Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this is a very important agency of the Federal Government in terms of consumer health and safety: the National Transportation Safety Board. And one of the things for a number of years that has concerned me about the National Transportation Safety Board is they approach issues of public safety from a fairly pure standpoint in terms of what is needed to better protect the traveling public and to prevent loss of life. And unfortunately, when it gets over to the agencies of jurisdiction, particularly the FAA, they have put a value on your life. Now, I once asked an FAA individual, I said, so what do you think your life is worth? And the particular value at that time I think was around $200,000 per life, or soul as they call it. I said, don't you think you are worth more than that? At that point we were arguing about moving seats further apart so people could access the over-wing exits. And the airlines were complaining about the revenue that would be lost. It took, actually, 8 years after a tragic accident, with people stacked up like cord wood in Manchester, England, to get that rule passed here. The Brits did it in 6 months.

So often the NTSB recommends what they see as needed changes to protect safety, and all too often those things are ignored. They disappear in the black hole over there at the FAA. This bill will change that.

The most wanted transportation safety improvements, which are available and published on an annual basis by the NTSB in all modes of transportation, are now going to have to be responded to by the FAA. Within 90 days of the date of enactment of this bill, we will get a report which will explain why they have not implemented these most wanted regulations here to better protect the traveling public. This will be an improvement. It will now at least require meaningful response from the agency, and perhaps move us forward in better protecting life and safety.

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

I rise in support of H.R. 5782, Pipeline Inspection Protection Enforcement Safety Act of 2006.

We have come a long way since the original legislation was passed in 2002. After the tragedies in Bellingham, Washington, in which committee Member Rick Larsen played a particularly key role in urging the committee forward, and Carlsbad, New Mexico, we had quite a contentious markup at that point in time, with a lot of resistance from what we saw as needed improvements in pipeline safety from the industry.

Not so this time around. In fact, there was broad consensus with the majority side, with the majority of the industry from the beginning, that we wanted to make some additional improvements in pipeline safety with this bill, but that a radical new approach was not warranted because we had already laid that groundwork with the 2002 bill.

The gentleman from the Energy and Commerce Committee will address in some detail the work done and improved upon in their committee relating to the pipeline, low-stress pipelines, which had been substantially exempt from regulation previously. Unfortunately, that led to some neglect on the part of BP in Alaska, and we had the largest North Slope oil spill because of a low pressure line which previously had been thought not to be of major concern, and in fact the company itself admitted they had been running the lines to failure.

Well, lines nowhere will be run to failure any more under this bill. We are going to have more pipeline inspectors, more enforcement. We are going to broaden the legislation to cover all pipelines and, you know, this will also have the Inspector General paying closer attention to some of the implementation of this legislation.

I want to thank my chairman, Mr. Petri, for his help in putting this together, Chairman Young, Ranking Member Oberstar and members of the committee.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Boucher).

(Mr. BOUCHER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Could I inquire as to time remaining, please?

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pascrell).

(Mr. PASCRELL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Barrow).

Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).

Mr. Speaker, headline today, Bush initiates Iraq policy review separate from Baker's group. Now, this might be good; it might be bad. Remember, the Bush administration ignored the advice of the State Department Middle East experts about postwar Iraq. He actually ignored the intelligence agencies, the real experts, as opposed to the phony group Dick Cheney put together. Is he now again going to end-run real experts who are going to give us real choices on how to extricate the United States from Iraq, get our troops out of the middle of a civil war and begin to have those people take care of their own problems?

Only time will tell, but this does cause tremendous concern that suddenly he is going to appoint yet another group in his own administration. It seems like he may want to counterbalance or pick and choose among the real recommendations. Hopefully, they are not going to give us another vacuous document like they did a year ago, the so- called national strategy for victory in Iraq, which has been an abysmal failure.

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

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6233, a bill to make technical corrections to the Safe, Accountable, Flexible Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, SAFETEA-LU.

I want to thank my colleagues on the committee and particularly the leadership on the committee, Chairman Young; subcommittee chairman, Mr. Petri; the ranking member, Mr. Oberstar; the staff who did tremendous work on this bill which became law just a little over a year ago.

It is a tremendous investment in the future of our Nation in terms of improving the infrastructure to mitigate for congestion, dealing with ongoing problems with maintenance of the existing structure. In particular in my State, a substantial amount of funds will be applied to fix cracked bridges on the Interstate 5 system, a life-blood system which serves the entire west coast of the United States.

The bill had, as any major bill does, a few inadvertent drafting errors, probably due to the Senate, and some legislative language that needed some minor change.

In particular, there was a problem with funding for the Service Transportation Research Development and Deployment Account, that the funding was oversubscribed. It meant that the Federal Highway Administration would not have been able to continue its legacy research program, which is an extraordinarily important program that looks at activities, including the Biannual Conditions and Performance Report, an objective appraisal of highway bridge, transit finance, physical condition, operational performance and future investment requirements, information that will be absolutely critical as we move forward toward the next major Surface Transportation Act in the not-too-distant future.

So the bill is otherwise a straightforward technical correction, without additions. I would recommend it to my colleagues.

Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Oberstar).

Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, Medicare part D, confusing, complicated, very costly. In fact, the Bush administration lied about the cost. They had estimates that said it would cost $750 billion to $1 trillion, but they suppressed that to get votes from conservatives on their side. They said not a penny more than 400 million, and it is very costly to seniors.

We now have 3 million seniors who have fallen into something called the donut hole. They get to spend $2,600 out of pocket before they get any more Medicare prescription drug benefit, and they have to pay a higher price for the drugs during that time period than they could get at the local drugstore, let alone getting it from Canada or if it was centrally purchased by the government.

We have it in our power to fix it today, save the taxpayer $750 billion, get the seniors out of the donut hole, but they are going to say it is the custom and practice of the House not to consider such things.

The custom and the practice of the House is to fix problems confronting the people of the United States of America. It is cleared on my side of the aisle. If he objects, it is only the Republicans who object.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take up the bill, H.R. 752.

The Republicans have objected.

Mr. Speaker, 5 years and 9 days after 9/11 our system of aviation security is not yet done. In fact, today, a USA Today headline: ``Crisis Seen in Luggage Screening.'' We still do not have inline, integrated state-of-the-art baggage screening in the largest majority of U.S. airports. People would be appalled if they saw what went on behind the scenes that is supposedly providing for security.

But the Bush administration has said consistently for 5 years, we cannot afford to make flying safe and to screen cargo and baggage; we cannot afford it.

If they just would forgo the tax cuts for 1 year for wealthy investors, exempting their dividend taxes from a normal rate of taxation, we could put this equipment in every airport in America. But guess what? Those rich people do not care. They are flying on the private jets and the Bush people are flying on their military flights, so they do not really care about the American public and their security.

But this is a crisis and we cannot afford to continue to ignore what we need to do, what we need to invest to make the American flying public safe.

This administration must change direction or we must change the leadership in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I want to take a minute to explain my opposion to H.R. 4844, the so-called Federal Election Integrity Act. Proponents of this legislation claim to be ensuring the integrity of our election system against voter fraud and voting by noncitizens. That is a goal I share. However, the hastily written legislation threatens the privacy of Oregonians due to the unique nature of our full vote-by- mail system.

I do strongly support the goal of establishing more secure identification for American citizens. That is why I voted in favor of the REAL ID Act. The legislation fulfilled a recommendation made by the bipartisan 9/11 Commission that the federal government set standards for the issuance of driver's licenses. The REAL ID Act established minimum document standards for issuing drivers licenses and limited the issuance of licenses only to those who can prove they are American citizens or are migrants who are legally in the United States. This bill, when fully implemented by 2008, will address many of the concerns about proving citizenship that H.R. 4844 raises.

The problem with H.R. 4844 is not its requirement of proof of citizenship when registering to vote, but its continual requirement to present such proof every time a citizen votes.

In my state we conduct all elections by vote-by-mail. This bill requires citizens voting by mail to submit photocopies of documents proving their citizenship along with their ballot every single time they vote. That means, at least twice a year, the 2.1 million Oregonians registered to vote will have to provide the same photocopied birth certificate, passport, driver's license etc. along with their ballot to election officials. This extra paperwork creates a big burden for citizens and election officials alike in Oregon. Under the current system in Oregon, election officials match the signature on your ballot with our signature that's on file. That should be sufficient to confirm your identity. Repeatedly submitting photocopied proof of sensitive documents is not necessary.

I also have serious privacy concerns about what is done with the sensitive, personally identifiable information that will be required to be submitted by millions of Oregonians. How long must election officials keep these sensitive documents on file? How should they be disposed of? Who has access to the documents and under what circumstances? How can the information in the documents be used? The bill is silent on these issues.

Further, this bill requires Oregonians to repeatedly submit this personal information despite the lack of evidence of a voting fraud problem in Oregon. According to the Oregon Secretary of State, since 1991, over 10 million votes have been cast in Oregon. Of those 10 million votes, only 10 people have met the criteria that would want an investigation into their citizenship. Of those ten, two have been prosecuted. So the level of fraud in Oregon over the last 15 years has been 1 in 5 million votes, and these two instances were prosecuted. It is important to keep in mind that the penalties for voting fraud are already severe. Immigrants who try to vote are automatically given a one-way ticket home, no criminal conviction is necessary.

If the majority was truly concerned about guaranteeing the integrity of federal elections, we should be focusing on widespread concerns about new electronic voting technology. Concerns and questions over the integrity of these machines have been proven in recent elections. Machines fail, votes are lost, hard drives are damaged. Secure and auditable electronic voting machines that provide a paper ballot for verification should be the focus of Congress, not this hastily written bill.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to discuss H. Res. 994, legislation commemorating the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against our country.

I remember September 11, 2001, vividly. The weather in our nation's capital was warm and sunny. I was giving a speech on the House floor against privatizing Social Security. After I finished, the House clerk told me there had been a plane crash in New York. I asked what the weather was at the time of the crash. He said it was sunny and clear. I thought a crash in good weather was strange. I returned to the office in time to see the second plane hit the World Trade Center, and my office received a call from another congressional office saying there was smoke at the Pentagon. At that point, we knew our country was under attack. The Capitol Police then mandated the evacuation of the Capitol and all congressional office buildings.

I am profoundly grateful that the passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 93 bravely fought back, thinking of the safety of others, not of their own well-being. Their actions saved the lives of untold numbers of us who were in Washington, D.C. that day.

The resolution on the floor today appropriately honors those who lost their lives due to these heinous attacks. Thousands of husbands, fathers, mothers, wives, daughters, sisters, brothers, children, grandparents and others were lost on that day. We must never forget those individuals and their families.

The resolution before us today also appropriately honors the heroic actions and sacrifices of our men and women in the U.S. military and their families. I have had the privilege of visiting with our men and women in uniform, both here at home and in a war zone. I am continually awed by the professionalism, determination, and commitment of our troops.

I am also pleased that H. Res. 994 acknowledges the service and sacrifice of the first responders--emergency personnel, fire fighters, police officers, and others--who aided the innocent victims of the terrorist attacks. While these individuals humbly say they were merely doing their jobs that day, their selfless actions embody some of the best qualities of the American people.

The resolution congratulates the Congress and the President for various steps taken to improve the security of the American people in the wake of September 11th. Personally, I don't believe the self- congratulation is justified. While Congress has adopted some piecemeal improvements on the security front, al-Qaeda will not wait for us to make gradual improvements. Security must be improved today, not after the next attack

Aviation security is not what it should be. Security screeners need upgraded equipment. We need to deploy technology to detect plastic, liquid and gel-like explosives carried onboard planes. All cargo baggage carried on passenger planes must be thoroughly screened for explosives. We need effective countermeasures and international agreements to reduce the threat of shoulder-fired missiles. The arbitrary cap on the number of security screeners should be lifted.

A fully unified terrorist watch list that is electronically accessible to necessary federal and state officials for real-time searches must be put in place now.

Border security is still notably lacking, five years after 9/11. I voted in favor of the immigration reform legislation in the House that included a number of provisions to improve border security. I have also voted for a number of efforts to increase funding for the border patrol, technology to improve border security, and other immigration enforcement measures. Regrettably, too often, this Congress has prioritized tax cuts for millionaires over adequately funding border security.

Astonishingly, on the fifth anniversary of the attacks, America's police, firefighters, and emergency response personnel still lack the fundamental ability to communicate with each other by radio. Congress must increase funding to help states and local governments purchase essential equipment.

Our nation has 95,000 miles of coastline and 361 ports. Yet, the federal government will spend only $168 million on port security grants this year while spending $10 billion to develop a missile defense system that doesn't work and is irrelevant to the threat posed by al- Qaeda. Congress should increase funding for radiation detection equipment to screen every cargo container, beef up the presence of U.S. inspectors at foreign ports to inspect cargo destined for the U.S., and enhance the Coast Guard fleet.

Five times as many Americans travel on trains and transit each day as on planes, but less than one percent of the transportation security budget goes to non-aviation programs. Congress and the Administration should increase funding for passenger rail and transit security. A baseline level of security for the transit systems in the 50 largest metropolitan areas would cost $2 billion.

Most of the 20 tons of nuclear material at 130 facilities in 40 countries has no more security than a night watchman and a chain link fence. In 2001, a bipartisan commission recommended tripling funding to $3 million a year for programs to help secure nuclear materials around the world from terrorists.

Finally, I want to say that I am disappointed that H. Res. 994 contains a handful of whereas clauses of dubious accuracy.

For example, one clause implies a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq, and Iraq and the September 11th attacks. A variety of experts, including the 9/11 Commission, the CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and others, most recently the President, have concluded there was no cooperation between Iraq and al-Qaeda on the September 11, 2001, attacks or anything else. It is also inappropriate to link Iraq to the global war against al-Qaeda. Iraq did not pose an urgent threat to our national security. Iraq did not have ties to al-Qaeda. Iraq had not attacked the United States, nor is there any evidence Iraq planned to attack us. Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, nor any delivery system capable of attacking us.

I supported the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, and I continue to support military action against al-Qaeda. But, to use a resolution commemorating the anniversary of 9/11 to peddle discredited theories about Iraq in order to cover for the failures of the Bush administration in Iraq and justify the diversion of resources from the war against our real national security threat--al-Qaeda--does a disservice to the American people.

And, I think the inclusion of the PATRIOT Act in the list of legislation that has helped in the war on terror is questionable to say the least. The PATRIOT Act did make a few reasonable improvements in our ability to go after terrorists using new technologies. But it also contained provisions that do nothing to enhance our security while posing a significant risk to the freedoms and liberties of law-abiding Americans. It is for the latter reason that I opposed the bill.

A lot has been made of the PATRIOT Act supposedly knocking down a wall that prohibited cooperation between the FBI and the CIA. In reality, the so-called wall was not really a wall at all. It was not a legal barrier, it was a cultural one. The PATRIOT Act was not necessary to get the FBI and CIA to cooperate. A change in culture was. Even today, cooperation among intelligence agencies and law enforcement is not what it should be.

I will vote in favor of H. Res. 994 because I want to honor those I mentioned at the outset of my statement--those who lost their lives in the attacks, those who tried valiantly to save lives on that day, and our men and women in uniform. But, I want to state for the record that I disagree with some of the rhetoric in the resolution.

We are mixing our symbols here. You have heard of Christmas in July and you heard the gentleman before me. This is truly Christmas in July for the wealthiest among us, those who have estates worth more than $10 million, so they won't have to carry a share of the burden of paying for our country.

But this is really more of an April Fools in July. The calendar lies to us. Because the Republicans are saying that there is some equivalence between raising the minimum wage, something in 10 years of Republican rule that has never been raised, from $5.15 an hour. Three million kids are dependent upon sole wage earners who earn the minimum wage, living in abject poverty at $10,000 a year.

Some of them are pumping gas into the limousine of Lee Raymond. Who is Lee Raymond? He is the guy who just retired from ExxonMobil with a $400 million pension extorted from the American people by gouging at the gas pump. Guess how much this bill would be worth to Mr. Raymond's heirs if he died next year? $128 million. A $128 million tax savings for one individual in this proposal, which will be financed on the backs of working Americans for the next 30 years.

Because, guess what, we are running a deficit. So if we are going to give Mr. Raymond's heirs a $128 million tax break, then we are going to have to borrow the money to do it. We would borrow $80 billion a year to give the Paris Hiltons and, yes, the Lee Raymonds, and the others who have estates worth more than $10 million a bye. And they say that is a trade-off for after 10 years of delay and disassembling to give a tiny increase that still won't bring 6 million Americans up to the poverty level who are earning the minimum wage.

Shame on you for Christmas for the wealthiest among us in July and shame on you for April Fools on working Americans.

Well, Mr. Speaker, the numbers are in. ExxonMobil's quarterly profits up 32 percent, Shell, 34 percent, BP, 29 percent. The three largest oil companies made $200 million a day profit by gouging consumers. This is extraordinary, and the Republicans have very little to say about this because they are sharing in the profits. Eighty-five percent of the political contributions from oil and gas companies go to the Republican party.

Now, they are so awash in money that the retired CEO of ExxonMobil, while Americans struggle to fill up their gas tanks and afford that and go on vacation, well, Lee Raymond, the retired ExxonMobil chief who got $400 million for a retirement gift very recently, he is personally buying oil and gas fields. So American workers, people who work for ExxonMobil, can't afford to go on vacation and fill up their tank, and their CEO is personally purchasing oil and gas fields in the Middle East and Africa. It's a great country.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to replace Mr. Emanuel.

Well, today was a big day on Wall Street. The oil companies, the three biggest oil companies, have reported record profits. They are up an average of 30 percent over this quarter last year. They are making $200 million a day in profit.

Now, you would think if the price of crude oil went up, it might squeeze their margins a little bit. No, they are working hand in glove with OPEC and the other producers around the world, and they actually get a premium. For every dollar a barrel it goes up, they add on a little bit more at the pump.

They have closed down a large number of refineries across America at the recommendation of the American Petroleum Institute. They had a memo 10 years ago that they sent out to all their members in the oil industry saying there are too many refineries; the profits aren't there. If you close down some of these refineries, you could claim there was insufficient capacity and you could drive up your profits dramatically.

In the last year, profits for refineries are up 60 percent in 1 year. Now, that is $200 million a day out of the pockets of American consumers, American business, stifling our economy, causing families to cancel vacations or change their plans, and people are having a hard time filling up their tank that live in rural areas in my district just to get to work.

But the oil company execs and their stockholders, why, they are doing just fine. Exxon Mobil has so much cash on hand they don't know what to do with it; over $20 billion of cash. They are not investing in new production, new sources of energy, or new refineries. Hey, they like it the way it is with the so-called refinery shortage. It is a good excuse to gouge people at the pump.

No, they are just plowing it back into their execs pockets and hanging onto cash and then buying back stock to drive up the value of their stock options. The recently retired CEO of Exxon Mobil, Lee Raymond, just retired a couple of months ago, they gave him a $400 million retirement. And now, Mr. Raymond, Americans are struggling to fill up their gas tanks; right? It is hard to afford 50 bucks if you are driving an SUV.

But Mr. Raymond, well, he isn't too worried about that. He is out buying oil fields and gas fields in the Middle East and in Africa. An individual, one guy, got so much money from ExxonMobil from them bleeding extortionate profits out of the American people, that he can afford to buy his own oil and gas fields. And certainly, I am sure, he will sell the capacity to his former employer, ExxonMobil, who will then mark it up handsomely, and they all come out ahead. The only losers are the American consumers.

We need both a short-term and a long-term plan. We need a short-term plan to stop the profiteering and price gouging. We need to regulate oil trading like we do other commodities. We need to put a windfall tax on these companies unless they are investing their ill-gotten gains, their excess profits in new refinery capacity, in new production, and in alternate fuels.

And then we need a long-term plan to make America energy independent and energy efficient. The so-called Bush energy plan will have us importing more oil from the Middle East. Imagine that, more oil from the Middle East 10 years from today than we are today. That is a great place to be dependent upon.

The Iranians are profiting tens of billions of dollars from these high prices. Aren't they part of the axis of evil? The Bush policy is facilitating billions of dollars to the mullahs in Iran.

It is time for America to get smart, and it is time for our government to lead the way to energy efficiency, energy independence, and clamp down on big oil. But we know that won't happen, because 85 percent of the contributions of the oil and gas industry went to the Republican Party. And they were incredibly generous to the President in his last election. And, of course, both he and Dick Cheney are from that industry.

But with a change in Congress and a change in direction, all those things could happen here and, hopefully, they will, in the interest of our country and not a treasured few of the President's friends.

The Republican do-nothing-of-substance Congress is unwilling to tackle issues of importance to the American people because they might upset their wealthy special interest campaign contributors in an election year. There is so much they could do and so little being done.

We could take care of the 7 million seniors who are about to fall in the doughnut hole of the so-called Medicare prescription drug benefit, getting no coverage, having to pay 2,600 bucks out of pocket. But that would upset the pharmaceutical industry.

We could increase the Federal minimum wage for the first time in 7 years. But tax cuts for millionaires take precedence.

And this week as every oil company announces record-breaking profits exceeding last year's record-breaking profits, what action is being taken to rein in the price gouging? None, because that would offend Big Oil.

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot the United States Congress can do. The problem is the Republican-run Congress is tied down by special interests.

It is time we take America in a new direction.

Mr. Speaker, well, today, gas prices since the price gouging post-Katrina climbed back over $3 a gallon average across the country, almost as high as on September 5 of last year during the frenzy of price gouging by the oil industry, using Katrina as an excuse. Now the excuse is unrest in the Middle East, despite very large inventories and no shortages on the horizon.

But it is yielding one tremendous benefit, and the Republicans would have us believe that we all benefit: record profits for the oil industry. And since we are all now shareholders, according to the Republicans' theory of the world, we are all benefiting from the huge run-up in the prices of oil stocks and the dividends that are being paid by the oil companies. Unfortunately, most of the people I represent

and I myself and many others I know do not own oil stocks, nor do we receive extraordinarily generous campaign contributions which the Republicans and the President do from the oil industry.

So our reaction is not a collective yawn, and there is nothing that can be done about it, and it is just market forces. Ours is to say let us stop the price gouging of American consumers.

Experts say that about 30 percent of this is pure speculation, that is, self-trading, oil being traded off the books purely to enrich the companies and traders.

Another very significant portion comes from the fact that the oil companies, not the environmentalists, oh, the darn environmentalists, they have just been closing refineries left and right. Well, no. Actually, there has not been a single refinery closed in America, although many have been closed in the last 10 years, by environmental restrictions or litigation. They have been closed for economic purposes.

There was a memo 10 years ago from the American Petroleum Institute that said, hey, guys, wake up, you are not making enough money on refining; if you could shrink down refinery capacity, you would have an excuse to drive up margins and the prices of refining. They have exceeded their expectations. In fact, refinery profits from the last year, 12 months, are up 60 percent, 60 percent.

If we return to the historic average margins for refinery, which were profitable but not wildly, unbelievably profitable, gas would go down by another 40 cents a gallon.

So you take out the speculation, you take out what they have done with the manipulation of refinery capacity and you are back down to $2.30 cents or so a gallon. Now that is not a long-term energy policy, but that is relief for American consumers. That is relief for American business. That gives us the opportunity to begin to invest in a more oil-independent future.

The so-called energy bill that passed the House based on subsidies for the oil, coal and gas industry, you know, they are hurting, they need subsidies from the taxpayers. We need to borrow money to give to them or give them price breaks for their production on Federal lands and not realize those revenues to the Federal Treasury, if that excuse for a so-called energy bill would actually have us more dependent on Middle East oil 10 years from today than we are now.

That is an energy policy? Look at the Middle East. Do we want to be dependent upon the Middle East? Do we want to be filling the coffers of Iran and Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries? I do not think so.

We need a plan for energy independence in America. We need a plan that is going to develop new technologies here at home that we will market to the rest of the world, that will make Americans energy independent. Somehow Brazil was able to do it, but they tell us it is just not possible here in the United States of America, we cannot figure out a way to get to energy independence like Brazil.

Now, I do not believe that. The President knows the American people are a little upset. So in his State of the Union he talked about how we need to do more about alternative fuels and alternative technologies. Unfortunately, the money did not follow the mouth. If John Fitzgerald Kennedy had applied that same amount of money to his mission to the Moon, we still would not be in the outer atmosphere of the Earth, let alone the Moon.

There is no real commitment there because real commitment would mean that you are starting to threaten the wildly profitable oil industry.

BP announced today, and they are supposed to be the weakest of the announcements this week, that their profits were up a mere 40 percent over the quarter for last year. ExxonMobil is likely to announce either the largest quarterly profit in history for any corporation on the face of the Earth this week on Thursday or maybe only the second largest. They made $100 million a day profit last year. They gave their CEO a $400 million retirement package. They are not investing in new capacity. They are not investing in alternative fuels. They do not care about energy independence for the United States of America. They like the addiction that they have got us on now.

We need an energy policy and we need it soon, and the Republican Party is in thrall with the oil companies.

Mr. Speaker, the Middle East is near all-out war and the United States is on the sidelines hamstrung by the Bush occupation of Iraq. We will borrow $1.3 billion today to run the government and hand the bill to our kids and grandkids.

Record gas prices are hamstringing family budgets and business. Record oil profits for the oil companies, and we are borrowing the money from Saudi Arabia and OPEC.

Now, these are difficult issues, and it would be tough to hammer out solutions here on the floor of the House, so the Republican majority has chosen to walk away from these issues of real concern to the American people and phony up an agenda full of dead-end bills designed for one purpose only, to excite the Republican right wing base and perpetuate their hegemony here in Congress.

Two fake stem cell bills to cover the first veto by this President of a meaningful stem cell bill that could provide relief to suffering Americans, paralyzed Americans, Americans with debilitating diseases. But, no, their ideologues won't allow that. They want medieval science to prevail here in Washington, D.C. It is time for a change in the leadership, to have a Congress that truly represents the needs of the American people, not a fringe element in this country.

Mr. Speaker, something odd has happened. There are a lot of odd things that happen around here, but the Republican Web site, the one that they use for scheduling the weekly activities of Congress, has been hacked by writers for the John Stewart Show, and they don't seem to mind. So we are going to be a parody of Congress this week instead of a real Congress this week, despite the fact that we are borrowing $1.4 billion a day to run the government, we are running a $2 billion a day trade deficit, average families haven't seen their wages go up in 5 years, and we are raining tax cuts on the wealthy.

There are a few real things that we could deal with that the American people are concerned about. Maybe high gas prices. No, those things are not on the agenda. We have the faux agenda for Congress, which is designed purely for either entertainment purposes or for political purposes.

Well, what are we doing? We are taking up an amendment to ban the threat of gay marriage. Now, let's see. The Senate didn't pass it.

That means it is not going forward. But, nonetheless, the House is going to use valuable time to vote on banning the threat of gay marriage even though we know that the constitutional amendment cannot move forward because the Senate has already disapproved this venture.

But it is good for the ratings, entertainment value. The John Stewart writers thought it would be fun to bring that up in the House. So we are going to bring it up. Then we are going to do another thing here called ``court stripping.'' We are going to say there are only two and a half branches of Congress, or maybe one and a half, the President and half a Congress, and the judiciary only if they are pets of the President and the Congress.

That is, no judge will be allowed to hear a case challenging the Pledge of Allegiance. Now, no judge has found the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional. Quite the opposite, they have found that the use of the words ``under God'' is diminimus in the Pledge and have upheld its use.

But the Republicans, they do not even want judges to hear those cases any more and reject those claims any more, because they think that this might provide entertainment value or excite some strange people in the Republican base. So we will spend a day on court stripping instead of dealing with high-energy prices.

Then we are going to take up two phony bills on a serious issue, stem cell research, could have tremendous benefits for the American people. The President is opposed to stem cells, the Republicans are opposed to stem cell research. The United States is falling behind the whole rest of the world.

Americans will have to go overseas to get procedures that have been developed by stem cell research that could cure Parkinson's or other debilitating diseases, because the Republican right wing does not want research on using stem cells, but the American public does want that research.

So we are going to take up two fake bills, two pretend bills. We are going to ban a practice that is not happening called fetal farming, and everybody will probably vote for that, and then we are going to authorize them to do what they can already on the President's lame program that is not working and is having America fall behind on stem cell research. So you see, we are really for stem cell research.

Well, not really, because the lines they are using are all corrupted and it is not going anywhere. And then the real bill, the real compromise bill that passed the House, it passed the United States House of Representatives, is going to probably pass the Senate this week. It will go to the President and he will veto it.

So in order to give them political cover or to provide entertainment value, they will vote on two fake stem cell bills, and then vote to support the President in vetoing the real stem cell bill that could provide tremendous advances in research for the American people.

So this is a sort of play Congress week. Maybe it was not the Stewart writers, maybe it was Colbert who was going through interviewing Members of Congress, and he might have gotten some of the data there.

But in any case, instead of dealing with very real problems that are confronting Americans, instead of dealing with world crises, instead of dealing with high energy prices, growing debt, stagnant wages, you know, access to better education for our kids, health care, high-cost pharmaceuticals, adequately funding veterans benefits, no, none of that is on the schedule this week.

This week we do not have time for those things because we are playing

Congress taking up bills that are not going anywhere, or that are pretend bills that will go somewhere to cover up the fact that they are killing the real bill that would do something useful and also that, you know, we are taking up constitutional amendments that are not going to pass. Hooray for the Republican majority.