Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 26, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 36 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until Monday, February 2, 2009, at 2 p.m.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information for publication in the Congressional Record regarding earmarks I received as part of the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2638, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008

Requesting Member: Congressman John Carter.

Bill Number: H.R. 2638.

Account: Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy.

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Texas State University-San Marcos.

Address of Requesting Entity: 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information for publication in the Congressional Record regarding earmarks I received as part of the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2638, the Department of Homeland Security, 2008.

Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter.

Bill Number: H.R. 2638.

Account: FEMA State and Local Programs.

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Texas Engineering Extension Service.

Address of Requesting Entity: 301 Tarrow, College Station, TX 77840.

Description of Request: I requested $23 million for the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (NERRTC) in the FY09 Homeland Security Appropriations bill. The entity to receive funding for this is the Texas Engineering Extension Service. It is my understanding that $23 million will be used to provide training courses and programs to train our Nation's emergency responders. Courses are delivered on a rolling basis as directed by DHS. These efforts take place year-round until all the appropriated funding is expended.

Madam Speaker, we have got an investment crisis that seems to be rising and the talking heads were on television last night talking about it. Most everyone agreed that we needed a long-term plan that our investing community could look to as we grow our economy. It needs to be long-term and it needs to have solutions. Part of that was an energy plan, a plan you could rely upon.

I heard an environmentalist this morning say we need to go to alternative fuels, but we need a transition with carbon-based fuels. Yet we passed an energy plan which purports to have drilling for these necessary oil and gas resources, but there is still in place the availability of radical environmentalists to stop all drilling by filing lawsuits. They have declared 80 percent-plus of the areas off- limits to drilling, and they have set up kind of ``gotchas'' that will prevent the rest of that drilling.

We need a good energy plan.

Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing we don't have Pinocchios working in this House or we would have some noses growing. To stand up and say this is a bipartisan bill when the first Republican saw it, I was present when it happened at 9:45 last night while we were speaking on the floor of the House, ought to make somebody's nose grow.

To call this a bipartisan bill is a sham, and we ought to call it what it is. This is a bill shoved down the throats of the American people, without the voice of the majority of the Members of this House having anything to do with this energy plan.

Look right here and see what it doesn't do: No real offshore exploration; no renewables without high taxes; no real oil shale drilling; off limits permanently, Arctic coastal plain; emissions-free nuclear, no; clean coal, coal-to-liquid, no; new refinery capacity, no. We got five of them out in Texas right now. No energy tax hike, no; no electricity spikes, no; lawsuit reform, no; playing politics with energy, yes.

That is what we have been given today. That is what we have. Meanwhile, on the coast, people suffer. Let's really address energy.

I thank you very much for recognizing me on this issue.

You know, tonight, as we gather here, a bunch of Texans have just weathered a pretty rough storm down there in our part of the world. And it brought to the forefront something that Americans have already experienced in Indiana, and that is, when one-fifth of the refining capacity of the United States is hit by a hurricane because it is concentrated on the gulf coast, then we're going to see gas prices and diesel prices go up.

And even though tonight there are double shifts working in every refinery--and we were blessed that those refineries were not damaged more than just slightly--to bring that production back up is just like any other factory you shut down, you have to bring it back up to get to full production. And it will take days, and maybe even weeks, to where we're back. And the market knows that, and the market fears that. Just look at what happened when one refinery burned outside of Chicago partially, that's the first jump in gas prices, if Americans will think back to when the first jump in gas prices occurred.

Now, the reason why I bring this up, not only do I think about my neighbors back home and all the pain and suffering that they're going through, and then I think about the neighbors around the country that are going to suffer as a result of this natural disaster down there with the prices, and then I think about the fact that Republicans on this House floor have been trying to get something done about refining capacity for 30 years. And for 30 years, it has been the policy of the Democrats to say ``no more refineries.''

And as the gentleman mentioned, we finally got at least an incentive package to try to get refineries to start building new refineries. And quite frankly, if you're putting together an energy plan and you're talking about just refineries, shouldn't you maybe think about putting them someplace else besides the Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi gulf coast, seeing as we know what happens there all the time when it comes to hurricanes? We should be having a plan for just the simple matter of having some gasoline and diesel produced in this country.

Now, Americans have common sense. Things don't have to be complicated for them. They look at an issue and say, are you telling me that this bill was written by the Speaker of the House and her folks with really no input from anybody? What makes them experts? And do I want them planning my life and my energy needs for the next 20 years in the back room of the Speaker's office?

Now I think the American people say no.

And I think the American people would say that this is an issue that should have some concentrated effort. Maybe they should have been here for the 5 weeks that the Republicans were here. I think the people back home were saying maybe we should have been meeting, which they seem to talk a lot about, in a bipartisan method to come up with a real all-of- the-above energy solution the Republicans started talking about 6, almost 7 weeks ago on a Friday afternoon when they shut off the lights, shut off the mics and ran off the press in this very House. But we Republicans stayed. And we talked. And we said this is a crisis. And then we've had another natural disaster which has enhanced that crisis. It's time that we wake up and realize, quit playing politics with that long distance trucker who is going to have to pay maybe $6 or $7 for diesel and not make a dime on his load. Or I had a rancher tell me that today, if you sell a calf at the auction in central Texas and you get $90 for him, $45 of that is in energy costs. It's time for us here in this Congress to wake up and instead of cramming eleventh hour pieces of legislation that look like the Fort Worth phonebook down our throats, maybe we should have that bipartisan discussion.

It's a shame that this type of legislation, and I can see it in your hand there, has come here in the last, it's 10 o'clock, in the last 20 minutes. It's time we get to work as Americans and pass a comprehensive energy plan that we all participate in.

Mr. Speaker, when you sit here and listen to what's been talked about, you wonder who's in charge of this House of Representatives. Well, the Democratic Party is in charge of this House of Representatives. They have the majority.

We have heard today that the Republicans blocked the Democrats' plan. How did that happen? Democrats have the majority. It must have been some of the folks on their side of the aisle thought their plan wasn't very good or else they would have passed their plan. They can pass anything they want to. The majority rules in this House.

But the reality is those things that were brought forward were brought forward without any input from the Republican side at all.

Now we hear we are going to get an energy plan today. I would be willing to bet my whole life that there is not one person who has checked with our committee chairman or anybody else. This plan is Nancy Pelosi's plan written while she was on vacation selling her book, and she has come back to deliver it to us, take it or leave it. No wonder the Republicans wonder what in the heck is going on on energy.

We ask for an up-or-down vote on the all-of-the-above energy plan that has been discussed for the last 5 weeks.

I thank my friend Mr. Latta for yielding to me. Let me say that when the uprising started, I was one of the 10 that began the uprising. I was the fourth person to speak that day. In fact, I got to speak just after the microphones were turned off, just before the lights were turned down. And I'm very proud of the fact that the Republicans stayed in Washington and demanded that the voice be heard of the American people on the issue of energy.

And what we were really saying, we were calling for the Speaker to, Come back, come back, call the House back, let's work together, because we are in an energy crisis. Let's reason this out and come up with solutions that we can all live with that will allow us to prosper in this country. I think that is what this is all about.

So I got to thinking today if you look at the pie chart--and Mr. King from Iowa had a pie chart in here one day that showed what all our sources of energy are. I can't get the numbers exactly right. I can remember that the alternative energy today, that is wind, solar, and biofuels, is about 2\1/4\ percent of our energy use in America. Right now. That is things we are looking at in the future and that is part of what the American energy act promotes, is research, development and working on those issues. But today it's about 2 percent.

And then the other sources of energy are gasoline and diesel to power our vehicles; natural gas, which we burn in industry and our homes; coal, which we burn in industry and our homes; oil, which we burn in industry and our homes, and a small portion we still use of hydroelectric power, which was one of the original sources of energy in colonial America.

And so what the proposal seems to be and the debate seems to be between our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats who are in charge of this Congress and have the power to make things happen in this Congress, I think that it's that debate we are talking about. It's those fuel sources that we are talking about. And nuclear energy, which make up right now I think it's around 18 percent of our power, but don't hold me to the numbers. But that whole chart makes 100 percent. But I do remember alternatives that today are a little over 2 percent.

The proposal we seem to be hearing is there's some things that now are bad. These are bad resources, even though the rest of the world, when they find natural gas off the coast of Brazil, they celebrate. When they drill a well off of--my wife is from Holland, and back in the sixties when they drilled a well in northern Holland and found this huge source of natural gas, they celebrated.

When people in Venezuela drill wells and find oil and natural gas, they celebrate, and yet we are ashamed of those resources.

Those resources are evil now, so we are basically starting to have a policy being proposed that says that there are some things that are just off limits for power right now because they are bad, and even though we don't have sense enough to know they are bad, we are going to get taught by the government that these are bad. And those things, by the way, most of them have to do with hydrocarbons, but we will start off with the one that doesn't, nuclear energy.

Now, we have heard arguments here tonight and examples were given here tonight of what other nations are doing in the way of nuclear energy. An example was given that the Chinese have on their drawing boards I believe it was 42 nuclear plants they are planning on building. And we are not planning to build, I don't think, any. Maybe there are a couple that are on the drawing board someplace, but we haven't built one in decades. Nuclear energy, our colleagues don't seem to want to open up nuclear energy, so it is sort of off limits.

Now we get off into the really evil stuff. Coal, terrible. You can't use coal. Oil, horrible. Horrible. As Speaker Pelosi said, we have got to wean ourselves off of hydrocarbons. And she said the solution is natural gas. I am sorry, but that is a hydrocarbon too. But still, let's throw natural gas in there.

Now, between coal, oil and natural gas, they probably make up about 75 or 80 percent of the fuel sources for industry and for transportation in America today. If those are off the table, let's just call it a small number, 60 percent, if 60 percent of what we are today using for power is off the table, then we have to replace it with something.

The proposals are solar, wind, biofuels, and new ideas we are going to come up with, like batteries and a lot of stuff, all of which is good and is in the American Energy Act. But today and tomorrow, and in fact for probably about 10 years, these things are not anywhere near the size and capacity to come even close to covering 60 percent of the power in this country.

So we are going to replace these oil, natural gas and coal resources with those power sources overnight, and we don't expect to stop right now on those things and not see prices go through the roof because of a supply shortage?

So what are we going to do for that supply shortage? Well, what we have been doing. We are going to buy from foreign countries, who are happy to have those products and happy to sell those products. But wait a minute. We just saw a comparison of the streets of Dubai. We don't have anything against Dubai. They are good friends of ours. But the change in that country between 1976 and today is like watching a miracle in the development of that country because of their intelligent use of the money that we are buying oil from them with and the rest of the world is.

So as we look down the pike, the corridors of time, if we make all these things off limits, then where are we going to go, except to foreign countries? And what we are talking about as part of our energy crisis is our dependence on foreign countries, whether they are friends or whether they be enemies.

So I think the average American back home in my district, when I talk to them, they all get it. They know that tomorrow, all this year for sure, and probably for at least the next 8 or

10 years, when they get up in the morning to go to work they are going to start a vehicle that is probably going to run on oil, an oil product or a natural gas product, gasoline or diesel. To say that we are going to keep this dependence going is insane in their opinion, and they want to know why we can't go after our own resources.

So why don't we put some things back on the table? Let's put American oil and gas back on the table by going to find it where we know that it is. Let's don't drill where it is not. If you want to lease property that has no oil and gas on it to drill on, you are welcome to lease my place. It is 2 acres right outside of Round Rock, and I guarantee you, you can put a drilling rig on it and it won't produce one drop of oil. But if you like drilling on places where there is no oil, I volunteer mine, and I will take the lease money. But that is ridiculous.

So when we hear proposals, why don't you drill where you have already got leases or where we have already offered leases, and our research tells us there are little or no resources there, why would we place millions and billions of dollars worth of drilling rigs on those sites to lose money? Why would anybody do that? So that doesn't make sense.

So let's go back. Let's start with the hard one, coal. But, you know what? We are learning very quickly how to clean up coal. We are learning how to liquefy coal and find new uses for coal. We are abundantly wealthy with coal. We shouldn't just put that off the table. And I am not from a big coal State, although question have got some coal. But the facts are we can't shove that resource off the table completely.

Oil, we know, as has been explained by Chairman Barton and others, there are at least 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic, up in ANWR, in an area which we intentionally set aside. There is abundant oil and gas resources off all the coasts of America.

Chairman Barton pointed out the reason they started looking at Alaska is because some whalers saw some oil seepage. Do you know that a place where there is oil seepage to this day is off the coast of California. In fact, those tar pits, that is just really, really thick crude at the top of the ground. But that is off limits.

Let's start being reasonable, taking care of the environment and drilling for these resources, producing them and putting them on the table. I for one am 100 percent in favor of Boone Pickens' proposal that we put natural gas in certain vehicles. It works. But he tells you 20 percent is the solution.

I think wind is a great idea, and it works. But it has got to be boosted to transport, and so we have to work on that. And still, with all the windmills we have got in production right now, we couldn't power Austin, Texas, for 2 days.

So, in order to meet our power needs, we have to be intelligent about what we are doing. As we reason with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, let's look at this picture and say reality says today, tomorrow and at least the next 10 to 20 years, we have to deal with what we have got. We can't hope that miraculously 2 percent of the power generated in America will instantly become 60 percent, just because we wish it to be.

I once asked a physicist from Austin, Texas, how big the solar panel would have to be to power Austin, Texas, for a day on the best day, that being a day in the spring when we don't need air conditioning and we don't need heat, and he said the size of the Texas panhandle. The size of the Texas panhandle is bigger than quite a few of the States in this country. So solar has its means, we will find a way for it, but today it is not going to even power Austin, Texas.

So as we look at this comprehensive energy that we have got to look at, if we are trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, let's wisely use the resources we have. Let's protect our environment as we do this. Let's make these burns and new scientific methods. For instance, you can burn things in pure oxygen and have no air emissions. You can capture carbon dioxide and use it to replenish oil fields, to bring more oil to the surface. We can do a lot with science and technology available and all those things on the table to be learned.

The bill that the Republicans are putting forward calls for us to wisely use all available resources, researching and developing the new ideas, offering incentives for more new ideas, offering incentives for conserving energy and all the things we need and want to do to make this country competitive, so that Indianapolis, Indiana, will look like Dubai some day, and not like Dubai in 1976, as was described earlier in a presentation here. Our infrastructure needs resources. We need to start taking care of America.

By the way, these lost jobs that people move overseas, did you ever think the high cost of energy might have something to do with that too?

So let's start thinking about ourselves and let's reason this out together. We have 3 weeks to do it. Time is running out. Our friends are back from their vacations, our Democratic friends are back from their vacations. Let's put our heads together. Let's don't give us an energy policy that comes from one person from San Francisco. Give us a policy that we work out in a bipartisan fashion, and I believe we can do it in the next 3 weeks.

Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Mr. Speaker, today in Texas the temperature is going to be about 103 to 105 degrees. It's going to be hot, and it's been hot for the last 2 weeks.

Last night I had the pleasure of visiting with some of my constituents back home, several hundred of them. And at this time of the year, Texans generally try to get their old folks and their kids out of the heat wherever they can. So historically Texans have loaded up in their pickups with their campers or their tents, and they have gone to visit our neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado to get a little bit

up in the mountains and get a little bit cooler so we can stay alive when this heat hits us.

But it's not happening in Texas today because, quite frankly, ordinary folks can't afford to load up their pickup, put gasoline in it, and drive the distance it takes to get to the mountains. And they're concerned about it, and they're worried about it. And they want to know if they are having to take the heat, why can't this House stand the heat and stay here until we have resolved this issue of offshore drilling and drilling in other parts of the country.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to submit documentation consistent with the new Republican earmark standards.

Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter.

Bill Number: H.R. 6599--The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

Account: Military Construction, Army.

Legal Name of Receiving Entity: Fort Hood, TX.

Address of Receiving Entity: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm. W321, Fort Hood, TX 75544.

Description of Request: I have secured $32,000,000 in funding in H.R. 6599 in the Military Construction, Army account for Unit Maintenance Facilities at Fort Hood, TX.

This funding will construct standard design unit maintenance facilities. Primary facilities to include vehicle maintenance shops, company operations facilities with covered hardstand, oil storage buildings, organizational unit storage buildings, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Maintenance Hangar, UAS taxiways and bridge, and organizational vehicle parking. Install intrusion detection systems (IDS) for arms rooms. Connect Energy Management Control System (EMCS) to base-wide network. Special foundations are required due to expansive soils. Sustainable Design and Development (SDD) and Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct05) features will be provided. Supporting facilities include electrical, water, sanitary sewer, and natural gas utilities; fire protection and alarm systems; security lighting; fencing, paving, walks, curbs and gutters; storm drainage; access roads; information systems; landscaping; and site improvements. Access for persons with disabilities will be provided in public areas. Heating and air- conditioning will be provided by self-contained units. Anti-Terrorism/ Force Protection (AT/FP) measures will be provided by structural reinforcement, mass notification system, special windows and doors, high curbing, and other site improvements to secure perimeter and maintain stand-off distances. Comprehensive building and furnishings related interior design services are required. Air-conditioning (estimated 300 tons).

Fort Hood, Texas, is a strategic installation for the Army. This project was programmed to receive funding in Fiscal Year 2009. This project is necessary to support the troop increase requested by the Secretary of Defense as part of the ``Grow the Force'' initiative for the Army.

Military Construction projects are always 100 percent funded by the U.S. Federal Government so there is no opportunity for matching funds.

Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter.

Bill Number: H.R. 6599--The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

Account: Military Construction, Air Force.

Legal Name of Receiving Entity: Fort Hood, TX.

Address of Receiving Entity: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm. W321, Fort Hood, TX 75544.

Description of Request: I have secured $10,800,000 in authorization funding in H.R. 6599 in the Military Construction, Air Force account for a TACP Joint Air Ground Center at Fort Hood, TX.

This project will construct a Joint Air Ground Center to support the administrative, training, vehicle and equipment maintenance and storage requirements for the 3rd Air Support Operations Group and the 9th Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Hood, TX. The construction will include reinforced concrete foundation and floor slabs, metal frame work, masonry walls, roof system, fire detection/protection system, utilities, pavements, site improvements, special foundations, communication support, and demolition and asbestos abatement of five facilities (3,611 SM). This project will comply with DoD antiterrorism/ force protection requirements per Unified Facilities Criteria.

Fort Hood, Texas is a strategic installation for the Army. This project was programmed to receive funding in Fiscal Year 2009. The project is necessary to support the mission of the 3rd Air Support Operations Group and the 9th Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Hood, Texas.

Military Construction projects are always 100 percent funded by the U.S. Federal Government so there is no opportunity for matching funds.

Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter.

Bill Number: H.R. 6599--The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009.

Account: Military Construction, Army.

Legal Name of Receiving Entity: Fort Hood, TX.

Address of Receiving Entity: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm. W321, Fort Hood, TX 75544.

Description of Request: I have secured $17,500,000 in funding in H.R. 6599 in the Military Construction, Army account for a Chapel with Religious Education Center project at Fort Hood, TX.

This project will construct a standard design chapel complex and religious education center. Primary facilities include a chapel complex, religious education center, administrative area, conference rooms, library, multipurpose activity area, kitchen and storage areas, fire alarm and fire suppression systems, connection to Installation Energy Management Control System (ECMS), and building information systems. Special foundations are required due to the expansive soils. Supporting facilities include electrical, water, sanitary sewer, and natural gas utilities; storm drainage; chilled water distribution; paving, walks, curbs and gutters; security lighting, information systems; landscaping and site improvements. Heating will be provided by self-contained natural gas units. Access for the handicapped will be provided. Comprehensive Interior Design package is required. Anti- Terrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) measures include mass notification system, structural reinforcement, special doors and windows, high curbing, and other measures to maintain stand-off distance.

Fort Hood, Texas is a strategic installation for the Army. This project was programmed to receive funding in Fiscal Year 2012, but was identified by the garrison commander as the highest unfunded priority in Fiscal Year 2009. The project is necessary to improve psychological and spiritual care for the soldiers and their families.

Military Construction projects are always 100 percent funded by the U.S. Federal Government so there is no opportunity for matching funds.

I thank my friend from Arkansas, the ranking member, Mr. Boozman. And I want to thank Ms. Herseth Sandlin for the work she did

incorporating into 6225, which I rise in support of, H.R. 6070, the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act.

I have a very similar story to the previous story. I had a spouse of a captain at Fort Hood come to me and say, you know, we have been transferred to the Pentagon. And my husband, he still votes, pays his taxes and everything else in Killeen, Texas. But I have been transferred with my husband up here to Virginia, and now I am having to register to vote in Virginia. My Congressman is from Virginia. I have to register my car titles and everything in Virginia, independently of my husband. I have to pay State income taxes in Virginia. And quite frankly, my husband serves in the Army, and we serve the military out of patriotism to our country, and we are proud to do it. But I make twice as much money as he does, and this is a burden upon me, taxwise and it is a burden on me with my family.

And I made the assumption that that was fixed, had been fixed a long time ago. So this, 6070, which is incorporated in 6225, allows the spouse to have the same benefits we have given to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, that they can designate a residency and that remains their residency no matter where the military sends them.

My wife is from Holland, and she has a little saying in Dutch that she has got written on the wall. And it says, ``It's not the mountain you have to climb that gets you, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.'' And this is one of those grains of sand in the shoes of the spouses of our military which is an irritant to them that is easy for us to fix.

And I want to thank all those involved in allowing this to go forward. This will be something that seems small to some, but it is a big hurdle to the spouses of our military.

I thank my friend from Iowa, my classmate from Iowa. We came in this Congress together and have been close friends since we have gotten here. The one thing that I have learned about people from Iowa, like Steve King, is that they are blessed, like a whole lot of my folks back home, hopefully I am too, with something called common sense. You know, this is really about common sense, and I think the American people get it.

Tomorrow morning, in Round Rock, Texas, where I am from, that used to be a little bitty town of 2,500 people, and now we are bumping up against 100,000 people, but I estimate we have got at least 15,000 to 20,000 vehicles that are operated out of Round Rock, Texas.

So, tomorrow morning, in just my hometown, 15,000 people are going to get out of bed and go out and start up a vehicle to go to work, and it's summer, they may be wanting to take the kids on vacation, maybe taking them to swimming practice or to baseball practice or down to the park to play, or they are going to grocery shopping, as the price of groceries go up, or they are going out to work, or they are driving down to Austin, 30 miles away, to their job. But they are all mobile and going some place.

There's no mass transit that comes to my town of 100,000 people. There's a Greyhound bus that passes through, going places. But I wouldn't call that mass transit. It won't get you back and forth to work. And all those peoples are going to start their vehicles tomorrow morning, either on gasoline or diesel. We may have a couple of hybrids. But the power that is going to recharge the batteries of that hybrid vehicle is going to come from a source of some sort. Hydroelectric used to be a big source, but it's one of the minute sources now. We got scared to death of nuclear energy and so we stopped making nuclear power plants. So we burn coal and we burn natural gas and hydrocarbons to make electrical energy most everywhere in this country.

Now, sure, I like what I heard from my friend, T. Boone Pickens, from the panhandle of Texas, where the wind blows all the time. Wind mills are a great idea in the panhandle of Texas, and they are going to help a small amount. I am all for it. I, of course, am a big fan of natural gas because my daddy was in the natural gas business. I grew up in the natural gas business, and every summer job I had from the time I was 16-years-old was in the natural gas business. Which brings me down to something that I discovered.

Most of the people here in Congress know that I am married to a little lady who's from the Netherlands. I worked on a pipeline in the Netherlands back in 1965. That is how I met my wife. That pipeline was being laid because the Dutch discovered in the northern province of Holland--and Holland is a little country. It's not very big at all.

I think it's 190 miles long by 90 miles wide.

They discovered natural gas. In fact, one well in north Holland produced the same amount of natural gas as the entire west Texas gas field in the panhandle. Now they were elated. They were overwhelmed. Europe was fascinated. They had found a resource to power their homes, because they were still burning coal, they were still burning coal that was made into liquid. They were still burning coal oil in their homes in northern Europe in 1965. And they were excited about this great resource that they found.

And then they moved offshore; off the shore of Norway, off the shore of Scotland, off the shore of Sweden, and out into the North Sea, out into the Baltic Sea, and they drilled and they found more oil and natural gas. And Europe was excited. Yet, we are ashamed of our natural resource that we know is sitting off the coast of the United States. Oh, woe is me. We can't touch that. That is not good for us.

Now what is wrong with us? Because tomorrow morning in Round Rock, Texas, 15,000 people want to run their vehicles to live their lives as Americans. And, you're right, these folks, the intercity folks, they have got mass transit. Some of it's good, some not so good. But they have got it. Maybe that is what is part of the divide that divides the red States from the blue States in the old comparison that we get right now. Maybe us red State folks don't have as much transit as the blue State folks. I don't know about that.

But I know this. The Republican Party stands for the right idea. Let's develop every power source known to man to make this an American independent power country. American power for Americans.

You have got a chart right there. You have got a great list. I will be glad to yield back for you to go over that list of the power sources that we say are available and how we support each and every one of those power sources. I yield back.

Will the gentleman yield?

There are commercials running on television on both sides of this issue, and one of them says, Why don't the oil companies do something about energy, not just oil? And do something about the environment.

Well, we are told that the big challenge we have today is CO2. Carbon dioxide is ruining our planet. We talked about the polar bears earlier. If we captured carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere from some type of burn process,

what will we do with it? Who has a use for carbon dioxide; taking it out of the atmosphere? The oil companies have a use.

The oil companies can use carbon dioxide to deep inject into fields like east Texas, where Brother Gohmert comes from, which just about spinout oil fields, and geologists tell us there may be 50 percent of the oil in that field may not be recoverable without some change in the field.

Under this future gen project, which this government is looking at spending billions of dollars on to study how to take coal, clean the burn of coal, capture the carbon dioxide and put the carbon dioxide deep in the ground, where it will change the composition of--I assume it's like tar sands that are left down there--and bring light crude to the surface.

So, you know, these are not the evil empire. They actually have a solution to a problem that we are talking about, and as we learn how to capture carbon dioxide, which we are working on right now.

I was in a meeting the day before yesterday with a group that has a process of capturing carbon dioxide from a burn process. As we capture it, it has a market price in a free enterprise world to the oil and gas industry to bring petroleum products to the surface safely, without polluting the atmosphere.

We don't talk about these things because these are the things that they do in the regular engineering in their business. But the reality is this is a solution to the very problem that our friend, Mr. Gore, is talking about. And if you believe that carbon dioxide is the end of the world, there are energy companies, oil and gas companies, that are ready, willing, and able to take captured carbon dioxide to work in their business.

This is the kind creativity when you challenge Americans to solve a problem. We say, Go to the moon. Yes, we can go to the moon by using these kind of new ideas to make life better for Americans so that when we get up tomorrow morning, we can comfortably start our automobiles and our pickup trucks and our SUVs and together work.

The other bogeyman, strawman out there, is Big Oil. Big Oil finds the oil rigs. As a Member of this House, and I don't think you would be ashamed for me to tell this, and it is not a long story, his name is Trent Franks, he is one of our classmates, and he made his living drilling for oil. You know how he started? Trent was 18. His partner was his 15-year-old brother. They bought a makeshift drilling rig that was basically rigged on the back of an old truck, and they went down outside of Midland, Texas, and started looking for a place to drill for oil.

Trent is out of the business now because he is a Member of Congress, but his firm today is drilling offshore off the coast of New Zealand and Australia. So he and his 15-year-old brother obviously found some someplace so they could keep drilling.

The average person who seeks oil is an independent, more or less for the oil industry, small businessman, and we should stop throwing these bogeymen out there, because these are the people looking for our oil, and they are going to find it and they are going to change things, as are our coal miners and all the other people we have talked about. We will get clean coal, we will get oil that we can live with, we will have American energy.

I thank you for allowing me to join you today. I yield back.

Madam Speaker, today we vote on a bill to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 70 million barrels of oil. The U.S. consumes 21 to 23 million barrels of oil a day. So this is just over 3 days' supply.

The good news is that our Democrat colleagues have finally started to realize that supply is the problem. Seventy million barrels may help slightly the pain at the pump, but so would the billions of barrels of oil in ANWR, offshore, and in shale oil.

Increasing American energy supply is not an ideological issue like traditional marriage or abortion. It's a simple issue of do you support the American people or radical environmental groups.

Sixty-seven percent of the American people want safe, environmentally sound drilling for oil. This is what the American people want. This is what they should have. The only obstacle seems to be Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat Congress.

Americans are counting on Congress to work together and lift the American oil embargo. Americans stand ready to work with the Democrats, as do the Republicans.

Madam Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 512 (H.R. 6493--The Aviation Safety Enhancement Act), 513 (H. Res. 1311--Expressing Support for the Designation of National GEAR UP Day), and 514 (H. Res. 1202-- Supporting the goals and ideals of a National Guard Youth Challenge Day), I was unfortunately unable to vote due to flight difficulties en route to the Capitol.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea''.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Last week, the so-called experts came to town and they told us that we need to shore up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to provide stability to the housing markets and to shore up and give stability to our financial institutions.

I listened very calmly to that and decided it made sense to me, and I think it makes sense to most everybody in this conference. I didn't hear anything about blank checks, but I did hear about shoring up the system. I certainly didn't hear anything about a housing trust fund or community block grants for buying foreclosures, but that's in this bill and that concerns me.

If we just take a look at the housing trust fund, we see a $9 billion permanent tax against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now wait a minute. I thought we were shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Now we're taxing them.

But besides that, over the next 3 years this will be used for the FHA bailout, and that makes some sense. Sixty-five percent of these funds will go to States that spend it on rental housing activities and low- income homeownership. That sounds like it makes sense, although it really wasn't what we were talking about but it makes sense. And then 35 percent will be distributed by the Secretary of Treasury to groups, groups that work in housing, I suppose, like ACORN and La Raza.

But there's a problem here that I see that there doesn't seem to be any permanent oversight that would prevent this kind of money that could potentially go into something that would be very abusive or fraudulent. It concerns me. The community block grants were not part of what we were asked to do either. Both these items have come before this House before unsuccessfully. But now when we have one of these must- pass golden opportunities that

the Democrat majority sees, then they put the things on there that otherwise they didn't feel confident they could get done, and then they ask us to do this to save the financial institutions of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and others.

This doesn't sound like what the American people sent us here to do. They sent us here to work on the problems that are before this Nation and are important.