Floor Statements

Madam Speaker, I wish to be heard on the point of order.

Madam Speaker, the point of order began with the words ``whether or not.'' No point of order can begin with the words ``whether or not.''

Mr. Speaker, these are serious times in which we are living. Supposedly there is a Chinese curse that says may you live in interesting times. We certainly do.

I have really been shocked that the mainstream media has not done more in the way of stories on the Americans, the four Americans, on a boat that were hijacked and then killed. Of course it made some news on February 22 when it happened, but it appears it didn't survive much of a 24-hour cycle.

This was an act of war against America. This was an act of war against four peace-loving people who apparently had the gall to travel around and offer Bibles to different places and apparently were spending American blood and treasure in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, only to find out that they were persecuting Christians in a manner that is reminiscent of why people came to Europe and tried to create a country in which Christians could worship freely without being persecuted, tortured, imprisoned, or killed simply for their religious beliefs.

In this case, though, it was a matter of Barbary pirates. I know that most people apparently in Washington have not learned enough from history, but there are so many history lessons that make very clear what Ronald Reagan used to say when he said no country ends up being attacked because they are too strong.

What Barbary pirates have seen and what people around the world have seen, including those in Libya, Turkey, Lebanon, and Iran, is that we have been promoting weakness in the United States and promoting a very weak vision of ourselves around the world.

This story from February 22 indicates that the pirates fired a rocket-propelled grenade at a U.S. Navy destroyer that was following the hijacked yacht with four Americans on board. Then gunfire erupted, and four Americans who had been taken hostage were fatally wounded. They were killed.

I don't know what this administration needs to see in the way of current events or why this administration will not learn from the myriad of lessons from history that when you're dealing with pirates, when you're dealing with religious fanatics--people who want to destroy you and who could care nothing about your life, your pursuit of happiness--you don't placate them; you don't try to negotiate with them; you don't show that, gee, we don't know what to do--or what you will get is more piracy, more terrorism.

There is only one way to respond, which is the way that the United States did in its early days, in the early 1800s, with Thomas Jefferson as President. Some don't go back that far and learn history. All they want to do is look at a fictional approach to U.S. history that says, in essence, gee, we're mean; we're colonialists; we have subjugated people all around the world to our imperialist whims. Unfortunately, despite all the hyperbole and the rhetoric, what we have done is expend American blood and American treasure in the name of freedom, not just American freedom but the freedom of Iraqis, the freedom of Muslims in Eastern Europe, the freedom of people all across Europe--in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Poland. All across, Americans have given their lives in the name of freedom. All across the Pacific, they have given their lives, their last full measure of devotion, for freedom.

With no racist view but absolutely, as Jesus said, ``Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.''

In the case of Americans, we've lain down lives for people we didn't even know because the concept of freedom was so important.

In our earliest days, Washington, of course, was quite concerned that, in having won the Revolution, we were still not strong enough to survive. So often you'll see in a new government's trying to arise in a country that it overcommits to other obligations with regard to military, and they lose their young nation. Washington was afraid of that. Through the 1790s, we had Barbary pirates. We had pirates off the coast of North Africa who were capturing American ships and taking American sailors hostage. They would either kill them or they would torture them, but they would ransom them if they had not killed them. At one point, I'd read that as much as 18 percent of the American budget was being spent to pay ransom to get American sailors back.

At one point, Thomas Jefferson was the one who was sent over on behalf of the United States to negotiate with these Muslims about why they were attacking American ships. The discussion apparently included the question:

Why would you attack American ships? We've not harmed you in any way. We're no threat to you. We're not threatening you.

One history lesson indicates that Jefferson was told: Well, under our religion, if we are killed while we are taking action against an infidel, like Americans, then we go straight to paradise, and we're rewarded.

Jefferson was shocked because, as a man who was so well-read, he couldn't believe that any world religion would encourage the killing of innocent people and that the killing of innocent people would gain you a trip to paradise. So he got his own English copy of the Koran, which is still over in the Library of Congress. He couldn't believe it. He wanted to find out for himself.

American history students will know that we finally created the United States Marines. Those who are not familiar with the history may still be familiar with the Marines' Hymn that says, ``From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli . . . '' Well, it was the shores of Tripoli to which the marines were sent with the message:

We can't continue to pay ransom to bloodthirsty religious zealots, and so we are at war with you until you stop.

It was only then when Americans showed strength that they could not be pushed around, that they would not be taken hostage without a response, and that there would be American blood and treasure spent in the name of freedom to anyone who tries to threaten the freedom of Americans on the high seas or on American soil.

Because the marines fought so valiantly and fiercely and fearlessly, those pirates, the Muslim pirates, learned a valuable lesson of, gee, maybe we ought to leave these people alone for a while--and they did for a long time.

Yet in 1979, after the Carter administration had welcomed back the Ayatollah Khomenei as a man of peace, as one who would bring great peace to the region, the Carter administration had snubbed its nose and abandoned a man who didn't seem to be a very nice man--the Shah of Iran--and rather put all our eggs in one basket with this wonderful man of peace, the Ayatollah Khomenei, who it turns out would also like to see the United States destroyed, and viewed Americans as infidels as well as the original Barbary pirates did.

I was in the Army at Fort Benning when the hostages were taken. No one at Fort Benning that I knew of was dying to go to Iran, but most everybody I knew at Fort Benning was willing to go and thought we should go because an act of war had been committed against the United States. Under everyone's interpretation of international law, when a United States Embassy or a United States compound is attacked in any nation, it is an attack on that nation's own soil. It is an act of war. This is under everyone's interpretation of international law.

If you go back and if you review the television footage of the day-- and I'm relying on my memory of those days because we were certainly paying attention--we didn't know who might be sent. It turns out none of us were sent from Fort Benning because the Carter administration, as eloquent as President Carter was and as peace-loving and as well- meaning as he was, felt surely these people in Iran will see how much I care. They'll see how much I really love them, and we'll negotiate. They'll be impressed by our words. They'll be impressed by our negotiations, and they'll let our people go.

But that's not the way those folks who view us as infidels and who need to be killed work.

In fact, if you go back to your own experience--back to a schoolyard--if a bully is picking on you or especially if a smaller person is picking on a bigger person and you don't defend yourself but instead say ``let me pay you money if you'll leave me alone,'' not only does that smaller person not have respect for the bigger person, but the smaller person will have nothing but hatred, and now you've added contempt because he can't believe somebody is such a coward and so weak when he appears to be so big and strong that he would pay someone who hates him to leave him alone.

So you get hatred, you get contempt, and you get more violence. And that is what we've seen. We have continued to this day to pay the price for the message that was sent in 1979 and 1980 for appearing to be so weak and helpless in the face of Iranians--we were told initially students--who committed an act of war and then gave our hostages to the Iranian Government.

Now as I watched all this unfold, it appeared to me, as a young man in the Army, that--you know, the Ayatollah's spokesman kept coming out and talking about the students--the students attacked, the students have the hostages. That seemed to me, as an inexperienced person in the way of foreign policy but someone who had studied a great deal of world history, that that

was their back door for Iran, that was their way of saying, look, we don't know if the United States is going to be the powerful country we're afraid they might be or if they're really the toothless tiger that we saw tuck their tail between their legs and run out of Vietnam. So let's just test. Let's talk about the students taking the hostages. Let's talk about the students committing the atrocity of invading the embassy. And if America steps up and says you either get our hostages back from the students within 48 or 72 hours or we're coming in and we're addressing this act of war against the United States of America and we're getting our hostages back, and if you kill them, we will be at war with anybody who condoned that action, and that would include the Iranian Government that allowed this to happen and did not intercede when they could have. That's what you have to do and that's what we didn't do.

So it appeared, as it all unfolded, that after 2 or 3 days the Ayatollah realized America is as weak as we hoped they were. This President Carter, he thinks he's a man of peace, we see him as a man of nothing but weakness, as the poorest leader the Americans could offer. So they quit talking about the students have the hostages, the students attacked the embassy, and they started talking about we have the hostages because they gave us time to show whether or not we would react with strength and they saw we reacted with weakness. You can't negotiate with people like that. You instill more contempt on top of the hatred.

And of course I filed, in all three Congresses I've been a part of-- and this Congress will be no different--my U.N. voting accountability bill that basically says if you vote against the United States more than half the time in the U.N. in any year, you will receive not one dime of financial assistance from the U.S. in the subsequent year. Now some say, gee, that seems so heartless. Well, the fact is we have been paying money to prop up regimes like Mubarak's. Is it any wonder that the report is he has billions of dollars in the bank when we've been paying Egypt billions of dollars that doesn't appear to have really gotten to the people and helped them? We're doing it all over the world. We're paying tyrants who hate us and would like to see our way of life destroyed with American treasure. It doesn't buy love, it doesn't buy happiness, it buys contempt. And as I've said repeatedly, you don't have to pay people to hate you, they'll do it for free.

In a time when the United States is struggling so with economic issues of just staying afloat, why should we be paying tyrants that hate us and paying people who have not helped their people? I mean, you look at the money that we poured into the Palestinian group and see how much of the money we paid in to help the homeless Palestinians has been paid toward building homes. It should be a no-brainer. Palestinians, so many of them, hate the Israelis because they have no homes. So they're told, well, blame the Israelis. So they do, and they grow up hating them. Well, why not, with the billions and billions of dollars we've paid out of this country to the Palestinians, why have they not used it to build homes so those people won't continue to hate Israelis and hate Americans?

It's no secret, we're not buying affection with the billions of dollars we're spending overseas. It makes no sense to these countries who hate us that we keep giving them money, but they figure if we're that stupid, sure, they'll take our money, and all the while the dollar gets weaker and weaker and you have more and more claims from people we're giving money to to get rid of the dollar as a reserve currency. And when that happens--if it ever happens--then our economy is in for just the fastest spiral down anyone could possibly imagine. Dollars are required to buy much of the oil in the world. We keep showing this kind of stupidity in our foreign policies and there will be consequences. There were consequences for four Americans who were hijacked and then killed.

As a former judge and State Chief Justice of a Court of Appeals, when I hear stories, I'm constantly looking for evidence so that I can find out, is there any substance to the story that's been heard? Now we see that there was a naval destroyer following, shadowing the hijacked boat of these Americans who were simply going out trying to help people in the world. They were not a threat to anyone, they were providing Bibles and hope from what we can find out.

Well, how does that compare to the incident of the captain of the Bainbridge being taken hostage by three pirates and how it concluded? There were conservative talk show hosts that said, hey, we disagree with so much that President Obama has been doing to this country and in our name, but it looks like he got this one right. Well, a story was circulating--and I was curious whether it had truth to it--that when the SEAL team was deployed, the order was a little different than normal, where instead of the order saying go rescue their hostages and they put together their own game plan for how you go about achieving the goal that's ordered, that this order was a little different, it just said go to the ship and receive further orders there, a little different for a SEAL team, that's what we were hearing, and that they did the drop at night. They had the SEAL team there, and for basically 3 days they had a bead on all three of the pirates in the boat with the captain they had taken hostage, and that at any moment they could have taken out all three pirates for that 3-day period. But the story went, what was circulating, was that the President's order said do not use deadly force under any circumstances unless the life of the captain is in imminent danger of immediately be taken. Only under those circumstances are you to use deadly force.

Well, when a pirate group attacks a ship, it is an act of war by those pirates. And this administration's response here is just to have a Navy destroyer tag along and try to negotiate.

And they were in the process of trying to negotiate, apparently, when the rocket-propelled grenade was fired at the Navy destroyer and then the four hostages were killed.

Well, the story was the administration didn't want to take any action against the pirates. We'll just negotiate our way through this.

And it's one of the problems with being one of the most gifted orators in American history, if you're that gifted of an orator, the temptation arises for you to think you can talk people into anything. People that hate your country, when they see that you really sympathize with them and not your own hostages as much--certainly there's sympathy for the hostages--but if they perceive that there is sympathy for the pirates or for those attacking Americans, then, sure, they're willing to negotiate, but it appears to be weakness.

And, obviously, these pirates in February were not impressed with America when they took the Americans hostage, committed an act of war, and even had a naval destroyer behind because they perceived we were weak.

Well, the story about the captain of the Bainbridge that was going around was that for basically 3 days, the SEALs were not allowed to take out the pirates, that they could have at any time. And then we heard on the news during that that the captain, while the pirates may have been falling asleep, was able to get out of the boat, get into the water.

As soon as I heard that, I thought, Wow, he was trying to give the SEALs clear shots at the pirates. He must have figured, as I did, that they surely would have taken an open shot if they knew they wouldn't jeopardize the American captain. And so by his jumping out of the boat, it gave them a clear shot to take the pirates out without jeopardizing the captain; but no shots were fired. That surely had to perplex him. It sure did me and many others. Why didn't they just take out the pirates before they drug him back in the boat?

But our American SEALs did nothing. Not because they couldn't or wouldn't; but the story was they were doing that because the President had issued an order that they were not to use deadly force. And the story was going that the captain, when he went out of the boat and these guys came to their senses, that they put their guns down to grab him and put him back into the boat and therefore he was not under immediate threat of death so the SEALs were not allowed to kill him.

It must have perplexed the captain that nothing was done when he got out. But nothing was done. The story went that these SEALs were following orders.

And then came an occasion when one of the pirates that had a gun on his arm or over his shoulder waved his weapon in the direction of the captain and that that's when the SEAL team commander realized he's waving his weapon at the captain, we cannot take a chance. The order to shoot was given--that could have been given anytime for 3 days and ended that terrible ordeal--was given not by the President but by the commander on the scene. And our well-trained SEALs did a remarkable job in taking out two of the pirates and rescuing the captain.

The story went it could have happened anytime, but the order of the President restrained them from doing that because he was convinced they could just surely know how good and loving and peaceful we were and they would eventually let these folks go.

Because this administration apparently had not learned the lesson that Thomas Jefferson had to learn. You can't deal with peaceful negotiating efforts or even paying people money or snubbing your allies and friends to try to convince them that you're really a great person they ought to love. Those things don't work. You have to go to war against them and let them know when they attack Americans, when they attack America that we are coming after them.

We don't have to be at war with a country. We don't have to be at war with an entire race or group of people. There's no need in that. But you go to war with the people that are at war with you, and this administration has not done that.

We have four Americans who are dead. Obviously, this administration didn't want Americans to die. Of course they didn't. That's a terrible thing. And they didn't want it--would loved to have avoided it, certainly. But it's not enough to intend good consequences. You have to study your history lessons and do so objectively, learn from history so you don't repeat the mistakes of the past. And that's what we've been doing.

And as much as I respected and think Ronald Reagan was one of our greatest Presidents, in 1983 when our Marine barracks was blown up and we withdrew from Beirut, it appeared to be further evidence of weakness. And I can't help but believe from people I've talked to that were part of the administration that if he had to do it all over, he would do it in a different manner.

But he had advisers telling him accurately we're in Lebanon on a peacekeeping mission. We have finished the mission. There is no need to keep staying there. Let's go ahead and get out. There's no reason. We've finished our job. Let's get out before any other Americans get killed.

The problem was when we did, it appeared to be follow-up weakness added to what President Carter had shown on behalf of this country.

And now we see it on the high seas.

We have a naval destroyer. We have SEAL teams. We have Army, Navy, Marines, Coast Guard, we have Air Force that can achieve things nobody in any prior service could have ever dreamed could be accomplished. We have a better military than I ever dreamed we could have had back when we had just gone to an all-volunteer Army and I was concerned about our national safety. Amazing military. Smart, motivated. And yet despite that, we're showing weakness.

Now, the story that was going around was that the captain that ordered the fire got a hot call from the White House saying--really chewing him out, that the SEAL team around didn't know what was being said but they knew that their commander was getting chewed out royally. And supposedly the story that was circulating was that he eventually said, That's fine, sir, and that apparently wasn't the President but said, You can tell the President that if he wants to continue this rear-chewing of me and my team, we're going to arrive at Andrews Air Force base, wherever they came in, at a certain time and the media knows, and you can dress them down there. Or you might want a good photo op and you could be there--told the President he could be there to congratulate them. And of course there was a wonderful photo op, and these great heroes were welcomed by the President as he should have.

That was the story going around back after the attack on the Bainbridge.

And so ever since then, I've been looking--I'd heard this story. I was wondering is there any evidence of similar activity that might give substance to that story. And how we handled these four Americans, these loving, caring Americans being killed on the high seas seems to be that kind of evidence, that this is our mode of operation. You commit an act of war against Americans, you commit an act of war against our ships, and we're going to send a Navy ship to follow you and try to offer you bribes to leave us alone and leave the people alone, but you don't have to worry much.

But after the rocket-propelled grenade was fired, it all went bad and four Americans are dead. It's shocking. We need to show strength.

And I was a year ago in April in West Africa with a group called Mercy Ships that brings healing. The lame walk, the blind see. They bring a ship into a port of a country that needs health care and they provide treatment to thousands of people. And I had gone to see this for myself.

And before I left the ship after the days there over the Easter break, some of the West Africans wanted to visit with me. And the oldest, a wonderful, wonderful man, I don't know how much education, but a smart man, great wisdom, he said, in essence, we wanted to make sure you understood as Africans we were excited when you elected a black President. We were excited. We thought it was wonderful. But since he has been President, we've become very concerned and a bit afraid because we see him showing weakness for America. And we need you to please convey in Washington that America is the hope for people, Christians like him. People who want peace around the world, we're their hope. And if you show weakness, and if you weaken America, we don't have hope in this world.

As Christians, they knew where they would go in the next life. But they also knew that America stood for hope in this world. And when we show weakness, as we have been doing, then it signals the tyrants to have their way. And we've got to stop that.

Now, may I inquire how much time is remaining?

I wanted to shift gears because we have been doing so much talking about the continuing resolution, which is just an ongoing funding of the way things are going, except for amendments that have been adopted to the CR. And we have talked so much about health care and the President's bill that many call ObamaCare.

And in the CR that was debated for over 90 hours, with an open rule until a unanimous consent agreement was reached, you know, 80 hours or so into the debate, it was the first open rule we have had like that in years. Certainly we didn't have such an open debate and an open rule during the last 2 years during the Democrats' control of the majority in both the House and the Senate. We didn't have an open rule here. And we were advised that it was the first time in America's history that there was not an open rule where you could bring, anybody could bring amendments to the floor and offer them to a bill.

Now, it's not a pretty thing to watch, all that debate going back and forth. And I know I hear some people say, you know, you guys shouldn't bicker so much back and forth, but they show a lack of knowledge about what the Founders intended. And Justice Scalia put it so well to a group when one asked do we have more freedom in America because we have the best Bill of Rights in history. And Scalia, as only he could do, abruptly said, basically, well, no, even the Soviet Union had a better Bill of Rights than we do. And I had forgotten, but back in college, during one of my history and world courses, I had written a paper on the Soviet Government and their Constitution, their Bill of Rights.

And Justice Scalia was exactly right, they had more promises in their Bill of Rights than we do. But as Justice Scalia so aptly pointed out, the reason we have more freedoms in America

than any country in history is because the Founders did not trust government, so they put as many impediments in the path of creating laws as they could. Because they knew if they made it too easy to pass laws, then it would be too easy to subjugate Americans and take away their freedom and have government get bigger and bigger until they basically took away people's freedom and their way of life to which they had become accustomed. They knew that. They had seen that. They learned that from their vast reading of history.

They had such great knowledge of the writings of the philosophers and historians. They understood all that. They did not trust government. So they were not going to be satisfied to have one House as a representative body because it might be too easy for one body, one group to take over control of that one House and then ramrod through all types of oppressive legislation like ObamaCare, for example.

So they were so worried about that they created a second House of Representatives, ended up being called the Senate. And they were selected a different way, by the State legislators, so that they would be responsible to the State legislators so that they wouldn't end up taking away States' rights, and certainly wouldn't allow the House of Representatives to take away a State's rights.

So they thought, gee, two Houses. But even that wasn't good enough because they realized, you know, we could do like as has been done before and have a Prime Minister elected by the legislative body, and he would be the top executive. It's not good enough. It's not enough of an impediment or an obstacle to passing laws. We still want to make it harder to pass laws. So let's create a separate executive branch and have the Executive, the top Executive, the President elected by the entire country, and at least elected by the entire country's Representatives. But that was going to be a different format.

And then they set up the judiciary branch. And both the President could veto and even the judiciary, as it turned out, was going to be able to veto things if it got through the House and Senate and yet took away some constitutional right. They thought they created a good enough system that wouldn't be as abused as the entire system was in the last few years.

They could not have imagined that a 2,900-page bill, ObamaCare, could have been crammed down the throats of American citizens that poll after poll showed did not want it. They would never have imagined that the Senate would not be independent enough and would be so taken over by one political extremist group that they would pass through such an oppressive bill that would force a government takeover and government control of everybody's health care, that would force every American to have their medical records sent to a central repository that supposedly General Electric would handle because they are good cronies with this administration; and they would take care of every American's records because the Federal Government would have control of all of that.

And not only that, they would take control over all the health care insurance companies. They would take control over ordering what would be allowable under health care, what would not be allowable under health care, all in this massive bill that would provide for supposedly hundreds of thousands of regulations that would follow to interpret those 2,900 pages.

They could never have imagined that it would get that bad in this country that the system they created to throw obstacles in the path of government creating laws that the American people did not want, and certainly not that a majority of Americans didn't want, and by golly, they got it through. They rammed it through. They used carrots. They dangled benefits. They added all kinds of pork to bills.

They threw in something for the big pharmaceuticals. They threw something in for the trial lawyers. They threw something in for the AMA. They certainly threw a big juicy bone in there for AARP--well, a bunch of juicy bones, actually. They threw all these things in for all these interest groups except for the one who poll after poll said we don't want it. Don't do this.

You promised us you would negotiate a health care bill on C-SPAN and we would be able to see who was out for the people. So all the people could assume was that because none of that was done on C-SPAN, other than a dog and pony show after it was basically done and about to be crammed down the Republicans' throats anyway, we had a little summit and it got crammed down our throats anyway and Americans didn't want it.

Well, I did go through the original 1,000-page bill. I went through the 2,000-page bill. I put off going through the 2,900-page bill because who knew if there would be a fourth or a fifth on top of that. I didn't want to end up going through yet another bill that wasn't going to be the one that really was the one that was seriously going to be made law, so I put it off.

And when I got around to going through and reading the 2,900-page bill, you know, I will admit, I was wanting to look at what the sections did, their effect. And so I was struck by finding, really, ingenious or insidious language and drafting provisions, depending on your viewpoint, for example, with abortion. There was a section there saying, you know, you couldn't have Federal funds for abortion, but over in the section that was going to allow it, instead of mentioning the word ``abortion,'' it just referred to the section. So if you went online and did a word search for the word ``abortion,'' you wouldn't see all of the provisions that allowed for abortion in Federal funding; you would only find a restricted group, that kind of really clever hiding what was going on.

I passed over a lot of the numbers that were utilized. So it was a bit surprising to find out here recently, and going back through, and Ernie Istook, a former Member here I served with, now with the Heritage Foundation, yesterday provided me with copies of specific pages of the bill. Again, this is public law 111-148 and 111-152.

But if you looked at, let's see, consolidated print -26, here it says down here: Hereby appropriated to the Secretary out of any funds in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated, $30 million for the first fiscal year.

And it goes on, and another page says: There are hereby appropriated to the trust fund, the following, and it appropriated 10 million for this, 50 million for that, 150 million for that, another 150 million, another 150 million.

And you go through these, and it's staggering how much money was actually not authorized, but they used appropriating language. Because, as many people know, and I am finding more and more that are watching C-SPAN, but they know, gee, normally you have a budget. Well, there was no budget last year. The majority didn't want people to see exactly how the money would be budgeted, so they didn't bother with one in election year. First time in decades, as I understand it. But we didn't have a budget. And then we had this, beginning of this continuing resolution stuff. But normally you will have a budget. You will have an authorization for expenditure, but then it had to be followed up with an appropriation.

Well, ObamaCare went straight to it and appropriated vast amounts of money. In fact, in this first year of 2011, fiscal year 2011, there is $4.951 billion appropriated in the bill. They apparently not only overran all the obstacles and hurdles that the Founders put in our way to come up with so that we would not come up with legislation that Americans did not want, they overcame that. Then, just to make sure that it would be difficult to ever stop this by unfunding it, they actually didn't just authorize, they appropriated $105.464 billion in this ObamaCare bill, over $105 billion from 2011 through 2019, $105 billion.

Now, the rules get a little complicated around here, and any amendment that seeks to rescind a prior appropriation is going to be subject to a point of order objection and not be allowed because it legislates in an appropriating bill, and under our rules you can't legislate in an appropriating bill.

So the only way--and these people that put this language in here, they knew it. When they were telling America we know we are broke; we have got to rein in spending, all the while they were sticking in $105 billion of spending in one bill, not authorizing, not saying, gee, you may not be able to afford this

5 or 6 or 7 years from now. So, instead, they just said we are appropriating it and you can't do anything about it, because under the House rules you try to bring up an amendment to rescind that, it's subject to a point of order objection and we can keep it from coming out.

The only way that I understand that this $105 billion that's now been appropriated by the last Congress, the only way that can be taken out is to have a provision in the original bill from the appropriators, not an amendment, a provision that rescinds this $105 billion of appropriations in this prior law from last year, and it's in the original bill. And then the Rules Committee waives any point of order objections to that rescission being in the appropriating bill. My understanding is that's the only way we can get it done.

The amendments we were trying to do and that we got done apparently are not going to accomplish that. We are going to have it in an original committee bill rescinding all of this massive amount of money. Right now, we will be borrowing 42 cents of every dollar of that $105 billion. It's irresponsible. It's almost inconceivable, except here it is in black and white in front of us.

America deserves better than this.

I told some folks back home, I have mentioned before, it strikes me that this government in this last not just 4 years, but even going back into the last few years and especially the TARP bailout that was such a disaster and should never have been passed, that this government became like a parent who had an overwhelming desire to spend and could not control their own spending.

So the parent goes to the bank and says, You have got to loan me massive amounts of money. And the bank says, How are you going to pay it back? You are not going to live long enough to ever pay this back. And the parent says, No, but I have got my children here, and they are going to have children and those children will have children. So my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren, I am pledging they are going to pay back all of this self-centered massive amounts of money I am throwing upon me and my friends, and I am pledging and promising my children will be indentured servants for the rest of their lives because I can't stop spending.

Now, in a case like that, you would probably have the Child Protective Service come swooping in and say you are an unfit parent. You have no business having children when you are selling your children's future for your own use of money now. How irresponsible that is. Do you care nothing about the children that you can't quit lavishing all that money and paying your friends for doing nothing?

You can't control your spending, so that your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren can have freedom like you had it? You can't control that? You're an irresponsible parent, and you shouldn't even have these children if you're going to do that. I've heard the Child Protective Services in Texas come in on a lot weaker claims to take children away from parents than that. It's irresponsible what we're doing. And to pass a bill that was against the vast majority will of the American people and to stick in $105 billion of spending is just irresponsible. It's got to stop.

On one final note before my time concludes, having been a judge and a State chief justice, I'm sensitive when I hear judges threatened. And especially in the wake of the Gabrielle Giffords shooting and the loss of life in Arizona, we really should not be provoking actions to the point of violence or threatening actions. And I have certainly had my share of death threats as a judge. But it was usually only when they included my family that it got serious. And we have a group that's held itself out for years now, Common Cause, as this wonderful nonpartisan group. And yet you see over and over, like you did here recently with the rally they held in California with Van Jones--such an impassioned socialist--speaking and stirring people up against Justice Thomas and Justice Scalia.

Justice Thomas himself, after one of the most embarrassing episodes in American history, the way he was treated as he went through the hearings for confirmation to the Supreme Court, he said himself, it's a modern day lynching, high-tech lynching. And in his book, ``My Grandfather's Son,'' where he describes coming out of poverty, severe poverty, and making it on nothing but hard work and his brilliant intellect he achieved the great heights he has. And I have heard him say himself, he started out in college as an angry black man and left- wing extremist who came to realize more oppressive government is not the answer. But he also came to see firsthand, as he has described it, that if you're an African American and you spout the words that the liberal left tells you to say, then they love you. But if you dare--as he points out, otherwise I wouldn't use these words--but he says if you dare to step off the plantation and think for yourself, then here comes all the groups that come after you. And we have seen that with this attack from Common Cause that they are using to fundraise this attack after Justices Thomas and Scalia.

And, again, I look for evidence, are they nonpartisan? Well, it seems like they only come after conservatives, mainstream Americans, but they encourage left-wing extremism on a wholesale basis. But to be attacking Justices Thomas and Scalia and stir up sentiment, they sent out the e- mails urging people to come, they sent out the notices of what they were doing, urging people to come. They knew who they were sending those to. They urged these people to come. And what they got was the friends that they had invited saying that they wanted to string up, basically lynch, one of the most honorable people in the America, Clarence Thomas, that came from the most oppressive background and fought and worked his way up, as he would tell you, with the help of loving grandparents to the status that he has, and they want to do a high-tech lynching of him now.

Except the people that they stirred up aren't going to be satisfied with high tech. They want to lynch him, and they want to lynch his wife. And when you look for evidence, well, have they been saying this all along about other incidences that were similar? Well, when we got a national leader of the ACLU, they never mentioned one word about perhaps she should recuse herself from things that involve the ACLU, and our sympathies go out any time anyone loses a spouse, but when people on the Supreme Court who came from leftist backgrounds had spouses that had direct interests that were affected, Common Cause was silent. Oh, no, they raised their money on going after people that are mainstream conservatives and believe in the Constitution meaning what it says.

And after bringing this up at a press conference this afternoon, we get word that Common Cause has come out and said, we apologize. We never meant for them to say that. No, actually, that's not what they said. They came out and said--this is laughable--they didn't come out and condemn people that want to lynch a Supreme Court justice or justices and their spouses, family and torture them and do these terrible things. No, it didn't say anything about that. It just said this is laughable because they are still raising money. And it is time the Justice Department started being fair about justice and not ``just us'' at their Justice Department but look into Common Cause and look at whether they really deserve to be called ``not for profit'' and ``nonpartisan'' because what they are doing to stir up Americans against honorable Americans is intolerable. America deserves better.

The adage is, Democracy ensures--America, any country--Democracy ensures that people are governed no better than they deserve. My hope and prayer is we deserve better in the next election.

I thank my friend from Iowa.

I've been listening to your well-thought-out comments. This is a serious time, not just in American history but in world history; and it's a little difficult to get beat up from our friends from the other side of the aisle over what's going on right now over a continuing resolution when there is one reason we're doing any continuing resolution--they didn't do their job last year. This was supposed to have been done last year. They didn't do it. Why?

I guess they were concerned if people saw exactly a budget that's required by law, but that wasn't done last year--they just ignored that--just like the President is now going to ignore the Defense of Marriage Act. I didn't know Presidents could pick and choose the laws that were duly passed and signed into law and just say, We don't choose to defend that anymore.

But to get beat up by people across the aisle over what's going on is a little tough to take, because they didn't do their job, and now we're having to do it.

And then to further get beat up over spending issues because we're trying to cut spending.

I know my friend from Iowa, as I did, voted ``no'' on the CR today because it didn't continue the hard-fought battle that was won in H.R. 1, where we were defunding ObamaCare. But I recall in 2005, 2006, my first term in Congress, getting beat up--figuratively speaking--by my friends across the aisle because they said, rightfully, we were spending too much money and that we were going to run $100 billion to $200 billion in deficit over the amount we were going to receive in, and that that was irresponsible. Well, they were right. We shouldn't have been spending $100 to $200 billion more than we were getting in in 2005 and 2006. They said we were spending too much, they were right. And what happened in November of 2006? They promised they would get the spending under control if they were given the majority, they got the majority, and they immediately started spending more than we had spent.

And so here we are after a Democratic President gets elected promising hope and change, and people didn't realize that the change was going to be the few pennies left in their pockets after this government was spending so much and leaving little that banks can

loan for new businesses and small businesses to hire people. So the economy is struggling. I mean, this government has sucked up all the capital that there is to create jobs and to get the economy going.

So one of the things that has troubled me is hearing people complaining about wanting to cut hundreds of billions of dollars--in fact, trying to cut $1.5 trillion of the President's proposed $3.65 trillion budget, $3.7 trillion. We're only supposed to get in about $2.16 trillion total of all Federal revenue, and this President's proposing a budget that's $1.65 trillion more than that.

So I keep wondering, since our Democratic friends across the aisle were beating up on us in 2006 for spending too much money, what would be wrong with saying not cut $100 billion, but cut $1.65 trillion, and let's get back to where we were in 2006. That was only $200 billion over what we were receiving. The Democrats were right: Republicans were spending too much money in 2005 and 2006. What would be wrong with going back to that budget? And yet here there's all this rancor over just cutting $100 billion. And the President's talking $1.65 trillion more than we received in?

I don't know if my friend from Iowa noticed, but 2 weeks ago when the President came out with his absolutely irresponsible budget that was going to spend $1.65 trillion more than we brought in--not the $160 billion more that we got beat up for spending more than, but 10 times that, $1.65 trillion--I noticed in the paper the next day that the Chinese were selling off some of their U.S. bonds, some of the debt from our country. Well, it immediately came to my mind, if I were China and I were holding our debt, and I saw that the President of the United States, despite making almost daily speeches about how we're getting spending under control--it would be irresponsible, he says, not to get spending under control--and then he reveals his budget and it's spending $150 billion more than he did last year, I'd start selling off our debt too. I would be thinking these people are so crazy.

I mean, the dollar is the reserve currency of the world. Nations around the world have been advising us as friends, look, you don't realize what you're doing, but people are getting ready to dump the dollar as a reserve currency for one reason--well, two reasons: One, a lot of them are jealous, but number two, we're being irresponsible with our economy and with our spending. And so I couldn't help but vote ``no'' today on the CR with my friend from Iowa.

I also heard a lady yesterday talking about 30 people had lost their jobs because of ObamaCare and what this administration is doing. I've heard from people who are extremely upset back in Texas who have lost their health care just because ObamaCare has been passed. I've talked to doctors who have said, I'm done, I can't play these games anymore. I have not saved as much money as I had hoped before I retire, but I'm done. And they're giving up the medical practice. I talked to a doctor just this morning who said the very same thing.

It just keeps bringing back: If you care about people, if you care about them having jobs, if you care about their self-respect that comes when they have a meaningful job, earn their own keep instead of having the government luring them into indentured servitude status where they are servants of the government and just running around wherever they can find a government that will hand them a check and demanding checks, America deserves better.

There are people that have given that last full measure of devotion to make sure that freedom existed around here, not freedom to go begging the government for a check, not freedom to go begging the government for health care, to pass some law that we're going to take someone's money that they earned, they don't want to give up, and force them to spend on people who don't want to work. We owe them better than we've been doing.

And so when we hear our friends talking about how we shouldn't even have to go through this process, I couldn't agree more. If they had done their job, if they had cut spending instead of putting the dollar in jeopardy, putting our economy in jeopardy, then they're right, we shouldn't have to be going through this. But we have got to defund ObamaCare before too many more people lose their health care and end up having rationed care. I heard about more doctors today who are no longer taking Medicare or Medicaid. We owe all of the people across this country better than what they've gotten in the last 6 years, and what they've sure been getting the last 2 years.

These are dire circumstances, and we just can't keep this going. I mean, we are really in serious trouble. And I know my friend knows that or he wouldn't be spending his time here when he could be doing so many other things. But I appreciate my friend from Iowa more than he could possibly know. I appreciate his courageous stands, and I look forward-- I can't really say that. I don't look forward to the battles ahead, but I look forward to having a friend as we go through them.

Mr. Chairman, we heard Minority Leader Pelosi saying earlier that we were here as Republicans siding with the insurance companies. Revisionist history is great, but if you go back and look at who was supporting the ObamaCare efforts, you had the insurance companies lined up all out there, supportive.

You had the big pharmaceutical companies all out there supportive. You saw the American Hospital Association out there supportive. You saw the AMA out there supportive. You saw AARP. They were seen out there encouraging all of the ObamaCare stuff. Naturally they stand to gain with UnitedHealth more than anybody. They are the biggest sellers of Medigap insurance.

So if you really want to look at history, who was it that was not supportive? Well, folks, we heard from them in November. It was the American people.

That's why we are here. We are with small business. They will create the jobs. We are with the American people. That's why we are doing this.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

We hear about a cozy relationship, and that's interesting because when you go back and look at the worst oil spill in American history from British Petroleum, BP, and why it took this administration so long to come down on them, we find out that BP was the one oil company that was willing to support and endorse the administration's crap and trade bill. They were ready to come out and make a big deal out of it.

And that's why--you talk about cozy relationships. Oh, yeah. That's not enough. This administration hired to help oversee these leases the person who was responsible under the Clinton administration for costing this country billions by taking out language that would have gotten us the royalties we should have had.

But one of the problems we should never lose sight of, no matter how cozy the relationship was with the Clinton administration and BP and this administration and BP and the 800 hazardous safety violations they overlooked, was that this country's history has been one of integrity.

You go back to the War of 1812. Banks in England had loaned this country's businesses money. And we had the War of 1812. It went on for a couple of years. After that war, we were struggling, but people that owed banks in England paid them anyway. The world took notice and said this is a country that can be trusted. When they give you their word, it means something.

Now this administration and this provision would say, Hey, if we make a contract with you and maybe because of this administration's cozy relationship is too good for you, we'll just come back, cancel the deal, punish you because we were able to lure you into a deal.

There's been more damage done to the gulf States by this President's moratorium. You want to help with jobs. Give them their jobs back. Open up the provisions. Get alternative energy by using the proceeds from the drilling that this group has cut off.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

I rise in support of the Pence amendment, and I am aware of some very helpful work that Planned Parenthood has done to help some women with some difficult medical issues. But we have heard discussion here about a bill of attainder. And Article I, Section 9, paragraph 3 says: No bill of attainder or ex post facto law will be passed. That is the Constitution.

A bill of attainder, according to William Rehnquist, is: a legislative act that singled out one or more persons and imposed punishment on them, without benefit of trial.

No one is being found guilty of a crime here. I know about those things. I have found people guilty of crimes after a trial. That is not what is happening here any more than it was what was happening when people decided to defund Guantanamo Bay or defund ACORN because they were complicit in encouraging prostitution.

To come in here and say that when this body finds that one entity does not deserve to be receiving more money that was pried out of taxpayers' hands is somehow a bill of attainder, then it means we can never withdraw money from someone to whom it was given previously. That is not a bill of attainder. In fact, to take it away, one would first have to assume that this money was the property of this entity before they ever received it.

Now, that would be like saying that the taxpayers that earned the money and the taxpayers that had to give it up because we stole it, but we legalized the theft because we can do that, we can say, You earned it. It is yours, but we have the power to legalize taking it away from you against your will. We have done that. We have taken it away. But we have a responsibility to be frugal and to be wise.

No, I will not yield. I didn't ask to be yielded to when I was being upset by the explanation inappropriately of a bill of attainder. But I know the gentleman is one of the smartest people I know, but this is not a bill of attainder.

The F-35, we voted on a second engine. Well, there had been money appropriated, supposedly, before. They could come in and say it is a bill of attainder to take it away. It is not. It is not their money.

This body has an obligation to investigate and to look carefully as to where we should most appropriately spend the taxpayers' money that we have taken, or the 42 cents out of the dollar now we are borrowing from China, or whoever will give us the money.

But it was never the intention of the founders that we could not be responsible as a body and say this shouldn't go to this place; it would be better served going somewhere else. That is our job, and we have an obligation.

One other thing, and to those who say, and I know well meaning, because I know the people who are saying it and I know their hearts and I know they really believed what they were saying. But I have got Part 1 of the act to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to modify the first-time homebuyers credit in the case of members of the Armed Forces and certain other Federal employees, and for other purposes, which is ObamaCare, because the Senate stripped out every word of the bill, including the title, and substituted, therefore, ObamaCare. This is the first half of the bill. And if you turn over, if you turn over to page 119, (B) subsection; says it: Abortions for which public funding is prohibited. But if you go to subsection (ii), it has this title: Abortions for which public funding is allowed.

That's not all. Legal clinics are financed and are required to be financed under this bill, and there is no prohibition either by the Hyde amendment or any provision in this bill or the Executive order that legally prevents Federal funding for allowing abortions in some of those medical clinics that are established and will happen.

Also, if you flip over here--and you wouldn't find this in a word search for ``abortion'' because it was too cleverly put back. But if you look at 122, it is required to have insurance plans, and there will be Federal funding involved to make this happen, that there be ``at least one such plan that provides coverage of services described in clauses (i) and (ii) of subsection (B).''

That is abortion, folks. There is money for it here.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the right to object because just to sit here and listen, after having spent the last 4 years dealing with the most closed Congress--the last Congress, in fact, had more closed rules than any Congress in American history--and then to be lectured about what is a travesty is itself a travesty. That's the real travesty. That many closed rules, and you come down here and want to tell us what is awful? Try standing here for the last 4 years and dealing with closed rule, closed rule, closed rule, no amendments. We're not going to let you represent your people because we're going to cram everything down. That's a travesty.

Let's get on with the democratic process because that's what it is when you get to hear from both sides. We heard from one side. We heard ``travesty'' several times, and now we'll get back to the democratic process.

And with that, I withdraw my reservation of objection.

Mr. Chairman, I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Mr. Chairman, I think for over an hour we've been hearing people say, I rise in support of this amendment, over and over, speaker after speaker.

My parliamentary inquiry is: Is there an amendment before the floor right now?

Offered By: Mr. Gohmert

Amendment No. 117: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Gohmert

Amendment No. 118: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Gohmert

Amendment No. 119: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Gohmert

Amendment No. 120: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Mr. Speaker, there have been some great questions raised about these provisions in the Patriot Act; but it's hard to believe that for all of last year, when Democrats had the majority in this body, that if those same arguments had been made to Speaker Pelosi and to Chairman Conyers, that they would have just continued to deny for an entire year the chance to have a hearing on these things. Either, surely, they were not asked for the hearings on those things when they had the majority and could have done it, or they did ask. But if they did ask, why would they elect the same Speaker to be their leader going into this term if she was so entirely nonresponsive to their pleas like they've made on the floor this year?

Now, look, going back to 2005, for that first extension, we had some very heated debates, as Chairman Sensenbrenner will remember, in private over what we should do. And there were a couple of us that fought hard in private to have sunsets on those provisions.

And my friend, Mr. Lungren, happened to have the amendment there that would allow the sunsets on these.

And some of those concerns are the very concerns that have been brought up by my Democratic friends here. We want to make sure the abuses are not occurring, but so far we have not gotten the information from this administration to tell us what they have been doing. And one of the reasons we have sunsets on there is so that we can force them to be accountable as they have not for the last 2 years.

I want those hearings. You have been assured we will have those hearings that you couldn't get from your own party last year. We are going to have them. We are going to find out if there are any abuses, and then we will be able to know what should be done.

But please know, under the Fourth Amendment, of course, a person has the reasonable expectation of privacy in their own person, house, or place. And that does not apply here. This is not to an expectation of privacy in somebody else's property. That's not what the Fourth Amendment addresses. But I want to find out how this has been used.

Please know that last year in the extension, all the things that my friends across the aisle are screaming about, we didn't have a chance to amend; we didn't have a chance to recommit. You have got that on this bill.

And as far as the vote on Monday, it was under suspension, had to be two thirds. I think it was stupid to bring it under suspension, because if they had brought it under a rule it passed because the vote was 277- 148. Now they are doing what they should have done the other day. They are new at leadership. They are living and learning; hopefully, they are not just living. But we will have the hearings. We will address these matters, and we will find out if it should be done for more than 1 year. But in the meantime, we appreciate the concern and hope you will express it this year.

Thank you, my friend from California. At Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1978-1980, we saw the military being cut, demoralized and marginalized. Our U.S. embassy in Iran was attacked and our diplomats taken hostage, while the sad administration wrung its hands and begged Iran to let them go. The U.S. seemed pathetic in the face of a vicious enemy.

Interest rates were rising from 12 percent up to 20 percent as my wife and I purchased our first home. Inflation and unemployment were both in double digits.

The Carter administration decided to deal with an over-reliance on foreign oil by asking people to wear sweaters at home and leave the heat turned down lower. Then, as now, the President waged a private war against producing our own energy, so then, as now, the price of gasoline skyrocketed.

We in the U.S. Army could not publicly express our dismay over our dismal leadership because it is a military crime to be disrespectful of the Commander in Chief.

Then in 1980, a new day dawned with the election of Ronald Reagan. Our hostages were released when President Reagan took office, and we had a newfound respect from other countries. As Reagan's tax-cutting policies took over, double-digit inflation, unemployment, and interest rates all came down.

Our military began to be respected again and feared again, which provided much needed protection for America.

The Bible says, ``Joy comes in the morning.'' It truly was morning in America. Thank God for the life and the gift of Ronald Reagan.

Thank you. I appreciate your yielding.

And not only do you not have anything wrong, but the Clean Air Act that the EPA is supposedly acting under, but they're actually violating, stipulates that pollution control is ``the primary responsibility of States and local government.''

While the national EPA office is supposed to set the overall priorities, States are supposed to have, under this bill that they are supposedly acting under, the States have considerable leeway in their ``implementation plans.'' That's what the States are supposed to do. And for all these years, when the EPA all of a sudden changes their instructions, States are normally given 3 years. Because what we're talking about is when the EPA says now shut down, you are talking about jobs.

And I realize this is all part of the President's war on jobs. And it's working well. First, the moratorium in the Gulf of Mexico has really decimated Louisiana and many of the Gulf States as he has declared this war on jobs and eliminated so many jobs there in the Gulf region. But what is happening here, as you freeze out refineries, as you declare war on drilling and activity in the Gulf of Mexico, we are now starting to see that effect on everybody else.

And it's one thing to stand up and say, and I am sure we'll hear tomorrow night about how the President cares so much about the working poor in America, and that's who he's out for. But the trouble is, don't watch what is said, watch what's done. And as we watch the price of gasoline continue to go up, and up, and up, the people that are most devastated by that are not the massive companies that can pass these costs on, they're the people that are trying to get to those jobs that have jobs left. So those that hadn't already lost their jobs are going to have to deal with this problem.

The EPA, the regulation chief, Gina McCarthy, just a couple of weeks ago sent notice to Texas saying she had no choice but to seize control of the permitting. I mean this is the Federal Government just deciding that even though the bill under which she is acting says the States and local government have primary control, she's decided to seize control. This is the Federal Government at its worst, at its most dictatorial, doing what democracy says you will not do, because they couldn't pass the bill, and now they're coming on and doing this with a totalitarian dictatorship.

Now, might as well put ``czar'' beside Gina McCarthy's name. She's the latest czar. Just hadn't called her that because the name's become unpopular. But now she has seized control of the State and local permitting under the act. She noted ``statements in the media'' by Texas officials and their legal challenges to EPA's greenhouse gases, but she cited no legal basis for the takeover. And what's more just really offensive is the fact that what in essence they're saying is in 1992, according to this Wall Street Journal article, in 1992, before there was ever any regulation of this horrible carbon dioxide, carbon emission, and unfortunately Gina McCarthy, as she says anything, she's a pollutant, she's a polluter, we need to shut down polluters like folks that are breathing out carbon dioxide. You know, it used to be a joke, Judge, that the government has gotten so overreaching that the next thing they're going to regulate the air you breathe. And now we're here. And that's what's happening.

But in 1992 there were no carbon dioxide concerns. And now they're using the fact that in 1992 Texas was not regulating carbon dioxide as a reason to take over what the Clean Air Act says must be done by the States and local governments. So it's pretty ridiculous. The Wall Street Journal says these words: ``The takeover was sufficiently egregious that the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued an emergency stay on Thursday suspending the rules pending judicial review. One particular item in need of legal scrutiny is the permitting takeover as an interim final rule that is not open to the normal and Clean Air Act- mandated process of public notice and comment.'' As the article says, so much for transparency in government.

But I guess when you declare a war on jobs, you declare a moratorium on drilling activity, you devastate the hardworking folks in America that are trying to produce energy, and what that didn't kill then you turn right around and take over control of State environmental responsibilities so that you can finish going through with your war on jobs.

Well, my friend indicates it's unfair for Texas. But as former chairman of Energy, Joe Barton, notes, with about two-thirds of the refining capacity for the whole country being in Texas, what this means is regardless how anybody feels about Texas, I know there are a lot of people that don't care for the State, but regardless of how people feel about it, when two-thirds of the refining for the gasoline they put in their cars is coming from the State of Texas, and the EPA has declared war against Texas, violating the laws of this land in order to politically stick it to Texas, the price that will be paid is by rank and file folks across the country. And, as we've seen, manufacturers--we had colleagues across the aisle talking about jobs, jobs, jobs--the things that this administration are doing are killing jobs. They were going to create all these jobs and create all these jobs, and then they did such a terrible job of creating jobs, in fact, we were going in the wrong direction. So then they went to saying, well, we are saving jobs, when the fact is they are driving jobs overseas. We're losing manufacturing jobs constantly. And this very thing we are talking about tonight is one of the reasons. There is so much uncertainty with regard to business in this country.

Now if you want certainty, you could be a friend of this administration, as George Soros is, so his biggest single investment is a drilling company down in South America, and so we loaned them $2 billion--that's with a B, billion dollars--to drill offshore off Brazil, but in the meantime, we've got a war declared on those who make their living in the gulf coast area, a drilling moratorium. People are still not able to drill, and that has affected so many jobs. But when the price of gasoline continues to go shooting up because this administration is doing everything they can to increase the price of energy and make it harder for people to get cheaper gasoline, people are going to make their voices heard. And what I don't think the administration understands is the timing of all this is going to be such that it's going to be coming around in 2012 and really adversely affecting people's pocketbooks and jobs. Employers can't count on the price of fuel being where they need it, and a lot of businesses are saying, this is something we can't do business with, the EPA, the uncertainty of the requirements.

And what it reminds me, too, is in our Natural Resources Committee with

the Democrats in control they were always able to bring more witnesses. That's just the way procedure works around here. Whichever party is in the majority, they get to bring more witnesses that will say what their position is. They brought a witness to the Natural Resources Committee to testify that, gee, we really need to stop drilling off the coast and basically everywhere. But he said there were over 200 million families in the world that make their living from fishing, and if we allow this drilling off the coast to continue, it's going to destroy fishing for all those 200 million families. Well at my turn, I pointed out, you'll be glad to know that we heard those things in Texas, I did growing up, that if you allow platforms off our coast, then it's just going to kill off all the fishing off the coast of Texas and in the gulf. It turns out, I told the witness, he would be glad to know, that those platforms become an artificial reef. Fish proliferate around those areas. So when you want to go fishing now, they take you out to platforms because it's done so much good for fishing. And I said, as far as you're concerned about the oil that was leaked after Katrina, not one barrel came from any of those platforms, some of which were totaled. They came from onshore tanks which really were the place where tankers bringing oil from overseas came in and unloaded it. Some of that was hit by the hurricane and leaked. And he said, well, look, and this is in a nutshell what he said, I guess the real problem is this: If you produce oil or gas onshore, offshore, wherever it is, at some point it's going to be burned, and it may be it's in an engine, wherever, that produces carbon, the carbon goes into the air, and eventually the rain brings it down either into the ocean or on the land, and it's washed into the ocean. That puts more carbon in the ocean, and as you have more carbon in the ocean, eventually the pH increases, and eventually if you keep doing that long enough, the pH will increase enough, everything dies in all the oceans, and so that's when people can't fish. That's what this administration is basing all of their opposition to drilling and production of fossil fuels on.

We all agree we ought to be moving off of fossil fuels; but if we would allow drilling on Federal offshore areas, Federal onshore areas and designate a percentage of the proceeds of our Federal royalty to go toward development of alternative fuel, we don't run the jobs off, we don't run the poor folks that are just trying to make it into bankruptcy because they can't afford gasoline, and everybody wins. It doesn't have to be an everybody-lose solution.