Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I withdraw my request that the words be taken down since they are withdrawn and I appreciate my friend doing so.

I know we have disagreements on some of these issues and I know what the intent is of the Democratic-proposed health care bill. And I know the intent is not to hurt the lower-wage earner. But this bill that's

being proposed is going to hammer employers with an 8 percent penalty if they don't provide health care.

Well, so they're going to turn around and provide health care because the people I know are saying, We're just hanging on. We've got these good workers. We don't want to lose them. So if I'm going to be penalized 8 percent, I'll have to provide health care; but I'm going to have to reduce their wages by the amount the health care costs. It may be $5,000 or $6,000.

And I'm begging my friends on the other side--this is my plea, Mr. Speaker--don't take $5,000 or $6,000 of wages from the lowest-wage earners right now. Don't force small businesses--and I know there is an exemption at the low end--but smaller businesses are still going to have to either lay people off, pay an 8 percent penalty, or take wages away.

Don't hurt our lower-wage workers.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to Republican Leadership standards, the following information is submitted regarding funding received in the first district of Texas as part of H.R. 3183, the Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Cypress Valley Watershed Project. The Red River Valley Association, P.O. Box 709, Shreveport, LA 71162, Corps of Engineers, Investigations Account, $100,000 to resume the Cypress Valley Watershed study. This project examines the current and projected water resource needs of the Caddo Lake wetlands and evaluates how Lake O' the Pines reservoir could be operated to potentially meet a broader spectrum of water resources needs in one of the nation's premier natural lakes which is rapidly disappearing because of non-native invasive species.

Madam Speaker, of course we have heard our President say we are not a Christian Nation. People can decide for themselves. But I thought it was worth pointing out that when the Washington Monument, right down the Mall from us, was dedicated, they put an aluminum-capped stone on it, four sides, there's writing on all four sides, but on the side that faced the Capitol were the Latin words ``Laus Deo,'' Praise be to God.

Now, the reason they put that facing the Capitol was so that every day when the first rays of God's sun hit the very first thing in this Nation's Capitol, it was the words ``Praise be to God.'' Every morning, the first rays of God's sun hit the first thing in the Capitol is ``Praise be to God.''

Just thought you ought to know.

We heard our President say that we're not a Christian Nation--and he may be right, but for those like the President whose education was lacking a great deal in the fullness of our history, I wanted to refer to the greatest resignation of all times.

When George Washington led the military in the Revolution, he did what no man has ever done before or since--won the Revolution and resigned and went home.

In his resolution, the last paragraph on this document said, ``I now make it my earnest prayer, that God would have you, and the State over which you preside, in His holy protection, that He would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another, for their fellow citizens of the United States, and particularly for the brethren who have served in the field; 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 pacific 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.''

That was George Washington.

Mr. Speaker, I want to follow up on what my friend from Georgia was saying, about tyranny in this House. We were promised the most open government in the Nation's history. That's what we were promised.

There is the Speaker's Web site that even talks about how open it is going to be. Well, it isn't. And as a result, the Nation is being punished because some of the things that our friends across the aisle said before they were elected to the majority to control this city and this country were true.

You do better when you have open government and open amendments and can debate these ideas. But that's not what we've gotten. Oh, no. We've had an abuse of the rule process. Why? Because they can.

I was asked, as I was around the district this last week, Why do you let them get away with all these things that are going on? And I said, Well, you're not following what's going on. Every time we make a privileged motion, we try to enforce the rules, it's tabled every time, so it's not going anywhere. So no one is held to account for abuses. Why? Because they can--and they didn't want an open government.

You know, the founding of this country tells so much. Those guys were so brilliant. They were so much better read than most of the people in this body now. They knew what government led to. They knew what the abuse of power led to. And so they weren't content to have one body elected, they said, let's have two. And not only should we have two bodies, let's make them at odds with each other. We need friction so that there is not this abuse.

And not only that, we don't want to do like we've seen some parliaments do where they elect their executive. No, no, no, no. We want the people to elect an executive, and then he will be at

odds with those two houses and he will be able to veto what they do. That will give us some protection--because you can't have enough protection from government--but that's not enough. We want another branch. We will have a judicial branch, and then they can veto things that are inappropriate and outside the Constitution. They saw all this coming, and they knew it could be abused if they didn't have these safeguards in the way.

But what's happened? Well, we can have an executive that the Congress just says, well, whatever you want. Oh, you wanted an Auto Task Force that will meet behind closed doors, be accountable to nobody? Put together a bill, a plan that is signed by a lazy bankruptcy judge because he doesn't want to have all the hearings the law requires, and it puts people out of business. It's a constitutional taking, but where is the Supreme Court? They start to stop the process and then they say, Go ahead, we'll let you be unconstitutional, we won't stop it.

And what has the Congress done? Well, look, Mr. President, if you'll let us keep abusing and running this country into the dust heap of history then we will let you keep doing what you want. It's abusing the process.

That's why we had a bill this evening that should have been clean, it should have given money to a friend, a good friend like Israel, but, oh, no, we've got to put all this baloney in there that ends up doing more harm to the purposes for which this Nation was founded than good. So I couldn't vote for it in the end.

The stimulus. We couldn't do anything with that--presented at the last minute where no one could amend it. I tried to tell the President and friends in here, look, how about a tax holiday for the people that earn the money? How about that? You let them have it, then you'll see stimulation. And what happened? The President liked the idea. And I heard him on the radio talking about, We're going to leave money in your check--except he said if you jump through all the obstacles, then you could have $65, maybe, in your check. I was talking about $6,000, not $65. Then you would have seen stimulation of the economy. But the process won't let us do that.

With the ``crap and trade'' bill, we're driving jobs out of America. We're sending manufacturers to countries that pollute four to 10 times more than we do. How does that help the environment? It doesn't.

And a health care bill that's being written behind closed doors so that we will not be able to get the best ideas in there. I'm trying to get a bill put through. Leg counsel said, Well, the Democratic leadership is taking all our time, we can't put yours in a form to bring to the floor. So we're having to try to go around behind other ways to get it done.

There are Nation-ending things that are happening, and the Founders put in place ways to stop it. We need to start following those ways.

Do you think there is any chance that something as ridiculous as amendments being filed in the middle of the night might happen? Do you think it is possible around here?

Or 3:09 a.m. perhaps?

I wanted to thank my friend, Dr. Burgess, and to be among such wonderful physicians. And I have been listening, a trained judge, I got to listen a great deal. And I heard so much wisdom from my friend Dr. Price, Dr. Fleming, Dr. Gingrey, Dr. Broun and Dr. Burgess over the last 4\1/2\ years I have been here, and I have come to know their hearts and know their heart is for the good of America.

When we hear about transparency, and we look at what's been happening, look at the Federal Reserve. My goodness, what's going on? And you look at the auto task force and what they have done with that, and now they are going to do that with health care? It's the doctors that save our lives. It's the health care that will save lives.

Well, that's what it used to be.

And so then we hear, and I don't know if, Mr. Speaker, if the American public knows what former Chairman Barton was saying, but manager's amendments have been filed after committees have done their work, and what little work was done.

And the manager's amendment just completely replaces all the work that was done, and it's put in at the last minute. And then we have amendments, as we did on crap-and-trade, that were filed at 3:09 and then supersedes everything and then right up here at the Speaker's desk. There was not a complete copy, as that was made clear.

And I have been listening to these things, and I appreciate so much the work of all of these people trying to come together with a plan. And I have been trying to get alleged counsel to put together a compilation of these ideas in a bill, but they will not. They have not so far. Former Chairman Barton has submitted this request, and I hope we have a bill so America can know about what's out there.

But I think Dr. Fleming has a great point. Congress ought to be part of anything we make anybody else comply with. And that's why how about a system where instead of Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP, we just put money in a health savings account that the patient controls and get out of what Mr. Shadegg was pointing out, all this bureaucracy, all these insurance companies coming between the patient and the doctor, and then have catastrophic care to cover everything above the health savings account amount where the patient and the doctor decide on treatment. These are things we could do. These are things that will be good for America. These are things that all of us, we have talked about, we would be willing to do ourselves. That's what we ought to do for America.

And I am broken-hearted for what this body is going to cram down into the lives of people. And if they think they didn't like some of the things that were dictated from Washington, wait till Washington gets to control your life, because I am guaranteeing you, when the government takes over health care, they have every right to tell you what to do, what to eat, how to live. They will have a right to monitor your credit card receipts. Oops, you had too many Twinkies you bought last month.

I mean, that stuff is coming once the government controls your health care. It controls your life.

I thank my friend from Iowa, and I appreciate the chance to participate here.

The prior Republican hour, we discussed health care and this socialized medicine that is coming and supposedly is going to be jammed down America's throat next week, at least as far as the House is concerned.

And then I got back to my office and listened to my friend from across the aisle talk about his socialized--well, he called it progressive, but you look at the history of the progressive movement. It is a nationalization of things; it is a socialization of things. That is where it is all headed.

I was intrigued as I listened to my friend from Iowa talk about these horror stories from Canada and we keep hearing horror stories from England and other places that have socialized medicine, and I was struck by our friend on the other side of the aisle saying this isn't Canada, this isn't England, this is America, we are going to do it right. We are going to do it better.

I was struck, and if it weren't so tragic and if it didn't mean that going to socialized medicine as they want, we are going to have people I love dying unnecessarily, it would be a joke. But it is no joke; it is tragic. Because for years, for years we have listened to people say we need to have nationalized health care like Canada. We need to have nationalized health care like England where everybody has all the care they need. That's what we have heard for years.

So some of us, like my friend from Iowa, have gone to the trouble to find out more about this socialized medicine, this nationalized care, this public care in Canada, in England, in Europe and in other places.

What we find is this isn't something we want. So now we are no longer hearing we need to be like Canada and England and just have public health care, whatever the term is they want to use that particular day, because now we know more of the truth.

I talked to a man from Canada last week who was visiting with me. He was telling me about his father who died a year or so ago from a heart attack. And his father knew he needed a bypass surgery and he had to go on the list to get a doctor's appointment. When he finally got the appointment and finally got the diagnostic care, he found out he needed a bypass. So then he went on the list to get bypass surgery. And he was on it for nearly 2 years.

I said I knew the lines were long, and my friend from Iowa pointed out there are people in Canada that will just fly you down to Houston if you are with a company that makes enough money that they can do that, but rank-and-file Canadians can't do that. Rank-and-file Americans have no place to go. They can't do that. They would stay in the line and they would die, like his father did.

I asked, How was it he stayed in the line so long?

Well, he said, bureaucrats moved people in front of him. For over a year, they kept moving people.

I said, Wait a minute, I know enough about Canadian care, and I know this bureaucratic, socialized piece of crap they have up there, it gives them a generalized standard of care. And I know they are very caring doctors. In fact, back 30-some years ago, my mother after a brain tumor was found had checked with one who was revolutionizing some areas of brain surgery. Not any more. You come here for that.

But anyway, my mother got the best care that medicine could provide because there are very caring doctors in this country and because there were no lines.

But with his father, I said as I understand, anywhere you have socialized medicine, you have to have people waiting in line because if you don't, the system goes broke.

You can't give people all the care they need when they need it or you go broke because the government can't collect enough tax to pay everything like that. The government can't do that because the government has no money of its own, it has to rely on taxes until it goes socialist completely--as the Soviet Union did, and then they were able to last 70 years because they would kill people and put them in prison if they didn't do exactly what they said. So they set a record, 70 years of socialism. We won't last that long once we get there, if we don't get it turned around.

But anyway, you have to put people in line, let them die waiting for treatment and care. But I also know you have to make it a crime for people to move themselves up the list or pay somebody to move them up the list. And so how was it that people kept moving in front of your father, they kept bumping him down the list to get the bypass? And he said, Well, you're right, it is a crime to do something to get yourself moved up. But bureaucrats are allowed to sit in their little cubicle

or office somewhere and at their whim decide whoever they may guess ought to be moved up; this guy may need bypass surgery worse than he does, and they kept moving people in front of him. Well, the bureaucrat guessed wrong. The man that needed the bypass surgery the worst died because some bureaucrat wouldn't let him move up the list in a timely manner. That stuff is coming to America.

And so when we were promised about this great, nationalized or public--you know, people have figured out socialized care is not something they want, and so now we're hearing it's public, it's a public care thing. Well, I heard my friend across the aisle say, well, an hour before me they talked about a bureaucrat being between you and your doctor. And he said what they talked about an hour ago was fantasy. Well, if we go to the program they're proposing, it may end up seeming like it's fantasy, but it will be a nightmare, and there will be no waking up and walking away from it. You get stuck in that system until it breaks your country because none that I know of have ever been able to successfully come out of it.

I was an exchange student to the Soviet Union back in 1973. I visited their medical schools. I visited with doctors. I met with doctors. I met families of doctors. People were embarrassed to tell me one of their parents was a doctor because they didn't pay them much. Now, if you were an assistant to the factory manager, you got a couple of weeks on the Niobrara River and you got some benefits, and that was a good thing, but people were embarrassed because doctors didn't get paid much. Folks, that's where this goes.

And I know we've even got some doctors that have said we ought to go to this thing--you know, insurance companies, we hate them, they delay payments, and things need to be done; maybe we need a public health care insurance. The problem is, they may reimburse for a little bit, but eventually you'll get to the salary, eventually the salary does not cover the education it takes to have the level of care we get now and so you have to dumb down the education. Your best and brightest don't apply. I like the top people in my class being the ones that go to medical school. I was encouraged to do that. I had one doctor saying, Lou, you would be such a good doctor, please don't throw your life away and go to law school, but I did.

But nonetheless, we're talking about a nightmare for the American people. And when I hear the sob stories about, you know, if we just had public health care, if we had socialized medicine, then these people would be able to get the mammograms, and they would get the care and they would find out about their breast cancer, and they would get treatment. Well, I've got some hard news for you. The fact is that in this country, for localized tumors we have a 98 percent survival rate at 5 years. That is incredible the progress that's been made. Things like the Komen efforts for the cure, I mean, just done great work.

Ninety-eight percent survival at 5 years for a localized tumor. Well, if you go to the socialized medicine countries, you find about 20 percent worse results. You get it? One in five people have to die because they went to socialized medicine. Now, I've got three daughters and a wife, I would hate to think that among five women, one of them is going to die because we go to socialized care and we have to have these long lists to get a mammogram, once you find it, to get treatment. It is insane.

Now, I agree with my friends, we need change. And I have been to the emergency room, and I've been with my kids, and I've been with my in- laws, and it is not a fun place to be sitting there in long lines. But what you realize is the lines are long because we are having to provide free health care to people that don't pay. And many are undocumented, illegal aliens--whatever you want to call it, and that's why the plan that I proposed is one in which you have to deal with that because that is causing unnecessary pain and suffering in the health care being provided to people that need it, who pay their way, who have health insurance, who have Medicare and Medicaid and SCHIP, they shouldn't have to wait and pay for people who are here to get free care.

Now, the plan I have starts with the fact that if, because we know that we are moving to, as one of my friends, Jim Frogue, just pointed out in some research he has done, we're moving toward a $22 trillion a year Medicare/Medicaid system, $22 trillion--we got about $2.5 trillion in income tax last year, you cannot sustain a Nation at a $22 trillion socialized medicine or Medicare/Medicaid system. We have got to do something. We can make it better and cheaper, but we can't have the government bureaucracy handling it.

So the proposal says, first of all, this is a matter of national security. Our health care is a matter of national security. We saw what happened in the Soviet Union; when you can't pay your bills, you go broke and you cease to exist.

So if we're going to continue to attract people from around the world, then we need to have a country that is not going broke. So under my proposed plan that we're trying to get into a bill--there have been other more pressing things, you know; we had to get a resolution for Michael Jackson, other more pressing things--but under this plan it makes clear that we have to deal with this issue.

So if you're going to ask for a visa into our country so that we will continue to have a country that you will want to come to, then you have to show proof that you will have a health savings account which you will be part of when you get here, and you will have catastrophic coverage to cover everything over that. And if you don't have proof of that, then you don't get a visa and get to come into this country.

Now, we've been told by the Supreme Court that the law of the land is that if you're here in this country, even if you're here illegally, then we have to provide you health care. So that is what we'll do, we'll follow the law. If you're here illegally, you have no health savings account, you have no insurance, then, yes, we will treat you, we will get you well enough to transport, and then you will be deported. And then because this is a matter of national security and our country is entirely at risk here of going broke and ceasing to exist, if you come back into the country after we've given you free health care and you present for further health care or you're caught here, then you're a risk to our national security to break the country and you will be put in jail. It will be a felony offense if you have taken free health care, been deported, and come back. It's too serious not to make it a Federal felony.

Yes, I will certainly yield.

I appreciate so much my friend from Iowa and those wonderful illustrations of exactly what we are talking about.

I know that there are some people in America have concern and I have heard people say, well, I'm afraid, you know, there are so many immigrants coming in, especially from south of the border, that we are going to lose our American culture. And my own personal feeling is that really I think America was blessed with three really central things. One is a faith in God throughout our history, another was a love and devotion to family, and the other was a very good, hard work ethic. So when I see most of the people I know that have come from south of the border up here that have faith in God, that have got a love and devotion to family, and they've got a strong work ethic, I'm actually hopeful that that will strengthen our American social scene here where people have lost faith in God, where they have lost devotion to family, where they don't want to work.

But the problem is we have to be unified. Out of many, one means we speak one language. And that means you don't teach kids in some foreign language. You teach them in a language so they have got a chance to be president of a company, not the manual laborer for the company. So I'm still hopeful that when people come legally and assimilate, it is going to make this country stronger and better. But it has to be legal. We cannot ignore the rule of law. That is what has allowed us to be maybe the greatest economy in the world or maybe in history.

And the country just south of us should be one of the top 10 economies in the world, but it's not because they pay no mind at all to the rule of law. There is graft and corruption. I appreciate the efforts of the President across the border trying to clean things up, and I hope and pray he has some success.

But I wanted to also respond to my friend from across the aisle who said it's time for change now. It seems like I heard a Presidential candidate saying that last fall. And then what we have gotten is about 10 to 20 times more deficit spending than we had when he took office and is about to break the country. So I agree it's time for a change, and let's quit having so much deficit spending. I agree it's time for a change in health care. We cannot allow our government, our country to be brought down because of runaway health care costs. And there's a way to fix this, and it's an American system.

I mean, for somebody to come in here and say before God and America and everybody, we are not talking Canada or England here. We are talking about a uniquely American, basically, socialism.

My friend from Iowa knows I was a history major. I'm a student of history. And sometimes I am just amazed by the thinking in this body that somehow we are so smart and so much better than all of those who have gone on before us that we can do the same thing that's been done throughout history and get a different result. But if

you're smart enough to learn from history, you know, and everybody in this body is smart enough to learn from history, if they just will. And you learn that if you do the same things that historically over and over and over have been tried and gotten the same result, you're going to get the same result too, and you should try something different.

So that's why we've got to fix Medicare, we've got to fix Medicaid, and we can't keep on this course of SCHIP getting bigger and bigger and bigger. So what I came up with, after consulting with experts in all these different areas, is, you know what, for 2007 the latest numbers we've got--we've spent $9,215, with the best Census Bureau estimate of how many households are in America--$9,200 roughly for every one of the 112 million households in America between Medicare and Medicaid. So you look at it, and you put your pencil to it, and you realize that, at most, there were 93 million Americans who either got Medicare, Medicaid or some form of SCHIP or some form of combination. We're better off saying, Folks, we want you to have the best care possible. I want my mother-in-law, who's still grieving over the loss of her husband last August, I want her to have the best care. If you're in America and you are an American legally here, then we want you to have $3,500 in your health savings account that you will control with a debit card, and we'll put that $3,500 cash from the government in your health savings account. You control it with your own debit card, and then we'll pay for catastrophic insurance to cover everything above that. Now that's health care that people can believe in and deserve and look at the cost. Less than a third of Americans would need that or be entitled to that. Those who are on Medicare, Medicaid, that are below the poverty level that we really need to help because they can't help themselves, we're better off doing that. Then not only will it cost less than $9,200, as it is now, but you're doing it for less than a third of the American people. So we should be able to save hundreds of billions of dollars, not this $100 million like the President. We will eventually get to that. Man, we're saving hundreds of billions of dollars. We'll get the country on track. We'll get people the health care they deserve. But of course one of the problems is, you can't keep allowing people to immigrate into this country legally or illegally and give free health care because it's not free. It costs everybody.

So that's something I came up with. Hopefully there are not too many other resolutions being drafted by Leg Counsel so that they can get around to putting ours in the form of a bill, where we can get a CBO score on it because you can't get a CBO score unless you have it done by Leg Counsel and get a real bill. So we're trying to get that done, and I hope we can get that done.

Then one other thing, if I might. You've got to have complete transparency on health care costs because we don't have them now. You get a notice from the hospital, the doctor, you know, $10,000, $20,000, whatever the cost was. ``Wow, thank goodness I had insurance or Medicare. I would have been bankrupt.'' That's not what it costs. It costs a fraction of that. So under this proposal, every health care provider will have to give the exact cost that they charge different entities. They don't have to give the names but the descriptions and how much they charge so that you know what it's going to cost you when you go up there before you give them your debit card to swipe. The card would be coded for health care only. If you try to pay something that's not health care, it wouldn't accept it, and people will get back to controlling their futures. We'll save this runaway health care cost, as it is, and I think save the country as a result.

My friend from Iowa has been so very patient and lenient, but this is something that is so passionate to me. I've known too many people who need good health care, and I am sick of insurance companies or government being between me and my doctor. I want patients to be able to get with their doctor, and I don't want socialized medicine. I've seen that. I've seen the results. You can look at the numbers. My friend from Iowa has all these wonderful examples that just break your heart. I don't want my American friends and our kids and their kids to suffer on our watch in this body because we didn't have the nerve to stand up and call it like it was. So I appreciate my friend for yielding, and I yield back to him.

I appreciate that. And just on a follow-up on what he's pointing out about transparency, a personal situation, a person I know--I had permission to know about--got hit by another driver. It was totally the other driver's fault. She had 2 days of hospitalization, had all the diagnostic tests, the ambulance, the doctors that she saw. And when all the bills were gathered from all those sources to deal with the car insurance company, it was right about $10,000 in health care. You say, Well, that's kind of consistent with the kind of bills I've seen, people that have been in a hospital 2 days, all the tests and doctors they see. That's about normal. Yet when it came down to the conclusion and the determination had to be made as to how much was actually paid and by whom, all of those health care provider bills that added up to $10,000 said they had been paid in full, consistent with their contract with the health insurance company. So then in checking with the health insurance company as to how much they were actually out of pocket in paying those $10,000 in claims in full,

it was $800. Now, if we get to the transparency that my friend from Iowa is talking about, then everybody in America gets the same deal that health insurance company did at $800. So you could have 2 days of hospitalization, and it doesn't even take but a fraction of your health savings account up.

The other thing I wanted to point out that kind of segues into a topic that I think my friend wanted to get into before he concluded, that is this business of the same costs. And what we saw in the last 2 weeks over the crap-and-trade bill that got shoved down America's throat through the House, at least--and I am hoping and praying that it won't get through the Senate--we're talking about skyrocketing electric bills, as the President promised a year ago back when he was a Senator running for President.

We are talking about skyrocketing gasoline prices. What is so very tragic about what my friend from Iowa pointed out is that with gasoline, it is the same price whether you're rich or poor. Those high electric rates, those high gasoline rates and the high propane rates are going to be inconvenient for Bill Gates. But they are going to devastate the people I know in east Texas and the people I have met in Iowa. They are going to devastate rank-and-file Americans.

We really need America to respond and say we can't handle that. Inconvenience for the rich is one thing, but devastation to rank-and- file Americans is something we should not have Congress do.

I yield back to my friend.

Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding funding received in my district as part of H.R. 2997, the Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010.

Stephen F. Austin Medicinal and Bioactive Crop Research Project. Stephen F. Austin State University, Box 6078 SFA Station, Nacogdoches, Texas 75962, $280,000, in the National Institute of Food and Agriculture RE/FA account, for the continuation of medicinal and bioactive crop research at the National Center for Pharmaceutical Crops. The initiative seeks to discover anti-cancer agents from plants and develop new crops for securing nationally strategic pharmaceuticals. Successful implementation of this research will improve human health, secure the U.S. supply of critical pharmaceuticals that currently come from foreign suppliers, and establish high value crops to revitalize the U.S. rural economy, while ultimately saving and improving America's lives.

I have a parliamentary inquiry.

Madam Speaker, in order to find out what we are doing, how much damage we are doing to the country, I tried to get a copy of the bill. We have out here on the table H.R. 2454 that has 1,090 pages in it. But I understood since debate in here that there are another 300 pages that were added in the middle of the night.

My inquiry is how do I get a copy of the other 300 pages that people here on the floor haven't had a chance to read or see? Where do we get that before we slam this and cram this down on the American people?

In the Rules Committee report. And Madam Speaker, where would I get that report?

Rules passed it earlier today?

That says basically we are going to the floor without everybody being able to get a copy in the Speaker's Lobby as is normally required?

Well, I'm asking an inquiry because I really want to know. Normally, the rules require we have access to a copy of the bill so we can look at it.

My inquiry is, where is it? There is one copy in the Rules Committee? Is that the answer?

It was part of the rule passed earlier today. But where is a physical copy I can get, read and look at?

The Chair is not responsible for disseminating copies. I appreciate that. I was just asking for where I can get a copy. I know that your hands are full. And congratulations on the position. I think the President did a great thing. But I'm still needing a copy of the other 300 mysterious pages that we don't get to see here.

Parliamentary Inquiry

Parliamentary inquiry.

My parliamentary inquiry, I was just at the dais and the clerks, as always, were immensely helpful. But apparently the official copy of the 1,090 pages are there, and then the additional 300 pages are sitting beside it, and the Clerk is having to go through and is in the process as we speak of going through and figuring out where the extra 300 pages that has been added goes in the official copy. So even as I speak, Madam Speaker, the official copy is not truly an official copy because it doesn't have all of the amendments in it.

And since the rule says there is an official copy at the desk, my inquiry is whether it is truly an official copy if it, as yet, does not have all of the pages in the official copy.

Right, to put the extra pages into the official copy. But is it required that it actually be a full official copy put together before you satisfy the requirement of having an official copy at the desk?

So the two together in two different piles that are being worked out together is the official copy. I appreciate the explanation.

Madam Speaker, you know, I've been trying to get through what I could of this bill and then finding out, well, actually, it's another bill. And then you have to incorporate all these other pages into it because I'd like to know what we're doing to the American people.

We've had people say we're playing politics on this side. If we wanted to play politics, because we know in our hearts this is bad for America, we would let you pass it and let you lose your jobs. But I've grown kind of fond of some of my friends on the other side; I'd like to keep you around.

But let me tell you, those who say there won't be any job loss, we're going to create jobs, let me just read you some of the things that are in your bill. The climate change adjustment allowance: when you lose your job, for any week of unemployment you are going to get some unemployment assistance after that. That's in there.

You've got some relocation allowance. But the coup de grace is that if you're an older American and you lose your job because of this, we fund a study in here.

So I would encourage my colleagues, if you lose your job because of this bill, you probably are going to be able to get assistance because you lost your job because of this bill. Don't vote for it.

Mr. Speaker, just moments ago on this floor there was cheering and there was clapping over the passing of the crap-and-trade bill. And it is a little tough to get excited. From a political standpoint, I should be overjoyed because I really believe in my heart that when the American people find out, and this is just a part of it, when they find out what has been done to them, they are going to be livid. And they are going to throw some people out of this body. I just know that will happen. But I care more about America than I do politics.

I know that we will be facing the single moms that we heard from last summer that can't afford the gasoline bill. They can't afford the propane.

You didn't do a great thing. You hurt some really decent families struggling and trying to make it. And this is going to be their death knell. It breaks my heart.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the time.

This is a trying time. And I appreciate my friend from Texas' belief and hope in the future. I just have read enough of this bill and know enough to understand the consequences. And this isn't the whole bill. This is two-thirds of it. The other 300 pages, they allowed me to borrow a copy briefly earlier today during debate right before the debate closed. But this is about two-thirds of it.

We're having a job fair in Longview, Texas, Monday. That arose when I met with a bunch of my constituents, most of whom were African Americans, in a North Lufkin church a month or so ago who had lost jobs because jobs were being moved overseas. Energy was too costly here. The corporate tax is over twice as much here as what it is in China. And I have been hearing from other manufacturers that we have in our district that if this cap-and-trade bill goes through and becomes law, there will be many more lost jobs.

And it breaks my heart. It broke my heart to meet with those people there in North Lufkin and others around my district who have lost jobs. So that's why I got to thinking what can I maybe do to help. I know the Texas Workforce Commission does a good job of having job fairs and trying to match up job openings with people's job skill sets and try to get people a job.

As someone said on the floor earlier on our side of the aisle, Our people are not interested in unemployment benefits; they're interested in a job. That's what they want. That's what they had.

We have continued to take actions for the last 2\1/2\ years since our friends across the aisle have been in the majority to place more and more of our energy off-limits, to make it more expensive.

I also have plants in my district that use natural gas as feedstock, feedstock meaning that natural gas is absolutely the most essential element to producing the things that they do like plastics and other materials. And natural gas under this cap-and-trade bill will naturally skyrocket. Our Democrat majority leadership is pushing to regulate and tax hydraulic fracking, which will make much of the gas that we're currently getting unavailable and will shove those prices even higher. I lost around 900 jobs in my district when the Abitibi paper mill closed because natural gas was more expensive here in the United States than it was virtually anywhere else. It was a Canadian company. They held on to the property hoping that one day they could reopen it and get back those 900 good jobs, but eventually they have announced they will not be reopening the plant. That was the price of natural gas that did that.

So I know with the job fair I've got coming up in Longview, we have over 60 employers there that will be offering jobs. We had over 600 people show up looking for jobs at the job fair in Lufkin, and I'm hoping it will go well.

But I have read enough of this bill and I know enough about the energy industry because we produce a lot of it in East Texas. We've got coal, we've got oil, we've got gas, solar, wind. But this bill is going to put a lot of people out of work. It's going to put people out of work all over the country. So the job fairs are not going to be adequate for the damage that this bill is going to do.

I have been joined by colleagues here on the floor who I think are as heartbroken as I am. And you would think we'd be giddy, you know, that our friends across the aisle have passed a bill that's going to come back to haunt them. It's going to cost jobs. It's going to make Americans mad. But I'm nothing but brokenhearted because I know what this will do to individuals.

And I know that my friend Mr. Souder is likewise affected, and I would like to yield to him.

And perhaps, Mr. Souder, that's why, on this map we have here, the dark red is high vulnerability under cap-and-tax to losses of jobs. That's why Indiana is in this area up here where apparently it's in the high vulnerability for high losses of jobs.

Texas, where I am from, it's in the medium vulnerability, but I already know. I have seen the loss of jobs we have.

And actually, we have some of the same industries. We have a Nucor, but we have Tyler Pipe, Lufkin Industries involved in steel, but there is going to be a lot of loss of jobs.

I appreciate that, that's an excellent point.

For this heavy manufacturing, you do have to have water. Regardless of any other energy source you may have, it takes water. That's a great point, which is why the traditional iron belt was up here in the Midwest. In those areas, you had water. You had all the things you needed. You had good workers. You had everything you needed to produce those things.

And just as an aside, as a history major and history buff, it needs to be noted. When a Nation can no longer make the things from scratch that are required to defend itself at a time of war, then the country will be lost in the next big war. We are losing the steel industry weekly, and it won't be long before we cannot produce tanks, airplanes, things.

Right now, we are barely able to produce tires because so many of the tire plants have moved overseas. You have got to have tires. You have got to have rubber. You have got to have wood. You know, we cut out so much of the wood industry, and that continues to happen, and people would be surprised how much that's used for.

Natural gas helps--is part of the process of making so many of the parts for weaponry, and that will become more and more difficult to obtain.

I appreciate my friend's point, and that is a good point.

I think if most of the people in this House had read this bill and been given a chance to read the additional third that was added at 3 a.m. or so this morning, then I don't think this would have passed either.

But we have been joined by another friend, a former fellow judge, a district judge also. I would like to yield to my friend, Mr. Poe.

I appreciate so much those sterling observations about what this bill does and the effect it's going to have.

I know last summer I was approached by so many different people about the high price of gasoline. And I know those same people are going to get hammered again as time marches on--the summer into the fall into winter--if this becomes law. And the only thing standing between it now and becoming law is the Senate, because the President is sure going to sign it if it gets there. But a single mom saying I don't make enough money to live in town, so I'm out in the rural area, which means I have to pay for more gasoline to get into town, I'm maxing out my credit card every month just on gasoline. And it's getting close on whether I have enough leeway each month on my credit card to get enough gas to keep going back and forth to my job, because if I lose my job, I can't pay anything, including my credit card bill. And just the desperation in their eyes.

The things that are in this ``crap and trade'' bill, they're an inconvenience to the wealthy. They will be an inconvenience; but to people like that single mom and to so many others that are just struggling to get by--one 80-plus-year-old lady told me last summer, she said, you know, I started out in a house that had no running water and no power, we cooked with wood. And she said, Because of the price of fuel now, it looks like I'm going to finish my life in a house the way I started. This bill is going to do that.

And I know that privately there are people who are so pleased about this bill because they really believe if gasoline goes to $10, $20 a gallon, people won't use it and they will save the planet. And what they don't seem to understand is the only way you ever get a grip on pollution is to have an economy that is just thriving, that's doing so well in an advanced society, like ours has been, and then they're able to do something about pollution. But with this bill being passed, it is going to so cripple our economy. And when people lose their jobs and they're struggling and they can't make ends meet and they're using wood to cook food, they could care less about the environment. It's unfortunate, but it's true. They care more about living and sustainability.

And so what happens is these jobs will go to places like China, India, Brazil, where the pollution standards are not what they are here. And so they will put out, as we've already heard today, three, four, five, six times more pollution than we would if we kept the jobs here. And guess what? That pollution goes into the same atmosphere that these people over here are complaining about.

So by passing a bill that drives jobs, which this will, to other countries who don't have our pollution control and don't have our sensitivities to pollution, then we are doing such a disservice to the environment.

I certainly will.

Well, I appreciate those observations.

And we've gotten testimony and evidence in other hearings that indicate if we were to open up the Outer Continental Shelf of this country where drilling is not allowed, it would, within a couple of years, have added 1.2 million jobs--not just on the platform, we're talking about most of those jobs would be added throughout the country.

We also understood from evidence presented that if you allowed drilling in ANWR, 1.1 million jobs added, there would be a handful, there would be some up in ANWR, but around the country to deal with all of that oil that would be produced. There are slopes in Alaska where drilling is not permitted that have incredible amounts of natural gas, that if allowed to drill, there is another 1.1 to 1.2 million jobs that would be added. If we just used the energy with which God has blessed our country, we would have 3.5 million more jobs. And then the President--it would suit me fine if President Obama took credit for it. If we start producing that, then he could live up to his pledge and say, see, I told you I would produce 3 million more jobs. Then he changed that to ``save or produce'' 4 million jobs because he knew nobody could prove if he saved a job or not. But this would nearly produce 4 million jobs. And I would be happy with him taking credit just to have people employed and producing energy, making us less reliant on countries overseas.

And I appreciated the point our friend, Mark Souder, made earlier about you do have to use energy to produce these products. And it's the same with agriculture. You know, we have a good bit of agriculture in east

Texas where I'm from. And as one farmer pointed out, they don't make a Prius tractor. There is no hybrid tractor. And when you get away from the barn and you've got to have power, to my knowledge nobody makes a hybrid generator--which is a joke because a hybrid means you plug it in, and if you plug it in, you wouldn't--anyway, I won't explain it. But you have to use diesel, you have to use gasoline, kerosene, something to produce the energy that agriculture needs to produce.

And then the fertilizer, goodness sakes, it takes massive amounts of natural gas to produce the fertilizer that the farmers use to produce all the food we get. And so it is heartbreaking to know how agriculture, you know, it's just going to devastate the middle class, the lower middle class, particularly. And what we are going to see in the next days ahead is heartbreaking.

We are joined also by a friend who Mr. Poe indicated is a CPA. And I always appreciate the way he looks at things because it's such a straightforward approach. So I would like to yield to my friend, Mr. Conaway.

Thank you, Mr. Conaway.

I will yield to my friend Mr. Souder.

I appreciate so much, Mr. Souder, your great observations.

Thomas Jefferson said: ``The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.'' And that's what we're seeing in this bill, the dramatic gains of the government's right to control your life in this bill are just extraordinary.

I do want to make a couple of quick points. Apparently we have about 7 or 8 minutes left.

For one thing, Mr. Conaway had mentioned earlier that it will likely cost the average family across America an extra $3,031. And I know there will be some people out there who have seen some in the mainstream media say, oh, well, we saw where that guy from MIT said it won't cost that much. It may be $300 or $500 or $600, but it won't be $3,100.

Those people just bought the Democratic talking points and didn't bother to check to see why it was that they are saying that it won't cost over $3,000. From what I have read, apparently they are saying it won't cost over $3,000 because even though the average family will pay more than $3,000 additionally because of this bill, they are saying what you will get back from the government in the way of services and benefits will be a wash because of all that you will get out of the government as a result of that extra $3,000 you pay for energy in the first year. It won't be that much, because you will be grateful for all you get. Baloney.

And another thing we heard in debate on the floor today about was, gee, the AFL-CIO leaders and other union leaders, we heard these union leaders were in support of this bill. Well, how about that? They were in favor of the government taking over GM and Chrysler. Why? Because they got a deal. They get to own the companies. Who knows what they have promised the union leaders to support this ``crap-and-trade'' bill.

It is a sad, sad day for America because the rank-and-file people in America are going to pay a severe price. This intrudes into their lives so much. And for my unfortunate Democratic friends who have not read this, they said, no, no, no. This will provide jobs, not take jobs. They just need to go to section 426 where it talks about the climate change adjustment allowance because there are provisions in it. They know that people are going to lose their jobs as a result of this bill. So it is built in here.

Now, you have to understand, though, it says here, you won't get such allowance for the first week you are unemployed. But then it will kick in after that. There is good stuff here. Over here it does mention that you're not going to get an adjustment allowance for that first week either that you're unemployed. They know this is going to cost so many jobs.

There is climate change adjustment assistance and relocation assistance. Unfortunately, it is not going to pay you to go get your job back from China, India, Brazil and Latin America. So that part of the relocation is not going to help. But I'll tell you the one that just galled me to no end. It says here, absolutely part of the law, the Secretary shall conduct a study to examine the circumstances of older adversely affected workers.

In other words, if you're over 50 or so and you lose your job-- because you're going to, you're going to lose a lot of jobs here--and you lose your job, when you do as a result of this bill, don't worry. We are going to do a study about you and your lost job. That will warm your heart, won't it? It won't keep you warm on a cold night next winter when you lost your job as a result of this bill.

But the good news is, the Senate has still not acted. Mr. Speaker, it is not too late for people to let their Senator know, look, I know you're a Democrat. I know the pressure is enormous. I know they are promising you all kinds of things to get you to vote for this bill. But don't get sucked in, because we will be the ones, the constituents will say, for paying the price for your sin and error.

I would like to yield to my friend, Judge Poe, in our last few minutes.

Thank you, and I appreciate your observations. I would like to also observe, though, we heard during the debate today that the National Association of Realtors was supporting this. Obviously they didn't know about the 300 pages added at 3:08 a.m. this morning, because whoever that Realtor was that pushed that should lose their job because it is going to cost Realtors jobs. It is going to cost them commissions. It is going to cost them royally.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I would yield back time.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 31, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 9 o'clock and 21 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until Tuesday, July 7, 2009, at 2 p.m.

I certainly appreciate my friend from California yielding. With regard to the polar bears, in the Natural Resources Committee we have been hearing that by 20 years ago we were up to under 12,000 polar bears in the whole world, and now we know there are over 25,000 polar bears in the world. They're doing pretty well.

But as we know--and there's some friends here from Texas--in Texas we have a problem with overpopulation of deer because they don't know when to stop overpopulating, and so we have seasons to help keep them from starving themselves to death.

So it is a little misleading to see the ice cap breaking off and the starving mother bear and the cub. That's heartbreaking. And, apparently, it's heartbreaking enough that millions of people--or at least millions of dollars come flowing in.

You kind of hate if you've got millions of dollars coming in from people that feel bad about the polar bears--by the way, the Bush administration was asked to say that the polar bears should be on the endangered species list. But the Bush administration knew they were increasing, just like you were saying, and so what they did was compromised and allowed polar bears to be listed as threatened, even though they're increasing in population.

I'm pleased the polar bears are doing well. Hopefully, we won't have to open up additional seasons, that they will moderate their behavior.

But we also saw with the caribou and people talking about how terrible it is to produce oil in Alaska. And we heard that if they ever put that pipeline up to Prudhoe Bay, it would kill off the last 2,900 caribou that were in the area, that we just couldn't do that. It would destroy their mating habits.

Turns out, caribou now, when they want to go on dates, invite each other to go to the pipeline on cold winter nights because that oil is warm going through the pipeline and it makes them amorous. And now we're up to 30,000 caribou in that herd. So it turns out man and caribou and polar bears can do just fine.

But it does remind one a little bit of the scare that went across the Nation about chlorofluorocarbons just as the Freon patent was coming up, and lo and behold we had to outlaw CFCs that were destroying the ozone layer. It turned out we found out that one eruption of Mount St. Helens put a thousand years' worth of CFCs in the atmosphere--one eruption.

So sometimes I think that we think much too highly of ourselves as human beings and the effect that we have on the world and on the globe, when actually we do need to be good stewards of this wonderful planet, but we also should not be fearmongers that scare people out of doing things to help themselves and their families.

I appreciate so much my friend from California and his yielding.

Mr. Speaker, I also want to thank the leadership and the very responsible conduct of the chairman of the task force, Adam Schiff, for having done an exemplary job in moving this along and bringing it to a head as quickly as could have humanly been done, and to Chairman Conyers and Ranking Member Smith. We have worked together on this because it is a very serious matter when our Federal courts are held in less than high esteem.

We have a Federal judge, as has already been mentioned, who pled guilty to obstruction of justice. He admitted to nonconsensual sexual acts. We have the transcript from the Federal court hearings in which there is actual specificity of misrepresentations. We also can take judicial notice of his orders and opinions that he wrote himself.

It is very clear that, as some of the witnesses testified, he was arrogant, he was a bully. That is not enough to impeach someone or remove them from office, but certainly obstruction of justice would be under the circumstances here.

What I found particularly offensive beyond the obstruction were the games that were played by this judge with this body. Here the day before we were having our hearing of the task force, we get a resignation letter dated June 2, 2009, addressed to the President, saying, ``I hereby resign from my position as United States district judge for the Southern District of Texas effective June 1, 2010,'' a year away, a resignation that could be withdrawn at any time before it became effective.

Now, we heard testimony from the witnesses that this judge was particularly manipulative, and that is how he was able to continue the nonconsensual sexual assaults over and over, because he was so manipulative. They were afraid of losing their jobs, and it was clear that he had said, I am the king, and it is good to be king.

It is good to be king, unless you are committing crimes and misusing the office to which you were entrusted.

But the resignation letter would just be a resignation, if it were sincere. But then we got another letter before our final hearing before the committee asking that it be taken into consideration that he had these problems and he needed his salary and his medical and he was trying to pay medical bills of his late wife. Ironically, he wasn't quite as concerned for his late wife when he was groping and manipulating and bullying people within his trust and care as a Federal judge.

We heard testimony that if someone had come before his court and used the same reasons that he gave as to why he ought to keep getting his salary, that he would not only have not been moved to sympathy, he would have been moved to anger and would have taken it out on the defendant.

So even at this late date, there is no evidence of contriteness. There is no evidence of remorse, other than being caught. There is more manipulation, which makes clear all the more that he should not have his request granted that he be paid as a Federal judge while he is sitting in prison for committing crimes while he was getting paid to be a Federal judge.

Let's bring this to an end and vote for the impeachment.