Floor Statements

I thank the chairman and I thank Mrs. Roby for bringing this forward.

It's really about time, because on the deathbed, very few people say, Boy, I wish I had spent more time at the office.

I've got to tell you, from being in business all my life--and I think maybe that's the problem in Washington, not enough of you have actually been on the floor of a business because you think it's always about some kind of a fair treatment. But your definition of ``fair'' is not fair.

When I look at men and women, I don't look at them as men and women. I look at them as moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and aunts and uncles. They love to go to soccer games. They love go to baseball games, and they love to go to all those Cub Scout meetings. But you know what? We want to just give them the flexibility, the same as we do in the public sector.

What an odd concept to actually give people the freedom to do what they want with their time and to work a little overtime so they can pick up extra time. My gosh, what a confusing concept that would be.

And this is not by gender, by the way. If you think this is about working mothers, it's also about working fathers. Do you know how many times people don't have that time to go see their sons and daughters in a school play or a baseball game? You want to take that away from them with some kind of phony act today, and you'll line up 15 deep? Talk about insincerity and inflexibility; that's your party.

You're supposed to be the party of the women. We're supposed to be the ones that don't like women. We're giving them a gift that you can never give: the gift of time. Nobody has the ability to do that.

This bill makes it possible for people to spend that precious time with those precious few that they want to.

Mr. Speaker, Armstrong is proudly celebrating its fiftieth anniversary of providing loyal cable service to its customers. With 800 employees, Armstrong serves 282,000 subscribers. Armstrong was founded in 1946 by Jud and Ned Sedwick and remains a family-owned and operated business that maintains close ties with the communities it serves.

Cablefax Magazine, a leading telecommunications publication, recently awarded Armstrong the 2012 Best Customer Service Award for service excellence among independent cable operators nationwide.

I congratulate Armstrong on the 18th day of April in the year 2013. I heartily commend Armstrong for its dedication to customer service and offer best wishes for future success.

Mr. Speaker, today is a very important day to us.

Monday, April 15, was tax day.

Our Tax Code is way too big, way too complicated, way too confusing, and way too costly. Americans spend a combined 6.7 billion hours on their taxes every year, and they pay a combined total of $168 billion just to comply with tax rules. Now, I've run a business all my life. I know full well the burdens of tax regulation: it slows hiring; it slows productivity; and it slows growth. Our Tax Code is a 70,000-page spiderweb that is unfairly trapping American workers, American families, and American businesses as well as the American economy; and it's time to set them free.

Today, April 18, is tax freedom day.

Look, it's time for us to simplify the rules, to lower the rates, to close the loopholes. A fairer, freer, simpler Tax Code will allow all taxpayers to save money, will let our economy thrive, and will allow new jobs to flourish; and, in the end, all America wins.

I thank the gentleman, and thank you for holding this this evening, because it's really important that we understand exactly what's going on with coal.

When America was looking for energy, they went to coal. Coal has always been there for us. It is abundant, it is accessible, it is affordable, and it is truly American. And this is the part I don't get. You just heard Mrs. Hartzler talk about the President's statement, and also Mr. Whitfield. That's one campaign promise he kept. He said, If you want to produce electricity using coal, you can do it, but we'll bankrupt you. Now, this makes absolutely no sense to anybody who understands what America needs right now, and it's jobs.

In Pennsylvania, 40 percent of Pennsylvania's electricity is produced using coal. In addition to keeping electricity affordable, the coal industry contributes more than $7 billion annually to the Commonwealth's economy. It's about jobs, jobs, jobs.

This is a President who just doesn't get it. He talks about all the above when it comes to energy, but he forgets all that's below. He turns his back on coal and looks to renewables that are very expensive and make no sense to the average American. And the hardworking American people who produce this coal are miners. We've not only shut down their mines, we've shut down their power plants, and we're ruining their communities. We're absolutely ruining communities right now.

Now, I couldn't understand what was so horrible about this product, because I heard the President describe it many times, and I grew up in a coal producing community. The Sauls were in the coal mining business, they had Eagle Coal. My friend John Stilley has Amerikohl. I have friends over in the Kittanning area, Rosebud.

But I went to CONSOL, and I went down to the Bailey Mine. I went down 700 feet underground to see this horrible, horrible product that the President absolutely hates and wants to eliminate. And while I was there, I was trying to figure out: Where is it so bad?

I watched as they did the longwall mining, how it shaved the coal off the wall. It's being drenched all the time with a fine mist, and then there's vacuums taking all the coal dust out.

I sat as far away from the machine as you having a conversation with somebody. And the guy who I was talking to said: You know, Mike, I've done this for 40 years. When I first started, I had to do it on my hands and knees. I laid on my back and I used a pick. And the reason I did that was because I was married and my wife and I had some dreams. We wanted to buy a house, we wanted to raise a family, wanted to educate those kids, and we wanted to live our life. And I did it through coal mining.

But, you know, the way it is now, this is incredible. And I stood in a room that was at least 10 to 12 feet high and about 30 feet wide and watched the coal miner, a machine, shave the face of the coal off the wall and then extract it.

Now, it doesn't make sense to me or to anybody else as a commonsense person. What in the world are you trying to do, Mr. President? In Erie, Pennsylvania--that's where GE Transportation is, they build locomotives. Now, the locomotives haul trains and those trains haul coal. And there's been a 20 percent reduction in coal.

So do you know what that did to GE? They don't have to build as many locomotives. We have 3,000 locomotives sitting idle. Why? In a country that's looking for jobs, why is this President eliminating jobs?

Now, look, it doesn't make any sense, it just doesn't make any sense. And as we go forward, I would like this President to look at energy, all the above. What would make us great as a country? Energy independence. That's what we need--low cost energy. And we have it right here, right now.

When coal wins, America wins, and when America wins, we all win. This isn't a Republican initiative or a Democrat initiative. As you said earlier, this is about America and America's strategy and America's answer to energy independence. Coal is a big part of it and has to continue to be a big part of that.

So I thank you for what you're doing. We'll keep fighting for coal, we're not going to give up, we're not going home. Mr. Rahall spoke very eloquently about it. But all these folks from all these coal-producing areas--you know, Pennsylvania is the fourth-leading coal-producing State in the country, the third-largest State in terms of coal produced by the underground mining method, and first in terms of total coal extracted by longwall mining technology. We win with coal, we put people to work with coal, we lower our energy costs with coal, we win the battle in the world economy because our cost of energy is lower, which allows us to pay higher wages to all those folks out there right now who are struggling, hardworking American taxpayers.

Why in the world would we take from them right now low-cost energy and condemn it because it doesn't meet this President's standards?

It's time for us to fight back and fight back hard, not as Republicans, not as Democrats, but as Americans. So, Mr. Barr, I thank you so much for what you're doing.

I thank the chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act.

If you're sick of government, spend a couple of years here.

We talk about the American people. Please tell me that these debates have anything to do with getting people back to work. This is about a constitutional process that we're supposed to follow. This is about unconstitutional appointments to the National Labor Relations Board. That Board, by the way, protects employers, management, and labor--it's not just labor--so let's make sure we understand that.

As we come here and do this posturing, no wonder the American people are losing faith in the way this body works. If we're really concerned about getting people back to work, if we're really concerned about letting this Nation rise again, this is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. This is not a Board that's supposed to be made up of all Republicans or all Democrats, but it's supposed to be constitutionally appointed. My Lord, what are we talking about today? These are unconstitutional appointments.

You know what the certainty of this is? Here's the certainty. And this is a President that always talks about if you play by the rules, if you follow the rules and you work really hard in this country, you have a chance to make it. But the footnote is: unless you don't agree with me, I'll go ahead and do it the way I want to do it. Even though I'm a professor of constitutional law, put that aside. I know an end run on this.

Now, I would tell my colleagues, please, this is a process that we have to protect. This is not a political football to go back and forth with. My goodness. This is about fairness. Fairness is not a Republican issue or a Democrat issue. It's an American issue. It doesn't matter who struck John or what did past Presidents do. This has been found unconstitutional.

The only certainty of what's going on here are three things regarding the Board's current decisions: those decisions cannot be relied upon; every losing party will be justified in filing an appeal; and no prevailing party can be assured that they will ever benefit from any Board-ordered remedy.

How do you fix it?

Take it to the Senate; run it through the process it's supposed to run through; get them appointed the right way; and then to go forward. Isn't that the American way? I'm not talking about a Republican way. I'm not talking about a Democrat way. It's what's best for the country.

This political posturing is ridiculous. We know what the law is here; we know what the process is; we know what the Constitution says; and we're here today making it something else. This is not about class warfare. This is about denying the process.

I thank the gentlelady for your guidance and your leadership the last couple of years. It was a joy serving with you in Foreign Affairs.

I rise today in support of House Resolution 834 and urge the EU and member states to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Hezbollah is called ``the A Team'' of international terrorist organizations by terrorism experts. Hezbollah was created by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force in 1982, and is a primary terrorist proxy of Iran. Hezbollah receives weapons, training, monies, and support from Iran and Syria.

Hezbollah has left its bloody fingerprints around the world in the last 30 years. Hezbollah has been implicated in numerous deadly terrorist attacks against Europeans, Americans, and Israelis:

In 1983, the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut, which killed 63 people; the 1983 bombing of the U.S. and French barracks of the Multinational Force in Lebanon, killing 241 American servicemen and 58 French soldiers; the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people; the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires, killing 85 people; the suicide bombing on July 18, 2012, that killed five Israeli tourists and a Bulgarian driver in the town of Burgas, Bulgaria, that had all the hallmarks of a Hezbollah attack.

Hezbollah has created violence and instability in Lebanon. In addition to terrorist attacks and political assassinations, it has launched thousands of rockets and missiles at Israel from within Lebanon. Hezbollah supports Bashar al-Assad's brutal, ongoing violence against the Syrian people.

It's long past time for the EU and its members to join the U.S. and other allies and list Hezbollah as a terrorism organization. I would ask the EU as a recipient of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize to please wake up. The U.S. designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in the late 1990s. Canada and Australia, as well as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, both EU members, also list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

Failure to recognize and designate Hezbollah allows it to continue evading law enforcement, intelligence, and security services, and it endangers the people of Europe. Hezbollah cannot claim to be a legitimate political party or provider of social services when it refuses to abandon its terrorist agenda. Both the United States and the EU must be united in our fight against Hezbollah.

This resolution, H. Res. 834, urges the EU and member states to designate Hezbollah as a terrorist organization and to prevent Hezbollah from using EU territories for fundraising, for recruitment, for training, for propaganda, and any other activities. It urges the EU and its members to impose sanctions on Hezbollah for supporting the Assad regime's brutal violence against the Syrian people. It affirms our support for the Bulgarian government in its investigation of the July 18, 2012, terrorist attack, and urges our President to support that investigation. It urges the President to provide information to our European allies regarding Hezbollah's terrorist activities, subversion of democracy in Lebanon, and support of Assad's violence in Syria. This Congress has and will do all it can to urge the EU to do the right thing and list Hezbollah as a terrorist organization.

In September, my good friend Gus Bilirakis from Florida, Mr. Deutch, Mr. Israel, Mr. Sires and I led a bipartisan group of 268 House Members to send a letter to the President and the 27 ministers of the European Commission urging the Commission to include Hezbollah on the EU terrorist list. I might mention Mr. Deutch and I had talked one day walking into our offices about how well our staffs have worked together to forge this letter, to put it together. And we do things in a lot of bipartisan ways. I think sometimes it gets lost in the wash of other things that are going on. I especially want to thank all those members of the staffs and also one of my staff members, Mr. Isaac Fong, for the tireless work he put in.

Earlier this month, the Senate unanimously passed Senate Resolution 613, which also urges the EU to declare Hezbollah a terrorist organization. H. Res. 834 has over 80 bipartisan cosponsors. I urge my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on H. Res. 834. It's time to recognize Hezbollah for what it is. If it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. This is a terrorist organization. It needs to be recognized and designated as one worldwide.

Mr. Speaker, I do rise today in support of the Government Employee Accountability Act, H.R. 6016, and I thank the gentleman from Texas and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Clay).

As a result of this, I think when we had that hearing last spring, both sides were outraged. I remember Chairman Issa speaking out very strongly and also Ranking Member Cummings speaking out very strongly. Because we truly are the stewards of the taxpayer money. And what we said at that time was that we're going to get to the bottom of this, and we're going to find out how this happened and why it happened. When I got back to my office, our switchboard was lighting up and people from back home in western Pennsylvania said, Why is this happening?

I stress exactly what you said--we have a lot of wonderful people working very hard for this country, for this government, and we don't want to paint them all with the same brush. But by the same token, when there is some wrongdoing, it is up to us in the Congress to step forward and do things that make sense.

So this is just a commonsense solution to a situation that has to be addressed. I would say that working together, this is a bipartisan effort to make sure that we have great accountability for those taxpayer dollars that are being spent.

This piece of legislation, as it goes forward today--let's make sure that we understand this--these are the senior executives, these are the creme de la creme, these are the top people that we rely on. That Western Region Conference, as Mr. Farenthold pointed out, was $600,000 over budget, and at some point you've got to wonder why. When we asked the GSA, when we asked Ms. Johnson, Why is Mr. Neely on leave with pay, she said, Well, we don't have any mechanism to prevent that from happening; we don't have the tools to do that. So what we said was, let's go back into the regular world, let's go back into commonsense rules and let's give them a tool to use that makes sense for the American people.

So, I applaud what you're saying, Mr. Clay. It's nice working with you on this. I want to especially thank the committee. We did work very hard on this to come up with something that makes sense for America and makes sense also for the people that work for us. So I thank you.

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support. Listen, this is what the country expects us to do; and today, you don't have to have on a red shirt or blue shirt. These are red, white, and blue jobs that we're talking about. And we're talking about our opportunity now to compete, and not just compete and not just participate, to actually dominate the world market.

I want to just read from a note from a friend of mine, Rick McNeel, who's the president and the chief executive officer of Lord Corporation. He says that outside our borders are markets that represent 80 percent of the world's purchasing power, 92 percent of the economic growth, and 95 percent of its consumers. One in three American manufacturing jobs depends on this.

In Lord Corporation alone, they increased their sales from $67 million in 2001 to $158 million in 2011.

Listen, this makes sense for America. This makes sense for the world. And when it talks about us not just participating, but dominating the world market, my goodness, does this give us a voice at the table when it comes to the discussion of human rights and personal liberty. We can be the strongest voice in the world, and we need to be that strongest voice in the world. There is no other place to look to now for leadership other than the United States. We can do that.

And by passing this today, we send a strong message not only to the world, but to our country, that we have joined hands, we are joining arm-in-arm, and we are going to dominate in the world markets and regain our position as the leader when it comes to human rights and personal freedoms and liberty.

I thank the gentleman, and I'd urge all our colleagues on both sides to pass this bill today.

Mr. Chairman, I have an amendment at the desk.

Mr. Chairman, I yield 2 minutes to my friend from Texas (Mr. Carter).

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

This is a subject I know a little bit about because my family actually has been in the business since 1953.

I find it unique that really just inside the Beltway we're able to pick and chose winners and losers, and we're able to tell people, you know what, you're not able to drive what you want to drive, and you're not able to use the source of energy that you want to use. You know why? Because we know better.

I tell you what: the track record here doesn't show me that you really know better--a $16 trillion business in the red, and it continues? I would look at the President. I think he has got a war on wheels.

The big thing about America is you were always able to pick the car you wanted to use. You could drive it anywhere you wanted. You could do anything you want. In this country you can leave here and drive to California if you want. You don't have to worry about it.

This amendment only asks us to do something that's common sense. I know that's hard to understand here. I have been here for 20 months, I'm still trying to figure it out, and I've pretty much got it down now.

When you take things away from people and replace them with something that they don't want, let me tell you what happens. When you raise the price of a car, what it does is take off the ability for somebody at the entry level to buy a car.

Now, the unintended consequences in this town are absolutely astounding. We talk about the loss of jobs. We talk about the loss of jobs, not just the people who build the cars but how about the people who make the tires. How about all the different elements that go into a car, all the different things that go into a car? We have a direct effect on these people being successful.

You have to get these cars lighter. When you make them lighter, what do you do? There's a safety impact there. The losses that we continue to put on our job creators is staggering here. I think the reason why is because most of the people here have never been a job creator. They have been debt creators.

They love coming up with legislation that the average American couldn't begin to figure out. They scratch their head and they raise their shoulders and say, how is this happening? I say it's happening by irresponsible legislation, or if we can't legislate it, let's just regulate it.

We understand what CAFE is all about. I was there when it first started. I understand, it was about dependence on foreign oil. The administration says, you know what, though? If you do this 54.5 miles per gallon, you know what? You'll save $8,000 in fuel. Now what they don't tell you is you have to drive 224,000 miles to reach that, but that's just a little detail. Why would we even worry about the details when we know so well what we're doing here? My goodness, it's evident.

Now there is a war on wheels. There's a war on fossil fuels, there's a war on just about everything here that would help a job creator create a job. Then we tell these people, look, we want you in here with both feet, we want you in the game. And all I say to these folks is, you know what? You need to get some skin in the game too. I want to see your noses bloodied a little bit when you come out with these ridiculous regulations.

I tell you what, as a job creator I'm being tired of being water- boarded by our own government. I'm tired of being told that you're going to have to meet these standards. How did you come up with those standards? Well, we have got some fuzzy science that we will bring in.

Now I will just close with this. We can continue this silliness, or we can get America back to work. My suggestion is get Americans back to work.

I thank the gentleman.

It's intriguing. And again, I've actually not just talked the talk; I've walked the walk. I'm always fascinated by these facts and figures that we throw around, and we talk about all the things that we're doing and we talk about General Motors.

The General Motors that I understand, the General Motors that my father started with in 1936 as a parts picker, was not the same General Motors that told me in 2009 I could no longer be a dealer, because it wasn't the same General Motors. You see, General Motors kind of went by the wayside and a new General Motors came into view.

And as we talk about all these folks that fell in line with what the administration wanted, of course they did. Who do they owe the money to? Who got bailed out in this great auto bailout? Who are the people whose jobs were saved? Who were the people whose pensions were made full and who was left hanging?

So we can talk about all these wonderful things that happened, and these are flights of fancy. This gets to be a little bit silly to me when the company that agreed to these new standards was beholden to the people who put them forward. It wasn't good enough that we already had standards on the books. No, no, no, no, 32\1/2\ miles a gallon aren't enough. We've got to get to 54\1/2\ miles a gallon. Why is that? Because that's what we want. We've got to get California involved. We've got to get the EPA involved. We've got to get everybody else involved.

I go back to day one when it was a CAFE standard and the idea was to get away from dependence on foreign oil.

We can talk about this and we can pretend that these things didn't happen. We can pretend that General Motors went bankrupt--and the idea of taking money from the government was to keep General Motors from going bankrupt. Amazingly, they went bankrupt. And isn't it something that a company the size of General Motors could emerge from bankruptcy in 11 days? My gosh, that's fantastic. Not only did they emerge, but you know what they were able to keep? They were able to keep carry- forward tax losses. That usually doesn't happen in normal bankruptcy. But we can game that a little bit.

So when we talk to these other manufacturers and we say we'll give a carrot here, but we also got a little stick that goes with it, yeah, they went along with it. But look who went along with it. The board of directors was not elected by shareholders. It was appointed by the administration.

Now these flights of fancy are a little bit funny inside here, but for a guy that actually walked that walk and had a dealership taken away from him--not because I couldn't run it but because the administration decided under the new General Motors that I wasn't going to be a dealer anymore--that's hard to take. My dad started in 1953, worked very hard to get there. We actually did build it. I mean, we physically built it ourselves. And now to be told, Well, we've made a decision; you're not going to.

Now, this energy stuff gets a little bit weird to me. And I know the President likes to take credit for all the things that the Bush administration did. The fact of the matter is permitting has been stopped. And what I would encourage all Members to do is go out in the field, talk to the people in the coal business, talk to people in the oil business, talk to people that are having a tough time staying open because they can't get a permit. Now you can get a permit, but you just have to wait in line a long time to get it.

These things, again, this is common sense. And if we can't come together in this House and do what's right for the people of the United States, then there's something dramatically wrong. We've got tremendous natural resources. You just have to take advantage of it.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to this motion.

Yes.

Mr. Speaker, in 2011, we came to this House for one reason, and it was a motion to recommit. We recommitted to the people of the United States that we were going to change the way business was done in this town. This motion to recommit is a joke. This is ridiculous.

Let me tell you about what it's like to be in the real world and not inside the Beltway. I operate a business that my father started back in 1953, after being a parts picker in a General Motors warehouse, going to fight the war, and coming back home. I called our body shop manager today, Jason Sholes. He's been with me for 26 years. I said to Jason, ``I need to know the cost of tape, Jason.'' He goes, ``What are you talking about, Mike?'' I said, ``In our body shop, when people wreck their car and bring their car in, I know we have to use a lot of tape.'' He said, ``Oh, my goodness. Has the cost of tape gone crazy. We use two types of tape, Mike. We use green tape. Green tape is the tape we use when we have to use water on a job, and we have to make sure that the tape sticks, and that's up to $4 a roll.''

I said, ``Tell me about the other tape.'' He said, ``The other tape is yellow tape.'' I said, ``Tell me about the yellow tape.'' He said, ``That's when we're going to paint a car, and we don't have to use the green tape. The yellow tape is a little less expensive. It's only $2 a roll. But, Mike, I've got to tell you that we're spending $160 a month on tape, and it's really making me wonder about whether I'm doing the right thing.''

I said, ``Jason, we're spending about $2,000 a year on green and yellow tape?'' He said, ``Yes, we are.'' I said, ``Jason, do you know what the cost of red tape is?'' He goes, ``I have no idea. We don't use red tape.'' I said, ``Yes, we do. It's $1.75 trillion.'' That's the cost of red tape.

I called my friend Don Shamey at NexTier Bank. I said, ``Don, we've know each other since we were kids. Our wives know each other, and our kids grew up together. We do a lot of things together. I've done business with you for 40 years. You're right across the street from me. Don, tell me about the new regulations.'' He said, ``Mike, if you take a look at it, there's 1,100 pages now that are the definition of whether you're a qualified borrower or not.'' I said, ``It only took 1,100 pages for the government to determine what the definition of a qualified borrower is? Are you kidding me? Do you mean to sit here and say that you are serious?''

We renovated a ballpark in my hometown with a guy named Tom Burnatowski, a veteran. It took us a couple of million dollars to renovate

our ballpark. The day we were going to open up, I got a call at the dealership where he said, ``Mike, could you come down.'' I said, ``Why? What's going on.'' He said, ``We're having trouble with the occupancy permit.'' I went down to see. I said, ``What's the problem?'' He said, ``Come into the men's room. Let me show you what the problem is.'' I said, ``You know, we have 1,500 people that want to come and see the opening ball game.'' He said, ``But we've got a major problem. The mirrors in the restroom are a quarter of an inch too low. So you can't possibly open that ballpark.''

You want to know the price of regulation? You want to talk about the thousands and thousands of pages that we put on the backs of the job creators? You want to talk about creating jobs in America? When you want to see a Nation that doesn't want to participate but wants to dominate in the world market, then let them rise. Take the heavy boot off the throat of America's job creators and let them breathe.

The jobs we are talking about are not red jobs or blue jobs; they're red, white, and blue jobs. They are not Democrat jobs or Republican jobs or independent jobs or libertarian jobs; they are American jobs. If you want this country to thrive and not just survive, then please start playing the game by the rules and stop this ridiculous mockery of what it is that we do here in this town. We are so out of touch with the American people.

Do you know what all this does? It adds layer, after layer of cost, and that cost is ultimately paid for by the American consumer. You want to have more revenues? Then let the tide rise for all boats. Let us be able to not only survive, but to thrive.

This is not a left or right issue, this is an American issue. I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to rise today and vote for H.R. 4078. Let's let America get back to work.

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

I thank the gentlelady from California.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge the passage of H.R. 5859. This legislation repeals a requirement that auto dealers provide consumers with an insurance cost booklet.

I actually know about this because I am an automobile dealer, and I've spent 45 years in the showroom and on the lots. To the best of my recollection--and we service anywhere from 800 to 1,000 people a month--nobody has ever come into our showroom and ever asked for that booklet. It just never happens. This booklet has information that is useless and totally irrelevant to the average consumer.

Let me read from the booklet:

The table presents vehicles' collision loss experience in

relative terms, with 100 representing the average for all

passenger vehicles. Thus, a rating of 122 reflects a

collision loss experience that is 22 percent higher, or

worse, than average while a rating of 96 reflects a collision

loss experience that is 4 percent lower, or better, than

average.

It goes on to say:

It is unlikely your total premium will vary more than 10

percent depending upon the collision loss experience of a

particular vehicle.

It then goes on to say that, if you really want to find out about the insurance, what you really need to do is to contact the insurance carriers or the companies directly.

Do you know what? I didn't want to base it just on what I know. I've talked to a lot of my friends who are also in the automobile business, and I've asked them, Have you ever had anybody walk in the store and ask for this? They've said, Absolutely not. It has never happened.

We called the NHTSA hotline, the booklet hotline. The representative said--and this is NHTSA's representative--I have no idea about the booklet. He said, Do you know what you need to do? You need to call your insurance agent. Now, this is NHTSA's person. This is their hotline.

Last month--again, not relying on my 45 years of experience--I went back into our store, and I went to one of our sales meetings. I asked our guys and our girls, who have a combined sales experience of 250 years, Listen, I've never had this happen, but has anybody ever come in and asked for this insurance collision loss booklet? Nobody--nobody-- had heard of it. Nobody has ever come in--zero, nada--and asked for that booklet.

Now, here is the deal. Dealers have to have this booklet available. Should somebody ask for it and you can't provide it, there is a fine of $1,000 per occurrence with a max of $400,000. That's what the fine is capped at. So, if somebody comes into the showroom and asks for the booklet and you don't have it and you get audited on it, it's $1,000. Unfortunately, the government caps it at $400,000.

So, when you look at these things, again, the unintended consequences have such a dire effect on the American people. These are taxpayer dollars that are being wasted on information that is irrelevant, never asked for. Nobody cares about it. So I join my colleagues.

I thank Mr. Owens, and I also thank Mr. Harper and Mrs. Bono Mack for bringing this forward today. It is another waste of taxpayer money that serves no purpose to the American people. I urge the passage of H.R. 5859.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to urge President Obama to designate August as National Fuel Efficiency Month. It is critical that we help educate the American public that we can all contribute to energy independence and environmental sustainability if we undertake a few simple measures.

More fuel-efficient vehicles are being built and sold in the United States every day. But as we head into the major summer driving season, it's important to remember that we all can improve fuel efficiency right now, through a number of simple measures--even without buying a new car.

In my home state of Pennsylvania, there were nearly 7.9 million passenger vehicles on the roads last year. Armstrong, Butler, Crawford, Erie, Mercer, Vernango, and Warren counties accounted for almost 500,000 of those registrations. For all of the drivers in Pennsylvania's 3rd congressional district--and for all of the many drivers across the United States--we should be raising awareness about how to be more fuel efficient.

For example, simply using cruise control will help drivers maintain a steady speed and save fuel. Tuning your car and keeping tires inflated each can increase your fuel economy by 3 or 4%. Driving responsibly and at the speed limit also improve fuel economy.

AAA and many other organizations have tips for driving economically. EPA also has posted information on efficient driving at http:// www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/drive.shtml. These techniques will save Americans fuel, decrease emissions and help us achieve energy independence.

Again, I urge the President to designate August as National Fuel Efficiency Month. Such a designation would provide the perfect opportunity for all of us to take a good look at our driving habits and see how easily we can improve fuel economy.

Mr. Speaker, the United States and the Republic of Korea have a deep and sustaining relationship built on shared values and shared sacrifice.

June 25th marked the 62nd anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War and the early days of an alliance with Korea that has withstood the test of time.

In honor of those who made the ultimate sacrifice for the cause of freedom on the Korean Peninsula, we should affirm our continued support of this trusted ally who has fought alongside the U.S. in nearly every major conflict the U.S. has faced since World War II.

Earlier this year, the United States and the Republic of Korea began the implementation of the U.S.--Korea Free Trade Agreement, the product of years of negotiation and persuasion that will be beneficial to both of our countries and to businesses, workers, and consumers both here and in Korea.

This Free Trade Agreement will stimulate America's economic recovery--without government spending--by increasing U.S. exports and creating jobs in the U.S. According to the Senate Finance Committee, data taken from the independent, nonpartisan U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) suggest that KORUS could create up to 280,000 jobs in the United States. While conservative estimates from the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative show a more modest increase of 70,000 jobs, either way you cut it, KORUS means more jobs for Americans, and that's great news for a nation that's suffered one of the longest periods of high unemployment rates since the Great Depression.

In order to level the playing field for American businesses and manufacturers, the agreement has already begun to reduce Korean tariffs on U.S. exports. The ITC estimates that full implementation of KORUS will increase U.S. exports to Korea by nearly 30 percent more than imports from Korea would increase in the U.S., an amount equaling more than $10 billion.

Even setting aside the great strides we have made by implementing the Free Trade Agreement, the relationship between the United States and Korea could not be stronger.

Economically and politically speaking, Korea is stronger today than at any time in its history, a strength that would have been unimaginable in the dark days after the North Korean invasion 62 years ago.

We have one of the strongest relationships in that part of the world and it will be growing stronger as we have more opportunities to advance our national security interests in the area of nuclear energy cooperation.

Mr. Speaker, let me add that, after 40 years of a really close partnership in nuclear energy, it's now time to renew our 123 Agreement with Korea to strengthen our cooperation in this area. The Korea--U.S. 123 Agreement will create good jobs for Americans in a key industry, nuclear energy.

Clean, safe nuclear energy creates red, white, and blue jobs. I'm talking about evening the playing field for American energy companies that are competing with foreign companies and ensure American global leadership to energy exports of strong domestic energy companies such as Westinghouse, which is one of the most successful employers in Pennsylvania.

Over the past 4 years, Westinghouse has added about 5,000 new employees to sustain its ability to deliver new nuclear power plants in China and the U.S., and provide services and nuclear fuel to the world's existing fleet of nuclear power plants. The majority of these new jobs were added in Western Pennsylvania. In fact, recently Westinghouse has consolidated about 4,000 of the 6,000 employees in Western Pennsylvania in a new facility in Cranberry Township in Butler County. Westinghouse is building products to export to Korea and other countries, and we must assure that all the legal hurdles to these exports are overcome. This includes renewal of our Section 123 agreement that dates to the early 1970s.

Mr. Speaker, as I mentioned, the Republic of Korea has been a partner with us since 1950 in every endeavor we've had--commercially, diplomatically, and militarily.

The Korean people don't wait for the call. They don't wait for somebody saying, we need

your help. They are there. And they stay until it's over.

We have fought side-by-side with Korean soldiers in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and Korea has been a reliable diplomatic ally as we seek peace and stability in Northeast Asia and elsewhere around the world.

Mr. Speaker, that last year I had the opportunity to travel to Korea to meet with political and military leaders and with business executives. The hospitality I encountered was remarkable. My hosts were gracious and informative, and being ``on the ground'' helped me to understand how the U.S.--Korea partnership works so well and, indeed, how it endures.

I urge my colleagues to join me in saluting our Korean allies on this 62th anniversary of the beginning of the Korean War. More than six decades have passed but the sacrifices of our American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines as well as the untold sacrifices of the Korean people have not and will not be been forgotten.

I thank my colleague from Tennessee.

I really appreciate the opportunity to talk tonight. And I think what I've found unusual in my 18 months here is that when I look at a lot of the legislation that comes forward, a lot of it is proposed by people who've never actually done what they're mandating people to do.

For most of my life, I was a small business person, still am. And when I get back home and I walk in the district and I talk to the people that are doing the same things that I've done all my life--I'm talking about small business people--they keep talking about the same thing. And the one thing that resonates with me all the time is the uncertainty of what this government does to them, the uncertainty of what this law, in particular, does to them.

When I talk about uncertainty in business, you cannot begin to project what your future costs are going to be on legislation for which the rules and regs still haven't been put in place. So we ask people to take this blind-faith leap--to go ahead, to go along with it.

The truth of the matter is you can't. You can't when it's your own skin in the game. You can't when it's your business that's at risk. You can't hire people when you don't know ultimately what the cost of those people is going to be.

Now, people say, Why is that a big problem? It's because it drives the cost of whatever it is that you do. Your personnel costs have an effect on whether it's the service you provide or the goods that you provide.

So the confusion that goes along with this bill is what puts job creators, small business people, in a quandary. They just don't know what to do because the law doesn't specifically tell them what it's going to cost. Again, because I've done it all my life and it has always been my skin in the game and it has always been my blood on the floor at the end of the day by making a bad decision, if it were about jobs, if it were about creating jobs, then this legislation surely didn't get the job done:

Between January of 2009 and April of 2010, private sector job creation improved by about 67,000 jobs a month. President Obama signed the PPACA into law at the end of March 2010. Since May of 2010, private sector job growth has improved at a rate of only 4,600 jobs per month.

Once people get a look at this law, it puts them on the sidelines. Once again, a law passed by this House and by the Senate and signed by the President puts the people who really do create jobs in a quandary. They look at us and they say, Please do something about this. Please get the government's boot off our throats. I can't continue to plan for the future with a law that doesn't project the total costs.

Look, we can talk about this on and on and on, but the American people know better than anybody else the effect that this has had on them. The job creators know better than anybody else what effect this has had on them. People in business who were never at the table know better than anybody else. Now I've gotten to the point where I understand, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu. I've got to tell you that job creators were put on the menu. They are getting eaten alive by a piece of legislation that drives their costs of operation up and that mandates them to do something under penalty of law or to pay a fine that they don't want to pay.

The funny thing about it is, a guy like me, I wasn't given the opportunity. I wasn't given a waiver. Do you know what, Kelly? It may not work for you, so we're going to give you a waiver. But who did get waivers? There were some people who got waivers out there. But who were the people who got the waivers? Why did they get the waivers? We wonder why the American people don't trust this government and this administration. Why would you trust people who pick and choose winners and losers and who say, You will follow the law. You get a waiver? Really? Why? It's because we can do it.

That's not the America I know. That's not the America that my father fought for. That's just something that's inherently wrong with the way business is being done in this town.

So we can talk about this, and we can talk about all the good things and the bad things and the pieces we ought to keep and the pieces we ought to reject, and we can talk about the fact that we don't know what it's going to ultimately cost us. I'll tell you one thing: if you're starting a business now--and people start businesses all over the world--at one time, we were No. 4, the country that people wanted to start a business in. Now we've fallen way down. We trail now Macedonia, Georgia, Rwanda, Belarus, Saudi Arabia, and Armenia.

It's more attractive to start a business in those countries than in the United States of America. And we wonder why? We wonder why so many millions of Americans are out of work? We wonder why job creators, small business people, won't hire people? We tell them, You're going to follow the letter of the law, or you're going to be fined. Then we wonder why they leave our shores and go to other countries?

If we're still wondering, we're either poorly informed or in denial. We have made it too hard for job creators to stay here. We have made it too hard for businesspeople to make decisions to hire people. We have made it too expensive for them, and we leave them no alternative but to stay on the sidelines. So when the President asks, Why are these people on the sidelines? Why aren't they investing? I will say, Please find the nearest mirror. Look in there. It is this administration and these laws that have put a choke hold on our economy.

Too many Americans have been waiting too long now for answers from a government that just doesn't have the right answers, but that tells them the way it's going to be without ever bringing them to the table in order to ask them, What is the effect on you, Mr. Businessman? How badly does this hurt you? At the end of the day, it's not about how bad it hurts the businesspeople. There is very little consideration given to us.

I thank the gentlelady from Tennessee for taking the time to bring this up in order for us to talk about it. We need to continue to talk about it, and we need to fix something that is very badly broken.

Madam Chairman, I thank the chairman for the hard work on this vital appropriations bill.

I met with some veterans back in Butler on Tuesday morning, and their concern is with the Butler campus and the building of a new health care center. Now, here's where the questions come. Specifically, they want to know why the VA would build a brand new, $16 million health care center while the existing facility, Building Number 1, was recently renovated, upgraded, and provides roughly 70,000 more square feet than the new health care center.

The decision to build the new health care center was done with no public hearing, which the VA readily admits. And according to local veterans, the VA failed to provide a forum for their input.

Now, veterans in my district would like to be reassured that the services they currently receive will be met and exceeded without any disruption in continuity. Many would like to know why a new facility is being built when the current facilities could have been further upgraded, and the potential savings could have been used to improve the quality of the service provided.

The VA should respond to the veteran community with reassurances that the care and service at the Butler VA is being enhanced, not diminished by the construction of a new health care center.