Floor Statements

Will the gentleman yield for a question?

I love having a new Congressman here who's so good at math.

The question is: We have heard repeatedly that the majority wants to have a green economy like that in Spain. Now we've heard from Spain, and it turns out they're having to abandon their green effort at a green economy because they have determined that, every time they created one green job, they lost two regular jobs in the economy.

I was just wondering if the gentleman from Georgia would make a

calculation and figure out how long it would take us to get to the 4 percent unemployment rate if we were to lose two jobs for every one job the majority were to create under their green plan.

I appreciate my new friend for yielding.

And going back to a comment from good Dr. Gingrey from Georgia about the $862 billion stimulus package, because I know he recalls and others recall that CBO told us that it was a $787 billion stimulus package. And lo and behold, we get here a year later, and they say, Oh, you know what? We blew it by about 15 percent. We just blew it.

Most statistical analysts say, you know, it's within the margin of error, 2

to 4 percent. Not with CBO here. You know, maybe we can blow it 25 percent, in this case, 15 percent or so. Whoops.

In a year's time, we were $100 billion off the mark. Really, to be fair, $80 billion off the mark. But still, that points out just how irresponsible things have gotten.

And when you look at the numbers, too, you find out that CBO really has been a bit of a willing ally, an accomplice, complicit in what's been going on. They told the country, okay, this ridiculous health care bill that's going to bankrupt the country, we're already finding, they're already starting to tell people we're going to have to ration your care. And, by the way, it's going to cost about $250 billion more than we thought it would. We just misplaced some numbers somehow, because if we had found them before the bill came for a vote, people had said they wouldn't vote for it if it was more than $1 trillion.

Well, what difference does another $250 billion make when you're putting us in debt $1 trillion? But the CBO just magically forgot, misplaced, you know, 200, $250 billion or so until after it passed, and then within a matter of a couple of months they found it.

We're in trouble here and we need to get rid of CBO. We need to get some kind of independent group, whether it's Moody's or some other, that can do an adequate statistical analysis.

But the games that are being played with jobs would be comical if it weren't representing real people hurting, real people hurting. And I proposed a year and a half ago that instead of spending $1 trillion, and we were told that we may be spending $3 to $9 trillion just to try to get the economy going. Hey, spend $1.21 trillion and you would let everybody in America forego paying any income tax for the year. You let people keep their own money and they would jump-start this economy.

Yet, what our friends across the aisle are saying, ``No, no, no. Our friends across the aisle want to give tax cuts and allow the lower rates only to go to the wealthy.'' Because the way they identify it, the 53 percent of adult Americans that will pay all of the income tax this year they consider to be the wealthy. And so what they're, in effect, saying is the Republicans want to give tax relief to the only people paying the taxes.

``We, on our side of the aisle, we want to give tax relief to all the people that aren't paying any tax.'' Well, there's another name for that. It's called redistribution of the wealth. It means those who have not been able to earn anything will have money taken away from those that earned it and given to those who didn't.

We need to help those that can't help themselves, no question. But we do not need to become a government that did what I saw as a judge, where the government lures people into a rut they can never get out of and gives them no hope, no way out, just still feeding them a little unemployment check, feeding them a little check here and there just to keep them in a rut with no help getting out.

It's time to blow the lid off this thing and get an economy going where small businesses create the jobs. Yes, the small businesses are the ones that need the tax cuts. They certainly don't need the biggest tax increase in American history that's coming in January. They're the ones that are going to provide the hope for creating the jobs.

And so I hope and pray we'll be able to help the small businesses create the jobs instead of just doling out these little temporary census worker jobs, which, as my friends know, was all that happened in June. 411,000 out of 431,000 jobs created in America were temporary census jobs.

I yield back to my friend from Georgia.

It should be noted in all those little areas, you talk about all the new parts of government that are created and brought together in this--it's not a health care bill. It's a GRE--government running everything--bill. But they all have little references to the specific areas within the law that created them and created the relationship. That's one thing.

Another thing is, you know, all of the records, the medical records that people consider so personal and so dear will be in the Federal Government control. I think they are contracting out to their dear benefactors and contributors at General Electric, but they will have all that information, and the IRS could have access to your most personal information.

Can you imagine the debt collectors of America being able to have your most personal medical records? Well, that's what will occur here, and there's a great quote from Patrick Henry. People remember, ``Is life so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?''

He had one quote where he said, ``The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people; it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government--lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.'' When I look at that board and I look at all the new government that is just going to be overwhelming people, they don't need the doctor after they start dealing with all this stuff.

Is that quote ever more appropriate that the Constitution should restrain the government lest it come to dominate our lives and interests? Will it ever?

Mr. Speaker, I do appreciate my friends from Georgia and the wonderful contributions that they have made to enlightenment with regard to these issues.

There is an issue that we want to recognize and take up tonight, and it's a wonderful topic, the 100th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America here in the United States.

The Boy Scouts of America were incorporated on February 8, 1910 and chartered by Congress in 1916. The mission statement of Boy Scouts was to prepare young people to make ethical and moral choices over their lifetimes by instilling in them the values of the scout oath and the scout law.

It's interesting, doctors say that often our short-term memory is the first to go and our long-term memory seems to last longer, but I still do recall the scout law, that a scout is supposed to be trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Those are good things to live by. The Boy Scouts have continued to live by that and produced incredible Americans over the years.

Right now we celebrate this fact because there is the National 2010 Boy Scout Jamboree going on at AP Hill--not terribly far from here--and so we've had thousands of Boy Scout visitors come through Washington, come through the Capitol. It's been an honor to take many through the Capitol and through this area, and we have many more coming. I know my district has 85 in one group that will be coming through on August 4 when they leave the AP Hill area and others have been helping as staff members.

But the jamboree is worth noting. There are 45,000 attendees that will include 37,000 Boy Scouts from all 50 States, 8,000 scout leaders and staff. A whopping 275,000 visitors will join the celebration over the course of 10 days to partake in the festivities. This 76,000-acre area has been hosting the National Scout Jamboree since 1981. The Boy Scouts use approximately 3,000 acres of this land to support a city of over 50,000 inhabitants.

One of my daughters asked years back, after having found out that one of the parents of one of her friends had

been at Woodstock, asked me, Daddy, did you go to Woodstock, she said. I said, Well, no I didn't. She said, Do you remember where you were during Woodstock? I said, I certainly do. Well, where were you? I was outside of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, at the 1969 National Boy Scout Jamboree. And we had rest rooms that worked, we didn't commit immoral acts, we didn't have illegal drugs, and we didn't need the National Guard to come in and rescue us from ourselves as happened at Woodstock. Today there are those who are proud to proclaim that they had the morals of Woodstock--some continue to, they continue to attack the Boy Scouts.

Of course we know the Speaker and 10 other people had pointed out in 2000 that the Boy Scouts had an ``intolerant policy'' of excluding people who practice homosexuality from leadership, so they were demanding that President Clinton step down as honorary chairman. He did not do that. And President Obama right now is Honorary Chair of the Boy Scouts of America and has spoken to them by video, and I know the scouts appreciate that.

Scouting has meant so much to so many. It prepares you for the future. It prepares you to save lives. I never thought I would have an opportunity to use any CPR training that I had gotten through all my years as a Boy Scout, going up to becoming an Eagle Scout; but when the day occurs, there is no substitute for having been through that. I get a big hug from a dear friend at church every time and he says, This is the guy that saved my life. Actually, it was the Boy Scouts that did it through all those years of training.

I've been joined by a dear friend, also a Boy Scout--I believe an Eagle Scout as well--and I would certainly be glad to yield to a fellow Eagle Scout.

If the gentleman will yield back for a moment, I owed the Army 4 years from an Army scholarship to Texas A&M.

From the years of being a Boy Scout, I was good at orienteering, which is the process of taking a map and a compass and finding your way from point A to point B and getting back. Those were things that were important to know when you were in the Army. There is no question that I was quite good at it in the Army because I'd had fantastic training in the Boy Scouts. It was the same way when learning to fire a .22 out on the range as a very young Boy Scout. The first day was the camping, the cooking. It was all about this planet and the things that occupy the planet--this amazing creation that God provided to us, which we learned and studied and had to spend a great deal of time becoming so acquainted with as Boy Scouts.

It may seem silly, but when my wife and I were helping with some decorations before a big dance there in Tyler, there were some ladies on a big scissor lift, helping put up heavy 10-, 15-pound decorations to suspend from the ceiling. They had a 50-pound fishing line, but they couldn't get any knot to hold to keep those things up.

So they yelled down, Does anybody know of a knot that would hold?

Well, I was an Eagle Scout. Of course I do. So they brought the scissor lift down. I got on. I got somebody to come up and help.

I would yield to my friend: If you had somebody yelling, ``Does anybody know a knot that would hold?'' what would my friend seek to use?

That's exactly what I did, a bowline, and that thing doesn't give. You can even do it with one hand.

They made you learn to do it with one hand. In case you were hanging from a rope on a mountainside, you could reach up with the other hand and tie that bow and be able to suspend yourself, just hanging with the rope, without having to hold on for dear life. So there are amazing things you learn in the Army--from the stars to Morse code. I don't remember that so well anymore, but what phenomenal training.

One of the facts we have indicates that, in 2009, Boy Scouting recognized their 2 millionth Eagle Scout. We know that the Eagle Scouts are only a tiny percentage of all of those who actually go into Scouting and who benefit from Scouting. So that's quite an accomplishment. There are 2 million Eagle Scouts in the Boy Scout program.

Another thing that is worth noting is, when you see a Boy Scout get to be a Tenderfoot and as you work your way up to Second Class, First Class, Star, Life, and Eagle, you don't attain those badges, those accomplishments, by representing only yourself. No Boy Scout ever has or ever will. It represents the millions of people who have helped Scouting over the years.

In my case, my parents were so encouraging, and my mother was actually more than encouraging. She was

downright pushy--my late mother, rest her soul. My Scoutmaster--rest his soul, Sam Parker--had more influence on my life than any man besides my father, I think. I've had such wonderful men and women help teach and encourage me; but my Scoutmaster, who was also an American history teacher, instilled just a love of American history and of America's greatness, not because America just all of a sudden appeared and did these things, but because it was blessed by God. Those things are in the Scout Oath.

My daughter Katie prepared a collage some years back, and it had all kinds of things on there from the music I liked to different things I'd accomplished. There was high school football and all of these different things that were pasted, and there were slogans and things. Well, right in the middle, on a small piece of paper--in the center of everything and with all the other things emanating out from it--was the Boy Scout Oath:

``On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.''

When I saw that and saw that that was the centerpiece of everything, I asked, ``Sweetheart, do you think of me as a Boy Scout?''

She said, ``Daddy, you'll always be a Boy Scout.''

I take that as quite a compliment, as I know my friend Mr. Thompson, likewise, is proud of the accomplishment.

One other thing before I yield to my friend about becoming an Eagle Scout: The people in my hometown who contributed, the churches and businesses that helped make our Scout troop a success and the volunteers who worked and made it go and who gave us that opportunity deserve such accolades for what they did and for the difference they made in all of our lives as boys.

When it came time for the Eagle Court of Honor, which is where I received my Eagle Award, I was the oldest of three boys. I have another sister who is older, and I just lost my younger brother a few months ago. We each, in turn, became Eagle Scouts. After my mother passed away in 1991, we were looking through her jewelry box. She had some jewelry pieces that were very nice; but in a small area, she had the most valuable pieces of jewelry she'd ever owned. There was a ring that had some rubies and diamonds on it. There was a gold nugget necklace, which had real gold nuggets. Then there were the three Eagle Pins that Eagles pin on their mothers at the time they're awarded the Eagle. It made it pretty clear that, not just for me but in my mother's life, her boys-- all three--becoming Eagle Scouts was one of the most treasured things that she had.

I yield to my friend, Mr. Thompson.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. And I yield again to my friend from Pennsylvania (Mr. Thompson).

Well, to follow up on some of the numbers that my friend, Mr. Thompson, was quoting:

Total youth served in the hundred years of scouting here in the United States, 114,304,329; adult volunteers, 33,364,261; total number of merit badges, over 117 million. And those merit badges don't just represent little pieces of fabric with stitching on them.

They represent a great deal of work, skills attained, knowledge attained, things that will help throughout life in the issues that come in the future.

Now, I do feel we need to touch on this briefly because Boy Scouting has been under attack. There have been groups that have been trying to eliminate and have successfully eliminated, like in San Francisco. For years, there have been efforts to restrict scouting from enjoying the parks that other groups might enjoy. There are efforts in Congress on a regular basis to try to hurt the scouting effort. And it all boils down to this one thing about scouting.

Despite the oath that scouts take, the Scout Law, scouting has chosen to stay faithful to religious tenets that man represented as the only full face of all the greatest lawgivers in this room. Every one of them has a side profile except the one in the middle who's considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. That's Moses. And one of the laws that Moses said were given to him that he gave was thou shalt not commit adultery. In other words, you shall not have sex, sexual relations, outside the marriage of a man and a woman.

Scouting, through all these years, has chosen to honor that Commandment, honor the Ten Commandments in all it did. And obviously, all sin, all fail, fall short, but scouting, at least, has tried to exemplify the best of humanity that most of us in this country believe come out when we try to live by those Ten Commandments.

So scouting has upheld that they preferred adult leaders who were not open adulterers. And I know, in our society today, so many believe that it's no big deal, there's nothing wrong with it. Adultery is no big deal, regardless of the sexual gender of the people participating. It's just fine.

Boy Scouting has chosen to say, we believe the Commandments given by Moses that he believed and we believe came to him from God are worth observing and trying to follow. Scouting has and, ironically, it has produced such great ire among so many who now want to kill the program because Boy Scouts say, We just believe those Ten Commandments are a good thing, including that one about adultery, not having sexual relations outside of marriage between a man and a woman.

And as a result, there's a number of corporate sponsors who used to give huge sums, six, seven figures even, to the Boy Scouts to assist them, who've chosen to say that because Boy Scouts have persisted in believing that avoiding adultery is a good thing, then they're not going to help the Boy Scouts.

And in the process, they have robbed so many, many minorities, people who would love to be Scouts. And I know in our east Texas area there are so many young minorities without fathers who we've met with and talked with and talked to their moms about starting Scout troops. And they're so excited. And some have started, and it's such a help. And it would be so wonderful if those corporate sponsors were not blaming Scouts for thinking the Ten Commandments were a good thing, and therefore withholding contributions, choosing to give them to groups who think that just blatantly violating the Ten Commandments are the best thing that we could do in America.

So they're giving to those who demean those who think morality is a good thing and in the process hurting so many who could be Eagle Scouts, who could be great Scouts. But the contributions are dropping, and the involvement has been dropping some.

I think that we're seeing things turn in this Nation in such a way that we're going to have a reawakening, we're going to have a great awakening, and people are going to come back to the fact that the real truth is this Nation has been blessed by God because this Nation has lived up to the blessed tenets that God said to live by. And as we return to those--certainly don't want to give up on the progress that this, the greatest Nation in the history of mankind has made. But in the moral area, where we've fallen apart and Boy Scouting has stayed so steadfast, I think we'll see people come back to the basics on morality, and we'll see even greater accomplishments.

And so it should be observed that 50 percent of all the NASA astronauts were Boy Scouts. More than 30 percent of all graduates from the military, Air Force, and naval academies were involved in Scouting in their youth, and five of our Presidents have been Boy Scouts. And even within this Congress, 199 of our current Members once participated in Scouting. And 22 in Congress, are, as my friend G.T. and I, Eagle Scouts. I had somebody try and say I was a former Eagle Scout. But it's kind of like being an Aggie: once you are, you are for the rest of your life.

And so that's why in my district office something wonderful my wife did, I believe it was Father's Day, she had a shadow box, unknown to me, put together with my Eagle award and so many of the things I traded for and had earned during my time in Scouting in that shadow box. And I am so proud of that. That's in my office back in east Texas.

But Scouting has done so much to contribute not merely to making boys far better than they could have been otherwise, but by making this Nation so much greater than it ever would have been without Boy Scouts of America.

I yield to my friend Mr. Thompson.

Thank you. I would ask my friend to stay with me one more moment as we have been paying tribute to Boy Scouts of America, the organization, what they've done. I know that as an Eagle Scout, as a Scoutmaster, my friend, Mr. Thompson has many Courts of Honor stood and asked all of those Boy Scouts and Eagle Scouts to stand and say the scout oath together. I wondered if my friend might join me, as I yield time to him, as we might conclude tonight.

That's what went through my mind.

On my honor, I will do my best, to do my duty to God and my country, and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight. Two.

Mr. Speaker, with that we yield back.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 11 o'clock and 56 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, July 29, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, it's always an honor to be on this floor. But at times it gets very difficult hearing positions put as being mine which were not mine.

I would like to point out, for example, about student loans. I have student loans. We gave up--well, I won't even get into that. The only asset my wife and I have left is our home so that we could have the honor of being public servants.

We've got a lot of student loans, and I cannot imagine a worse scenario than having to come begging to an administration that we already see punishes Republican States, Republican communities, and beg the administration for a student loan, because there is no one else that makes student loans besides the government.

There were people that fought a revolution to avoid having the government, the King, make all the calls on who got to be educated, well-educated, that is, and who got to be property owners, who got to be well-to-do. They fought a revolution so that we would have the chance, the opportunity to at least succeed ourselves without having a government pick the winners and losers. That was the last thing they wanted.

Patrick Henry talked about that. Is life so dear and peace so sweet that it can be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God.

They did not want the government to tell them what they could have and not have, what they could do and not do, who could have their children educated and who couldn't. And we have grown into a government that tells everybody everything they have to do.

And now, though some of us read those disastrous health care bills, others are just now finding out the things we tried to warn about: that it was not about health care, it was about the GRE, the Government Running Everything.

So now we find out in the news what some of us already knew. Gee, people are surprised to find out the government, under that disastrous health care bill, so-called, will keep everybody's records.

And then people were surprised to find out that the health care czar says we may require everyone to have a body mass index, so we know who all is fat in this country and who isn't, who's more fat than others. That's the government's business? It wasn't after the revolution.

They didn't want the government to say who could eat what and who couldn't eat this and that. My gracious. They got upset over a tea tax. If they could only see what's happened now.

But, my friends are honorable people. So are they all, all honorable people. Come not to praise this country. Apparently, we're coming to bury it and to start with a new country where the government controls everything.

Boy, Shakespeare could have a day with what's going on now.

The government, our friend the government, is going to tell us who gets health care. We tried to warn people that if this health care bill passed, it would mean rationing. It passes, signed into law, all kinds of joyous occasions, and then we find out the President puts in charge the ration king. It shouldn't have surprised anybody. The President himself said to that dear lady at the White House, tea party precedent, whatever they tried to bill it as, when she said, what about my mother? She had a pacemaker put in, and she's had all these additional years of really quality life. And the President ends up, after stammering around for a while saying, maybe we'd been better off to just tell your mom to take a pain pill. Those were his words. Maybe we'd have been better off telling her to take a pain pill.

I don't want the government to have that kind of power. Your mom lives, your mom dies. You live, you die.

Was the revolution for nothing but 200 years?

And now we've left all personal responsibility. We don't want personal responsibility. We're going to let the government tell us who can have a college-educated child and who can't.

We've seen what happened under this majority with the African Americans who had come begging in this city saying, please don't end the voucher program that was started under the Republicans. We weren't sure about it.

One dear lady was talking about her children, how one had been brutalized, but others had been able to go to a good school, a private school because they got a voucher, and it allowed them the freedom to have their child as educated as any rich Democrat in this city.

But apparently, as Clarence Thomas points out, and I can't do his book justice, ``My Grandfather's Son,'' he talked about being raised in a poor, poor African American community by loving grandparents who had very little. And he talked about his grandfather pointing out that some snakes, you don't have to worry so much about because you see them. They make a big deal if they're going to try to bite you from the front. But you have to worry about those that will sneak up on you, act like they're no big deal, just kind of blend in, and all of a sudden they bite you.

And that's what he talks about, as I understood him to talk about this soft form of discrimination. You know, we're going to help you. We're going to provide for you. We're going to take care of you. But don't have a thought of your own because if you dare, as a minority, to have a thought of your own and try to rise above your circumstances on your own, we're going to slap you down. And that, as he talks about in his book, is the kind of discrimination that can hurt worse than any kind.

The liberals who would talk to him, and you could tell they only wanted to talk about sports, or how he had been mistreated as a poor black growing up in America; whereas others, he began to notice, as a radical liberal himself, Clarence Thomas in the early days, bitter about what he had been through, began to notice that conservatives would talk to him and wanted to know his opinion about a lot of different things, including politics.

And he began to see that soft discrimination from liberals. Yeah, we'll help you. We'll provide for you, but you've got to do what we tell you, because if you dare to have a thought of your own, if you dare to think for yourself, if you dare to try to rise above your circumstances, we'll slap you down.

As he said during those hearings, it was an electronic lynching that he got.

And what's tragic through it all, when you go back and review his incredible school record, growing up with the poverty he did, the man had and has a brilliant intellect, but you wouldn't know it from the liberals. They were out to slap him down.

And here you have African American mothers coming to Congress saying, Please, don't let the voucher program go. Allow us not to have our kids educated where they can be shot and be part of gangs, but where they can go and have a uniform and get a great education and end up being very wealthy or very powerful down the road, much like the President himself did.

Why wouldn't you want that for every child. Regardless of the race, creed, color, nationality, why wouldn't you want that for the child? Give them a voucher. Let them chose what school they can go to so they don't have to worry about their child being shot, killed, brutalized by gangs.

You want to talk about what this majority did? They struck that program down and condemned minorities in this city back to the poor schools from which they came. Don't you dare try to rise above your circumstances. We want you back in the poor schools where you will have to rely totally on us. Why not let them reach their God-given potential? Slapping them down.

And our friends across the aisle want to come in here and trash-mouth Republicans because we had concerns about the government taking over all of the student loan business. Yes, I do, and I always will. The government gets to tell us who's going to get a loan, whose child gets a college education? Yes, I've got a problem with that.

One of our friends across the aisle says it's like a car wobbling down the aisle or the street, he said. And people on our side of the aisle, he says, don't even want to try to fix it. Well, guess who set it to wobbling? Our friends across the aisle. And guess what? I am so sick and tired about hearing all of this trash mouth of the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency and how terrible the last year of the Bush Presidency was and how bad the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency was, because guess who was in charge? It sure wasn't George W. Bush. He was over there in the executive branch. But the Constitution makes clear that the people who run the country will be the Congress. That the President down at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, right down that way, he can't appropriate one dime for any program. It has to come from the Congress.

So what happened? Our friends across the aisle appropriately complained that during the Bush early years the Republicans got giddy and began spending too much, began to have a $160 billion annual deficit in their budget. And so our friends across the aisle said, Throw them out. Put us in. They're overspending. We'll fix things.

And so the voters appropriately said, Republicans, you have been overspending. We loved you in 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, when you, not President Clinton--he was in the office. He fought the Republican Congress kicking and screaming. But when they would have enough votes over here, he couldn't stop them, vetoed a few things. When he couldn't stop the Congress, they had folks across the aisle that realized they wouldn't get reelected if they didn't vote for balanced budgets, then the Republican Congress brought President Clinton around.

And that's why I love the comment from my colleague across the aisle about the Clinton administration. He said, There were problems except for the blip during the Clinton administration. That's right. There was 4 years of Democrat control in this House as they brought our financial situation closer and closer to the day we are now. And as my Democratic colleague pointed out, there was a blip during the Clinton administration after the Contract with America when Republicans took over, and they balanced the budget. The President can't do that. This Congress has to do that.

And what do we have to show this year? No budget. As one of our Democratic colleagues said back in 2006, If you can't put together a budget, you can't govern. This year, they didn't put together a budget. So according to our Democratic friend, they cannot govern.

I'm proud to be joined by my friend, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, and I'll be proud to yield to her such time that she needs.

If I could reclaim my time, going to the June employment numbers, I have an article here. I call him a friend. I hope he would. Mallory Factor had written an article entitled, ``The Truth About June Employment Numbers,'' and Mallory talks about the spin that our friends across the aisle are creating, trying to make it sound great about the unemployment numbers.

And as he says, ``All this spin is supposed to make us respond positively: `Wow! Happy days are here again. The recovery must be really gaining steam.' And we are supposed to conclude that maybe we don't need to throw out the Democrats in the midterm elections after all.''

Mallory goes on and says, ``The June jobs numbers show unemployment falling .2 percent to 9.5 percent.

This may sound, or this may seem, like an improvement until you realize that this decrease is almost all caused by an additional 611,000 Americans giving up on finding jobs last month. When people stop looking for work, unemployment percentages go down even though the economy has not improved and may have even gotten worse.''

He goes on and says, ``Not only is unemployment the lowest in the government sector of all industry sectors in America, Federal civilian employees make a stunning 30 to 40 percent more in total compensation than similarly skilled private workers, according to the Heritage Foundation.''

Now, further, he says, basically, at the end of 2007, ``The Federal Government's civilian payroll has actually increased by 240,000 to 2.2 million workers, excluding Census and postal workers.''

We know last month, in June, there was all this hoop-de-do about 431,000 new jobs; and that would ordinarily be fantastic, except that 411,000 of them were temporary Census workers. Anyway, Mallory goes on and says, ``This leaves a smaller private sector supporting an ever larger public sector. And that can't be good for the recovery.''

I yield to the gentlewoman.

I appreciate the point of the gentlewoman.

I would submit that it appeared that after the Republicans not only had Congress, as they took over in January of 2005, but then also had the White House beginning January of 2001, that there apparently is a giddiness from controlling both Houses of Congress and the White House. Because when there was a Democratic President, Bill Clinton, the economy was going to Hades in a hand basket, and that's when the Republicans took the majority, November in 1994.

So Republicans took over, and they fought tooth and nail against the Clinton administration. They succeeded, despite the best efforts of the Clinton administration, in balancing the budget and bringing us to the point where things were balanced despite the President's desire to spend out of control.

But then once the White House was obtained, January 2001, the Republican Congress quit being as diligent. It was as if the Republicans did not want to tell the President ``no.'' From the other standpoint, the Bush administration didn't want to say ``no'' to Democrats or Republicans so there were no vetoes for, I think, at least 6 years or more of President Bush's two terms.

But what we have seen since our friends across the aisle had the House, the Senate and the White House, is giddiness, dizziness beyond anything anybody could have ever have imagined. Where we got beat up where it was $160 billion deficit in a year, our friends think nothing of having 10 times that deficit in a year.

I am just shocked because I remember so vividly people on the other side of the aisle complaining, appropriately, about not having a balanced budget, that I am shocked that they could stand up and act like they haven't created the biggest deficits in American history in a year and a half, and going back the 2 years before that. It shocked me that once our friends across the aisle took the majority November of 2006, that their runaway budgets and deficits were far more than anything we had done in our first 2 years here in 2005 and 2006, and I am talking about my friend, Ms. Foxx, having both been elected in 2004.

So I don't want to return to the same overspending from 2001 through 2006,

but I absolutely know we have got to stop the craziness from the last 3\1/2\ years of spending with our Democrat friends in charge. I would just have to submit, with the runaway spending, and the damage that was done to our energy programs, beginning in 2007 and 2008, as the Democrats took control, to our economy, to our private sector, the additional requirements that were rammed down from this Congress down the private sector's throat, when they took over in January of 2007 and, again, in 2008, that I would submit to you that either our Democratic friends who took the majority in January of 2007 need to stand up and take credit for what they did in 2007 and 2008, or they need to admit that they were the most incompetent Congress in the history of the country.

Because you can't have it any way but one of those two ways. Either you intentionally cause what you did in 2007 and 2008, or you were just so incompetent you need to be put out of your misery, let out of the majority, so that we can go on and try to straighten things up.

But to sit here, and having heard friends across the aisle say, gee-- and I believe this is the quote--Republicans don't want to reduce dependency on foreign oil, it just flies all over me. How could anybody have ears and think that. All the people I know on this side of the aisle want to end dependency on foreign oil. We want to end dependency on our enemies.

And let me just add, I'm tired of paying our enemies, not only through oil purchases--heck, the New England area just made a 20-year contract this year with Yemen to provide liquefied natural gas that will come rolling up in Boston Harbor. And they're hoping--and I imagine there are a few people praying--that there will not be a stowaway from Yemen, one of those terrorists that they were able to get released from Guantanamo that went back to terrorism in Yemen. They're hoping they won't be onboard that ship to blow it up and take half the city with it.

Now, that does not make sense. I want to end any dependency on foreign oil because I know, having been a member of the military, having had years of military history, having been in the military 4 years, I know if you cannot produce, as a country, everything you need in war, and especially energy, you can't win a serious war, you can't.

Some people are not aware of how dangerous the Battle of the Bulge was at the end of World War II. Some think it was all over. That was not true. Many historians believe, and there is evidence to support it, that if the Germans had had enough gasoline, the Battle of the Bulge, the bulge that was being pushed to the west through the American front--good old Montgomery said, I've got the back back here. I'll stay in the rear in case they break through. It would have been too late if they had gotten Montgomery, but they ran out of gas.

My personal belief, those incidences when the German Army got so close to American supplies of gasoline and through different flukes did not go ahead and take the supply depots I think were acts of God. As a result, they didn't have the gasoline they needed. Patton was able to move in, others were able to move in, and they stopped the bulge. But the intent was working to drive Americans back to the Atlantic Ocean, and they ran out of gasoline.

Now we're to the point where we are so dependent on foreign oil, if we had a major war we had to win, we would need steel. We would need energy, gasoline, things to power our jets, the ability to make jets like we used to. You would need wood products. You would be amazed at how much the military requires in the way of wood product. But all of those things you need to produce yourself--the plastics, all those things--in order to sustain an attack against your own soil, and we're not in a very good position right now.

It also was so infuriating to hear a colleague across the aisle say Republicans are constantly voting against efforts to build back manufacturing jobs in this country. I know that so many of my friends across the aisle never met a tax they didn't like, but some of us, in a bipartisan group, went across to China some years back, and one of the purposes was to talk to manufacturers about, Why did you pick up your industry and move it to China? I figured, in advance, the number one answer we would probably get was the labor was so much cheaper, you don't have to deal with labor unions, that kind of thing. That was an attraction, as was fewer regulations, but the number one reason we heard why whole industries left, took manufacturing jobs from the United States and went to China, was how much cheaper the corporate tax was, less than half of what we have here.

I talked to major injuries--industries--they have been injured--about what would happen if we cut our corporate tax down to 17 percent like China. I've heard repeatedly, We would be back in America in no time. And yet, what do our friends across the aisle talk about? Let's heap more and more and more tax on these mean, nasty corporations. There are corporations like BP who have done wrong and deserve to suffer the consequences, but corporations provide jobs, small businesses provide jobs.

Small businesses, so many of them are subchapter S corporations, and yet we hear from both the majority and from the President that they want to hammer those people with higher taxes. Those are the people that create the jobs. And the insidious thing about corporate tax-- apparently it's a secret that the other side does not want people to know--is no corporation stays in business if they cannot pass that corporate tax onto their customers or clients, no corporation. So it's an insidious tax because it's paid by the folks we're trying to help, who are the working folks, the working poor in America who are getting those prices heaped higher and higher on them. And they're told, Oh, don't worry, we'll make the corporations pay. And the corporations, to stay in business, have to keep passing it down to those poor folks that can't pay anymore.

And so in talking to folks, some people across the aisle say let's erect trade barriers, and yet that would trigger so many problems internationally in trade, so many punitive measures against the United States, when what we could do is eliminate corporate taxes, and nobody in the world could compete with how cheap our prices would be produced. That would explode the economy upward. And as Art Laffer, Ronald Reagan's economic advisor--boy, I sure wish he were advising this President. As he pointed out, you can only increase the percentage of taxes so far, and each increase, to a certain extent, will increase the revenues in the Federal Treasury. But if you increase it too far, then you start hurting the economy, which then, in turn, starts decreasing the revenues into the Federal Treasury.

So if you want to maximize the tax dollars coming into the government so our friends across the aisle can continue to buy safe havens in China for rare dogs and cats, continue to buy safe havens for cranes in foreign countries, continue to pay billions to Pakistan so they can turn around and reward the Taliban that we had pretty much defeated but they're on the rise again, if we want to keep paying enemies of our friends, like the enemies of Israel, all this money, then we need to have higher revenues by the Federal Treasury. And that's going to require not raising taxes--we're too high already--but lowering.

And I know this is going to offend some of my friends across the aisle, but you're going to have to lower taxes on the people that are actually paying them. I know that's an affront to some people. They think, well, the people that are paying taxes must be wealthy or they wouldn't be paying taxes, so they should not be entitled to tax cuts. We should give the tax cuts to people that aren't paying them. So I know it's serious. I know it's an affront to some of my friends, but you have to lower taxes on the people paying the taxes or the tax cuts don't explode the economy and create new jobs.

I yield to my friend, Ms. Foxx.

If I could reclaim my time on that point, apparently, my friends across the aisle do not want to recall, but the truth is that the rebate that was $40 billion of the stimulus package, of the Democratic Congress stimulus package of January 2008, which I did not support and was totally against. It was $40 billion out of $160 billion, and it was going as so-called ``rebates'' to people who didn't pay any taxes.

Yes, President Bush was in office, but the Democratic majority in the House and Senate passed that stimulus bill with my fussing about it and complaining about it. In fact, after President Bush's State of the Union Address, he was coming up the aisle over here, and I asked him a question. I didn't realize the microphone was picking my question up, but I asked:

By the way, Mr. President, how do you give a rebate to people who didn't put any ``bate'' in?

The question still stands. How do you give a rebate to somebody who didn't put something in to begin with? It's not a rebate. It's a giveaway. You are redistributing wealth from people who have worked hard, who have earned it and who have paid taxes on it so that people here in our majority party could give it away to others who they wanted to give it to.

That does not encourage job growth. It does something that encouraged me to leave the bench and run for Congress, and that is because this Congress was incentivizing people to never achieve their God-given potential, and Congress should never be in that business. We should incentivize people to do their best and to become all they can be.

I know my friend Ms. Foxx, having been president of a university, has spent a lifetime working to try to help people reach their potential. That's what we all ought to be doing. You know, when you have 30, 40 percent of high school students dropping out and never finishing high school, those kids are going to be condemned to never reaching the potential that they have.

Why wouldn't you want to give vouchers to kids and say, ``Go get the very best education you can possibly get''?

``We don't care how poor the neighborhood is that you're growing up in. If you want to go where the rich Democrats' children go to school, here is a voucher. Go there. Get as good an education as they have. Don't let people try to push you down as they did Clarence Thomas when he was growing up. Let's help you reach your God-given potential. Go where you can get the best education.''

What happens when you do that?

Schools know they've got to get better because, if they don't get better, no one is going to choose to go to their schools. So they have to be more picky about the teachers they hire. They have to be really good teachers or nobody is going to want to have those teachers. That's kind of the American way, and that is kind of the way America became the greatest nation in the history of the world. We are in danger of losing that. It is a dangerous time.

My friends across the aisle have continued to say that Republicans hope President Obama fails. I hope President Obama succeeds. I would love it if he became the most successful President in helping people reach the great American dream of any President in our history, but if he continues to try to have the government take over all of the private sector, if he continues to take over health care so that his czar, who is unaccountable to the Congress, can tell people which person lives and which person dies, I sure don't want that to succeed. I want him to succeed as a great President.

There are the words of George Washington when he resigned his commission. It was the only time in history anybody has ever led a revolution as the head of the military, has ever won the revolution as the head of the military, and has resigned and gone home. He sent this beautiful resignation letter.

In it, at the end, he says, ``I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the state over which you preside in his holy protection.''

He goes down toward the end and says, in talking about God, ``And finally, that He would most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity, humility, and specific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.''

George Washington says, if President Obama wants to have a happy nation, he needs to inspire this nation to have the characteristics of the ``Divine Author'' of our blessed religion and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.

We are in trouble. We are in big trouble in this country, and it does not help when the government takes over health care.

There is an article here, dated July 24, in the New York Times: ``Britain Plans to Decentralize Health Care.'' It talks about the aim now is clear ``to shift control of England's $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level.''

Do you want to talk about Republicans not being in support of education? I am not in support of this educational bureaucracy. Think about what individual school districts in America could do if you took the billions of dollars that this Education Department has lavished on itself over the years and if you put that money to work hiring good teachers, not administrators who are simply going to have to respond to all of the bureaucratic redtape put out by the Federal Government, which requires bureaucratic redtape and bureaucratic jobs in each State capital, which require bureaucratic redtape and new administrators in every school district.

It is time for the madness to stop. It is time to put the money where it will do the most good and to quit spending the rest of it.

I have a bill, the U.N. Voting Accountability bill, that I will bring to the floor with a discharge petition in September, when we come back. I am hoping my friends on the other side of the aisle, as well as friends on this side of the aisle, will sign on. It is very simple. It will end what has happened as to our apparently having given, according to the recent reports, billions of dollars to Pakistan, billions of dollars which have found their way into helping the people who are killing American soldiers.

We're paying people indirectly to kill American soldiers. As I've said repeatedly, you don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll do it for free.

My U.N. Voting Accountability Act says any nation that votes against the U.S. position on a contested vote more than half the time will receive no financial assistance from the United

States the following year. Very simple. It eliminates those problems, because Pakistan's made very clear in the U.N. they're going to fight us and oppose everything we believe and hold dear.

I don't hope President Obama fails. I hope he will reach the stage of enlightenment that will allow him to see that every government that's tried these socialized efforts to take over car industries, manufacturing, banking, health care, always results in failure.

And it's time to get back to what George Washington described as the characteristic of the divine author of our blessed religion, without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 50 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, July 28, 2010, at 10 a.m.

I thank my friend from Virginia, truly a conscience in this body, for those profound words of challenge, bringing us back to the roots from which this great Nation has grown.

And I realize the time grows late, and it is the last hour that we will be in session this week. And if the gentleman would indulge me, I know that we have a President who has said we're not a Christian Nation, and I will not debate that.

But it is so critical to look at our roots. And so I would like to direct, Mr. Speaker, back to the words of Roger Williams when he said: ``That forced worship stinks in God's nostrils, that it denies Christ Jesus yet to come; that in these flames about religion, there is no other prudent, Christian way of preserving peace in the world, but by permission of different consciences.''

These are the words of our Founders that set this Nation in motion, that pointed us in the direction of religious tolerance.

1701, William Penn drafted the Charter of Privileges and said: ``First because no people can truly be happy, though under the greatest enjoyment of civil liberties, if abridged of the freedom of their consciences, as to their religious profession and worship: And Almighty God being the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits, and the Author as well as Object of all divine knowledge, faith and worship, who only can enlighten the mind, and persuade and convince the understandings of people, I do hereby grant and declare that no person or persons inhabiting this province or territories, shall confess and acknowledge one Almighty God, the Creator, upholder and ruler of the world; and profess him or themselves obliged to live quietly under the civil government, shall be in any case molested or prejudiced in his or their person or estate, because of his or their conscientious persuasion or practice.''

Going back to our heritage, that this country was based on these principles, taught in the Bible, discussed by our Founders, and made the basis of our beliefs in religious freedom, Thomas Jefferson said: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are a gift of God? That they are not to be violated, but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.''

And it ought to cause every American to tremble when they think of the injustice we're allowing to be perpetuated on our citizens around the world. It ought to break the hearts and minds and consciences of everyone.

A United States President said these words, referred to a Mr. Levi, a Galveston, Texas lawyer and a president of the National B'nai Brith, drafted President Theodore Roosevelt a telegram denouncing a Russian pogrom in 1903. The Czar of Russia was so stung by Roosevelt's message that he formally refused to accept it. Some Americans complained that Roosevelt had gone too far. He replied that there were crimes so monstrous that the American conscience had to assert itself. And there still are.

``No one is a better witness to the transience of tyranny than the children of Abraham. Forty centuries ago, the Jewish people were entrusted with a truth more enduring than any power of man. In the words of the prophet Isaiah, `This shall be my covenant with them, said the Lord: My spirit which is upon you, and the words which I have placed in your mouth, shall not be absent from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your children, nor from the mouth of your children's children, said the Lord from now for all time.'

``It is not an accident that freedom of religion is one of the central freedoms in our Bill of Rights. It is the first freedom of the human soul: the right to speak the words that God places in our mouths. We must stand for that freedom in our country. We must speak for that freedom in the world.''

Could the current administration and President dare to do any less than this President that is so reviled in this administration, President George W. Bush?

I would like to just finish with one other thought, and that was what was related to have happened in Iraq after United States troops liberated Iraq, not for any purpose other than to liberate and to free the people there, and to assure us that they would not be a threat to their neighbors or the rest of the world.

President Bush appointed a retired general named Jay Garner. I had heard the story relayed before and I called him this evening to ask if I could retell it here.

He was in charge of looking about, talking to people all around Iraq, and seeing what kind of government would be best suited for Iraq so that we could help the Iraqi people establish a nation of strength and a representative, hopefully, a representative government. And he talked to people around the country. And over and over, people kept referring him to this huge man, a Shiia, a cleric, who wore the black turban, the black robes, and was a descendant, apparently, of Mohammed. And everyone kept telling him he had to talk to this man because everyone looked to him for insight, for words of wisdom.

And so eventually General Garner went, made an appointment, visited with him. He had a number of people with him, including a reporter. He was often a freelance report, but at this point a reporter for Time magazine.

And apparently this cleric spoke very good English, but he said he'd like to tell in his own language what should be done. And he talked for quite some time in his language. Everything was recorded.

And then he said, let me tell you in a nutshell what I've said. We need a constitutional process, perhaps like yours in the United States, where we create a constitution. But it must be written by Iraqis. The government must be of Iraqis. And it must be based on the lessons of Jesus Christ and bring all the nation together.

General Garner said when he left that interview with the people in the entourage, he asked the others, did everybody hear what I just think I heard? And they said, yes. Could you believe he said you needed a constitution based on the teachings of Jesus Christ?

And he asked the reporter from Time, are you going to put that in the story? He said, no one would believe that.

But when you think about the wisdom of this great Shiia cleric, apparently, Shari'ah law does not allow for freedom of religion and worship when it's considered in context too often. That's the way it's interpreted. It's only the teachings of Jesus that allow for a constitution that allow for freedom of worship. Whether you're Muslim, whether you're following the teachings of Mohammed or Jesus or Moses, it's only those teachings that give us the kind of Constitution we have.

But since we have that Constitution, and we have been given the foresight by our Founders of what is required to do justice, to love mercy, we can do nothing less than what my friend from Virginia has indicated. We must stand for those who seek to worship as the directives of their heart lead them.

And I thank my friend so much for the very touching time he has spent here on the floor. And I hope and pray that this administration will take those words to heart. I thank my friend.

Mr. Speaker, I was hearing my friend across the aisle. He was yelling about things not being paid for when, actually, what happened was, in my first 2 years here, in 2005 and 2006, our friends across the aisle pointed out to voters, These guys are running a $100 billion, $200 billion budget, so elect us, put us in the majority, and we will stop the insane deficit spending. We will make sure every bill is paid for.

So the voters took them up on that. They gave our friends across the aisle, Mr. Speaker, the majority, and said, Okay, you guys say you won't deficit spend like the Republicans had started doing.

The Republicans balanced the budget in the late 1990s, but they got away from it and got giddy when President Bush got elected. So, in January 2007, it was the Democrats' job to do what they had promised the voters they would do. That promise has not been kept.

PAYGO was passed as a rule, but then that promise was not kept. I voted for PAYGO previously but not this last time because I found out it was a joke, that it was not intended to do what it said because, every time a bill comes along that they want to pass, they just do a rule that goes around it. There was no sense in that. This could be easily paid for.

For all of those people whose eyes we look into who have lost their jobs--we see them at job fairs, and we see them around, looking for jobs--we've got to tell them that we have all of these little pet projects that we don't want to give up the money for. So, therefore, you're going to stay out of work because we're not going to let the private sector have the capital they need to create jobs.

Yes, we're going to provide the unemployment benefits. That would be fine. But don't force other people not to

have jobs because we don't create the capital by stopping the insane deficit spending. You hurt people. Yes, you help people by giving them unemployment benefits further, but you hurt people because they can't go get jobs because the jobs can't be created because we won't give up the little pet projects.

Mr. Speaker, well, I keep hearing our friends across the aisle end up talking about George W. Bush. They keep forgetting that got them the majority in November of 2006. My friends across the aisle have been in charge ever since 2006.

It's time to do something besides blame people who are not in office. Take responsibility, that's a good thing.

And then we just hear this weekend, our administration, our friends, want to give $500 million more to Pakistan because we are not worried enough about folks here. We already gave them maybe a billion bucks. I have the new results from last year. They voted against us in the U.N. 87.5 percent of the time.

You don't have to pay people to hate you; they'll do it for free. Let's get the

money where it will do us some good instead of helping our enemies cause us problems.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Now, as always, it is a great honor to speak on this floor where so many have given so much trying to get the country in the right direction.

I do need to address some things that have come up. For one thing, I would like to read an article from The Washington Examiner, June 9, 2010, written by Timothy Carney.

``As BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig was sinking on April 22, Senator John Kerry, D-Mass, was on the phone with allies in his push for climate legislation, telling them he would soon roll out the Senate climate bill with the support of the utility industry and three oil companies--including BP, according to the Washington Post.

``Kerry never got to have his photo op with BP chief executive Tony Hayward and other regulation-friendly corporate chieftains. Within days, Republican cosponsor Lindsey Graham, R-S.C, repudiated the bill following a spat about immigration, and Democrats went back to the drawing board.

``But the Kerry-BP alliance for an energy bill that included a cap- and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases pokes a hole in a favorite claim of President Obama and his allies in the media--that BP's lobbyists have fought fiercely to be left alone. Lobbying records show that BP is no free-market crusader, but instead a close friend of big government whenever it serves the company's bottom line.''

It goes on to point out that British Petroleum has lobbied for tax hikes, greenhouse gas restraints, for the stimulus bill, the Wall Street bailout and for subsidies for things like oil pipelines, solar panels, natural gas and biofuels.

``Now that BP's oil rig''--this is the article written by Timothy Carney, ``Now that BP's oil rig has caused the biggest environmental disaster in American history, the Left is pulling the same bogus trick it did with Enron and AIG: Whenever a company earns universal ire, declare it the poster boy for the free market.

``As Democrats fight to advance climate change policies, they are resorting to the misleading tactics they used in their health care and finance efforts: posing as the scourges of the special interests and tarring `reform' opponents as the stooges of big business. Expect BP to be public enemy No. 1 in the climate debate.''

Again, this is the article by Timothy Carney, June 9 of this year.

Carney goes on, ``There's a problem: BP was a founding member of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a lobby dedicated to passing a cap-and-trade bill. As the Nation's largest producer of natural gas, BP saw many ways to profit from climate legislation, notably by persuading Congress to provide subsidies to coal-fired plants that switched to gas.''

Well, it goes on, it talks more. It mentions that ``BP signed off on Kerry's Senate climate bill, which was hardly a capitalist concoction. One provision BP explicitly backed, according to Congressional Quarterly and other media reports: a higher gas tax. The money would be earmarked for building more highways, thus inducing more driving and more gasoline consumption.

``Elsewhere in the green arena, BP has lobbied for and profited from subsidies for biofuels and solar energy, two products that cannot break even without government support. Lobbying records show the company backing solar subsidies, including Federal funding for solar research. The U.S. Export-Import Bank, a Federal agency, is currently financing a BP solar energy project in Argentina.

``Ex-Im has also put up taxpayer cash to finance construction of the 1,094 Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline carrying oil from the Caspian Sea to Ceyhan, Turkey--again profiting BP.

``Lobbying records also show BP lobbying on Obama's stimulus bill and Bush's Wall Street bailout. You can guess the oil giant wasn't in league with the Cato Institute or Ron Paul on those.

``BP has more Democratic lobbyists than Republicans. It employs the Podesta Group, cofounded by John Podesta, Obama's transition director and confidant. Other BP troops on K Street include Michael Berman, a former top aid to Vice President Walter Mondale, Steven Champlin, former executive director of the House Democratic Caucus, and Matthew LaRocco, who worked in Bill Clinton's Interior Department and whose father was a Democratic Congressman.''

``Two patterns have emerged during Obama's presidency: (1) Big business increasingly seeks profits through more government, and (2) Obama nonetheless paints opponents of his intervention as industry shills. BP is just the latest example of this tawdry sleight of hand.

``Once a government pet, BP now a capitalist tool.'' Again, this is from The Washington Examiner's lobbying editor, Timothy P. Carney. Interesting.

Some of my friends come to the floor and talk about, make it sound like the Republicans and BP are really tight. You look at the lobbying records for BP, you look at the contribution records for the Wall Street firms that benefited so dramatically from the ridiculous bailout, yes, it was a Republican President, should have known better.

You don't set aside free market principles to save the free market, because if only socialism works in a crisis, we got no business going back to free market in the good times.

But the trouble is it was no free market. In this world in which people are not perfect and you have some greedy people, you have some people that lust for power, you have got to have a government intervention to make sure everyone is playing fairly; not that everyone has equal assets but that people have an equal opportunity. That's what a free market is supposed to be about in this world. In the next, we won't need a government. God will reign. But in this one, we need a government, and it needs not to be a player on the field

and also the referee. We've had enough of that, got that going on in the flood insurance program. We now have been told in this last year and a half that, gee, we need the Federal Government playing in the health care field just to give an option. That's what we heard in the flood insurance program, and now the Federal Government is the only flood insurance program because nobody can compete with a government that gets to run in the red all the time.

So I appreciate my friends trying to lay BP at the feet of the Republicans, but the fact is that the reason, apparently, that it took so long for this administration to finally turn on BP was--they did have to turn on them because they were together, working together on the crap-and-trade bill because BP was right there with them, supporting that crap-and-trade bill. And then you had Senator Kerry, the administration, I mean, BP was their buddy. They were helping them on the stimulus package, of all things. Most of the true free market people that don't want the government taking over everything were not supportive of the stimulus bill because they knew exactly what has happened would happen. That's what people knew, that when the government starts sucking all the capital out of the country for its own uses and its own devices, then the great job creator, small business, private business across the country, cannot get loans.

And I so agree with my friend Mr. Schauer when he talks about how difficult it is for people to get loans in this country; it is just so difficult. We've got regulators breathing down their throats requiring them to hold more in reserve than the law requires, requiring them not to lend money to people that have been with them 20 and 30 years as great banking clients, threatening the full vengeance of the Federal Government if they were to make loans that some regulators told them not to make so that people can't get capital. The Federal Government is sucking it up, and it is a terrible, terrible shame.

And I appreciated my friends across the aisle pointing out that, as Mr. Schauer said, I think it's 600,000, 700,000 jobs were lost the last 5 months of the Bush administration, and then he went on and pointed out that over the last 5 months the average has been 170,000 jobs a month that have been added. My friend from Florida came in and didn't realize he had said that. Her figure was 125,000 jobs per month. But we won't haggle over 50,000 jobs average per month. We would love to have those jobs. But unfortunately, to get to an average, whether it's 125,000 or 170,000, you have to have things like we did in June. 430,000 jobs created in the month of June. Great news. 431,000, actually. Unfortunately, 411,000 of those were temporary census workers. Oh, yeah, the economy is just booming, isn't it?

It gets so tiresome hearing my friends across the aisle talk about that last year that Bush was in office and the damage he did to the economy. It's deeply troublesome because the fact is, in November of 2006, our Democratic friends took the majority by promising America that Republicans would not control spending but they would. They promised that we will get rid of this ridiculous $100 billion, $200 billion deficit for 1 year of spending by the Republicans who controlled Congress because, as anybody who has had any decent education in this country knows, the President and the executive branch can only spend money that is appropriated by the Congress. So we also know, then, for the last 2 years of the Bush Presidency, every stinking bill that passed only did so because the majority wanted it to pass. There was nothing Republicans could do in 2007 and 2008 to stop any bill in Congress that our friends across the aisle wanted to have passed. We tried. We made points of order, objections when we could see that the rules were not being followed and then would be ruled down from the Chair in order for us to appeal the ruling, which was voted down every single time that we appealed the ruling of the Chair because they had the votes to do so, not because it was a violation of the rule.

So we come to the point a fair analysis has to indicate that if the spending was out of control in 2007 and 2008, obviously it wasn't because of the Bush administration. They can't appropriate anything to themselves. And if the policies of spending caused this great loss of jobs in the fall of 2008, then it was either the responsibility of the majority party, the majority party either caused the massive problems in 2008 to our economy, or the majority party was the most incompetent ever to be in the majority in this House. I don't think they were that incompetent. I think they passed exactly what was intended.

We heard talk about the wonderful health care bill. It got pretty tiresome over the last year and a half hearing friends across the aisle accuse me and others of misrepresenting the real facts. How could we not understand what the bill was about? Well, the truth is, for those of us that read the ridiculous bills that were brought forth that were not about health care but were about the GRE--``government running everything''--we knew problems that were going to be forthcoming. Some of us came to this very podium and other podiums here and talked about what was in the bill because we were reading these provisions that deeply troubled us.

And I note, General Electric is a big backer of this administration, been so excited about the health care bill because they were going to get to have the contract for bringing together all of the health care records in the country, that the Federal Government was going to be the repository, the depository for every health care record in America. The personal, private, biological situations of every person in America would be within the control of the Federal Government.

You know, there are people who have made incredible deals happen, who have made the economy purr, and though they knew they were dying, others didn't know. The Federal Government didn't know, and so they made things happen because their biological lives were their own lives. Their lives were their own business. As a result of the ObamaCare bill that needs desperately to be repealed, if it is not, every man's most private, personal lives will be under the electronic control of the Federal Government.

We have noticed that, when someone stands up against this administration, private information seems to surface from out of nowhere about that person. So anyone who stands up against them is liable to have the full power of the Democratic government come down on them.

We know that in the days preceding the impeachment vote, or the vote to remove President Clinton from office, the White House was found to have over 1,000 FBI files in the White House. In the possession of every one of those files was a felony, meaning years in prison to anyone who possessed them, to anyone who was complicit in having them brought over from the FBI, because they had to be physically brought into the White House. They were, and you had to know there were a lot of people involved. Yet not one person was prosecuted.

They could have certainly made the case against the person who had them. I believe it was 2 years in prison--it could have been 4--and I'm sure there are different ways to charge it so you could lump on different Federal charges, but at least 2,000 years in prison minimum for having those files. Any good prosecutor knows how you work that.

You go to the guy who has the files, and you say, You're looking at 2,000 years in prison. You'll never get out, but you know what? If you'll help us successfully prosecute those who have caused you to get those 1,000 FBI files--because we know you can't do it on your own--and if you help us to know who it was who told you to get these files, who went through these private FBI files--if you help us with all of that, we can work a deal. Maybe you'll do 4 years.

That's the way prosecutions normally work, and you work up the food chain until you find the highest person who was involved in bringing those files to the White House. None of that happened. None of it. For most prosecutors, they would see that as lay-down cases that are just so easy. You know, you've got them dead to rights. Now it's just a question of how far up the food chain you get to send people to prison. It didn't happen, and that was with the physical possession of FBI files.

Now we're talking about a private company overseeing this operation. We're talking about the Federal Government's having control over all of these records. I know I've heard people ask, Well, what makes you think that anybody could ever get access to these private medical records of each individual in America?

How could anybody be so naive when you see the kind of things that have already happened in this country and the disclosure of secret information? Do you think that if this Federal Government cannot keep secret the identity of our most secret agents that they will be able to keep secret the medical records of someone who has become an enemy of the reigning party in the White House or in Congress? There are always leaks these days, it seems. There are always leaks.

We've found out, in the past few days, that the government, apparently, is going to require everybody in America to have a body mass index because the Federal Government wants to know how fat everybody in America is, and it doesn't take an Einstein to figure out that, once the Federal Government knows what your body mass index is, then they will be able to make decisions based on that information.

Now, I've been belittled; I've had blogs take all kinds of shots at me; I've had people on the other side of the aisle belittle this comment I'm about to make that I've made over the last year and a half; but, boy, is it turning out that I was right and that the naysayers simply hadn't read the bill and could not see what was going to be allowed unto the Federal Government.

Here is what I would say:

Think about it. The Federal Government has all of your personal medical records. We've been told that the Federal Government has the capability of monitoring every credit card purchase, every debit card purchase that anyone in America makes. We are also told it doesn't do that, but that it has the capability. But once the Federal Government, through tax dollars, is paying for people's health care, then it will proclaim the right to know what you're spending your money on.

For example, if you have too high of a cholesterol rate and if you have too high of a body mass index, then it's quite conceivable at some point that you'll get an email or you'll get a letter from your Federal Government, saying, We noticed your cholesterol was 160, and we noticed that you bought bacon at the grocery store this weekend. Accordingly, since you were on a Federal program, we are going to have to increase the amount that you pay to participate in the Federal ObamaCare program in which you're found.

Well, now, as we hear these things come out, now that we are a few months past the bill's becoming law, things for which I was belittled are now appearing to be quite accurate in their projections.

I heard my friends across the aisle talking about Social Security. If people are going to represent what I believe and what I have pushed for my 5\1/2\ years here in Congress, I would wish that they would get it right, because it wasn't. What I pushed with my Republican colleagues the year I got here in 2005, what I continue to push today and what I will continue to push next year, whether or not Republicans are in the majority or not, is this:

Social Security tax dollars should go into the Social Security trust fund. Statements I made back in 2005 are easy to find. I pointed out back then that I had my staff do an experiment, which was to contact the Texas Employment Retirement System, the Galveston retirement system and the Social Security system and to pose this hypothetical:

Suppose somebody had worked for 30 years, averaging $30,000 a year. What would be a person's retirement income per month?

I talked about this in 2005, in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, this year. I spoke of it recently back home in East Texas. Well, what we got from Social Security was, well, you say average. A lot will depend on how many years, it was at what level, how you ended, all these other factors. So the best we can give you is somewhere between $600 a month and $900 a month. Tragic. Six hundred dollars to $900 a month. After someone has spent a lifetime paying into Social Security that's all you get? My goodness, the prescription drugs can eat that up in a heartbeat. And if you hadn't had your home already paid for, you are in big trouble.

Six hundred dollars a month in your senior years, when you ought to be a glory to your family? No, you become a drag, because this government did not do what it said it would do--put that money in a Social Security trust fund. You look at some societies throughout history, and they point out that when you pay tribute to your seniors because of their wisdom, because of what they've learned through the years, and one society they always made, at any gathering, the oldest person the center of attention. It gave people a reason to continue to live longer, so people there did live longer. It's not what we do here, and it's tragic. We relegate our seniors, who are our greatest source of wisdom and experience and knowledge, to $600 a month for Social Security.

Well, on the other hand, checking with the Texas Employment Retirement System, they came back and said, well, because it's a hypothetical and we don't have the exact years and how much was at the end and all that, the best we can say is somewhere $2,700 to $2,800 per month in retirement income. Wow. Several times the amount you would get from Social Security in the same scenario. What's the difference? The main difference is Social Security, since its inception in the 1930s, has never had a dime go into the Social Security trust fund. I thought it had until I got here. Come to find out this has been going on from the beginning. I thought it was a more recent development, maybe since the Great Society. Not true. Since the 1930s, never a dime of Social Security tax money going into the trust fund.

How about that for a start? That's what I have been advocating. Try to lay a privatizing label on me. I have been advocating this for 5\1/ 2\ years. Put Social Security tax money into the trust fund. Now, we've got people on our side of the aisle too, a tiny minority that say uh- oh, if you were to do that it would make the government own too much in the way of bonds. But some of them also voted for the Wall Street bailout, so apparently they got beyond that concern in the 3 intervening years since they opposed my proposal.

But there are just not a lot of people in the majority, it doesn't appear, who want to put Social Security tax dollars in the Social Security trust fund so that we can ensure that it will be there for years to come and it will draw interest. And we could do so much better by the seniors, who are the Greatest Generation, the seniors who have laid the groundwork, the foundation for this greatest advancement in human history. And now we're treating them so poorly by giving them $600 a month after all they've done because we won't put money in a trust fund so it can grow and they could get more in their senior years so that they don't have to worry whether they'll have to eat or get their drugs. We owe them so much better.

And if my friends in the majority would want to do that we could do it like that. And the President wouldn't have a choice. He'd have to sign it because you would have more than two-thirds in both Houses that would vote for that. What a great day for seniors that would be. What a great day for people moving toward their senior years to know, finally, money's going into the trust fund that will start growing. First time in American history. That's the kind of thing we need to be doing.

Now, we keep hearing about this financial reform bill. It's a financial deform bill, pure and simple. It still continues this ridiculous notion of a systemic risk panel, so that the government gets to pick and choose which companies will live and which will die. Because the way it's set up, that's what's going to happen. We already saw that with Goldman Sachs and AIG, two companies that had historically given contributions four to one to the Democratic Party over Republicans. But boy didn't George W. Bush do them a favor? He let Hank Paulson talk him into bailing out his buddies, all these big Democratic donors, to the tune of billions of dollars when they got their own cart in the ditch.

Some of us realize it's nice when you help somebody get their cart out of the

ditch, but you sure shouldn't let them run over you with it once they do. And that's what's happened. Goldman Sachs had their biggest profiting year in their history. So you can bet they'll be able to donate lots and lots of money this year to keep their friends that have done them the most good in office. And it won't be Republicans.

Another problem in this financial deform act is that it creates a system of bailouts as far into the future as anybody living today can see. When anyone says that a company or a bank is too big to fail, then it is absolutely essential that they be allowed to go through bankruptcy, be declared a failure, reorganized, sell off some of their attractive assets, and reorganize so never again will they be so big that they will pose a risk to our economy. That's not what happened with the Wall Street bailout. It's not what has continued to happen.

And one of the things that has grieved so many of us, that we could not believe that any White House, Republican or Democrat, could appoint a task force, a bunch of czars, and they make decisions about who lives and who dies in the automotive industry. They picked the winners and losers. They take property from people without due process of law. They force dealers, who owe money to the banks for buying the dealerships, into losing their dealership, take it away from them without any due process of law, without a chance to go to the bankruptcy court and say we have an alternative plan. Without a chance to come to the courts and say, you know what, you're not going to sell more cars by having so many less dealers.

They didn't have a chance to come to the bankruptcy courts or to the courts of America and say why in the world would you have some idiot proclaim that in a terrible recession we're going to close down tens of thousands of jobs and put them out of business, put them out of their jobs, put their families out wanting and begging because we felt like it?

We wanted our friends to be in business, didn't want our enemies to be in business. Well, the Founders were scared to death that a government might ever have that kind of power, so they took pains, they fought for, they died for the chance to have a government with not just one House in Congress but two. So if one got too far afield, the other could rein them in, keep them from doing something stupid. And if both of them did something stupid, then the executive branch, the President, could stop them with a simple veto. And if both of them got out of hand, you had a judicial branch, and they could cancel out what the others did.

And if the executive branch gets too far afield and appoints an auto task force that's going to violate the Constitution by taking property without due process of law and they're going to just run roughshod over the laws passed by the Congress that says this is the way bankruptcy proceedings go and you don't violate that, that if an executive branch ran roughshod over both the law and the Constitution, then the Congress would be upset and they would say, Wait a minute. The Congress passed those bankruptcy laws. We don't care if you did get a bankruptcy judge who wants to be reaffirmed as a judge in a few years or be a district judge down the road. We don't care if you got them to sign that bill. We're going to cut off funding for all of these czars, all of these task forces you've appointed who have no accountability to us. We're going to cut off your money. We'll cut off your task force at the knees. We'll cut off your czars at the knees because we're going to defund them.

That power was given to Congress to make sure that you don't let an executive branch appoint a bunch of czars without the consent of the Senate and then make rules and decide who loses their property without any accountability to anybody.

The Founders knew that with people in Congress in numbers in the House and Senate, they would never let the laws they passed be run over in such a fashion. They would stop the executive branch from doing that. But, unfortunately, it didn't happen.

Congress let the executive branch, through the auto task force, disregard the Constitution, disregard the law, disregard creditors' rights in the law, disregard the rights of secured creditors, promote unsecured creditors and make them owners, put secured creditors down to getting pennies and tell the secured creditors, if you say anything about it, you'll have the full force of the Federal Government executive branch come on you and you will be done in business for good. Don't you dare stand in our way. There were threats that we heard were made. And so they couldn't fight. Their only hope was that Congress would protect the power that it was entrusted with to keep the executive branch from running over the Constitution.

Congress let it happen.

But the Founders were so clever. They knew they didn't trust government, so they had this third branch, the court. And of course the Supreme Court was the only court actually created in the Constitution. Every other court in America owes its existence to this body. But the Supreme Court, thank goodness the Founders had the foresight to create that third branch. They'll stop the auto task force from disregarding the Constitution and disregarding the laws passed by Congress. Even though Congress didn't, they will. And God bless Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to her credit, put a 24-hour hold on that whole deal.

But the executive branch scared the Supreme Court sufficiently into thinking that if they extended that 24-hour hold any further, then apparently they made the Supreme Court believe that they would be responsible for the loss of every job related to the auto industry and all of those lost jobs would be on the Supreme Court's head. Why else would they let the Constitution be trampled on in such a fashion? Why else would they allow the laws to be trampled on in such a fashion?

None of the safeguards worked and people lost their businesses.

And then we get this article, July 19, from Bloomberg of all sources, and I'll read: ``The Obama administration's push to accelerate General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC's dealership closings aimed at helping the companies compete may not have been necessary and added to unemployment, a U.S. watchdog said.

``The Treasury Department should have considered whether speeding up the closings was worth the potential loss of tens of thousands of jobs, according to a report released yesterday by Neil Barofsky, special inspector general of the Troubled Asset Relief Program.'' TARP, of course.

The article goes on, ``The U.S. had rejected reorganization plans from the carmakers in March 2009, in part citing a `slow pace' for GM to scale back its dealer network.

`` `Such dramatic and accelerated dealership closings may not have been necessary and underscores the need for Treasury to tread very carefully when considering such decisions in the future,' Barofsky concluded.

``The report made prompt congressional criticism of the administration's handling of the automaker bailouts. Lawmakers have already complained about the job losses in their districts from dealership closings and the process by which retailers were selected for shutdowns.

`` `This sobering report should serve as a wake-up call as to the implications of politically orchestrated bailouts,' Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and ranking member on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said yesterday in a statement.

``Obama's Treasury Department, which has spent $80.7 billion on auto assistance under the TARP program, criticized the inspector's audit and said without government aid both companies faced failure and possible liquidation.

``The Department's auto task force in early 2009 found Detroit-based GM's plan for closing 1,650 dealers by 2014 too slow, according to Barofsky's report. In response, GM identified 1,454 dealerships to be shut down by October, Barofsky said.

``Auburn Hills, Michigan-based Chrysler, which planned to shut almost 1,200 dealerships by 2014, instead decided to immediately close 789 in bankruptcy after Treasury's urgings, according to the report.

``The Treasury Department, using advice received from industry experts,

had encouraged smaller dealership networks to help the carmakers boost sales and better compete with Japan's Toyota Motor Corp. and Honda Motor Co., according to the report.

``GM, which later moved to trim the closers by about half, said in a statement that events described in the report `have since been overtaken by a new GM and a stronger dealer network to match,'. The statement added, `The new GM is also moving forward to improve dealer relations and has already reinstated several hundred.' ''

Reinstated several hundred? After the executive branch forced these people to lose their property without due process of law?

Continuing on with the article.

``General Motors Co. was formed last year out of bankruptcy from the best-performing assets of General Motors Corp. while a group led by Fiat S.p.A. purchased most of the bankrupt Chrysler LLC assets, forming Chrysler Group LLC. Taxpayer aid made the reorganizations possible.''

Not bad enough to put tens of thousands of people out of business and take millions and millions of dollars without due process, we also took taxpayer money. This administration and this majority let it happen.

``Dealer complaints about closures prompted lawmakers, including Senator Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, to ask Barofsky to investigate.

`` `There is substantial confusion, even among dealers themselves, as to how GM and Chrysler selected dealerships for termination,' Rockefeller, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, said in a letter to Barofsky.

``The report found that Chrysler, which made decisions on a case-by- case basis, followed the criteria for targeting dealers for termination. GM was inconsistent and retained more than 1,300 dealers who would have been shut based on sales, consumer satisfaction and profitability, according to the report.''

`` `The fact that Treasury was acting in part as an investor in GM and Chrysler does not insulate Treasury from its responsibility to the broader economy,' Barofsky said. `Treasury should have taken special care given that the auto team's determinations had the potential to contribute to job losses.' Herbert Allison, assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability''--isn't that a misnomer. Anyway, he ``said in a letter included in the report that the restructuring process `was not easy' and required `deep and painful sacrifices' from all parties.

`` `We strongly disagree with many of your statements, your conclusions and the lessons learned,' Allison told Barofsky.

``President Barack Obama signed a law in December that required the automakers to offer binding arbitration to dealers whose outlets were being closed. GM said in March it planned to reinstate 661 dealers after the company began reevaluating the closing of 1,100 retailers.''

And who's going to pay them back for all the property that was stolen from them by this administration? But I have to add stolen legally because Congress didn't stop them; the Supreme Court didn't stop them. So, accordingly, it must have been legal. They weren't stopped by the people that could have.

Well, back to the article: ``Chrysler said that same month it was offering new franchises to 50 dealers who applied for arbitration, in addition to 36 previous offers or new agreements. Chrysler terminated 789 dealers last year and said in January that 409 had applied for arbitration.''

I tell you what, we've heard from dealers who were some of the most profitable, who were doing well, and this administration took them away from them and got a bankruptcy judge to sign off, to his shame. Should be eternal shame, the damage that judge and those auto task force people caused. Shameless.

And yet when the House and Senate asked for information, notes from their meetings, they said, We're not accountable to you. We're a rogue government, is basically what they, in essence, were saying. We're a rogue government; we're czars. We do what we want. You can't touch us. Only the President who put us in these positions can get rid of us, and he likes what we've done. That's the message in essence.

When I hear my friends across the aisle talk about the importance of PAYGO, I was a Republican that voted for that in the previous term because I supported that, and then I come to find out it was a joke. It didn't mean what they were talking about with PAYGO, because every time there's a big bill, including extending the unemployment benefits, they have no intention of paying for that, just creating an exception over and over. Here it comes with a rule. Well, PAYGO suspended, we're not going to apply here.

Well, what good was it ever passing it in the first place? I learned my lesson. I thought that I could believe my friends across the aisle: yeah, we need to vote for PAYGO. People on this side of the aisle said don't believe them. I said, no, they're pushing this PAYGO bill; I'm going to vote for it. I did, and boy, did I learn. There was no seriousness about following through on that.

And it still blows my mind to hear people say over and over that tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans are wrong. They're right. If you do nothing but have tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, it is wrong, should not happen. But how about when you have a tax break for the people paying taxes? That's fair. When it's an across-the-board tax cut, evenly cut across the board, that's fair.

Unfortunately, we are quickly approaching the point where 50 percent or more of Americans will not pay income tax. Historians have warned about this point, that it is the point of no return. It is the line of demarcation. Once you pass it, you can't get back. Only with a miracle from God can a Nation be saved once a representative government has more than 50 percent of its voters not paying the taxes that run the government. When you get past that point, you're done.

It's one of the reasons I came here. It's one of the reasons I don't sleep much, keep working away, trying to figure out ways to hold this place together until we can have a fair deal for everybody.

Heck, I'm the guy that came up with the tax holiday idea. When the Bush administration and Obama administration were talking about, you know, really trillions of dollars to get the economy going, heck, I found out you're talking about trillions, Federal Reserve, trillions, to get the economy going. $1.21 trillion was all that was expected to be paid in personal income tax for year 2008. That's when it hit me, wow, we'd be a whole lot better off if we just said no income tax for 2008. It'd be a lot cheaper than all these bailout programs, and the American public would get their own money, and they would get to decide what car to buy. They would get out of trouble on their mortgages.

But now, this administration--and they can only do it with this Congress getting it done because Congress passes the money bills. This administration, this majority have spent trillions and trillions of dollars; and we are so obligated, there's no way to have a tax holiday right now. We've got us so deeply in debt we can't do that now. It sure would have spurred the economy a whole lot more cheaply than what we've done.

I want to finish tonight by taking, Mr. Speaker, one back to 1755. We know that there are those, including the President, who have said this is not a Christian Nation, and I will not debate that point whether we are or not now, but I know where we came from.

In 1755, George Washington was in his early 20s, 6-foot, three and a half, at least that's what he was measured when he died. Some books say six-two, six-four, six three and a half at his death, big, strapping guy, full of emotion, powerful man, athletic man. He was riding a horse, leading 100 American militiamen. They were accompanying 1,300 British Red Coats in the French and Indian War. They were heading up to Fort Duquesne in Pennsylvania. And the British generals--there were 82 officers including Washington on horseback.

The British generals had decided to go take the path of least resistance, through the woods, through this low area, sort of a ravine, passing through that area. Well, Washington got concerned they could be walking into an ambush. So he asked the general, Let me send some of the men ahead that

know this area, make sure we're not walking into a trap. He was belittled by the general. You think you know more about military than I do? This was a guy that was described as self-taught, described himself that way, George Washington.

So they didn't send Washington's men. They had to check, they walked into an ambush. The Indians, the French opened up, for 2 hours, firefight.

After 2 hours, over 713 British redcoats were dead, they had gone shoulder to shoulder, back to back. They were getting wiped out. The Americans, none were killed, some were wounded, but they had immediately taken cover.

Washington, at the end of 2 hours, was the only officer still on horseback, still fighting. He had had one shot out from under him, at least one. He is still on horseback fighting. Brave, he is fighting, he is calling out orders, incredible man.

All his men were amazed at this gallant, brave, courageous 20- something year old. After 2 hours, he could see the rest of the British were going to be wiped out if they didn't retreat. They retreated.

Two days later he wrote to his mother and brother, he hadn't met Martha yet. He said, in essence, when we got to a place of safety and camped for the night, I took off my hat, shook out my hair. Bullet fragments flew everywhere, had not a scratch on my head. Took off my jacket, I had bullet holes through and through, had not a scratch on me. Truly, divine providence. God protected me.

Fifteen years later, George Washington, he became a hero out of that, because word spread from all the Americans about how courageous and brave this young man was, big, tall, strong, strapping guy, how brave he was, what a fighter he was. He never lost his head. He kept his cool, kept fighting, calling out orders, just a leader of leaders, a man who was quoted as saying, men unused to restraint must be led; they will not be drove.

Fifteen years later, he was going with a friend, Larry Craig, up through that same area. Dr. Craig was with him when he died, unfortunately, but he was going to show him the area that was so famous where this occurred. They got up there where there were Indians there that wanted to sit down and meet with him. The Indian chief, the lead chief, said, we were in these woods 15 years ago, you and I were here. I ordered my men to fire at you before they fired at anyone else, and they did that. We came all this way to meet the man that God would not let die. It used to be in history books and every American history book until 1910 and began to disappear.

I won't debate whether we are a Christian nation now, but Washington knew what we knew, knew what we were.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 10 o'clock and 30 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Wednesday, July 21, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, again it's certainly a privilege to get to speak in this hallowed hall, where so many courageous decisions have been made, and also so many ill-begotten decisions have been made.

Speaking of which, today in our Natural Resources Committee we voted a bill out of committee to deal with the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, disastrous oil spill that hopefully, maybe, prayerfully, maybe, they have gotten the cap on things and are going to be able to stop the oil from destroying lives and livelihoods.

But our bill did some amazing things. For example, the bill we passed in committee--should be coming to the floor now for a vote for the whole Congress--provided $900 million a year for the next 30 years, through 2040, to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. Now, it was pointed out that actually we already own so much land, we have so many Federal parks, national parks that we can't take care of them, and we are not taking care of them.

There is a report that indicated that just in maintenance alone we are $3.7 billion behind on just doing necessary maintenance to keep the Federal parks from falling apart. And we are not taking care of that. And here we voted $27 billion to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. And it's important to understand when the Federal Government buys any land at all, that land is immediately taken off of the tax rolls. And the schools, the local governments, the State governments are prohibited from taxing that land. So that land that has brought so much revenue in taxes to those schools, hired teachers, all that kind of thing, hired local servants, it goes away.

And there for a while when this started 100 years-plus ago, old people were assured locally, well, don't worry, though, like if we take timberland, we will sell timber, and we will give you a cut of the proceeds. Well, that's gone away. So the Federal Government takes land and the local folks get nothing.

Some say, oh, no, but it creates green jobs. Right. And just like Spain has found this year, as the report of the country that this administration and this majority has said repeatedly we want to emulate because they have moved toward a green economy, Spain has found that for every one green job that's been created they lost two jobs. And I am tired of looking into the faces of people who have lost their jobs due to no fault of their own, but due to terrible decisions by the public servants that were elected to come here to Washington and not meddle, not take over the country, but just to make sure there was a level playing field, people had an opportunity, not happiness, but the opportunity to pursue happiness. And what we find repeatedly is when this government, when any government weighs in and steps in and buys or takes over land, money, property, it doesn't really leave anybody happy.

So, I got a little chart here we put together yesterday that shows where we have been on money that was appropriated in the budget, been appropriated to buy land. You've got over $100 million here, not quite $150 million in 2008, and that was with this majority. This majority took over in 2007, 2008, and they had already gone many times from where we were in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007. By 2008, the majority started just going many times over. That's how we got over $100 million to buy land in 2008. And then the same majority in 2009 kicked it up quite a bit more over the $150 million mark. 2010, this year, we are approaching nearly $300 million to buy more land for the Federal Government to sit on. And in this bill that passed committee today, there is this provision for $900 million. Why don't we just call it a billion? You know, you are that close. Doesn't seem like $100 million means that much to this administration. But it's $900 million a year for the next 30 years to buy more land.

I had such great hopes. We were hearing responsible economists telling us, you know, there is a way out of this runaway deficit. Now, $1.5 trillion in 1 year, you know, it took the Bush administration a number of years to do that. And here, boom, 1 year we got it done here with this majority and this administration.

But economists have said, you know, get responsible. Quit frittering away money like it was no issue, like it's growing on trees, because it's growing off of China, and they're saying they about got enough. And we are printing it. Got printing presses running like crazy printing it. We will eventually pay for that with inflation. So the vote today was as if we got all the money in the world. Why not just buy more land?

And what we heard from people who live in the Western half of the country was, you've already taken so much of our State, why do you have to keep taking more and more? One Congressman from Utah, Rob Bishop, had offered a verbal proposal: How about, if

you're so inclined to spend that much money, how about if we just say, okay, we will only buy land from now on from States in which the Federal Government owns less than 20 percent of the State? Because when you look at the Western United States, the red represents land owned by the Federal Government, you begin to understand why people in the West are saying haven't you taken enough of our land?

This country didn't start out owning all the land. And as we've seen over and over, we're not taking care of what we've got. And we've got people who have lost their jobs, and yet last summer we passed a bill for $700 million to buy wild horses more habitat because there had been a bill before that that this majority passed that said you can't do anything about the overgrowing population of wild horses on Federal land. You can't use birth control, you can't sell them off in auctions. So they have proliferated.

And at a time when Americans are being thrown out of their homes in record numbers this year, foreclosures are up higher than ever before, bankruptcies continue to be filed, the folks in charge decide, you know what, let's take care of the wild horses. They matter more to us than all these people getting thrown out of their homes and losing their livelihoods. That's more important.

We have lost our priorities. And I understand it didn't just start in the last year-and-a-half. The President I admire greatly, who is smarter than most people give him credit for, a good man, he listened to maybe the worst Secretary of the Treasury we've ever had, Hank Paulson, as he ran around like Chicken Little saying the financial sky was falling, but give me $700 billion and I can go make my friends rich, and I can fix everything. So Goldman Sachs didn't suffer, AIG didn't suffer. And the American people are suffering.

And I know I've heard people on the other side of the aisle, including this week, talking about, you know, all the rich, fat-cat Republicans, yet if you look at the truth--which is a good thing to look at time to time--you look at the truth and you find out that Wall Street families give to Democrats four times as much as they give to Republicans. You look at BP and you wonder why it took the Federal Government to intervene and call their hand? And they really haven't completely yet. And then you find out they gave much more to this administration than they did to the McCain campaign. They got heavy on Democratic lobbyists from administrations that were Democratic. They'd signed on to the crap-and-trade bill. We're pushing that to be passed.

So this administration, this majority didn't want to buck their good friend that was going to help them push through some things that were not going to help America even though they were going to help BP get richer. So they hated to call their hand, and that's why it took so long. And we're fixing it by buying more land for the Federal Government. How in the world that makes sense.

Now, we also had the committee vote against my amendment that was very important, protecting our homeland. My amendment to the bill was very simple, and it arose out of finding out during hearings that there was only one entity within the Mines and Minerals Management Service that was allowed to be unionized, and that was the offshore inspectors. Unionized. Well, union contracts usually have restrictions on travel, restrictions on how much that can be worked, things like that. And it reminded me a great deal of the job of sentry. And in mock war games when I was in the Army, I sat sentry. I wasn't about to go to sleep, be court-martialed for that, at least an article 15 punishment because you're it. You're the protection for the rest of the people there. You're supposed to be standing guard. That's what our offshore inspectors are. And they're unionized.

And we were told by the Director of MMS that the real check of how we can be so sure that they're doing their job, we send them out in pairs. And we found out the last pair of offshore inspectors that went to the Deepwater Horizon rig before it blew was a father-and-son team. Yeah. So much for checks and balances. But that's what we got.

So my amendment just said for people who are offshore, deepwater rig inspectors, you can't strike and you can't threaten to strike. Just like if you're in the military, you can't go on strike. You're protecting the country. Our offshore inspectors are what stand between our homeland and environmental disaster and the loss of lives as we had on the Deepwater Horizon rig. And all but one Democrat voted against my amendment, so our offshore inspectors can strike, can get out there on a rig and say, ``You know what? I'm what stands between our homeland and disaster, and either you give me what I want or I'm going on strike and you'll have no protection. And who knows, you may have another Deepwater Horizon happen because I'm not checking anything.''

If you've got a problem with your contract, then get your Congress, get others to help if you're working for the Federal Government. But if you're not working for the Federal Government as a government employee and yet at the same time you are the protection for a country, you shouldn't be able to strike. And in this case, even though MMS had become basically, we're told, a stagnant pond that stunk it up because of the cozy relationship between the people that worked there and Big Oil, it had to be divided into three parts.

Well, we haven't found out how it's going to work out. I tried to find out what else was going to be unionized once it was split into three parts, was told they didn't know, didn't know how exactly it was going to come out. But from east Texas, we often find if you want to fix a stagnant, stinking pond, it doesn't help if you just divide it up into three parts. You've got to do something to fix it, and we haven't seen that happen.

And, in fact, when we found out that a person involved in the leases that may have critical testimony as to why the price adjustment language was pulled out of the 1998-1999 leases that have now cost the Federal Treasury billions of dollars--1998-1999, under the Clinton administration. You want to know why they pulled that language out? It made billions extra for the oil companies, but it cost our treasury billions, because that language is normally in there.

Why did they dictate that it be pulled out? And I was told at a hearing by the Inspector General, well, I wasn't able to talk to people that were critical into finding out why they pulled that language out because they've left government service. When the Clinton administration left, they left. And then after hearing President Obama talk about the cozy relationship between the people in the government managing minerals and Big Oil, I had a hunch and checked. And sure enough, that person, one of the people I was told had been involved and had direct knowledge about the language being pulled that cost us so many billions of dollars, made it for companies like BP, found out she'd gone to work for British Petroleum when she left the Clinton administration. And in June of last year, she came back to work for the same people that managed the affairs of British Petroleum offshore.

Yep, the President knew what he was talking about. He has helped create a cozy relationship between those who were supposed to keep Big Oil honest and Big Oil.

And we find out BP had 800 or so safety violations. And this administration dealt with those in a strong way--by giving them a safety award for a wonderful safety record. And yet they were apparently the only company that had that horrible safety record when compared with Exxon and others that had one or zero violations.

You wonder why was BP entitled to a safety award, and then you find out who they gave most of their contributions to in the election. You find out they were going to support bills that the administration wanted pushed through when other big oil companies would not. So you begin to understand. They felt bullet proof. They felt like they had such good friends in the administration and in the majority that certainly nobody would ever throw them under the bus. Well, guess what? When the public heat got hot enough, they got thrown under the bus.

And how did we deal with it today? We passed a bill through committee to

appropriate $900 million a year for the next 30 years to buy more Federal land. I haven't figured out how that solves the problem in the gulf. And, in fact, it creates a worse problem because, as we've already seen from this administration, they do not like to lease land for drilling.

And, in fact, in the prior administration, 7 years before this administration took office, a leasing process was begun to lease land in the Utah, Wyoming, Colorado area. And it took 7 years to get to the point that companies would be in a position to make a knowing bid, and the bid could be chosen, the high bid, for the lease. Those leases, after that 7 years, were let at the end of 2008. Immediately, Secretary Salazar came in and ordered that the checks not be cashed and then ordered that they be returned, that he was not going to allow the leases that took 7 years to come into being to exist because they were done at, in his words, the midnight hour.

For 7 years, he calls it the midnight hour, as the Bush administration left. So there went one source of oil that was going to help eliminate the need for deepwater drilling, and we've seen that happening over and over.

Last year, as I understand, the second most rich deposit of uranium was declared off limits. It came through our committee. That was a bill we voted out to put our second best source of uranium off limits, and that all at a time when we're trying to figure out ways how to get off carbon-based fuels, and nuclear should be one of those ways that we utilize, especially when you find out, as we have in our committee, that 90 percent of our uranium we're using in our nuclear plants right now is imported, and yet we have uranium that could be used for that.

God has so richly blessed this country with resources, when you take them all into consideration, like no nation in the world. When you look at all the natural resources that would produce energy, nobody comes close to this little country where we've had until more recently an experiment, as the Founders called it, in a democratic Republic, in an elected representative government.

We appropriated $900 million a year for the next 30 years to buy land to put more of it off limits. You know, we heard when gasoline went to $4 a gallon that actually there is land about 500 square miles in this country where within a 500-square-mile area, from the thicker tar sands, if oil is $80 a barrel, they can do it and be able to make money, produce maybe 1 trillion barrels of oil. We've also heard in the entire Middle East there may only be 1 to 3 trillion barrels of oil; and yet, since then, we've heard there may be 3 to 5 trillion barrels of oil in that same area, as long as oil is $80 a barrel or higher.

When you start realizing that, you go Why are we not like 90 percent effective in providing all our own energy? Why do we continue to fund people that hate us like Chavez and countries in the Middle East who are harboring terrorists and in which terrorists are farm fed and farm grown.

I mentioned yesterday here on the floor about Yemen. I just wonder how many New Englanders, how many people who live in Boston know that this year for the first time they've gotten rid of their contract for liquid natural gas, liquefied natural gas from areas that are very friendly to us, some in the Caribbean. That's been done away with, and now the contract for the next 20 years is with Yemen. Now, I know they're nice folks. I've met some nice folks from Yemen, but they also happen to harbor terrorists; and when people from Guantanamo were released to Yemen, they ended up getting away and those terrorists are at large, maybe back here in the United States now.

Another thing, of course, that occurred today, in addition to this massive appropriation that came out of committee, we find out the Senate has voted to send the so-called financial reform bill to the President for signature to come into law. Breaks my heart. Now, there's some things in there that are good reform rules and changes that needed to be done, but there are also poison pills in that bill.

For example, the systemic risk council in which we have some Federal, unelected, unconfirmed by anybody in Congress bureaucrats who are going to decide what businesses they deem to be a systemic risk and, therefore, businesses that the Federal Government will never let fail.

What happened to America? We used to be the land of the free. When the government gets to pick and choose, we're going to let your business be the one that lives because nobody can compete effectively with a business that can run in the red because they know the government will not let them fail because other businesses can't run in the red. They have to declare bankruptcy. So what used to be the land of the free has become the land of the government's hand-picked winners and hand-picked losers. We're not going to allow the opportunity to sink or swim as God as given us, as we've been endowed with by our Creator, because our government has now come to the point where it's decided we're not going to let you decide who wins by how hard you work and how smart you work; we are going to pick winners and losers with our systemic risk council.

There are things in there, once again, they're going to cripple community banks who have suffered enough because of the greed, in some cases avarice, displayed in some of the investment banks. It nearly brought the finances to a standstill. Community banks have just been lumped in with them, and they've been hurt by the regulators and it is tragic.

So much for the financial deform bill because it deforms the market that used to exist, and this government has gotten so busy picking winners and losers and meddling and telling car makers what kind of cars to make and exactly what they've got to do to make them, how to make them, what they can do to make them, and how they got to be when they're finished. We've gotten so busy into the minutia of things that we shouldn't be involved in that the government--we haven't done our jobs, because if we had there would never have been somebody that was able to bilk people out of $50 billion of their life savings so they could squander it on himself. There were plenty of red flags that went up, but we were too busy as a government meddling to actually do the job to make sure everyone has a level playing field, everybody has an opportunity and people are playing fair, and when they're not playing fairly we punish them.

That's what government is supposed to do; and if as the Founders you look at Romans 13:1-4, you see that as the Founders believed, government's ordained by God. And if you believe as philosophers have pointed out that a democracy ensures that a people are governed no better than they deserve, then you see that we get what we deserve.

So for generations they have been deserving of more opportunity than the last generation before them, and now we come to a place where 70 percent of adults in America when polled say they don't believe their children will have as good a life, as good opportunities as they've had. That has never been the case in American history that a majority of Americans would say that. We've lost our way.

But if you're concerned about the detainees in Guantanamo, there's good news. We've been releasing detainees. And this is a report from this year: it's believed that roughly 20 percent of the 560 detainees released from Guantanamo are back on the terror front lines.

Interesting, huh?

But I really like this story about Abdullah Massoud. He came to Guantanamo, as the House panel was told previously, he came to us without one leg from about the knee down, and we fitted him with a prosthetic leg before he left while he was in U.S. custody. So the leg, this report indicates, the artificial limb cost American taxpayers between $50,000 and $75,000. But it was nowhere to be found after Massoud had directed a homicide attack that killed 31 people, and then two months later blew himself up to avoid capture. Now, that was in 2005 that he had been released and did that, so you would think that a smart administration would come in and learn from mistakes of prior administrations.

We heard friends across the aisle over here say over and over, you got to stop deficit spending, and our friends across the aisle won the majority in 2006 for

that very reason. Republicans were deficit spending. Now by a margin of about 8 to 1 or 10 to 1 that has been increased in deficit spending for one year. Extraordinary.

Well, then we get back to the issue of morality, because this is what it all comes back to. As Chuck Colson said previously, when you demand the morals of Woodstock, you are going to have to expect some Columbines.

Think about it. When the morality that is demanded by those in charge is one that says if it feels good, do it, then somewhere you are going to have some nut that thinks it might be interesting to find out how it feels to kill people. It might feel good, so let's do it. You can't demand the morality of Woodstock and not expect some terrible tragedies to be wrought from that.

That can also be pointed in the direction of the loss of life of the unborn. We used to talk in terms of over 40 million abortions. Now we are talking about over 50 million abortions.

So we have got to get back to a morality that recognizes there is something more important than ourselves, and it is not the government. It is that we have been endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and unless we are willing to fight for our endowment, to fight for our inheritance, then, as so many generations, so many countries before us, we lose that for which so many paid the ultimate price. We have an obligation as a government to protect those who have entrusted us with this responsibility.

When I was a judge, one of the jobs was to qualify people for jury duty for anything from significant civil cases to capital murder cases. There were some disqualifications listed in statute, and many times, thank goodness, not that often, but over my 10 years I would have people come in and say, I won't be able to be qualified to be on a jury because I am a Christian, and I am not supposed to judge lest I be judged, and I am supposed to turn the other cheek.

What they didn't understand is, and I never sought to use my position to force my beliefs on someone else, but if they would read their scripture more carefully, they would find out as individuals, we are to forgive and turn the other cheek, but the government is given the responsibility that no individual has.

As Romans talks about, God has given the sword, and the government is his minister to punish evil. And if you do evil, be afraid, because that sword is not given in vain.

You have to understand our history, and that is where maybe we begin to fall down, when people didn't learn our history, and they didn't find out that the Founders were so excited, 1775, 1776, especially around the time of the Declaration, July 4, 1776, because they said we have within our grasp something that philosophers have only dreamed about. We have the chance to govern ourselves.

In England they had a parliament, but the king could throw them out at any time, and did. This was going to be a nation for the first time not like Rome, where there was a Caesar, but where people would govern themselves. And that sword would be given not to a Caesar, not to a king, not to a duke, but to the people, we the people.

So a method of government was set up such that the people as the government would hire servants to come in and do what they hired them to do, and if they didn't do what they were hired to do and said they would do, were told to do, then they could be fired and replaced by other servants, public servants, to do what the government, the people, we the people, said must be done.

So when citizens of this country, these United States, are called for jury duty and they refuse to serve and they try to do so on the basis of saying, well, I am a Christian, then they have rejected Romans, they have rejected teaching in both the Old and New Testament, they have rejected the sword, the power that was ordained and put in their hand, and said I am not going to do my job. I reject the power that God has placed at my disposal to protect my country.

And when people don't go out and vote, it is the same thing. They are rejecting the power that was put in their hand to govern this country. And when they don't support good candidates, they are rejecting the power that was put in their hands to hire their own servants to carry out their will. And when they don't run for office when they feel that calling to do so, the same thing. They can't say they are an obedient Christian, the way I read scripture and the way so many before us in the founding of this country read it, if they are willing to walk away from that power that is put in their hand to govern this country by hiring servants and firing servants when they don't do their jobs.

Now, I have been told by my staff, you have to be careful talking about those things, because you have an election every 2 years. Somebody could come in and say, okay, I am using your words against you. The people have the right to hire and fire, and so I am saying it is time to fire you.

Well, I am not afraid of that, because I believe I am doing what my district hired me to do. I serve at their pleasure and at their will, and if they say I am not doing the proper job because I believe in this little experiment in elected representative government, this incredible gift that this Nation was given so long ago and has fought to keep ever since, I believe in it to the point where, yes, it will hurt to be defeated, it will hurt your pride. But I can also say thank the Lord, I know there is something else for me to do.

The people, for good, for bad, in a democracy, get the government they deserve. And I think it is too important that people understand that to worry about somebody using my own words against me. Come on and use them, and I will run on my record.

Speaking of the record, we were talking about Guantanamo and people-- detainees--that have been released. This article was incredibly good news. The headline in the New York Times said, ``Five Charged in 9/11 Attacks Seek to Plead Guilty.'' Hallelujah. What great news that is.

From Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ``The five Guantanamo detainees charged with coordinating the September 11th attacks told a military judge on Monday that they wanted to confess in full, a move that seemed to challenge the government to put them to death. That is such great news. Such great news.

Unfortunately, that was on December 9, 2008. December 9, 2008, the five people alive still most responsible for the killing--the wanton, lustful, murderous killing--of over 3,000 people in New York City and in the Pentagon were ready to plead guilty, and this administration came in and snatched defeat for justice from the jaws of victory. It just seems like somebody owes an apology to the victims' families from 9/11 for taking a victory and justice being done and throwing it away, costing millions--some project hundreds of millions, maybe billions--to try these terrorists who, 2 years ago, were ready to plead guilty, and now, with the encouragement of this administration, are ready to play games. Very tragic.

As the last minutes come to an end for this session of Congress, for today, which will be the last for this week, I want to close as I try to normally do by pointing to some history so that, Mr. Speaker, people will understand where we came from. There is no way to really chart a good path of where you're going in the future unless you honestly know where you've been without it being a deception.

There are those who continue to say that George Washington was not a religious man, that he was a deist, didn't really believe in religion, didn't practice religion; and those are great lies. Anyone can go read the huge book George Washington's Sacred Fire written by the same guy that wrote this, Peter Lillback, over in Philadelphia.

Here is a letter, text written by the moderator of the Presbyterian General Assembly, Rev. John Rodgers, in his correspondence with Washington during the war about giving away Bibles to the American troops. The Presbyterians as a group wrote:

``We adore Almighty God, the author of every perfect gift, who hath endued you''--talking about George Washington--``with such a rare and happy assemblage of talents as hath rendered you equally necessary to your country in war and in peace; the influence of your personal character moderates the divisions of political parties.''

He had such integrity and character that it moderated through all the squabbles between the parties. They say on further:

``A steady, uniform, avowed friend of the Christian religion, who has commenced his administration in rational and exalted sentiments of piety, and who in his private conduct adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ.'' That's not a deist.

But, anyway, the letter says Washington ``adorns the doctrines of the Gospel of Christ, and on the most public and solemn occasions devoutly acknowledges the government of divine Providence.'' That's where we came from. They recognized his character. I read yesterday where Washington's own order said that there could be no higher compliment to the soldiers than that they put on Christian qualities, the qualities of a Christian.

In June of 1985 in a decision, Wallace v. Jaffree, unfortunately it was in dissent, but William Rehnquist pointed out the deception that was being talked about by Lillback in the Wall of Misconception, and these are Rehnquist's words:

``The wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.''

And in the Supreme Court decision, Lynch v. Donnelly, the decision itself actually said:

``The Constitution does not require complete separation of church and state. It affirmatively mandates accommodation, not mere tolerance, of all religions, and forbids hostility toward any.'' And yet we find today as we dealt with hate crime issues, the only group which it is becoming lawful and unfortunate to show prejudice against are Christians. The same people our Founders kept talking about.

Patrick Henry correctly warned future Americans the following:

``Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is impossible that a nation of infidels or idolators should be a nation of free men. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains.''

John Adams wrote, August 28, 1811:

``Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism''--and that doesn't mean our Republican Party at all; it means the system where we have elected Representatives--``they are the foundations not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society.'' This is just so important that people understand these things.

Harry Truman stated this:

``The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount.'' And isn't it ironic, when this Hall of Representatives was built and decorated, above every door up in the gallery is a profile of all of those that our predecessors believed were the greatest lawgivers of all time. The greatest.

Hammurabi. Some say, why is Napoleon up there? The Napoleonic Code. The Justinian Code, of course. But in the middle is the only face that's not a side profile and that is because he was considered to be the greatest lawgiver of all time. As it says under his face, Moses. That's the Moses Truman was talking about.

Truman goes on:

``The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the State.''

John F. Kennedy said, ``The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.''

Supreme Court Justice Douglas remarked, ``We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.''

James Madison said in November of 1825:

``The belief in a God all powerful, wise and good is so essential to the moral order of the world and to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters and capacities to be impressed with it.''

Our history is so full of such incredible quotes. But those words that are carved into the Jefferson Memorial, so powerful, are these: ``God who gave us life gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a Nation be thought secure when we have removed from their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep forever.''

That's why we begin every session every day in this Congress with prayer led by a minister from that podium, going back to the unanimous motion by Benjamin Franklin, that unless the Lord build a house, they labor in vain that build it. If we have the morals of Woodstock, we can expect more tragedies. We can expect more greed and more avarice, more lawlessness, and more rights to be usurped by the servants that were elected and selected and hired. And we owe the future generations so much better than that.

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

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 5 o'clock and 22 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until Monday, July 19, 2010, at 12:30 p.m., for morning-hour debate.

Madam Speaker, it is always an honor and privilege to speak on the floor of the House of Representatives where so much history has been made. There are a number of things we need to cover.

I had some interesting things going on in the Natural Resources Committee today because we are taking up legislation as a result of the oil spill. Those pesky words keep resurfacing, ``never let a crisis go to waste,'' and it appears that is what is happening here.

We had 11 people lose their lives in the Deepwater Horizon explosion. Many thousands may lose their livelihood. We know that it is the worst environmental accident we have had in the United States.

It has been amazing that so little had been done to try to assist from the Federal Government. Eventually the Coast Guard came on board, but three days after this terrible accident, it is nations like the Netherlands that have extraordinary expertise in building barrier islands, in actually taking in water and separating out the oil, people that had all these wonderful inventions and ideas and things that would help capture the oil, should have all been utilized because so many of them have merit, and yet the Coast Guard kept turning them away. Kevin Costner had spent $10 million of his own money to see this thing developed that would separate oil and water and do so in large numbers, but didn't get a lot of attention.

So I know there were a lot of pressing things to do. There were golf courses to be played, there were things that had to be done, parties that had to be attended. All the while the oil kept coming up and the environment kept suffering, wildlife kept suffering.

And then when we eventually find out, well, actually there was a reason. British Petroleum thought they were bulletproof. They thought they could have more safety violations, hundreds of times more safety violations than other oil companies drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and be immune from having the administration come down on it.

It is understandable now, once we got into it. They were supportive of the administration's crap-and-trade bill. In

fact, as the Deepwater Horizon rig was sinking, Senator Kerry down the hall was making negotiations making sure BP was still on board with the crap-and-trade bill. The White House counted them as being supportive of the bill. And they, of course, have so many lobbyists. Their best lobbyists are all from Democratic administrations. They felt like they were bulletproof.

So then it begins to explain why it took so long to finally get on to BP and fuss at them, because America had had enough. They had seen the kind of poor safety record BP had.

So BP got thrown under the bus, much to their apparent surprise, after all their support. They've given heavily to the President's campaign. So I'm sure they were surprised when they ultimately were thrown under the bus.

But as a result of that terrible tragedy there are some laws that are being voted out of committee. We had debate on them for several hours today. And that's as it should be. A bill shouldn't come to the floor that is so sweeping unless it goes through proper committee channels. Didn't go through subcommittee, but we had a long hearing on it today. And it will be voted on in the morning. All the votes were rolled so that they'll take place in the morning. It's just hard to believe that out of a crisis like the gulf oil spill, that people would take advantage of that and want to pork up the bill. Shocking. Shocking.

One of the things that economists have proposed across the country that would help get us on track is that--financially, that is, on track--is that is we have got to get out of the mentality of constantly buying more and more and more and more land. The Federal Government seems to want to take over the country, or at least those States that often vote heavily Republican. The colleagues across the aisle want to buy more and more of the land.

So I had a chart here of what the West looks like, the Western part of the United States, how much of it we have in red that is owned by the United States. That is, by the United States Government. So you get an idea. Here is the Western United States. The red parts are those that are owned by our Federal Government. And the Federal Government wants more. We have had information on the amount of money that our Federal Government has been spending in the past on buying land, and it's been rather shocking to see the numbers. Here we have the amount of money that was allocated in 2008 for the Federal Government to spend on buying more land in the United States for the Federal Government to take over. It's important to understand that when the Federal Government takes over land, it means the schools in that vicinity, the local governments in that vicinity get nothing. Because all of the land, when the Federal Government takes it, is removed from the tax rolls. It cannot be taxed. Schools, cities, counties, States cannot tax the Federal Government once it takes over the land.

So it makes sense that you want to be cautious in having the Federal Government take over more and more land in this country. In fact, that's what economists have said. You have got to get out of the mentality of continuing to buy land. Start selling some. Let's get on track to get rid of our deficit. Quit buying land. And it turns out that right now we're $3.7 billion behind in the projects that are needed to keep up the existing Federal land and Federal parks that we have right now. Our parks are going to squalor in many places. Places that people used to love to visit are just being let go because the money is not there to take care of it. Why? Because we keep spending money on buying more and more land and locking that land up so it cannot be used for any purpose.

That's one of the problems we've got down with the border between Arizona--a U.S. border--and Mexico. Thirty-two miles of that border are wilderness, national park, which means the Border Patrol are the only ones that can't take--or U.S. Federal agents are the only ones that can't take vehicles in there. It's against the law. They commit a crime if they do that. But it doesn't stop the drug smugglers, the illegal alien smugglers from taking vehicles across there. And so that's what happens. They can have mechanical instruments. But even if you need to bring a helicopter in to lift out somebody that's been shot, like a Border Patrol Agent, which has happened, the helicopter can't land. Illegal aliens, drug smugglers, they can drive right by them, but our Border Patrol cannot go in there because it's a national park wilderness area. That's why I've got a bill to try to do something about that, but apparently it's not going to see the light of day.

So here we have in 2008, the last year of the Bush Presidency. But since all appropriations originate in the House of Representatives, no matter what the President wants to do, it originates here, and if you check back in 2004, 2005, 2006, it was a fraction of a hundred million dollars. Well, in 2008 it was a little over a hundred million dollars. In 2009, it was still about $150 million or so, according to the chart. And then in 2010, this year, from last year's appropriation, it shot up to nearly $300 million. And for next year it's already--what is being laid out for next year's land acquisitions is nearly $400 million.

So here we are, in the worst budget crunch we have ever had, and what happens? For the first time since 1974, Congress is not going to have a budget. Apparently, it was considered too politically difficult for people to come in and vote for a budget that would expand costs as apparently the desire is to have done. So here you have a tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico, still ongoing. Hopefully, the cap is going to hold. But that remains to be seen. There's still so much damage.

And since we're dealing with a time when those in control do not want to let a good crisis go to waste without taking advantage of it, in the legislation that we debated today and that will apparently pass in the morning around 9:15, we're going to stick in $900 million for land acquisition. That's in the committee, July, 2010. That's what is apparently going to happen because the majority will have the votes. They're going to appropriate in an authorization bill $9 million to buy more land, as if our parks are not in enough trouble because all of this money keeps going for more and more land acquisition. We're going to not cut spending on land acquisition and just even have a moratorium just for a little while. Let this country catch its breath.

We're looking at a $1.5 trillion deficit for 1 year. My first year here, I kept hearing people across the aisle talking about how $100 billion, $200 billion was an outrage for a deficit in 1 year. And, you know what? They were right. There shouldn't have been $100 billion and $200 billion deficit for 1 year. And that's why people voted them into the majority in November 2006.

Yet here we go this year. The same people have no problem with a $1.5 trillion deficit in 1 year because of all the jobs that it apparently, they think, is creating. Well, it did. For June, 431,000 jobs were created. Unfortunately, 411,000 of them were temporary census jobs.

So here's our chart. This is what will pass tomorrow because me and my friends simply do not have enough votes to keep it from passing. They're going to pork up this bill to deal with the gulf oil crisis by sticking $900 million of pork in there to buy more land for the Federal Government to own, to put local governments, local schools, State governments in a difficult situation because they'll never be able to generate any tax dollars or revenue from that land once the Federal Government takes it over.

And so with that in mind, we look back at the chart again, the map, that shows the western part of the United States with that in red, representing areas that the Federal Government already owns. But apparently to those in charge right now, it's not enough. It's not enough to own nearly all of Nevada. It's not enough to own 70 percent of Utah. It's not enough to own most of Idaho, Arizona, Wyoming. So tomorrow, $900 million will be appropriated in this bill about the gulf oil crisis to buy more Federal land that will hurt more local governments and more local schools. It's just hard to fathom. It is hard to believe that this is going to happen tomorrow, but we simply do not have enough votes in our minority to keep that kind of pork from being added to a bill emanating from a crisis.

You know, we've already heard from people, families of victims who were

killed on Deepwater Horizon, out begging, Please do not have a moratorium, because they knew their friends would be out of work, other family members would be out of work. I don't have a problem if you want to shut down every one of BP's offshore rigs until we can be sure that they are safe. But when, as we heard in the hearing today, BP had had 800 safety violations to, in some cases, none for other oil companies in the same period, one for other oil companies in the same period, they had 800, so what did this administration do? They gave them an award for safety. That's right. They didn't fine them. They gave them an award for safety.

But when you understand they were embracing a tax, a gas tax, they were embracing so many of the bills this administration was pushing forward that most in the country didn't support, they didn't want to lose their good friend BP, and that's why it took them so long to throw them under the bus. Well, that's one area in which we're throwing away a lot of money. It's pretty amazing, pretty outrageous.

Another area is in our foreign assistance programs. Now, this is my third term here. In each of my three terms, I have filed a bill. This is no exception. It's H.R. 4636. I have now filed for a discharge petition. So hopefully we can get enough folks that will sign on to the discharge petition to force this bill to the floor for an up-or-down vote, because we haven't been able to get one. This is a very simple bill. In essence, it says--well, it's entitled the United Nations Voting Accountability Act. It is very simple. Any nation that votes against the United States' position more than half the time on contested votes in the United Nations will receive no Federal assistance from our government to theirs. Very simple. And as I have said before, you don't want to have to pay people to hate you. They'll do it for free. Why pay them to hate you when they'll do it for free?

So we pulled the report for this year--because each year a report comes out; it has to come out by March 31 of each year--of all of the votes, the contested votes from the year before so that we could get some idea of who is voting with us, how often, who we're paying to hate us.

For example, in 2008, there was $105 million given to Bangladesh. They voted against the U.S. position 82.4 percent of the time in 2008 and 80 percent of the time in 2009.

We gave millions to Belarus, a former state in the Soviet Union, and they voted against us in 2008 84.6 percent of the time, and this past year voted 75 percent of the time against the U.S. interests and position.

You've got Bolivia down in South America. We've given them over $100 million. That was in 2008. As I understand, it was a great deal more than that in 2009. They were our great ally and were only voting against us 85.2 percent of the time in 2008. And it got a little better in 2009. Only 70 percent of the time they voted against the country that provided them over $100 million in aid. We're paying them to hate us.

Brazil. Of course we've heard recently about the $2 billion that we're loaning to Brazil to develop their deepwater territories, their deepwater offshore drilling program. And lo and behold, it turns out apparently George Soros' biggest personal investment is in a company that does that drilling, so we provided $2 billion to help our dear friend George Soros make that much more money from his biggest investment, personally. And so Brazil, we loaned them millions--I'm sorry. We loaned them billions, give them millions, and they voted against us in 2008 70.7 percent of the time and against us last year in 2009 62.5 percent of the time.

You've got Cambodia, where lots of Americans lost their lives fighting for freedom for the people. We let them out from under all the murderous regimes that have followed. But with tens of millions of dollars, they voted against us 84 percent of the time in 2008 and 62.5 percent of the time in 2009. We are still just pouring money into them.

Now, I have been talking to them about this ever since I came on into Congress in 2005, and it makes me think that maybe we're doing some good, because of all the hundreds of millions we've given to Colombia, in 2008, they voted against the U.S. position 80 percent of the time. Last year, it was 40 percent of the time. So they would not be adversely affected by this bill because they have found their way clear to support us.

Most people think with the embargo sanctions against Cuba, that's taken care of. Not true. In 2008 alone, we gave $45 million in aid to Cuba when they voted against us in the U.N. 87.8 percent of the time. And in 2009, they got even higher, up to 90 percent of the time.

Now, the Republic of the Congo in 2008 got $103 million, $104 million, and for some reason, that same year they only voted against us 7 percent of the time. This year, I was under the impression they got even more money, but they voted against us 71 percent of the time. So from 7 percent to a 71.5 percent turnaround there.

You've got Dominican Republic. Give them tens of millions of dollars. They voted against us 80.5 percent of the time in '08, 60 percent of the time in '09.

Egypt gets a couple of billion dollars, in essence, but they voted against us in the U.N. against our position 93.3 percent of the time in '08, and in '09, 81.8 percent of the time.

Got Ethiopia. We gave $455 million in '08. They voted against us to show their gratitude 82.9 percent of the time in the U.N. in '08, and 83.3 percent in '09.

Again, you don't have to pay people to hate you. They'll do it for free.

India, $99 million that we gave away as Federal assistance to India in 2008. They voted against us 76.3 percent of the time. That number, I think, may have risen and now so has their opposition to anything we hold dear. They're now up to 88.9 percent of the time in 2009, voting against us.

India is benefiting from our high corporate taxes. They're benefiting from the threat of the crap-and-trade bill passing. They're benefiting from the health care bill that just got passed because employers, big manufacturers are saying, we've got to go where the country doesn't hate us being there so much. We're going to India, we're going to China, we're going to South America.

So a lot of these countries we're pouring money into that we don't have, that we're having to borrow from China, all the while they're opposing us every step of the way.

You've got Indonesia, 189, basically $190 million simply in foreign aid, not counting the other benefits we've given them. And yet they opposed us 84.9 percent of the time in the U.N. in '08, and 80 percent of the time in '09.

Pouring money into these countries that we don't have, that we're having to borrow, while people are out of work, hurting, searching for jobs, hoping for the economy to turn around, and something besides temporary census jobs to become available, and this is what they find out.

Jordan, in 2008 got $687 million, simply in aid, and they voted against us 91.7 percent of the time in '08 and 60 percent of the time in '09.

Now, Mexico, this shows $50 million in foreign aid in '08. But also, of course, we had, I believe, $500 million that we provided them to assist them in their defense effort. And as a result, we have the President of Mexico come in here and chastise us for having immigration laws that he says promote racism; laws like that passed in Arizona that simply are begging to have our laws enforced.

Well, Mexico voted against us 75.9 percent of the time in '08. But in '09 that dropped to 36.4 percent of the time, so apparently we're buying some love and affection there.

Nicaragua, they've got tens of millions of dollars each year, yet they voted against us in '08, 84.7 percent of the time, and against our positions 80 percent of the time in '09.

You've got Nigeria, $486 million they received in 2008, simply in foreign aid, not counting other types of aid; '08 they voted against us that same year 82.7 percent of the time in the U.N., and against our position 63.6 percent of the time in 2009.

Pakistan, that we keep hoping is going to make a turn for the better, well, in 2008, simply in foreign aid, we gave them $737 million. They voted against our position 81.1 percent of the time in '08; 87.5 percent of the time in '09.

Got the Philippines. They wanted to be completely shed of the United

States, didn't want anything to do with us. Well, almost nothing to do with us. They did want our hundred-plus million dollars that we will give them, as we did in 2008, while they voted against our position in the U.N. 81.2 percent of the time in '08; 62.5 percent of the time in '09.

Philippines have people there, many of whom are very dear to the United States. But as a separate independent nation, they're free to make their own decisions, love us or hate us. But we shouldn't have to pay people to hate us when they're willing to do it for free.

Russia, hard to believe, but we gave them $81 million in foreign aid in 2008, and they voted against us 82.9 percent of the time in '08. Did a little better, 66.7 percent of the time they were against our position in '09.

South Africa, $574 million in '08 we gave, only in foreign aid, not counting other types of aid. They voted against us, our positions, 84.5 percent of the time in 2008, and against our position 66.7 percent of the time in 2009.

Sudan, gave them $337 million in 2008, they voted against us to show their gratitude 91.9 percent of the time in 2008, and a clear 90 percent of the time in 2009.

You've got Uganda. We gave them $350 million, simply in foreign aid, not counting all the other types of assistance in 2008. They showed their gratitude by voting against our position 82.3 percent of the time in '08; 62.5 percent in '09.

Venezuela. I bet most people didn't know we were giving Venezuela foreign aid, but we did. This majority voted to give them around $10 million in 2008. Regardless who is in the White House, the Congress is the one that votes appropriations. Venezuela got basically $10 million, simply in foreign aid, and of course they showed their love and affection for the United States by voting against us in opposition, 86.1 percent of the time in '08 and 81.8 percent of the time in '09.

You've got Vietnam. Vietnam, we've gotten so friendly with, they got over $100 million of U.S. taxpayer money. Actually, I'm sure it's borrowed money from China that our grandchildren will pay the interest on, and pay the principal as well, unless they have to declare bankruptcy as a nation because of our gluttony. But Vietnam, we gave away over $100 million to them, and their gratitude was expressed by voting against the things we believe in 94.5 percent of the time in '08, and 75 percent of the time in '09.

Yemen. Yemen. Now, this was just giveaway money here. It's $16 million, $17 million just as foreign aid to Yemen in 2008. Showed their appreciation by voting against our position 92.8 percent of the time in 2008, 71.4 percent in 2009.

But Yemen, not only did they get millions and millions of dollars simply in foreign aid from the United States, New England gave them a real boon. New England, just found out in the last few weeks, this year New England gave them a contract to provide liquid natural gas for the next 20 years to Yemen.

Now, in order for Yemen to get that contract we had to snub our nose at countries who have been very supportive and have been friends, including some in the Caribbean. We snubbed our nose at our friends, and New England gives what will result in incredible amounts of money to Yemen for liquid natural gas.

At the same time, we were having hearings, been having hearings in the Natural Resources Committee to try to hamper hydraulic fracking. By the use of hydraulic fracking, we have been able to secure over 100 years' reserves of natural gas that we could be using, our own natural gas. Dan Boren across the aisle has a wonderful bill that would encourage making cars that run on natural gas more widespread, more easy to get, and trying to move some of our country over to natural gas vehicles because we have so much of it. Of course if we eliminate hydraulic fracking, which by the way has never been shown to have polluted drinking water--we have had hearings on that--there is no need for the Federal Government to get in and try to oppose hydraulic fracking. Many States that have it regulate it themselves, and they have done a good job in controlling that, and will continue for the future.

As one of the Members of Congress from Louisiana said today, if you were to eliminate hydraulic fracking, you would do more damage to Louisiana and its economy and people's livelihoods than this environmental disaster will do. Yet Yemen got this massive contract to provide liquefied natural gas to New England.

That means big, huge ships carrying massive amounts of liquefied natural gas. In other words, a rather large bomb will be floating in routinely to Boston Harbor. And I found a quote from the Coast Guard where they indicate, gee, one of their biggest concerns, since Yemen has proved to be home of so many terrorists that want to destroy our way of life, one of their biggest jobs is going to try to make sure there is not one stowaway somewhere on that Yemen tanker that may set the thing off and wipe out much of Boston in the process. I wonder if the people of Boston knew that that was going on, that not only were we giving away so many millions to Yemen--of course, some may remember that just recently people were allowed to leave Guantanamo Bay, went to Yemen, and Yemen of course ended up seeing them take off and we don't know where they are anymore. Heck, they may be back here coming across our Mexican border, since we haven't secured that.

So, going back to my bill, 4636, I am going to keep bringing it up, and we will have a discharge petition and give people on both sides of the aisle an opportunity to sign that and bring that to the floor for a vote. That will end up cutting off foreign aid to countries that so strongly oppose the things that we hold dear, the things for which we have sacrificed, in John Adams' words, toil and blood and treasure to secure. And yet we just keep giving money to those who are opposing us in almost every turn.

They are sovereign nations. We shouldn't get into nation building. They are big folks. They can make their own decisions. But if they want to oppose us at every turn, they can't expect us to continue to pay them to oppose us at every turn. Are so it just is hard to believe that that's something we are still dealing with, but it is.

And I have to mention this. Regarding the gulf oil spill and this legislative markup, as it's called; it's of course voting a bill out of committee. It's the emergency response to the gulf oil bill that includes $900 million a year for the next 30, 40 years simply to buy more land. Think about the James Bond title ``The World Is Not Enough.'' Well, owning most of the West doesn't seem to be enough.

My friend Rob Bishop from Utah indicated how about a friendly amendment to just say the Federal Government will only buy land in States in which the Federal Government does not already own up to 20 percent of the State? But my friends across the aisle from those States in the East that love continuing to purchase land in the West, forcing schools to lay off teachers, shut down schools, inability to provide tax revenue--they love that because they're not going to have land bought in their States. The friendly amendment that Mr. Bishop offered, since the Federal Government already owns 70 percent of his State, was not accepted. So the intent appears clear: They want to keep buying more land in the West. They don't want it purchased up in the East for the most part.

So in addition to that, during the hearings regarding the gulf crisis, when I was questioning Director Birnbaum, brought out the facts that we learned that there was only one entity, one group within MMS, Minerals Management Service, that was allowed to unionize, and that was the offshore inspectors. The offshore inspectors, the people that stand between disaster and our beloved homeland. And they are unionized.

So I offered a simple amendment today, because those offshore inspectors that go out to make sure things are done properly to protect us from disaster on our homeland, they are like people in the Army. You know, I never went into warfare. I was commissioned based on an Army scholarship I had at Texas A&M. I had an Army scholarship there. I owed the Army 4 years, but I wasn't commissioned until a year after Vietnam. When I took the scholarship, I anticipated I would end up in Vietnam, but the war ended.

And we were taught, though, in training--and I had been a sentry before, put out on a perimeter to sit guard during the night. And I was out there to stand guard to make sure nothing happened to my friends who were getting some sleep at night. I was their protection. So I wasn't about to fall asleep when as dark as it was out on perimeter because I had to warn them if someone was coming in. And sure, you know, it was drills, it was practice if some want to call it that. But during drills you take it very seriously. But I came to appreciate the role of someone who is a forward observer, someone who is a sentry, someone who is out there on the perimeter sitting, standing guard to make sure that they are protected back in the main group.

Well, that's the way the role of an offshore inspector struck me. They are out there protecting us. Can you imagine someone on guard duty out protecting your perimeter calling in and saying, guess what, I am going on strike?

I don't like my contract. I'm going on strike. So you're no longer protected out here. Things could go completely awry. I'm not inspecting. I'm on strike. That should not be allowed to happen in the military. It shouldn't be allowed to happen on offshore rigs.

So I had a simple amendment that said offshore inspectors are not allowed to strike or threaten to strike from doing their jobs. Votes were rolled. So we will have a recorded vote on that in the morning and we'll find out how serious people on both sides of the aisle are about protecting our homeland, or are they going to have to kowtow and cater to unions as we've seen on so many votes. This, we're talking about our homeland. We're talking about prevention of environmental disaster.

So, Madam Speaker, I hope that people will let their Members of Congress know that are on the Natural Resources Committee, Don't vote for the unions; vote for the homeland. Don't vote to allow our soldiers, our offshore inspectors out there on our shore, on our offshore rigs, to go on strike because, wow, what leverage.

It would be like an air traffic controller saying, All of those planes are in the air, and I don't care if they land or crash. We're walking away. They're on their own. You can't let them do that.

You have to provide for our country's security. You can't let people in the position with the leverage over lives and livelihoods to walk away on strike at the worst possible time. So we'll find out tomorrow who's voting for our Nation's homeland, our homeland, all we love and hold dear--the environment, the animals, the plants that can't do anything about the oil coming ashore. We'll see whether the vote will be for the unions so that offshore inspectors can continue to have the threat to strike if they so feel like it or not. That's tomorrow.

One other thing I want to get to, because I know our President said this year that we're not a Christian nation, and I want to debate that because I don't know if we are or not anymore. But I know how we got started, and it's easy to see in the writings, the things that were said, the proclamations. It's easy to see.

For example, George Washington, May 2, 1778, gave this order to his troops, May 2, 1778, to the troops at Valley Forge. Here it is, and I'm quoting from George Washington's order. ``The Commander-in-Chief directs that Divine service be performed every Sunday at 11 o'clock, in each Brigade which has a Chaplain. Those Brigades which have none will attend the places of worship nearest to them. It is expected that officers of all ranks will, by their attendance, set an example for their men. While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished Character of,'' and this is Washington's words, ``Christian.''

That was his order to the Continental Army, May 2, 1778. Again, I won't debate whether or not we're a Christian nation now. But it is important that people in this body know, and people across America know, that we, at one time were--the Judiciary Committee of the Senate made that proclamation at one time in one of their votes. They said point blank, We are a Christian nation. That was in the 1800s.

Abraham Lincoln, July 7, 1864, said this in his proclamation. Abraham Lincoln said, ``I do hereby further invite and request the heads of the Executive Departments of this Government, together with all legislatures, all judges and magistrates, and all other persons exercising authority in the land, whether civil, military, or naval, and all soldiers, seamen, and marines in the national service, and all of the other law-abiding people of the United States, to assemble in their preferred places of public worship on that day, and there and then to render to the Almighty and merciful Ruler of the Universe such homages and such confessions to offer to Him such supplications, as the Congress of the United States have in their aforesaid resolution so solemnly, so earnestly, and so reverently recommended.'' That was for the day July 7, 1864.

September 5 of 1864, Abraham Lincoln addressed a committee, and according to the historic document of Colored People from Baltimore-- that's according to the historic document. Now, that would be African Americans, I'm sure, but back in 1864, apparently Lincoln didn't know better. So acknowledging a gift of a Bible from those wonderful people, he said, this is Lincoln's words, ``In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, I believe the Bible is the best gift God has given to man. All the good Saviour,'' that's Lincoln's words, ``All the good Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for this Book we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.'' In the Bible. How about that. Those are Lincoln's words.

You'll look at his second inaugural address. Interestingly enough, he said these words. These are carved in the north wall of the Lincoln Memorial. In the middle of his second inaugural address, he's talking about both the North and the South. He said, ``Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been fully answered. The Almighty has His own purposes.'' Then he quotes the Bible, ``Woe unto the world because of offenses.''

``Yet, if God wills that it continue, until all the wealth piled by the bondsman 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still it must be said, `the judgements of the Lord, are true and righteous.' '' Those were Lincoln's words in the second inaugural address.

So I won't debate whether or not we're a Christian nation. But that's how we got our start. Despite the efforts of those even in the early 1800s up to the present day who disregard the facts, they disregard so many of our Founders' own words. Call Benjamin Franklin a deist, even though at 80 years of age at the Constitutional Convention he's the one that says, ``I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writing, that unless the Lord build the House, they labour in vain that build it.''

He went on to urge those other members at the Constitutional Convention--his words, not mine--he said, ``Firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel.'' So much for him being a deist.

Regardless of where we are now, this Nation started as a Christian Nation. All of the indications from the official sources, from our Presidents, indicated as much. So, regardless of where we are now, that's where we started. We need to get history right if we're going to have a future.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 7 o'clock and 40 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, July 15, 2010, at 10 a.m.

Madam Speaker, that's one of the great things about our system, we have a chance to speak from both sides. As I listened, I was surprised to hear I had taken so many positions that I had never taken. But let me just say that with regard to Republicans being for privatizing Social Security, that bill did not pass. It didn't even get around here to get passed because so many Republicans were not in favor of it. And, in fact, you can go back and find this Republican saying repeatedly then and still saying that what we should do is what was not done when Social Security came into existence, and that is take Social Security tax dollars and put them in a Social Security account.

Now, until I got here 5\1/2\ years ago, I was under the impression that it was some kind of modern creation that Social Security tax dollars were taken away, they never even get to the Social Security Trust Fund but went to general revenue with IOUs being placed in file cabinets for the Social Security Trust Fund. But lo and behold, come to find out, Social Security tax dollars have never, ever gone into the Social Security Trust Fund, not since its inception.

Now, in Texas, we have the Texas Employee Retirement System. Teachers have an employee retirement system. And those systems have done many times better than Social Security for one reason: They put dollars into the retirement fund so the fund was able to grow. And because it was able to grow, people can get several times more in the way of retirement payments from those retirement systems than you can from Social Security. In fact, when I first got here in 2005, I had my staff run a check to find out--and I gave them a hypothetical to submit to Social Security as well as to the Texas Employee Retirement System and another retirement system to find out what kind of monthly income you would receive under that hypothetical.

It turned out, the best Social Security could tell us was that under the hypothetical we gave them, that the monthly income from Social Security to a deserving senior would be somewhere between $600 and $900 a month. Well, if anybody is familiar with seniors and the costs that they end up being out of pocket, you will know that $600 to $900 does not go far enough, but that's what Social Security payments would be. And as I recall the hypothetical, it was $30,000 average for 30 years before retirement, and that was the best we could get, $600 to $900.

However, when that hypothetical was provided to the Texas Employee Retirement System, which puts real money into an account, it turns out the monthly payment was somewhere between $2,600 to $2,800 per month-- the same hypothetical--and the difference was that real money went into the trust fund.

But President Franklin Roosevelt knew, apparently, when this began that there would not be real money going into the trust fund, and every President since then has known that. President Roosevelt, President Truman, President Eisenhower, President Kennedy, Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, they've all known. No money that is pried out of the hands of those who earn it and those that pay those who earn it, none of that money goes into the Social Security Trust Fund, not a dime. Now, that's tragic.

I was pushing that back at the time in 2005. And true, there were Republicans who did not support that, and there were lots of Democrats who didn't because, as we've seen since my friends across the aisle have had such a huge majority in recent years, they've done nothing about Social Security tax money going into the Social Security Trust Fund. They control both Houses. They could have passed a bill requiring Social Security tax money to go into the trust fund in January of 2007. Madam Speaker, I can tell you, there would have been a lot of us Republicans voting for that had they decided to bring that to the floor. If it was brought to the floor this week, next week, I would vote for it. Social Security tax money must go into the Social Security Trust Fund.

But there has been a reason that they have not wanted that to go from the general revenue into the Social Security Trust Fund to shore up Social Security, and that's because there are so many other little pet projects and pet ideas that this money goes to fund. I heard my friends across the aisle talking repeatedly about how important infrastructure was. Isn't that ironic, because after President Obama was sworn in, became President, the Democratic Party had such big majorities--a majority here in the House and was veto-proof, or had a supermajority down in the Senate at the time--they didn't do anything about Social Security being shored up. They didn't do anything about infrastructure, not in the way that it was talked about.

We heard so many beautiful, eloquent speeches from friends across the aisle on how this spendulus stimulus bill was going to pay for all of this wonderful infrastructure. America was led to believe that the whole $787 billion was going to end up being for infrastructure and really be good for America. Well, there was a little bait-and-switch that went on, which is easy to do.

My colleague, for whom I have great respect, I heard saying that Republicans have ``hamstrung the deliberative process.'' So apparently, as best I can figure--I'm sure he's smarter than I am, but the deliberative process then, apparently, must mean that you rush in with a 2,000-page bill not once but repeatedly, say, There's no time for anybody to read this. Too many jobs are being lost every day. There's no time for this to go through committee. There's no time for amendments. There's no time for anything. People are losing their jobs as we speak. You've just got to vote for it now.

Now, see, to me, just from the very practical, pragmatic growing up that I had, a deliberative process would have meant that it had time to be viewed and get some sunshine into those 2,000 pages to figure out where all this pork was going, that that would have been part of the deliberative process.

But apparently, as Republicans, we hamstrung the process that they called deliberative, where you rush in with a 2,000-page bill repeatedly, say there's no time to read it, just pass it and then we'll find out what's in it. See, I wouldn't have thought that was deliberative. But apparently, since my colleague said Republicans hamstrung the deliberative process, that must be what he's talking about.

So they rush in with this $787 billion stimulus bill. You could have polled Americans after it passed and the majority would have said, you know, this is going to be great for building infrastructure. We need infrastructure. Little did they know that 6, less than 7 percent of the $787 billion was ever even thought to have anything to do with infrastructure. So that's why I say a bit of a bait and switch there.

America wasn't even sold on it, but the few that were thought that was going to be for infrastructure and that didn't happen. Just such a tiny, tiny bit of it.

We heard our friends during the last hour talk repeatedly about small business and how the stimulus was so good for small business. What they forgot to mention, they may not be aware, but of that $787 billion, less than 1 percent was for small business. How about that?

So it was all about small business and infrastructure, and yet less than 7 percent was for infrastructure and less than 1 percent geared, aimed at small business. Interesting.

So is it any wonder that, with people thinking that 6, 7 percent of $787 billion will build all the infrastructure we need and less than 1 percent will help small business more than anybody else, that it hasn't had the desired effect?

And I couldn't really see my colleague's chart well enough to see what the last month was where they were talking about all these private jobs being created.

But forget the charts. Let's look at real numbers. And the real numbers for the month of June came out, and I don't have a big pretty chart for it, but the fact is that in the month of June there was great news and then there was really bad news. The great news was that for the month of June, 431,000 jobs were created. That is great news. The really bad news is that 411,000 of those were temporary census workers. So much for all those private sector jobs we were hearing about.

I heard my colleagues talk about Republicans just want to nickel and dime the middle class. I've got an awful lot of Republican friends, and I don't remember any Republicans I know of wanting to nickel and dime the middle class. The ones I know of see people in the poorest sector of America, see people in the middle class of America and want them to do even better. But it won't happen when the government is taking over control of everything. You kill incentives.

And I've mentioned this before, but it is just such a clear lesson of what happens when the government gets involved and decides it's going to be the one that creates the jobs.

And it was 1973, as an exchange student for the summer to the Soviet Union, going out to a collective farm, 30 miles or so from Kiev in Ukraine, and farmers sitting in the shade when their fields looked terrible. This is in the middle of summertime. Well, anybody's worked on farms or ranches knows in the middle of the morning is when you want to be working hard because you want to try to get done before the sun gets to its hottest in the afternoon, and so you start when the sun does and you try to finish before it gets to its hottest. And here it was, the best time of the day to be working, and they were all sitting in the shade with no movement toward going to work.

And so I spoke a little Russian back then and asked, when do you work in the field? And they all laughed. And one of them said, I make the same number of rubles if I'm out there or if I'm here in the shade, so I'm here. That's what the government did. It kills incentives when it decides it's going to take over the job market.

And I loved hearing the discussion about big corporations, big pharmaceuticals, big oil. You know, we've heard this Wall Street, they're all the big buddies of the Republicans. And yet, if you go check, Wall Street has traditionally given 4-1 to Democrats over Republicans. That was true for Goldman Sachs. If you don't just look at the officers, but you look at their spouses and their children, then you find a 4-1 average giving to Democrats over Republicans.

And the big pharmaceutical companies that were mentioned, they let greed get the better side of them in coming out in support of the ObamaCare bill. And for the short term they'll make billions, maybe hundreds of billions more than they would have without the bill. But in the long term, they've written their own death warrant. The same with AMA, AHA. They

sold their souls. Short term, they'll come out good. In the long run their professions, as we know it, will be changed forever for the worst for American health care. And we're already seeing those things.

I get out in my district. I've been in other parts of the country. I'm hearing the people say, you know, we've decided not to hire because this crap-and-trade bill may get passed. We've already had this health care monstrosity wrapped around our necks. We're going to have to end up having to pay more than ever.

You know, the President went out there to have a big photo OP with Caterpillar, and then it turns out they were going to lose over a million, was it $100 million this year?

We know jobs are being lost all over the country because of that health care bill. There was no need to push good jobs out of this country. When I hear my friends say, I couldn't believe they said the Democrats want it manufactured here and Republicans don't. That's ridiculous.

I went with a bipartisan group to China 5 years ago, bipartisan because there were both Republicans and Democrats. And the ones I talked to on both sides of the aisle wanted to see jobs return to America, manufacturing jobs. And I thought that perhaps, as we talked to CEOs, the number one thing I would hear was they left the U.S. and went to China because labor was so much cheaper there. That was not the number one thing I heard.

The number one thing I heard was the corporate taxes in China, 17 percent, U.S. 35 percent, plus States pop them on top of that, and local governments do as well. And so not only that, but China would cut deals with them. No income tax for 5 years, then gradually increase up to 17 percent.

And one of the things I loved hearing was that the quality of the work by American workers was greatly exceeding that that could be done in China by the workers there. That was good to hear. Quality control in the U.S. was so much better.

But that huge 35 to 40 percent hit that they had to take before they competed in the global economy was just too much. It was putting them under. And they could go to China, and with the dramatic cut in corporate tax, they could build state-of-the-art facilities that allowed them to have workers who were not capable of as good a quality control here, and then their state-of-the-art facility would be paid for by the time, many times before the taxes really kicked in in earnest at less than half of what they were in the United States.

So if my friends across the aisle were really serious about bringing manufacturing jobs here, then the solution would be to eliminate the corporate tax. It's one of the most insidious governmental creations in this country. Insidious because everybody gets to talk about these mean, evil corporations and how we want to sock it to the corporations, when the insidious truth is no matter how much tax you lay onto the corporations, if they don't pass that onto the consumer, they don't stay in business. And that's why so many have left and gone to other countries, one of the biggest reasons why they've left and gone to other countries.

Now, we've heard some are not building here for refineries or energy businesses because of this looming threat of the crap-and-trade bill. Our President in 2008 had commented that he wasn't going to--basically, he said he wasn't going to put coal power plants out of business, but he would skyrocket the cost of energy. And that's where we're headed, and so that will drive businesses out of the U.S.

We've had the moratorium declared by the President that was then struck down as unconstitutional. But this administration did not want to let a little thing like the Constitution get in the way, so this week they've come back with another moratorium, basically throwing the Constitution, the judicial sector, throwing them away because just as they did with the auto task force, no confirmation from the Senate, just appointed people, and they took charge of the automobile business.

They came out with a declaration as to what dealerships would close, which ones would have their property taken without due process of law. They came out with a bankruptcy plan that did not go through the requirements of bankruptcy law. They found a judge--I don't know the judge, but bankruptcy judges have to be confirmed I believe it's every 10 years. It's not a lifetime appointment. Many of them would like to be district judges. So apparently it wasn't hard to find a judge who would sign off on an illegal, unconstitutional auto task force plan, and no accountability to anybody. And once the Congress let it go without stepping in and being the check and balance on illegality and unconstitutionality, then there was only one branch left to stop such unconstitutional, illegal activity, and that was the Supreme Court.

To her wonderful credit, Ruth Bader Ginsburg put a 24-hour hold on it. And apparently the administration improperly scared the Supreme Court into thinking that if they extended the hold any longer than 24 hours, all the automobile industry, all of those related to the auto industry would go under and it would all be on the Supreme Court's head. And supposedly, the Supreme Court would never let such a ridiculous thing, unconstitutional thing go through again, but they let it through then.

And so we know that this administration is capable of doing end runs on the Constitution. And it looks like that's what they're doing again on the moratorium. So with the moratorium being in place, as one person in Louisiana said, we stand a chance of losing more jobs from the moratorium than we do from the oil spill. And of course beat up on Big Oil. Yet as the Deepwater Horizon rig was exploding and sinking, there were still deals being cut with this administration and this majority's dear friend British Petroleum, because they were one of the few big energy firms that were supportive of the crap-and-trade bill. So they hated to see their good friend get in trouble.

They were hoping it would blow over, they would get control of this disastrous well in the gulf coast. But they didn't, and eventually the administration and majority had to throw them under the bus. Whereas, if they had been able to get control of the oil well, you would have seen a big photo op with the BP executives as they pushed through the crap-and-trade bill. So, hopefully it will not come back and get passed because it will mean so many jobs that will be lost in America.

And you know, I know they meant well, I know the intentions were good across the aisle when we debated that bill here in the House. And so many people came in here and said nobody is going to lose their job as a result of this bill. In fact, we're going to create jobs. It's going to be like Spain. We're going to create so many green jobs. Well, since then we found out Spain has actually lost two jobs for every one green job they have created, and now they are trying to abandon the very thing that this administration and this majority are trying to push us toward.

But it was so ironic that so many people I am sure unintentionally saying that no one would lose their job because I know it wasn't intentional because obviously they hadn't written the bill, they hadn't read the bill, they had their talking points. But if you read toward the back of the bill, I don't remember the page number, I had it here on the floor and was reading from it at the time, the bill itself created a fund to pay people who lost their job as a result of that crap-and-trade bill. Not only that, it created a fund that would help reimburse them travel expenses to help them move to where their jobs were going as a result of that bill.

So, whichever left wing organization wrote that bill, or whoever's staffer helped them write it, they knew people would lose their jobs right and left. That's why they were creating a fund in there. But my friends across the aisle had not read it. Apparently, the deliberative process from their standpoint was ram the stuff through, don't read it, don't get bothered with the actual provisions in the bill. Push it through, and we'll find out what's in it later. Apparently, that's deliberative. That's no bill to saddle America with. It means more lost jobs.

Now, we had another job fair last week in east Texas, this one in Nacogdoches. We had over 550 people attend, around four, five dozen employers that were there. Some people left

with jobs that didn't have them. Some people have hope for the future through the interview process.

And, normally, when you throw a party, you are really thrilled when people show up. But just as I saw in Marshall and Longview when we had a job fair there, and Lufkin, you look in the eyes of folks who have lost their jobs and you can't be pleased that the turnout is big because every one represents hurt, it represents lost finances, people struggling, many of them struggling for self-esteem because even though it wasn't their fault, so many get their strength and their pride from the job that they hold. And so it's very difficult to see so many people out of work.

But what I keep hearing also from businesses is the same thing, similar thing: they can't get credit, they can't get loans from their bank. Banks are telling them they're not going to extend their line of credit because they got regulators breathing down their throats. Because regulators, on instructions from this town are out there telling them, micromanaging, telling good community, solid community banks that were not the source of the problems--the source of the biggest problems were those on Wall Street that give four to one to Democrats. That was the big source, the investment banking firms, not the community banking firms. But the community banking firms, on instructions from those who were closest to the investment banking firms telling the regulators to go after them. And even hold them to having more in reserve than the law requires. Had that admission from regulators themselves.

And so people don't have capital because this obese monstrosity of a government that keeps growing can't control its appetite. And so it sucks up all the capital and throws it away on the government's pet projects.

It's no way to run a country. It's a way to lose a country.

Well, I didn't intend to spend that much time on the economy, but having heard so many comments from my friends across the aisle on what I believed and what I support, which were things that I simply do not, and have not supported, I had to address that.

But there are so many dangers in the world. One of them, of course, is this out-of-control spending. And one final thing on the economy, my friends across the aisle keep talking about how bad it's been since 2007, 2008, 2009. And the fact is they've been controlling everything but the White House since January of 2007. So when they took control and they let spending explode on their watch--they were right. They won the majority because Republicans did not control spending, and too many Republicans equated compassion with spending.

And so Democrats over and over, over and over came to the floor and said, you know, a hundred billion, $200 billion deficit in 1 year is outrageous. It shouldn't be allowed. We need to be in the majority so we'll control the spending. We'll cut the deficit. We'll get back on track. And so Republicans appropriately lost the majority because they had not controlled spending.

And what has happened since? Spending has gone through the roof. And under this administration, once the Democrats had the White House and both Houses with such huge majorities, spending became giddiness, and that hundred, $200 billion deficit in a year has bloomed now to a $1.5 trillion dollar deficit in a year. It's unbelievable.

And at the same time, it's been encouraging to see this administration in the past week show some friendliness toward our wonderful ally Israel, because all of the snubbing and pettiness by this administration in the way that it's treated Israel in conjunction with willing allies like The New York Times, like the 5,000-page editorial that was written about, there's just so much pettiness and snubbing of our friend Israel from this administration and its allies that they're hurting this Nation. Because when you hurt Israel, you hurt a true democracy in the middle of the Middle East, you hurt this country. You hurt any democracy when you hurt democracy that exists in the Middle East.

And I read this weekend an editorial written by Caroline Glick, and it's entitled, ``Fit for The New York Times.'' And Caroline Glick is so articulate. I wanted to read verbatim what she had to say about the article in The New York Times. So I will read from Caroline Glick. This was published July 9, 2010.

She says, ``Two important statements this week shed a light on the nature of the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Both were barely noted by the media.

``On Saturday the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper reported that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas gave U.S. mediator George Mitchell a letter detailing a number of concessions that he would make towards Israel in a final peace treaty. These included a willingness to accept permanent Israeli sovereignty over the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem's Old City and over the Western Wall. The Al-Hayat report received enthusiastic and expansive coverage in the Israeli media and in media outlets throughout the world.

``What was barely noted was that just hours after the report hit the airwaves, Abbas's chief negotiator Saeb Erekat categorically denied the story. In an interview with Israel Radio, Saeb Erekat said the story was untrue.

``Abbas has been the recipient of adulatory press coverage in Israel over the past several days. Last week he thrilled the Hebrew-language media when he invited Israeli reporters to a sumptuous feast at his Ramallah headquarters. And then the Al-Hayat story came out. Lost in the excitement was Abbas's eulogy for arch terrorist Muhammad Daoud Oudeh who died over the weekend. Oudeh was the mastermind of the PLO's massacre of 11 Israeli athletes during the 1972 Munich Olympics. Abbas himself served the operation's paymaster.

``As Palestinian Media Watch reported, in a condolence telegram quoted in the Abbas-controlled Al-Hayat al Jadida newspaper, Abbas touted Oudeh as, `a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter,' and described him as `one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement.'

``So while the local and international media pounced on the Al-Hayat story as proof that the Palestinians are serious about peace, they failed to mention that their hope was based on a story that the Palestinians themselves deny. So too, in their rush to embrace Abbas, they failed to mention his glorification of an unrepentant mass murderer who commanded the terror squad that massacred Israel's Olympic athletes.

``These statements by Palestinian officials the media routinely characterize as moderates, demonstrates how deeply distorted and largely irrelevant the discourse on the Middle East has become. As the `moderate' Palestinians insist they are uninterested in peaceful coexistence and territorial compromise with Israel, news coverage in Israel and throughout the Western world is dominated by other issues. Specifically, discussion of prospects for peace between Israel and the Palestinians is dominated by an endless discussion of Israel's Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in eastern, southern and northern Jerusalem.

``The most egregious recent example of this distortion was a 5,000 word article in Tuesday's New York Times regarding US charitable contributions to these Jewish communities. Titled, `Tax Exempt Funds Aid Settlements in the West Bank,' the report was co-authored by five Times reporters. It was the product of weeks of research. And notably, the New York Times chose to publish it on its front page above the fold on the very day that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visited the White House.

``The Times article is a textbook case of the media's ideologically motivated aggression against Middle East reality. Any way you look at it, it is a premeditated affront to the very notion that the role of a newspaper is to report facts rather manufacture news aimed at shaping perceptions and skewing debate.

``The article goes to great lengths to discredit the American citizens who make charitable, tax deductible donations to organizations that provide lawful support to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria and Jewish neighborhoods in southern, northern and eastern Jerusalem. It paints a sinister picture of such contributions and

contributors and accuses them of actively undermining U.S. foreign policy.

``The contributors, we are told in the opening lines of the report are the Left's bogeyman--Evangelical Christians and religious Jews. They are unacceptable actors in the Middle East because they both believe that Jewish control of Judea and Samaria is a precursor to the coming of the messiah.

``Reacting to the Times' report, on Wednesday Honest Reporting noted that the article appears to be the product of active collusion between the Times and the radical, anti-Zionist, tax-exempt Gush Shalom organization. As Honest Reporting relays, in July of 2009, Gush Shalom sent out a communique to its supporters calling for the initiation of a campaign that, `includes a combination of legal action and public advocacy aimed at denying Federal tax exempt (501c3) status to U.S. charities supporting settlement activity.'

``The Times' article bears all the markings of a political campaign. First, despite the valiant efforts of five Times reporters, the article exposes no illegal activity. At best, its investigation of more than forty organizations that contribute funds to the hated Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria indicated that less than a handful of them are guilty of poor accounting practices.''

Assuming that Honest Reporting's emminently reasonable conclusion that the Times report is the product of collaboration between the newspaper and radical anti-Zionist groups is accurate, the report is shockingly hypocritical. By publishing it, the New York Times is engaging in the precise behavior it argues the organizations it investigated should be punished for purportedly engaging in.

To wit, in the service of radical tax deductible organizations, the Times seeks to undermine U.S. foreign policy. For the past four decades, it has been the foreign policy of the United States to maintain a strategic alliance with Israel. The goal of Times-aligned groups like Gush Shalom is to undermine that alliance by discrediting and criminalizing those who wish to strengthen and maintain it.

The Times article uses dark language and innuendo to create the impression that there is something treacherous and evil about contributions to Jewish communities in neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem.

For instance, the article argues, ``The donations to the settler movement stand out from other charitable, and this is in brackets, from other charitable contributions that promote U.S. foreign policy goals, close brackets, because of the centrality of the settlement issue in the current talks and the fact that Washington has consistently refused to allow Israel to spend American government aid in the settlements. Tax breaks for the donations remain largely unchallenged and unexamined by the American government.''

What the Times fails to acknowledge is that the reason these donations are ``largely unchallenged and unexamined'' is because it is the constitutional right of American citizens to contribute to charities that promote policy goals, even when those goals, like those of Gush Shalom, are antithetical to U.S. policy as determined by the U.S. Government.

The New York Times alleges that these communities are illegal. Its authority for this allegation is none other than the Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Erekat opined to the paper, ``Settlements violate international law.''

The truth is that Israeli communities beyond the 1949 armistice lines are legal. But even if one were to accept the argument that they are unlawful, one would be accepting an argument based on the language of the Fourth Geneva Convention from 1949 which prevents occupying powers from transferring their population to the areas under occupation.

There is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the voluntary movement of Israelis to Judea, Samaria and post-1967 neighborhoods in Jerusalem. Likewise, there is no possible reading of the convention that would prohibit the provision of financial support to Israelis who voluntarily move to the areas in question. Yet it is precisely this indisputably lawful, voluntary movement of Jews to these areas which the Times acknowledges is often done against the wishes of Israel's government that the Times article attacks.

In short, the Times' contention that there is something legally problematic about these donations is preposterous, both as it relates to U.S. law and as it relates to international law.

From a journalistic perspective, worse than the Times' decision to engage in precisely the behavior it seeks to criminalize when carried out by its political nemesis on the Christian and Jewish right and worse even than the article's false characterization of law is the article's clear attempt to obfuscate the main problem with land issues in Judea and Samaria. This it does in the interests of manufacturing a false but ideologically sympathetic picture of the situation on the ground.

The Times only gets around to alluding to and obfuscating the real problem with the land issues in the 58th paragraph of the article. The Times reports ``Islamic judicial panels have threatened death to Palestinians who sell property in the occupied territories to Jews.''

Actually, while this may be true, it is not the problem. The problem is that the second law promulgated by the Palestinian Authority just weeks after it was established in 1994 criminalized all Arab land sales to Jews as a capital crime.

Since 1994, scores of Arabs have been killed in both judicial and extrajudicial executions for selling land to Jews. This open move to hide the fact that since 1994 the PA has dispatched death squads to murder both Palestinians and Israeli Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews is a shocking miscarriage of journalistic standards.

Whereas the New York Times required five reporters to work for weeks to come up with exactly nothing illegal in the operations of U.S. charitable groups that support Jewish communities the Times wishes to destroy, the Times would have needed to invest no resources whatsoever to discover that the PA kills any Arab who sells land to Jews. The PA has made no effort to hide this policy. It is in the public sphere for anyone willing to look at reality.

That is, of course, the real issue here. The entire New York Times investigation, so-called, of American charitable groups that support Jewish communities in neighborhoods in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem is a blatant attempt by major newspaper to hide the real issues prolonging the Palestinian conflict with Israel. Those issues exposed by Abbas's praise for a terrorist mass murderer, Erekat's denial that Abbas has any interest in compromising with Israel, as well as by the PA's policy of killing all Arabs who sell lands to Jews, do not serve the Times' purpose of blaming the absence of peace on Israel generally and on the Israeli right and its supporters in the U.S. in particular.

And so it is that 17 years after the start of the so-called peace process between Israel and the PLO, and 10 years after the PLO destroyed that process by launching a terror war against Israel, and 4\1/2\ years after the Palestinians elected Hamas to lead them, we are still stuck in a distorted, irrelevant discourse about the Middle East.

We are stuck in a rut because politically and ideologically motivated media organs operate hand-in-glove with radical groups seeking to undermine Israel's national sovereignty and end its alliance with the U.S. Together, they manufacture news that bears no relation with reality or the true challenges facing those who seek peace in the Middle East. But obviously for the New York Times, that is what makes it fit to print.

That was posted July 9, 2010, 7:27 a.m. by my friend Caroline Glick.

The article speaks for itself. It is a sad day when the New York Times has become such a political hack of a newspaper that in the summer of 1973, when I was in the Soviet Union, it was exciting. Actually, got a chance of going over there through Europe, coming out through Europe, to see a New York Times, especially in English. Exciting. And it was trusted to be the international resource. So it is a bit heartbreaking that as its sales circulation continues to plummet, it continues to lose money, that it continues to proceed with the very things that have

brought down its reputation and hurt it as such an objective resource. Doing reports growing up as a kid, you knew you could count on anything that you found in the New York Times and cite it as a valuable and accurate resource. Not so anymore. Not so anymore.

Israel is a friend, and I'm grateful that democracy has worked to the extent that this administration got concerned about its plummeting numbers enough that it realized maybe this time it should treat the Prime Minister of Israel with some respect, just as it is and just as it has heads of states of countries that despise us and have said they would be glad to see us fall as a Nation. It's nice if they could treat Prime Minister Netanyahu with the same respect that it treats some of our sworn enemies.

Very interesting. There's just so much to cover, so little time. But I did want to address that issue and the fact that Iran is continuing to have its centrifuges spin. It has been reported by this administration, by the IAEA, that Iran has apparently at least enough uranium material, at least, to manufacture two nuclear weapons. So the rhetorical question to be asked, How many nuclear bombs does it take to become an existential threat to Israel or to this Nation? I would submit a nuke in New York Harbor, coming up the Potomac, the Houston and New Orleans shipping channel taking out the majority of our energy resources, Los Angeles, the lake right up next to Chicago, the effect could be existential to the U.S.

This isn't a game. You can't keep walking around blaming the prior administration. Yes, I was upset with the Bush administration with the TARP. Yes, this administration went right out and hired the same people that helped push that thing through. And they're still pushing it. Still like it. Should have never been passed. That was a huge mistake by the Bush administration, and we should not continue to confound it.

Well, just as we've seen the New York Times can twist and distort, we've seen throughout America people distorting our heritage. And so in an effort to correct yet another distortion, I want to finish with this. This is from a book written by Peter Lillback, ``Wall of Misconception.'' A small book, lots of resources. Dr. Lillback says: ``Everyone agrees that George Washington was critical for the formation of America's values. Washington was conscious that his every act created a precedent for good or ill for all that would follow him. As our first President, everything he did established precedents for how our country was to work.

``So there is no accident that so many have sought to portray Washington as a man without faith. For if he exercised faith in the public square, this in turn argues that the Judeo-Christian system still has relevance and vitality in the public square today. Did Washington's legacy include strong precedents of advocating the Judeo- Christian values in the public square? Recent authors have declared an emphatic no.

``Randall writes, `Washington was not a deeply religious man.' Douglas Southall Freeman says, `He had believed that a God directed his path, but he had not been particularly ardent in his faith.' James Thomas Flexner states that `Washington . . . avoided, as was his deist custom, the word ``God.'' ' Judging from these writers, Washington could hardly be called a `godly leader.' But are these claims correct?''

I could go on, as I have, taking people on tours through this building for about 2 or 3 hours with what Washington wrote and said and did. But continuing Dr. Lillback's book: ``The very men who gave us the First Amendment did not intend to impose a radical separation of church and State that is advocated by so many today. In fact, the day after Congress adopted the words of the First Amendment, they sent a message to President Washington asking him to declare a day of thanksgiving to show America's appreciation to God for the opportunity to create America's new national government in peace and tranquility.

``So on October 3, 1789, President Washington made a Proclamation of a National Day of Thanksgiving. He declared: Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God''--I guess he did use the word God--``to obey His will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor. And, whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me `to recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God' ''--oops, he used it again--`` `especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness, now, therefore, I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the people of the United States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be; that we may then all unite in rendering unto Him our sincere and humble thanks, for His kind care and protection of the people of this country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of His providence, which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war; for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed, for the peaceable and rational manner in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted, for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general for the great and various favors which He hath been pleased to confer upon us.

``And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions to enable us all-- and deists doesn't ask God to enable us to do anything--whether in public or private stations to perform our several relative duties properly and punctually.''

I see my time is running out so I will go straight to the bottom of George Washington's words: ``to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the increase of science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as He alone knows to be best.

``Given under my hand, at the City of New York, the 3rd of October, in the year of our Lord, 1789.'' Again, George Washington's words.

Therefore, Madam Speaker, I yield back.