were told the figures never lie. So it stopped right there at 2007. Let's look at it.

Because their chart would have been upside down because it was below the line.

That's the way it ought to be. Turn it upside down.

And we got to see last night all those Bush blue lines. And we did get to see the first little Obama line right there. But that's not an Obama line yet, that's just a Democratic Congress line.

That's a Nancy Pelosi line. And then look what's happened since. And so it's true, figures don't lie. You just don't show them all, it makes a little bit of a difference. So I am glad you got that chart out. I just brought it up because I kept wanting to go raise my hand and say, Aren't there supposed to be some more lines on there?

But anyway, that's another story. Back to what our folks back home were saying. They are looking at that, and they are saying, Who is going to pay for that? Well, it would be their grandchildren and our grandchildren and our colleagues across the aisle's grandchildren. I personally don't have any yet, but I am praying every night to have some grandchildren. When I do, I certainly don't want to start them out behind the eight ball.

In fact, we most of the time work to try to make sure that we start our kids out ahead of where we started out if we can, just like our friend Mr. Jordan said a minute ago. And that's kind of what makes America great. Now, there are people that say, well, we have been deficit spending forever. But you know, these numbers we see here are on new ideas and new concepts. We don't see the threats, the outside threats the American people face, like the wars and so forth, being that big number. This is new energy, which may be a great idea, but thus far it's not replacing the energy we have got. And it's new projects and it's new concepts of, what I would call in nice language, a centrist form of government. And what we are really seeing here is a group of folks running amok with spending and not even being willing to do what their leader said the most basic responsibility of governing is, to have a budget.

Well, why didn't they do that? Well, I think it's because we are too busy doing pet projects and making sure that we change America. It's more important to change than it is to get it right.

And I think that's a question we need to be asking ourselves. We didn't know what ``change'' meant. Now we're starting to get a glimmer of what change means. And is that the change we want?

I yield back.

Will the gentleman yield?

One of the reasons you have a budget is so you can make legitimate estimates on how much you're going to spend. If you don't make a budget, you're not tied to a legitimate estimate and what your revenues are going to be coming in to pay for it. That's what you do to make a budget. Everybody back home knows that.

I'm not going to mention the company, but it was a good-size company. I met with one of their folks the other day, and they just finished charting out at their board of directors at just what increasing the health care costs for covering the 26 year olds, in other words, carrying the children of their employees to 26 years old, what it was going to cost their company.

Now, they're a good-size company--$28 million. Now that's missing it just a little bit, isn't it, for one company is looking at $28 million just to carry children to 26 years old?

Above what they're spending now on their health insurance.

Now, I don't care how big you are. That's a big chunk of money, and it would shock anybody from the biggest corporation in the world down to the little mom-and-pop to have that kind of percentage of your revenues all of a sudden by government action going out the front door.

That's the kind of thing when you don't think things through and figure out what it's going to cost that those things jump up and bite you. But in this instance when we don't figure out what it's going to cost, it's the American people that get jumped up and bitten, and that's what I think we're seeing happen right now. And I think that's unfortunate.

I yield back.

Will the gentleman yield for a question?

So if I understand you, those other budgets you're talking about, those four others, there was--in those cases there was an attempt to pass a budget, but they never could reconcile. Maybe they couldn't reconcile the differences with the Senate or they couldn't even reconcile it within the Congress, but they certainly made a good- faith effort to try to get a budget passed and didn't get it done. Is that what you're saying?

It seems to me you ought to at least try. I mean, it's almost like, you know, my wife, one time my son wanted to know--he had to drop out of baseball to play football, and he wanted to go back and play baseball. And he was all hanging around the house all moping around. And his mother said, Well, you know what? If you don't try, the answer is ``no.'' So why don't you go ask the coach if he will let you back on the baseball team.

Well, I'd say to the Budget Committee of the majority party, if you're not even going to give it a try, of course we're not going to have a budget. Let's at least give it a try. Let's at least see if we can't come up with an idea.

And I kind of like Mr. Scalise's idea of this time let's try to put a balanced budget before the American people and see what happens there.

You know, it was the Republicans back during the Clinton administration that battled and battled and battled Bill Clinton who vetoed and vetoed until they finally got their consent of a balanced budget amendment done. They had a route for a balanced budget, and they fought the administration until they got it there. And it had a lot to do with some of the prosperity that took place in that decade. That seems to be lost in history. Revisionist history is actually current event in this place. It's constantly changing what really happened, when things really happened.

The welfare reform was really done by the Congress, but somehow that got forgotten. There's a lot that gets forgotten. And right now they're forgetting to do a budget, and it's time for the Democratic Party and their leadership and this House to do a budget and it would go forward and let us see just what you're going to spend and where the revenue is coming from. I think it's only logical that they go forward on that.

I yield back.

I've heard that before.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

These are serious times, and we have serious issues to deal with.

Recently, I was privileged to be in a meeting with some conservative economists, and I say that because I want to make sure that we are pretty clear they are conservative. They gave us a whole bunch of projections of spending and projections of debt-to-income, both government debt and private debt to GDP and bank deposits. And they said, but cutting through the chase is, if we continue the policies of the Obama administration into a second term, if he wins a second term, in the third year of his second term we will be Greece. That is pretty serious.

And, you know, you talked about the middle class. I bet if you questioned everybody that lost their job and is out of work and what class they were in, they would all tell you they were in the middle class, because we all consider ourselves to be middle class in this country. We are sort of proud to be middle class.

So these concepts require work, and that means a budget.

I yield back.

Madam Speaker, I've been coming up here on the first day of each week that we're back in session to talk about the rule of law and how the rule of law needs to apply to those of us who serve here in Congress, those who serve in the administration, and that it is the glue that holds our society together. And if we, in turn, are going to circumvent the rules of law, then we, in fact, are chipping away at the very foundation of the American culture.

Today we're going to shift gears a little bit because we've talked a lot about what's going on up here and some folks that have had some problems following the rules, but I don't think we've ever seen a more glaring example of a violation of the rule of law and the failure to enforce the law than what is happening on the southern borders of the United States.

You see right here on May 17, 2010, Real Clear Politics, Threat on the Border with Mexico: Possible Terrorists Entering the U.S., and it's a picture of people climbing over a barrier, a very strange-looking barrier, to be honest with you. It's got a big hole in the middle of it. I don't understand exactly what it is. But we've had an issue, and those of us who have been in this Congress for a while have been very concerned, and I, in particular, have been very concerned about this situation down on the Texas-Mexico border, the New Mexico-, Arizona-, and California-Mexico border.

So I want to go back with you for a while to when I first went with parts of the Homeland Security Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee to look at the border between Texas and Mexico. We've made trips. We've gone all up and down that border. I happen to have been on the one that was in my home State down on the border. I went with my colleague on the other side of the aisle, Henry Cuellar, down to Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, and Laredo, Texas, across the border. And we talked with the Border Patrol about their issues, and that was way back in, I believe, 2004, maybe 2005.

I sat out in the dark with a Border Patrolman along the banks of the Rio Grande with his surveillance equipment, and it was in the wintertime, but it wasn't cold. It doesn't get real cold down in that part of Texas. ``Cool'' would be the word. It was not a whole lot colder than it is right now outside in Washington, D.C. And he and I watched, I think it was, 2 miles in either direction of the border. Right there, right next to what I would call the city, because right across the road was a housing project, were apartments, were hundreds of people walking in the streets. It was 10 o'clock at night, and there were people everywhere.

I talked to him about the illegal crossings coming into this country, the danger. And it was a dangerous place. In fact, while we were on the bridge between Nuevo Laredo and Laredo, John Culberson picked up a flattened bullet head slug, if you will, from probably a 9-millimeter or something like that, that had flattened out when it hit the bridge, the international bridge between Mexico and the United States. He carries it around in his pocket with him now to remind people that this is dangerous business that our Border Patrol is dealing with down there.

Well, since that time, international drug cartels have moved to the border of the United States, and they are fighting a border war just a stone's throw from the places where American citizens live up and down the border from Brownsville all the way across to San Diego, to Tijuana. The crime will take your breath away.

I spent 20 years in the judiciary. Many of my colleagues did the same. I have seen lots of crime. I have tried lots of cases involving horrible situations. But while we were down there on that trip with my friend Henry Cuellar, we saw pictures in the Nuevo Laredo newspaper of a woman who was the wife of a police official in Laredo who had been kidnapped and burned alive, and she had been set down in a business chair very much like these ladies sitting over here that are taking down the minutes or are recording the proceedings, sat in that chair, had three tires full of gasoline shoved down around her body, and she had been set on fire and burned up alive.

That was done as a threat to the police department in Laredo to either get in line with what the criminal element in Nuevo Laredo wanted to do or suffer the consequences. That was a shocking thing. I carried that back up here and showed it to our committee members. Some of them were ill from looking at it. And I pointed out that this is a lawless society we have created on this border.

Now I have a theory, and I think my theory is based on some pretty good police discoveries we have made over the last 25 years in police work. During the time when they cleaned up New York City and made it a safer place to be, they discovered, and this was the chief of police and the mayor, at that time it was Rudy Giuliani, that a bad criminal environment breeds crime. So if you have a neighborhood where there are old junk cars in the front yard, there is trash in the front yard, they haven't taken things off the stoop, broken windows, that is a neighborhood without pride, and the criminal element breeds in that neighborhood. But if you get the criminal element out of there, you get the criminality of that environment out of there, the neighborhood improves. And you put a beat cop there that allows them to know that law enforcement is there, law enforcement is involved, then the public can feel confident, and they start to take care of their neighborhood and in turn make the crime move elsewhere. And they cleaned up New York City with that basic theory. They went back to the old, walk-the-beat cop theory that came out of the 19th century.

Now, why do I mention that? Well, people say to me why do you think the cartels who were in Colombia and other parts of the country, why did they come and settle along the southern border of this country? I thought about it a lot. And it came to me that, you know what, lawlessness breeds lawlessness. So what were we creating on the border when we weren't enforcing some basic tenets of the law? We have laws that say you can't come into this country except legally. And millions of people, whether for good purpose or bad, and many, many for good purpose, I am not saying it is not, just for a job, but they were breaking our laws. And they were coming into this country. And where was this community of lawlessness? Along the Mexican border.

That community of lawlessness, which was just sneaking people into the country and people sneaking into the country so, as many will tell you, just so they can get a job to feed their families. Of course there was a little criminal element, and a little more criminal element, and all of a sudden we have estimates of four or five drug cartels from Central and South America fighting a drug war from Brownsville to Tijuana, from Matamoros to Tijuana on the other side of the border. Twenty-three thousand people have been killed in the last 18 months in that war across the border. Mexico has brought in every kind of resource that they can afford to bring in to try to stop this, but it is out of control and it is bleeding across the border into my State and the other States that border Mexico.

We are having a great conversation today in our country about a law that was passed by the State of Arizona. And I would argue that the State of Arizona, that law has a real clear message to the Federal Government: You know what, we have been waiting 10 to 15 years for anybody to realize how bad this is.

Now back in 2004 and 2005, we were beefing up the Border Patrol and pouring homeland security money into building fence. We had resources that were dedicated to trying to stop this flood, but the flood was still coming. But they were doing the best they could, and they were catching a million, million and a half a day, but the estimate was for every one that got caught, 10 got across. The flood was ongoing.

There are many reasons and faults you can lay upon that: employers were hiring these people and maybe they shouldn't; we didn't have a good identification system for people to know whether or not someone was an illegal alien in this country; and the argument goes on and on. But the reality was we were creating a lawless border

from Matamoros to Tijuana. And that lawlessness drew in organized crime in the form of these cartels, and those cartels are slaughtering people, fighting it out on the streets. Sometimes gunfire is as prevalent on the border towns across the river from Texas as it is in Iraq or Afghanistan. Just recently, 35 people were killed in a shootout in Juarez, across the border from El Paso, in one day. Many of those were Federal officers of the Mexican federal police force and the army.

You say well, what does that have to do with us? Phoenix, Arizona, one of the places where a lot of folks up north go to get some warm weather in the wintertime, a really wonderful town. I have been there, it is a great town. It reminds you of a cross between the west of New Mexico and the west of California blending together there. It was a laid-back group of people. They enjoyed life. But now they are the kidnap capital of the United States. And it is not Americans kidnapping Americans, it is illegal people coming across our border and starting a big business of kidnapping people. They kidnap them and hold them for ransom, and if they don't get the ransom on time, they send them a hand or an arm, and ultimately maybe a head of their loved one to let them know that they didn't pay the money, and that is what happened to their loved one. We don't live with that kind of horror in this country, but there it is right there in Phoenix, Arizona. And that means that this lawlessness that exists on the border of this country, the southern border of this country, is bleeding over into the United States. We have got to do something about it.

So the Arizona folks, they wrote themselves a law. And they basically said, they basically defined some stuff that Federal officers have had the ability to do for a long time. And they talked about the fact that if Washington is not going to do something, we are going to do something to try to find out who these people are who are coming across our border illegally. We have international people talking about us. We have the United Nations talking about a law in Arizona.

Well, I want to throw something out, and I see the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop) is here. And I am happy to have my colleague and classmate to join me tonight. It pleases me to no end, but I want to start off this conversation by pointing out something. Mr. Lamar Smith, who serves on the Judiciary Committee, told to a group of us last week, a statistic that he produced, which is very eye opening. We are criticized by the United Nations. We are criticized by China. We are being criticized by Russia. We are being criticized by EU countries over there about our horrible immigration policy.

Over the past year, we have brought in legally through the legal process in this country over 1 million immigrants. By the way, that number and more has been going on for just about as far as you can look back in time and see in this country. More than 1 million came into this country last year. You say, why do I mention that? What is the big deal about that number? I have news for you, my colleagues, here it is: That number equals more immigration than all the rest of the world combined. So these people that are criticizing the United States and our citizens, who are acting like we should look to some others as example, there are no other great examples of people who welcome immigrants but the United States because the United States by itself welcomes more than all the rest of the world put together.

Now, that ought to make us stop looking at ourselves as evil people. We, through a legal process, bring in more immigrants to our country and welcome them to be law-abiding citizens and come here and help make our country what it's always been, the great melting pot of America; and we do it legally. And they wait their turn. They get in line. They fill out the paperwork. They pay the fees. They do all that it takes to get here legally, and they are legal immigrants, and there are more of them than all the rest of the world combined has in their countries, added together.

With that as our premise, that we are not evil people, we are people who care about immigrants, I'd like to yield such time as my friend, Rob Bishop from Utah, would like to spend in discussing this matter.

And I thank my friend. Reclaiming my time, I thank you very much for that explanation. And, in fact, I learned a lot from the explanation.

One of the questions that I was always curious about and should have asked is these vehicle barriers that they kept talking about were part of the fence, and they weren't really building a fence, but they were building vehicle barriers where the vehicles couldn't get back in there. And it was my impression from what I had learned from law enforcement that vehicles weren't their problem; it was foot traffic that was their problem. Now I learn the vehicles kept law enforcement's vehicles out.

I certainly do.

I think common sense is more in short supply in this place than any place else on Earth. If we had more common sense that makes sense, and you know you mentioned something that--I don't like to use shock value when talking to the American citizens but they ought to know when we say lawlessness on the border, you mentioned something that is a horrible thing. The rape trees.

Now, with all of your imagination just think about this. These are like monuments to women who have been brought across the border from the other side of the border, and then the people who brought them rape them before they move on, and they hang their undergarments on the tree as a monument to that rape. And our folks who patrol the border call those ``rape trees.''

Now, if that doesn't get your attention about lawlessness, I don't know what's going to. But when I learned about that, you know--and then I talked to a man from Rock Springs--which is a pretty darned good ways from the border in Texas--and the interesting thing is, if you look at that map that Mr. Bishop laid up there, you didn't see any Federal lands in Texas. Texas is the only State that entered the Union retaining its public lands.

But it even makes for more problems for us, too, because all of the land along the Rio Grande River in Texas belongs to Texans--ranchers and farmers and so forth. And we start dealing with barriers. That even creates a bigger problem in some ways by--because these folks, it's their private land and you have to deal with them.

So whatever you do, the issues of our law, they stay in the way. But putting up barriers to interfere with the enforcement of the law I think is aiding and abetting criminal activity. But then I wouldn't mind taking it to a jury. I think it would be an interesting argument.

But the stories that you just related to me--John Culberson, also a Member from Texas, related that he had seen in New Mexico and Arizona lookout posts that are established on the Indian reservations and on the public lands where they sit up there and look for the Border Patrol so they can radio back and bring people across at various areas. It's like they own that. It's like that's their ranchero. That's their place on the border. We are having our country invaded. And it's bad enough to talk about people coming over, all of these poor people coming over to get a job. True. Absolutely. Some great folks coming over trying to get a job. But we could do better. We could figure out a way to get them over here without this lawlessness on the border, because if you're not going to defend your country, then what good are you? What good is this place if we're not going to defend our country?

And your description--in our land. They are invading our land that belongs to the United States of America. My Lord. We ought to be willing to defend that land.

I yield back to my friend

Here's another thing. We're talking about the rural areas, which, you know, one time we were having a hearing in Homeland Security; we were talking about helicopters, and we were talking about drones. And many people were asking about it. So I asked them, Okay, Now, there's at least some people that--we had Duncan Hunter at that time who was saying we not only needed a double fence for the entire border, but we needed a high-speed highway in between it so that the Border Patrol could respond quickly.

And so I asked this guy about these helicopters. I said, Okay, what do you use these helicopters for? He said Well, we go out and we spot these large groups of immigrants that are crossing in Arizona and New Mexico and some in California. I said, Oh, so if our electronic equipment gives you a signal that there's something there, you go out there and you look at them from your helicopter and you swoop down. No, no, no. We don't swoop down. We check to see if they have adequate water and food supplies. And if they don't, we drop them water and food supplies so they don't die in the desert.

Well, that's very compassionate. But now I hear from my friend in Rock Springs who was talking about sitting on his back porch of his ranch looking down into sort of a drawdown behind his place, and his wife said, Look there. That looks like 20 illegals crossing our property. Get in the truck and go down and run them off. And he said, Mama, wait a minute. And he picked up his binoculars and looked, and he saw at least the two at the front of that line of folks had automatic weapons over their shoulder, and the two at the end of the line had automatic weapons over their shoulder. And all of them had large backpacks on their back, obviously carrying drugs.

And he said, Mama, you don't shoo those people off. They'll kill you. We'll call the Border Patrol. Hopefully they will do something about it. He called them. They didn't get there. They tried but they didn't get there. They were too far away.

But here's something from CNN. This was May 18, 2010. Tuesday, May 18. That's pretty current. Twenty-five people have been killed over this weekend in drug-related violence in the Mexican border city of Ciudad Juarez. Among those slain were 30 Federal police personnel, including three officers who had been engaged in controlling the ever- increasing spate of violence in the north Mexican City. Ciudad Juarez in Tijuana state is now the world's murder capital with near a thousand murders occurring since January 2010.

This city lying close to the border with Texas of the United States has witnessed a surge of violence in recent times over control of the key drug smuggling routes to the U.S. between rival gangs of Sinaloa and Juarez cartels.

That's a clip out of the newspaper. That's day before yesterday, right? Or today. That's yesterday. Yeah. No, it's today. That's today. That's out of today's newspaper. But that's about this last weekend.

Now, we can't stand still and let this happen on our border. We are sending soldiers into harm's way in places around the world to stop violence and 23,000 people have died across the border in a place where, by the way, by Texas standpoint, many of us call--used to be one of the places that we dearly loved to visit. We have friends that we know of across the border. In my lifetime, I've been across that border more than a hundred times, probably 500 times.

So although there were places you didn't want to go over there, there still was--they were still a sister city. People forget that El Paso- Juarez is a city of I think almost 3 million people. It's a huge metropolitan area. That's a big city over there across the border. And look at the violence that took place this weekend.

We see the shows on television with the gangs shooting at each other. But they are happening across the border from major cities like El Paso.

I yield back.

If the gentleman would yield for a moment. Question: When America retains or takes public land, aren't we as a body of Americans stewards of that land for this Nation? Isn't it our job to take care of the property that the Federal Government has? Isn't that the job of the Interior Department, to be a good steward of that land, to make sure that land thrives

and it is safe and it is a part of the body politic of the whole country's ownership?

Now, how can they possible think that it is for the well-being of the American populace to have our land that we own as a body politic full of drug dealers, rapists, and prostitute smugglers? Why in the world won't they open the roads up to our law enforcement to go in there and stop this?

And to yield to another question: Isn't it a fact that the kind of people that they are letting in there without any law enforcement being able to stop them are not what you would call good citizens for taking care of the wilderness nor good citizens for protecting endangered species?

Look at that picture you are holding up there: bottles, cans, clothing. It looks like the city dump outside of the city here. Now, is that protecting our wilderness?

Just real quickly, we have this issue with the Arizona law. And I think everyone says that the Arizona law really is an outcry from Arizonans saying: if you are not going to do it, we are all going to get involved.

But maybe the administration is setting a policy or a mindset here that is causing some of these things, because public opinion versus the opinion of our Speaker and our President seem to go in opposite directions.

Public opinion, and I believe that after they heard what you said tonight, they would even say it louder, they would say: my Lord, if we are not enforcing our borders and all this horrible stuff is happening down there, somebody has got to. And I don't blame Arizona for saying we want to have the right to ask questions.

So look at these polls: 51 percent, Gallup 59 approved; McClatchy Newspaper 61 approved; Fox News 61 approve. And yet President Obama; Attorney General Eric Holder; the Secretary of State, Posner; and the Department spokeswoman, P.J. Crowley, all seem to take the position that this is some horrible infringement upon goodness and mercy and the Constitution of the United States.

Well, maybe we have got to get our minds set straight. We have got to start realizing that our job as Members of this Congress, this whole body, we take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. And in that Constitution, it tells us one of our responsibilities is to defend our Nation against all enemies.

These are enemies of our country. If you don't believe it, I will be glad to take you down to places in Texas where the abuse of the drugs that are killing our children are clear to be seen on the streets, and you tell me if that's not an attack on our country for those drugs to come pouring in here. And you tell me the rapes are not an attack. Maybe it is happening to poor innocent people from foreign lands getting smuggled in here, but the rapes are taking place in the United States; and that aggravated sexual assault is taking place on those hundreds of women. That is a serious felony offense in every jurisdiction in this country. And we know it is going on, and we are using regulations to hold the hands of those who would protect those innocents. It drives you nuts to listen to this stuff.

Well, I thank the gentleman for coming down here and actually enlightening me on some facts that I was not aware of because, like I say, we retain our public lands in Texas. So we look at Texas, the issues--it's just as serious on the Texas border, but it's a different issue on the Texas border. But they're all serious. The incursions into Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California are getting worse every time they occur, and it's time for us to unite and defend our borders.

We need an immigration policy that works. I'm for that. I think everyone is. But I'm not for rewarding criminal behavior. I will never be rewarding criminal behavior. We need to stop the border and seal it up and then come up with an immigration policy that is fair and takes into mind that the law has a purpose in this country. It is the glue that holds this society together.

I thank my friend for coming and joining me.

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Mrs. Marcia Hilsabeck upon her retirement from Round Rock High School after 43 years of service.

Marcia served all but the first two years of her career in the English Department and has led the English Department since 1994. Throughout the years of her teaching career, she has been honored as Teacher of the Year and Round Rock Local Legend. When Marcia first began teaching at Round Rock High School in 1967, there were 368 students in grades nine through twelve, today there are ten times that many students. Times have changed since Marcia first began her teaching career, but her dedication and love for education has not. She has been called the ultimate teacher by colleagues and generations of students fondly remember and recognize the impact she made on their lives. Her commitment to education is extraordinary and it is with great pride I honor Marcia's career today as I wish her all the best for her retirement years.

Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate Gregory E. Pope, United States Corps of Engineers Operations Manager, on his retirement after 34 years of dedicated service. Greg has been a true asset to the Corps for decades and a leader in Texas District 31. I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Greg on many projects over the last several years including the re-opening of several parks on Lake Belton after severe flooding. He has been a valuable resource and I admire his knowledge and professionalism. I appreciate Greg's commitment to the community, TX-31 and the U.S. Corps.

I would like to thank Greg for his leadership and service as well as congratulate him and wish him well in his retirement.

Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Mr. Charly Skaggs upon his retirement from Williamson County Juvenile Services after 32 years of service. Charly served 24 of those years as the chief probation officer. In the beginning of Charly's career there were only seven employees in the juvenile services department and the county had just broken ground on a ten-bed secure detention facility.

Williamson County grew a great deal during Charly's time of service resulting in operation of a detention center, a non-secure residential center, a juvenile justice alternative education program, a secure residential program, court services, probation services, community services, electronic monitoring and the first military model residential setting with 150 employees. Charly has spent many years traveling all over the U.S. training in the juvenile services field, as well as serving as the past president of the National and Texas Juvenile Detention Associations. I had the pleasure of working with Charly when I sat on the Bench as District Judge of Williamson County. It is an honor to congratulate my friend on his retirement and I wish him all the best.

Madam Speaker, Speaker Pelosi took the gavel of this House in January of 2007, and she made a promise to this House and this Nation that the new Democrat administration of this House would be the most honest, most open, most ethical Congress in history, and that she would drain the swamp. And she said that in reference to what they called the ``culture of corruption'' in the previous Congress.

Barack Obama said, when he became President of the United States, that he would put an end to the standards of one standard for powerful people and one for ordinary folks.

Tonight I'm asking the question, how's that swamp draining coming along, Madam Speaker? Because the way I see it, and the way we see it in the newspapers and on television and other sources these days, is that we seem to be up to our eyeballs in alligators in this swamp. And this swamp seems to be oozing across the whole country.

So how are we coming on draining that swamp, Madam Speaker? That's the kind of question that we think Members of this House ought to be asking. And I ask my colleagues, how do you think we're coming in draining this swamp? Because it certainly seems like there's an awful lot of strange animals still wandering around this swamp, and it certainly seems to be spreading from coast to coast. And we need to ask that question over and over.

You know, I take the position, and I want to say it right now so it's very clear, accusations are just accusations. Until those accusations are resolved by a competent finder of fact that will decide whether or not what is alleged is true, and whether it be under the ethics rules or whether it be under the laws of the courts of this land, until a court has found, made a judgment, or until the Ethics Committee of this House has made a judgment, they're still allegations.

But these allegations are part of what's swimming around in this swamp. And that's why we need to ask, Madam Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, how you coming on draining that swamp?

So let's look at some of these things, and let's just see what we've got.

But first let's go back to what the President said. February 3 of 2009 President Barack Obama, on CNN said, I campaigned on changing Washington and bottom-up politics. I don't want to send the message to the American people that there are two sets of standards, one for the powerful people and one for the ordinary folks who are working every day and paying their taxes.

I think that was a very noble statement by the President of the United States. Now, the question is, how are we doing under the Barack Obama administration on making sure there's not one set of standards for the powerful and another for the ordinary citizens?

Another visual here. The Speaker of our House says, This leadership team will create the most honest, most open and most ethical Congress in history. This was made by Speaker-Elect Nancy Pelosi of California in a press release of November 16, 2006, after the Democrats had won the majority in the House of Representatives. And let's remember that since January 1, 2007, the Democrats have been in charge and in the majority in this House of Representatives.

So, what am I talking about? Well--and I'm making this very clear because I do not want to treat people unfairly--these are allegations, some of them made in the press, some of them made in complaints to the Ethics Committee and some of them being at least looked at by police and FBI and others. All of this is stated in newspaper articles which we'll discuss. And that's just what they are, they're allegations. Nobody's guilty in this country. We still have the rule of law, and we still believe that you have to be proved guilty. And if it's in a court, it's beyond a reasonable doubt. And I will defend that for as long as I live.

But the reputation of this Congress was what the Speaker of the House was speaking to when she said she wanted to drain the swamp. She was accusing the Republican Party of having a swamp full of evil alligators that had broken rules and laws, and that she was going to clean them up and give us the most ethical, the most honest, and the most open Congress in history. No more closed deals. No more special bargains. It was going to be out in the open, honest and ethical.

And then we have these questions that come up. So let's just give a quick outline, and then we'll go into some details.

Under Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi, we could arguably say that we have had allegations of corruption that equal the allegations in the famous Tea Pot Dome scandal. Their latest scandal is Eric Massa, a Representative who has now resigned from this Congress. But it goes on to others. There are violations that are still unaddressed by Charlie Rangel, allegations of Tim Geithner and tax cheating. The list goes on to Alan Mollohan, Maxine Waters, Pete Visclosky, John Conyers, the czars, the violation of Jefferson's Rules of Order in this House and closed door deals and conferences and bills that are brought without a chance to read them. That's not open. And some would argue, that's not ethical.

But let's look. First let's go back to what the President said: we're not going to treat anybody differently because of who they are and how powerful they are. Now, I'm sure he was probably talking about in one way some of this Wall Street stuff that he's talking about now.

But you know what? There's an awful lot of people would say that the folks that sit in these chairs out here every day, as far as the government, which, right now is just about to be in control of over 50 percent of commerce in this country by owning an automobile company, by running the banks, by running Wall Street, by putting together a health care plan that covers everybody and mandates everything in the world for everybody in this country, and controls the health care system of this country, that these people that sit in these chairs are pretty darn powerful. Some would argue they may be on the verge of being the most powerful people in this country, especially those in positions of power, like the leadership of this House and those who are chairmen of committees.

So let's just look at one--and I know some people are tired of hearing me talk about this--but Mr. Rangel has been under investigation now for at least 18 months that I can remember, because I've been talking about it that long. And it's actually longer than that. And one of the things that we brought up and we talked about is the fact that, as chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, he was treated differently than the ordinary person would be if they had the same kind of tax problems that he indicated to this House, from that podium right there that he had. And yet he was treated differently. And he was the most powerful person on the Ways and Means Committee. He admitted to us underreporting income and assets for 2007 by more than half, including a failure to report his income from his Caribbean resort property again. And he'd already told us he didn't do it once.

Underreporting income and assets by Rangel's aides, Rangel's lease of a multi-rent-controlled apartment in Harlem, Rangel's use of a House parking spot for long-term storage of his Mercedes, failure to report and pay taxes on rental income on his resort villa in the Dominican Republic, alleged quid pro quo trading legislative action in exchange for donations to the center named for Rangel at the City College of New York, gift rule violation on trips to the Caribbean sponsored by the Carib News Foundation in 2007 and 2008. And these are the items that are currently under investigation and have been for 18 months by the Ethics Committee of this House. I have asked over and over and over the Ethics Committee, please, please resolve these issues one way or the other. But as I said, these are allegations.

But you know what? That's why the swamp water is rising. And guess what? The American public isn't treated the same way Mr. Rangel is on their tax violations. They don't get to pay the back taxes with no penalties and interest, as Mr. Rangel did. So that's one of those things that the President promised us wasn't going to happen, but it did. So that's one we ought to have to think about.

The President promised one thing; we got another. Nancy Pelosi promised ethical, honest. Some of those things don't look ethical, and they don't look honest.

Now, the President of the United States sent to the Senate, and it was confirmed by the Senate, the appointment of Secretary of Treasury Geithner. And certainly, if you're talking about the financial world of this country, the Treasurer of the United States is certainly one of those people that the President was talking about, one of those people who are powerful people because he's in charge of basically the finances of this country, and certainly in charge of the value of our money, the issuance of our money, the national debt.

All those things are his to take care of, to make sure where we are going, to report to us, to speak with other countries about the financial problems and financial solutions of the world. He is the spokesman for our economy.

And yet by his own admission, The Wall Street Journal says, ``The Fox Watching the Henhouse: Tim Geithner's Tax History.'' He didn't pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for several years. The IRS audited Geithner in 2003 and 2004, his taxes, finding he owed taxes and interest totaling $17,230. The IRS waived the penalties. If you know anybody out there that has had to deal with the IRS in this country, ask them if they failed to pay $17,230 if penalties were waived on them.

In fact, if you didn't pay your taxes and you got a permissible extension of your taxes from April 15th, which passed just recently, when you get ready to pay them in August, or if you don't pay in August, you get another extension in October, take a look and see if the IRS is going to waive the penalties for you failing to pay those things on April 15th. I will tell you I don't think they will.

So could it be that Mr. Geithner was given this privilege because he was one of those powerful that the President of the United States told us would no longer be treated differently than the ordinary people in this country? I think that's a question we have to as a House ask ourselves. Are we really treating the powerful the same as we do the ordinary folks? I certainly think we need to resolve this. And I think it's something we need to be seriously considering. And by the way, I think the water in the swamp is rising.

He used his child's time at an overnight camp in 2001, 2004, and 2005 for tax deductions. Sleep-away camps don't qualify, according to the IRS. He recently filed $4,334 in additional taxes and $1,232 in interest for infractions including a retirement plan early withdrawal penalty, an improper small business deduction, and the expensing of utility costs that were for personal use.

The Treasury Secretary, by the way, Mr. Geithner, is the overseer of the IRS, the same IRS that waived the penalties that ordinary Americans would pay for failure to pay their taxes. I think we have a right to ask the question, Is this what the President meant when he said we are not going to treat people that are powerful differently than the ordinary people of this country? I think that point is one we need to continue to ask. I think we are continuing to ask that. But the water in the swamp keeps rising.

And what happened to the Speaker of the House who told us she was going to have the most honest, open, and ethical Congress and drain the swamp? Well, the swamp seems to keep filling up and the alligators are still swimming around.

One of the things that I think we at least ought to know about what's going on in this country is that we have created more czars to be special people with special salaries to do special things for this government than the entire history of Russia had czars. So there is a bill out there to sunset all these czars by Steve Scalise. And this would be the kind of thing that would be drained in the swamp, because we created people to do the same job that we have Cabinet Secretaries doing. To me that's very, very bizarre. If you have a Secretary of Agriculture and an agriculture czar, what is the agriculture czar supposed to do? And we have got so many that I have lost count. It is somewhere in the 30s, I think now, of czars that we have.

A czar is defined as someone who heads a task force or council and is appointed by the President without the consent of the Senate, excepted from the competitive service, and does not have an existing removal date. In other words, he is there at the will of the President. Appropriated funds can't be used to pay for salaries and expenses of task forces or councils established by the President and headed by the czar. That's what this bill says. In other words, it's trying to put a curtailment on this czar program.

Now, why would I bring the czar program out as we are looking at the swamp? Well, we are creating positions of power and paying big salaries to these positions of power to duplicate the duties and responsibilities of Cabinet members of the President's Cabinet, and you have to ask the question why? Who are these people? Is this a payback? Is this treating the powerful different than the ordinary? Is this open, honest, and ethical? I don't know. I don't know. But the question needs to be asked why do we have to have so many czars?

I defy anybody, without getting some kind of reference paper to look at, to give a list of these powerful jobs that have been created in this Congress by--I defy anybody in this Congress to give me a list off the top of their head. If they can name two they are doing better than I can. But these folks have top salaries, they have large staffs, they have big budgets, and they are doing who knows what? But at least we know they must be promoting the agenda of the President of the United States, because he is the only one who appointed them, he is the only one who approved them, because they are not subject to approval by the Senate, as Cabinet members are. And he is the only one that seems to be able to take them out. So they must be doing his agenda.

Now, the question is, is that open? Could be honest. I don't know. Is it ethical? I think we have the right to know. When we have that many people doing that, I think it's a right. We as American citizens have a right to ask, who are these people? And we have actually had some articles about some of them being community organizers and some of them having very radical positions. Some of them actually resigned before they became a czar because their radical behavior was pointed out in the press. And it's not open, it might not be honest, and it might not be ethical. We ought to be worried about the czars.

Now, I brought up to start off with Eric Massa. That thing hit this town like a storm, just as, a while back during the Republican administration the Mark Foley incident, where he made some statements to some young pages that were considered inappropriate. He resigned. He left the Congress. And the question was raised what did the leadership of the Republican House know about that incident and when did they know it? And these were questions that were asked of the Republican Speaker of the House and asked of the majority leader and others.

I think there is a question that needs to be asked. The minority leader of this House, John Boehner, has asked it. The questions are being asked in several committees I understand. What did Speaker Pelosi know about Eric Massa?

Now, those of you that don't know the story of Eric Massa, I am not going to tell it. But I am going to read to you a thing from the New York Daily News. It's an article, ``FBI joins in Massa probe of sexual harassment, hush money and coverups.'' This was written April 22, 2010. ``The FBI has joined the mushrooming investigations of sexual harassment, hush money and coverups allegedly involving former upstate Representative Eric Massa, Democrat from New York, and his male staffers. The bureau's entry into the case followed the announcement by the House Ethics Committee yesterday it's conducting its own investigation of how the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat from California, and others handled complaints against Massa. Massa's alleged ``tickling,'' groping, and raucous behavior at a gay bar with young staffers was ``offensive, inappropriate, and created a hostile work environment,'' the Ethics Committee said in a statement. In the chaos in Massa's office, ``moneys or

other payments may have been misappropriated or otherwise fraudulently or improperly distributed or received,'' the committee said. Massa resigned last month as the charges escalated. He maintained he was a ``salty guy'' whose gruff language and behavior may have been misjudged by his staff. The case entered a new phase last week when Joe Racalto, Massa's former chief of staff, disclosed he had filed a sexual harassment complaint against Massa. Racalto also said he received a $40,000 check from Massa's campaign fund shortly before Massa resigned. Through his lawyer, Massa said he did not authorize the $40,000 payment, alleging forgery might be involved.''

Is that what you meant by end the swamp, Madam Speaker? That seems to be very similar to what you were talking about when you made the statement it was time for you and the Democratic majority to start draining the swamp. Well, as recently as April 22, 2010, at 4 o'clock-- this was filed at 4 o'clock in the morning, a newspaper had sent out a news report about something that seemed to be a pretty nasty part of the swamp.

So let's look at--we have talked about Geithner, treated differently. And you know what, didn't pay his taxes, and he is the head tax man. Rangel, the head of the head tax committee didn't pay his taxes, didn't pay his penalties and interest, and still has other things to answer for which haven't been answered for. Sounds like that's got the water rising in the swamp also.

And remember, we said we were going to start draining this swamp back in January of 2007, and the Rangel investigation has gone on since 2008 and no end is in sight. And the Ethics Committee, although it has an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on it, is chaired by the majority party, the Democratic Party. And so it's the Democrats' job to move that Ethics Committee along and dissolve and start draining at least that part of the swamp.

These things are difficult to talk about. They are allegations. And I am going to say it again and again and again, we are blessed by our Constitution of the United States and by the attitude of the American people that allegations are just allegations. They are alleging something happened, but it has to be proven. And if it's under the ethics rules, it has to be proven to the satisfaction of the Ethics Committee by the burdens of proof that they set forth. If it's set out in a court of law and it involves criminal behavior, it has to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. If it involves civil responsibility, I would argue that there are a couple of means by it, but the most typical is by a preponderance of the evidence, the greater weight and degree of the evidence that proves such a matter. But there is a burden of proof.

So when you allege something against somebody, whether you be a newspaperman or a Member of Congress like me, when you step up and say these things they should be taken just as it is. And I believe that's why I want to continue to clarify.

But when you stand up before the House and you accuse others and you say they've created a foul, stinking swamp that needs to be drained and you will heroically drain that swamp, then adding animals, plant life, and water to that swamp and raising the level to where it spreads coast to coast is certainly not draining the swamp, and we should at least be able to discuss that matter in this House of Representatives. That is what I am talking about.

Some of these things are very difficult to talk about, and that's why I want to repeat again and again, these are allegations.

So to review. Pelosi's action, none, on Eric Massa. Obama and Pelosi's action, none, on Charlie Rangel and Tim Geithner. The investigations of the Ethics Committee completed, none. Not one has been completed. The rest are still pending.

Reading an article from the Congressional Quarterly, Waters Calls TARP Meeting for Husband's Bank. ``Watchdog groups claimed (Waters) took inappropriate action on behalf of OneUnited Bank, which received financial assistance from the Federal Government last fall. Waters--a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, which oversees banking issues--last year requested a meeting between Treasury Department officials and representatives of minority-owned banks, including OneUnited, on whose board her husband, Sydney Williams, had previously served. He also held stock in the bank.''

That's just a small article. But once again, there are more alligators in the swamp, and are we finding out, and as Nancy Pelosi promised us she would do, to have the most open, ethical, and honest Congress? There are allegations of ethical misbehavior here.

What has our Speaker done? I would submit, nothing. I've certainly heard of nothing. I don't think--I would like to know if anyone knows of what's been done. But I think that's something that ought to be at least part of draining the swamp, part of the most ethical, honest, and open Congress in the history of the country.

Detroit News, March 11, 2010. Representative Conyers avoids sentencing for embattled wife. Detroit News Washington Bureau, Washington. ``On a day his wife was front and center, Rep. John Conyers, D-Detroit, stayed in the shadows. Conyers was inside his office in the Federal courthouse Wednesday and expressed an interest in attending his wife's sentencing hearing, but advisers told him he shouldn't, sources said. Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, missed votes on the House floor for the second day in a row. Conyers' office did not issue a statement, nor did staff respond to repeated inquiries.''

Mlive.com, Everything Michigan. This is from the Internet. ``Landmark Legal Foundation files House ethics complaint against Conyers. A conservative public interest law firm on Monday filed a House ethics complaint against U.S. Rep. John Conyers over a letter he wrote to the Environmental Protection Agency in 2007 allegedly tied to his wife, according to the Washington Times. The Landmark Legal Foundation filed the complaint, saying Conyers should respond to the allegations under oath. . . . In a 2007 letter, Conyers urged the EPA to accept a permit transfer request that would allow Greektown businessman Dimitrios Papas to resume operations at a hazardous waste injection well in Romulus.

``Consultant Sam Riddle said last month that Conyers' wife, former Detroit City Councilwoman Monica Conyers, drove him to a meeting with Papas earlier in 2007, arranged a $20,000 consulting contract for Riddle and demanded $10,000 as a finder's fee.

``Later the same year, Conyers wrote a letter to the EPA, reversing course from his stance in 2003, when he joined Rep. John Dingell in opposition to the well. In a statement issued last month to the Detroit Free Press, Conyers defended the letter on the grounds he was representing his constituents, and it is not clear whether he had any knowledge of his wife's ties to Papas.

``Monica Conyers resigned last month after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery in a separate incident involving Synagro Technologies.''

Those are allegations that are made in the State of Michigan against the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which is the committee that has oversight over the rule of law, if nothing else, but everything legal and many of the moral issues that come before this Congress. It's a very important, very important committee. And from these articles, we see that his wife has gotten in a lot of trouble for it.

We need these things, these allegations resolved. We need to know if they're still in the swamp. We need to know if we're still draining the swamp.

There are allegations in The Washington Post. This is pretty long. I am going to read some of it. Washington Post. ``Rep. Norm Dicks is about to go from Mr. Boeing to Mr. Spending.'' It was written May 9. That's 2 days ago. The Washington Post.

``Maybe this whole outsourcing thing has gone too far. This week, House Democrats indicated they have plans to contract out the Federal Government's spending to Boeing. Specifically, they are planning to outsource it to Mr. Boeing, Rep. Norm Dicks (D-Boeing), a Washington State lawmaker who has received tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from Boeing sources and has--by complete coincidence, of course--directed tens of

billions of dollars of government business to the military contractor.''

And it's an article about the fact that Mr. Dicks is possibly going to be named as the chairman of the Appropriations Committee.

I'm not going to go into this whole thing. It's an early allegation, and it's a question. But it's a question that, before we go any further, this part of the swamp needs to have sunlight put on it, and we see if where there's smoke, there's fire, and whether these allegations should be looked into.

I think we have a duty to this House to drain the swamp. And if we're not going to drain the swamp as Nancy Pelosi promised us, then let's not make big noise about it like we're going to, and let's admit that, you know what? Arguably, these allegations and this whole list of things that are there--this is kind of a collage of things, New York Daily News, Washington Post, Congressional Quarterly, Roll Call, Weekly Standard, NPR Radio, The Hill--these are a list of things that are asking questions about the things that I have raised tonight.

The real question is: Are we running the most ethical, open, and honest Congress in the history? Are we? I think that the entire--the vast majority, let's put it that way, of the American people have heard and understood the procedures that took place to pass the health care bill. The health care bill is now law. ObamaCare. And when we say ``open,'' we mean that we want things to be done out in the open, not in closed-door sessions in the Speaker's office, but out here on the floor of this House, on the floor of the committees and the subcommittees. ``Open and obvious'' means we're going to do it where you can see it. Let the sun shine in, as the song goes, and let's see what's there.

And yet we look at how this gigantic takeover of at least one-sixth of our Nation's economy by the Federal Government was done behind closed doors in a massive bill that arrived at a point in time where no human being actually could have had a chance to even look at it in any detail and was shoved down the throat of this Congress and the American people. That's not open. That's not obvious.

But more importantly, when you take the Chair as the Speaker of the House, and you take on the rules of this House--a man that both sides of the aisle respect in the building, Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence, wrote rules, and those rules have been followed pretty well, not all the time, but pretty well by this House

Greg Walden, John Culberson, and Brian Baird have offered H. Res. 554, 3-day reading rule, which, by the way, was one of the promises by the majority in this House that they would give at least 72 business hours before taking any action to allow you to read the bill. Even if the bill happened to be 2,500 pages, you ought to get 72 hours. And this House Resolution says legislation must be available to Members and the public for 72 business hours before taking action, requires the full text of the legislation and each committee report to be posted continuously on the Internet.

In writing the rules of the House, Thomas Jefferson said bills should be publicly available for 3 days before voting.

And Thomas Jefferson had in mind what? Open, obvious, ethical. Honest. That's what he wants us to be. One of our Founding Fathers, one of the most highly respected Founding Fathers, a writer of our Declaration of Independence, he said that every bill that came before this House, we ought to have 3 days to read it. And I'm not even sure if Jefferson, in his wildest imagination, ever envisioned that there would ever be a bill, a printed bill, that would be 2,500 pages long. But even that, I think, he intended for it to at least give somebody 72 hours to read it.

And we haven't done that in this Congress. Not only on these massive bills, but on even other bills that come before the Congress. In fact, it is rare that we see any bill come before the Congress before you get your hands on it.

Others will say to you, What are they complaining about? They did the same thing. Aha. That may be so, but guess what? We all promised each other we weren't going to do it that way anymore. And the Speaker made that commitment, and the majority leader made that commitment. And they promised it when they asked for the control of this House, and they campaigned on it that they would give us the time to read the bills and know what's going on and that things would be open and that sunshine would fill the room as far as knowledge that the various Members of Congress would have. And it didn't happen, and it is not happening.

So once again we have to ask the Speaker, How's the swamp draining coming along? Because that was one of the swamp facts that you talked about that you were going to fix. How come it wasn't fixed? Well, yeah, it's an important agenda, sure, and maybe you don't want people arguing with you about your important agenda, but that's not what was said. That's not what was told to us when the control of this House was turned over to the Democrat Party.

And what results when there's that kind of thing of trampling on House rules? Well, these backroom deals like that took place in cap- and-trade and health care, the failure to give the 3-day reading time. And what comes of it?

Let's take the health care business. Right now, we have 22 States in this Union that have filed suit against the ObamaCare bill. They argue the individual mandate and the unfunded Medicare mandates are the subjects of that lawsuit, and that we have talked about before. And it's certain people being treated one way and another group of people being treated another. And we have a lawsuit that's probably going to take us all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States to resolve it, which is the proper place to go.

But maybe it could have been resolved by this body if we had done what we said we would do: drain the swamp; be open, honest, and ethical; and trust each other and do our work together. Maybe we wouldn't have this problem. I don't know. I think I can make a pretty good argument that we wouldn't.

I've just about ridden this horse long enough. I want to point out to you that for 18 months I have been on the floor of this House almost once a week. I've really been talking about something I think everybody ought to be really, really concerned about in this country and, that is, it is the duty and responsibility of everyone who raises their right hand and takes that oath that we take in this body to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States. And I took that oath as a member of the judiciary, which included, And of the State--that State being Texas. At least those people that take that oath in this room, those people have the responsibility to do what our Speaker told us we were going to do and create an open, honest, and ethical Congress. They have the responsibility to make sure the rules are followed. And winning and losing shouldn't be so important that you will override what you promised you would do and what you swore under oath you would do--or affirmed, if you didn't believe in taking an oath. I'm sure there were those here that didn't. I took an oath: So help me God. I took an oath.

And so I'm asking the question, Are we willing to loosen up the glue that holds our government and our society together, the rule of law? That is, we can count on the law, we can count on the Constitution, that it will prevail against personalities that may come along and try to interfere with it, because Americans owe their sovereignty to a piece of paper, a rule of law, and not to an individual. We don't swear an oath in this body to the President of the United States or to the Speaker of the House or to the Secretary of the Senate or to anybody other than to God and to the American people and to each other that we will preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, the glue that holds this society together.

And when our Speaker talked about draining the swamp, she was making allegations, many of which were resolved and some of which were not resolved, especially at the time the statement was made, that needed to be addressed, because there was a stinking swamp of misbehavior she was alleging. And it hasn't been drained. Not only hasn't it been drained but it seems to be a policy that we will win at all cost. Therefore, we will not give 3 days to

read. We will do things behind closed doors. And we will not be open and honest, even though we promised it.

I'm going to get up here and say this until, hopefully, we change. And I will do my very best. And I have confidence that everyone in here, when reminded, will do their very best. My colleagues will be reminded--I'm hoping they'll be reminded by the few little things I have to say and I'm certainly hoping all of them on both sides of the aisle will be reminded, their consciences will be touched, and they will realize that the American people want to know what goes on in these Halls.

If you don't believe that, look at the tea party people out there. They're not trying to start a revolution. They're trying to start an honest government. They want to know what's going on; what are you doing. We feel hopeless and helpless because we don't understand what is going on up there. And you promised us open, honest, ethical. Where is it?

That's what we ought to be doing. That's what I'm doing up here. That's why I'm here tonight. I have the highest respect for every Member of this body. Any allegations made against any Member of this Congress should be rapidly and efficiently dealt with. And I hope these allegations will be proved unfounded. But to stand up and use campaign rhetoric about I'm going to have an open, honest, ethical Congress, I'm going to drain this nasty swamp, and then not do it and not answer for it is something I'm going to continue to talk about.

When the President says powerful people are not going to be treated differently than ordinary people, and if somebody is being treated powerful or it sure looks like it, we have a duty to ask the question, Why is that going on? Why do Geithner and Rangel get treated differently than me when I don't pay my taxes or you when you don't pay your taxes or you just miss paying them on April 15 because you didn't get all your paperwork together so you got a legal extension? You still pay penalties and interests. Why don't they?

These are not hard questions to answer. These are questions that I think the American people have a right to know, because the American people want that glue that holds this society together. They want the kind of country that we wrote about in our Constitution. As long as I think we've got questions to be answered, I'm going to be asking the questions.

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