Floor Statements

I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania.

In the United States, if you destroy an eagle egg you are subject to 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine. If you destroy a human egg, it's not only legal, but it's taxpayer funded. That's what we're here to talk about.

You would hear our friends say that we've taken too much time today, that we can't give 2 hours out of the endless lunches, out of the fundraisers, out of the rubbing elbows with the powerful to talk for the unborn and the innocents.

I would tell you that even in economic times we cannot suspend our voices against injustice. We cannot suspend our voices for the weak, the powerless. It is our sacred duty to be a voice in the Republic for those who have no standing. The unborn have no standing and no voice.

Let us allow our voices to be heard for these 2 hours.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the three free trade agreements that we are considering today. Free trade is good for America. These agreements will increase our products flowing to other countries that currently get to send their products for free here. We live in a world where products flow freely around the world. It's time for us to get American jobs to produce some of those goods moving abroad.

I would note that the President has asked us to pass pieces of his legislation, his jobs-creating legislation. I would compliment the chairman that we've waited 2\1/2\ years to get this particular proposal from the administration, and in less than 9 days, now we have it on the floor of the House. We're serious about doing the things to fix the economy. While the President lectures us, he fails to follow through on regulatory relief and tax relief. He fails to follow through on those things which would actually create jobs.

So we in the House appreciate the opportunity to vote on these particular bills today, because it is our way of saying that we will agree with the President when he's right, and we'll steadfastly disagree with him when he's wrong. We've got many areas that we can move forward together on, and I would recommend that the President come and sit down with us, come back to this floor of the House and sit and discuss with us the way to move forward instead of pushing a plan that says ``my way or the highway.''

We have generally a great threat from American Government on American jobs. The overregulation is killing jobs in the electrical utility field, it's killing jobs in oil and gas, and it's killing jobs in manufacturing. We can protect workers, we can protect the environment, and we can protect species and create jobs simultaneously. It is up to us, the policymakers, to find those balance points and to move forward with commonsense legislation that will effect these.

Mr. Speaker, at a constituent event in Inglewood, California, on August 21, 2011, the Congresswoman who represents that area made several shocking and egregious statements that slander the good work a dedicated group of Americans are trying to achieve for our country. Perhaps most disturbing was her statement that, ``As far as I'm concerned the Tea Party can go straight to hell. And . . . and, I intend to help them get there.'' These words do nothing to unite Americans and only fan the flames that incite division. Earlier in August, following the highly charged debt limit discussions, with words worsening the political divide, the Vice President declared that the Tea Party had ``acted like terrorists.'' These attacks are an assault on democracy. Any action which ignores deep-seated concerns, or attempts to extinguish the voices of millions of Americans damages the democratic process. The Tea Party is united in common concern for the future and the well-being of generations to come. They are not, as one Congressman from Pennsylvania described, a ``small group of terrorists.'' These are people who care deeply about the path our country is on and are working through the issues. They are present at parades, marches and rallies. They are gathering in meeting halls, restaurants, and family rooms to discuss their goals for our nation's future. Words that dismiss the Tea Party's shared belief that government can do better by the people of this country only further divide us. We have only our voices to change the hearts and minds of elected officials. Those of us entrusted by the people to support and defend the Constitution of the United States must never work to extinguish the light of democracy or the avenue of free speech. To limit the excitement and drive of a united group grows dejection; a certain foe of democracy. It casts a web of doubt over the activities of the Congress and threatens to harm the creation of good public policy. I will defend the right of any man, woman, or child to speak their truth and share their concerns. Just as all Americans regardless of race or gender, creed or religion, ideals or personal conviction, Tea Party members deserve to have their voices heard.

I move to strike the last word.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I reluctantly rise to oppose the gentleman from Washington's amendment and support the underlying bill. A lot of compelling arguments have been made tonight to support the Endangered Species Act without interruption. They talk about the bald eagle and the compelling story about seeing those magnificent birds, and those are visual images that we all like.

But there's a side to the Endangered Species Act that is not being told. That's the side where one group just this year filed 1,000 petitions at one time to list new species. They know that their lawyers get reimbursed from the Federal Government every time they bring suit, and so they're happy to bring these actions which are destroying jobs in the West.

For instance, in the Second District of New Mexico, a suggested listing was given this year on the sand dune lizard, a small brown lizard that I've seen in the sand hills since I was going up there. They were plentiful then; they're about the same number now, but they have been listed as endangered.

And people didn't think much of it. And then they began to read the reports that anything that disturbs the surface of the ground would represent a potential threat to the habitat of the lizard and would thereby be prohibited.

Disturb the ground, they ask. What does that mean? Well, that means oil and gas activity. That means that $2.8 billion investment for nuclear enrichment that is taking place in southern Lea County, just taking place now, creating jobs for the first time in the nuclear industry that has been dormant for 30 years, would be shut down because they disturb the ground.

It would stop the high line wires from being put up and the electric utility crews from driving to the homesteads miles and miles away from the nearest town because they would disturb the ground. They could not even check the power lines to make sure electricity is going to these remote areas.

This is the Endangered Species Act that we're seeing.

People would come to me in disbelief and say, Mr. Pearce, it is not true? They couldn't kill our jobs with a lizard, could they? What about us as humans? What do they say?

I said, Take a look at the San Joaquin Valley. Twenty-seven thousand farmers put out of work with a 2-inch Delta smelt that we could have kept alive in holding ponds and bred by the millions and put into the rivers and go ahead and use the rivers for irrigation. But instead, a judge found that we had to shut down the entire agricultural product.

We began to import vegetables from areas that spray contaminants that we are not allowed to use in this Nation, a less safe food supply. We kill 27,000 jobs. We caused jobs to be created somewhere else, less safe food supply, all for a 2-inch minnow that could have been kept alive in some other fashion.

We also have a Lesser prairie-chicken that threatens the oil and gas jobs in our area. They're saying that the bird might not fly under or over those lines, so we can't put up electric lines across. Then, bury the lines, people say. Well, then the lizard wouldn't go across the area that's been disturbed by burying the lines.

It's easy to see why people are saying that the Endangered Species Act is not functioning properly and we've got to stop it. We are spending $3.5 trillion a year in our government and we're bringing in $2.2 trillion. Part of the problem is we've killed enough of our jobs, we've killed enough of our economy that we're in severe debt and deficit crisis.

Now, one of the problems is we've systematically eliminated the timber industry because of a spotted owl. We eliminated those 27,000 farmer jobs in the San Joaquin Valley. We've got the salmon swimming upstream, and now it's threatening that we've got to tear down all the hydroelectric dams. And the list goes on and on.

It is time for us to say that we can preserve the species and create jobs at the same time. That's not an unreasonable request. But to those lawyers making $350 a hour, they don't care if it's reasonable or not. To the Fish and Wildlife Service, they arrogantly told the people in New Mexico, No, we didn't do an economic study to see the cost on the jobs. We're not required to. These are things that are making people say enough is enough.

It's in my district that 900 people showed up to protest at one of the hearings on the listing of the lizard; 900 people coming out, and the Fish and Wildlife Service came to me in nervousness before the meeting and said, Would you speak to those who couldn't get into the meeting? They're agitated. I said, People do get agitated when you start killing their careers, when you start taking the jobs away from them.

There's a side to the Endangered Species Act that is being dealt with here tonight. I support the underlying bill and oppose the amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2021 and appreciate Mr. Gardner bringing this to our attention.

You know, this is not a bill about Shell Oil Company. This is about a system that is broken. Shell Oil Company has been trying for almost 5 years to get a permit and still doesn't get the answer. In the meantime, they've drilled over 400 exploratory wells around the world, but they can't drill in the United States.

I've recently spent time at gas stations talking to people, their frustration over our gas prices is why are they so high here, why are the prices going up. This bill answers why they're going up. We have a government that has a war on American jobs and a war on American energy. We have a war on Western jobs because oil production is concentrated in the West.

Every time a drill bit is stopped by its own actions, the price of gas will go incrementally up by just multiple percentages of very small amounts. But when it's stopped by bureaucratic action, then the market's going to assess that a government is going to be unfriendly to future production and the price begins to escalate because people get out of dollars and out of other investments into this because they know the price of gas and oil are going to go up because they can see the bureaucratic delays being played out.

So understand that when we have high gas prices in this country it is because the government is making them high. It's making them high by moratoriums. It's making them high by delaying tactics in our administration's responses to these things like this permit.

The gentleman from Colorado's bill simply says we're going to simply unravel one piece of the delays that have been happening. It's a well- thought-out bill, it's a well-thought-out process, and it's one which will result in lower prices for American consumers. There's absolutely no health hazard. Lisa Jackson herself has said that. They're going to give the permits.

What we're doing today is passing a bill that won't help Shell at all, that will help future producers to understand that they can get regulatory certainty, that they can get answers when they're asking questions of the government. It's a reasonable request and one which we should do.

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend I had the opportunity in Hobbs, New Mexico, to attend two services, recognition ceremonies for people from Hobbs. First of all, we were able to attend the retirement for Dr. Dean Mathis, who pastored Taylor Memorial Baptist Church for 36 years, same preacher, same church. That is just not heard of these days in America.

All teachers are required to do two very difficult things. They are required to push our knowledge base to the extreme limits of what we are able to know; but simultaneously to that, they have to stay grounded in truth. In other words, you can't just teach out to the edge of the learning envelope. You also have to stay grounded in the timeless principles that cause things to be relevant and true. Dr. Mathis did this with extreme care and with a delicacy that I found always attractive. He was able to bring biblical lessons to life in our personal lives and bring relevance to these teachings.

I think that also he perfected community participation at all levels. From his one small congregation there in Hobbs, New Mexico, we have city counselors, county commissioners, judges, two State representatives, a State senator, and a U.S. Congressman.

Now, that says a lot, coming from one small corner of the State of New Mexico. But his life didn't end there. He also had two missionaries check in

from very difficult parts of the world. They were on Skype and checked in at the ceremony, saying that if it hadn't been for his teachings, that they would not have been there.

Dr. Mathis and his wife, Betty Sue, dedicated their lives to the spiritual calling. And without those spiritual teachings in our society today, we find our society is drifting towards moral chaos. We are dealing with those problems here in this Congress as we deal with teen pregnancies, with hunger, with people who are wasting their lives on drugs and taking extraordinary amounts of Medicaid.

So we deal with the problems of a society that is becoming all too secular and forgetting that no matter what we pass as laws here that there is a moral component to every nation and that if we ignore that, we ignore it at our peril. I would like to give my congratulations to Dr. Dean Mathis and his wife, Betty Sue, for their years of service.

But then on the same day, we were able to recognize Carl Mackey. Carl Mackey was a few years younger than me and passed away at too early an age last year. Carl Mackey was a community leader. He was one of the friends, one of the many people that my mom had in class. She used to talk about Carl and said, Carl is really mobile. That meant Carl was walking up and down all the time during classes. Carl was actually one of her favorite students.

Now, I know Mom and Carl both personally, and they probably did not agree on one philosophical issue: Carl was a hard-core Democrat, community activist, black leader. Mom just was conservative, raised a conservative family. But they identified each other across that chasm of philosophy to recognize that there aren't many differences in us accept the human nature that says that everyone should have access to justice, to mercy, and to kindness. So it was in that that this young junior high student and Mom formed a relationship that continued until he passed away.

I was able to visit with Mom about their relationship this last weekend, and she still remembers it with a smile. When I was elected and Carl Mackey was serving, Carl and I, again, overcame all the supposed difficulties, the things that we did not see eye to eye on in our philosophies. But we did see eye to eye in having him represent a piece of the community that is often forgotten. That was the community that I grew up in, the southern part of Hobbs, the part of Hobbs that did not get its fair share of funding, fair share of justice.

So Carl was a constant voice, reminding all of us that we need to stop, slow down just a bit, and pay attention to the small guys in society. He will be greatly missed, and Dr. Mathis and his wife will be greatly missed. But I thank the community of Hobbs, taking the time to honor two different people, completely different backgrounds, completely different lives who weren't so different after all.

In the end, we are all Americans, and we're here for a better America. I salute them both.

Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentlelady from Wyoming bringing this amendment.

You know, many times people think that horse slaughter is just simply inhumane. Somehow they think that horse starvation is somehow more humane. The truth is that people are going to get rid of their horses in some way, so what they do in New Mexico and in the Western States is they simply take them out and turn them loose.

Right now we are struggling with an economy, an economy that is having difficulties from every area, and too often we say it is just a problem of the economy. We don't break it down to its individual components.

One of the components in New Mexico is that we have completely eliminated sheep from New Mexico. New Mexico used to be a large area of sheep production. That piece of the economy is simply gone because of regulations we in Washington and the States have put into place. New Mexico also used to have a vibrant apple economy. That is now gone because we have given favorable treatment to overseas products.

But then this is another element of the economy that has simply disappeared. New Mexico used to have a vibrant horse trade. Prices were high. Now prices on horses are low because people know they have no option at the end of a horse's life, so it is simply doing away with the horse market.

So we find that we in Congress are causing the economic decay of our entire Nation, and the gentlelady's amendment simply says let's study the facts. Let's understand what is going on that we ourselves are causing. Let's understand the economic duress that Washington and the States are putting on their own economies. It makes ultimate sense, and for us in the West it should be absolutely reinstated. We should reinstate the market there, because horses are being very inhumanely treated in the guise of some more humane treatment. So I thank the lady for her presentation.

Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

In my district people ask, what is this vote about, this debt ceiling vote, and so I have created a simple chart that just says it as plainly as we can. We are spending $3.5 trillion in the country each year, and we are bringing in 2.2 trillion.

It doesn't work for your family, it doesn't work for your business, and it's not working for the country. In order to make up the difference, we have to borrow that money except that our bankers are saying no more, just as your bankers would say no more. So we are printing the money to make this system work. It's a scheme that's not working.

This chart in the upper right-hand corner says that the whole economy collapses about 2038 so OMB and CBO both are saying that we must take care of the spending problem that we have in this country; that's what the debt ceiling is about. We have a law that says we can't borrow more than a certain amount of money.

If we just extend with no provisions for reform, then we are going to continue to spend this much money every year that we don't have. So let's take care of the problems; let's do structural reforms in the way that we are spending our money. Let's do structural reforms on our budget; let's get it under control so that we don't give our kids a failed economy.

I thank the gentleman from California.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my revised amendment, No. 144, which will address concerns I have regarding the DOD contract bundling process.

The current DOD process encourages wrapping together projects for bid proposals. This process unfairly distributes DOD resources and often allows outside companies to get contracts on bases where local businesses have better regional and technical knowledge to perform the service. The winning bidder then subcontracts with the local businesses, often underfunding the subcontractor and pocketing the rest. The local companies in the State where the base is housed lose out on significant revenue and job opportunities.

An example of this was recently in my district. A man that makes radios and radio antennas was called by DOD, asked if he could make a radio antenna that would fit in the pocket like a cigarette package. While they were speaking on the phone, he actually built one of these. The DOD contractor asked him how much it would be. He said somewhere between $1.50 and $3. DOD said the lowest bid they had had for the same antenna was over $150,000.

We run into this all of the time. At a time when we have deficits soaring, I think it's time for us to spend our money wisely and efficiently and use local contractors.

Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. Speaker, the Western Caucus has several members here tonight. We would like to talk about what is going on right now in the country. The administration seems to be waging a war on the western jobs, and that is carried out through a whole range of activities.

A couple of weeks ago, the administration and the President said that the administration is not doing enough to address the high gas prices. The President said in a speech at Georgetown that he would like to cut foreign oil by one-third by drilling at home. Well, we have been in the process of offering him the solution to what he said he would like to do.

Now, keep in mind that while the President is saying one thing, he's doing another.

While he says that we would like to drill for more oil here, understand that

he has increased the moratorium on the offshore drilling. They have made it more difficult to drill in on-land areas through the Rocky Mountains. Know that they rejected Shell Oil Company's $4 billion NEPA study because a paragraph was omitted.

So while we are hearing bold language from this administration about increasing the amount of oil that we are drilling here at home--and that would create American jobs but it would also create lower energy prices--understand that it appears that the President is not following through on what he said.

So in the past couple of days, this Congress, this House, has passed out H.R. 1229, which says that we are going to put the people back to work in the Gulf of Mexico.

I think everyone understands that BP is accountable and should be accountable for the problems that they caused, but we should not have killed 100,000 jobs offshore.

Our Nation is stuck at 9 percent unemployment. We are stuck with a deficit that is having to be financed by our own Federal Reserve. We are putting the Nation's economy at risk because of the way that we are treating jobs and because of our deficit.

So we are saying: Put the American workers back to work in the Gulf, produce American oil, produce American jobs, and bring lower prices of gasoline to the consumer.

The same bill improves the safety by reforming current law. It sets timelines for the Secretary to act on permits to drill. Right now, one of the things that the Secretary is doing is holding off approvals for those applications for permits to drill, the APDs. Know that the administration has within its power to improve the situation with jobs immediately, but instead they are doing the things that harm our work.

H.R. 1229 also establishes expedited judicial review processes.

We also have passed in this House H.R. 1230, which says we are going to restart the American Offshore Leasing Now Act. It passed last week. It requires that the four lease sales in the gulf and Virginia take place. Those lease sales were previously scheduled, but instead of going ahead with them, the administration has put them on hold. Let's simply produce the energy which has been verified to be there, which would create American jobs and which would aid American consumers by lower prices of gasoline.

H.R. 1231 has also been passed, which reverses President Obama's offshore moratorium. The President made a big deal just after he was sworn in 2 years ago about reversing the moratorium. But after one analyzed the moratorium that he reversed, we actually saw that he increased the moratorium, that more areas were put off limits to drilling rather than the message that he gave the American people.

So H.R. 1231 says to the President: We would like for you to join us in creating American jobs, jobs that the West would be proud of, jobs that would produce energy, jobs that would produce high-paying careers and not just jobs. We believe that these are the things that the American people are looking for. This is the leadership that they are asking for out of Washington.

H.R. 1231 requires each 5-year offshore leasing plan to include lease sales in areas containing the greatest known oil and natural gas reserves. Our offshore areas are tremendous reserves of energy. All we have to do is tap into them and use them. It requires that the Secretary establish a production goal when writing a 5-year plan.

I am joined tonight by several members of the Western Caucus. Each one has got their own particular interest area where the administration appears to be conducting a war on western jobs. So tonight, to lead off, I would like to yield time to my good friend Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming such time as she would consume.

I thank the gentlelady for her comments.

We are joined tonight by my good friend Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania. Before I yield time to him, I would like to walk through just a brief list of some of the other ways that the government conducts war on Western jobs.

Consider the listing of endangered species. No one of us wants to see a species be extinct or go extinct, but what we have seen is an extreme interpretation of the rules which kill jobs at the same time. I think there are ways that we could keep jobs and preserve species, yet we are not doing that right now.

The Coho salmon was listed as endangered. As a result, the farmers in the Klamath Basin in Oregon have been forced into bankruptcy due to prohibitions on water use by the listing of the salmon.

The Methow salmon, water rights holders in the Methow Valley of Washington lost the use of their water, and property owners and timber owners face restrictions on their properties because of the imposition of egregious stream buffers to protect the listed salmon.

The listing of the salmon in general, the court case over whether hydroelectric dam operators have done enough to prevent the death of salmon in Washington and Oregon, billions of dollars have been spent to accommodate, according to Bloomberg Business Week, but the environmental groups continue to sue.

The northern spotted owl, the listing has killed the entire timber industry in much of the West, especially in northern California and Oregon. The Mexican spotted owl, that listing also killed the timber industry in New Mexico and Arizona. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost.

The Delta smelt, the listing of that species, a small 2-inch fish that lives in the San Joaquin Valley, killed 27,000 jobs there. The San Joaquin Valley was the source of 80 percent of our Nation's vegetables. Now those vegetable farms are gone. Bankruptcy. We are now importing food from countries that can spray pesticides that are outlawed in this country, so our food supply is less safe. Fewer jobs, bigger government deficit, greater cost of vegetables and unsafe food supply.

The gray wolf was listed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered and has killed agriculture and mining jobs throughout the West. Still the list goes on and on. So it is not that these are just hypothetical ideas that the war on Western jobs is occurring by a government. These are ongoing processes.

One group, the Center for Biological Diversity, has declared they are going to list over 1,000 species this year, that they are going to petition for the listing of over 1,000 species this year. Understand that their lawyers get reimbursed at the rate of $350 to $500 per hour. For every lawsuit that they bring against the government, every lawsuit that kills jobs provides employment for lawyers in those groups, so know that the taxpayer is footing the bill but yet losing jobs in the meantime.

I would like to recognize Mr. Thompson now, and thank him very much for being here tonight.

I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his comments. So far, the quote of the night is ``prosperity is a good thing.'' Yet our government seems to have a war on prosperity. Why is our government trying to undermine the economy when we're struggling with high deficits and unemployment? It defies imagination that that's going on.

I would like to recognize now my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Broun) for such time as he may consume. I appreciate your being here. Georgia and Pennsylvania in the Western Caucus, that's the way it should be. We're west of somewhere. Thank you for being here tonight.

I thank the gentleman for his comments and his perceptions.

As he mentioned, it seems that Washington has a war on profits. I think that maybe our friends on the other side of the aisle don't understand that profits pay high salaries. If you work in an industry with no profits, you work at low salaries.

Profits pay to reinvest in new buildings, creating construction dollars in neighborhoods. Profits are put into youth training, baseball leagues, soccer leagues. Profits are reinvested into new equipment, causing manufacturing firms to thrive. Profits are invested in dividends, and they cause increased values of stocks, helping retirees.

And, finally, profits are the only thing that corporations pay tax on. They do not pay taxes on losses. So when we begin to talk about taking away the profits of companies, understand that we're talking about undermining the American way of life. This attack on profits is an attack on the American way of life.

I am pleased to be joined tonight by a good friend from Utah (Mr. Bishop), and I yield to the gentleman.

I thank the gentleman for his comments. He pointed out that this Nation is rich in shale oil. We do, in fact, have 2 trillion barrels in reserve in shale. That all was outlawed from use by the American consumers back in 2007 in a bill passed by Nancy Pelosi off the floor of the House.

To put that in perspective, what does 2 trillion barrels of shale oil mean? We have only used 1 trillion barrels of oil completely in our history in just shale oil. That's not natural gas. That's not normal petroleum. We have double in shale oil what we've consumed up to this point.

Another comment that was made earlier is that we subsidize and that consumers end up paying for things that they don't know they're paying. I just talked to a constituent last week. He said that he was given a tax credit for 40 percent of a solar facility that he put on his own home. That was from the Federal Government; from the State government, another 10 percent. So about 50 percent of the cost of the program was completely reimbursed by the government. But the big deal is they're paying him 22 cents per kilowatt hour of energy that he is able to sell back into the system. Now, that 22 cents needs to be compared to the 7 cents that electricity normally costs. So the consumer is tagged with three times the cost of electricity that is provided by solar power that is bought from individual producers. The consumer will pay more for the power. It is not an easy process to understand, but consumers will ultimately pay all of the higher energy costs.

We hear much today in Washington about the subsidies for Big Oil. Be aware that there are no subsidies for Big Oil. There are simply write- offs that every company is allowed to take legally; write-offs to encourage them to invest in machinery; write-offs that sound like depreciation, amortization; write-offs that are allowed by accounting techniques across the board in this country. Understand that when we begin to penalize these oil companies, we're going to cost America jobs.

So let's talk just a bit about the different supposed subsidies that are, in fact, legitimate write-offs that companies are given.

The suggestion was made that we repeal the expensing of the intangible drilling costs. The intangible drilling costs usually represent 60 to 80 percent of the cost of a well. Historic U.S. policy allows a deduction for development. That's since 1913 in this government's Tax Code; and yet, today, we're talking about reversing it at a time when we're starving for jobs, 9 percent unemployment, and we're going to talk about making it harder to employ people in this country.

Other businesses are able to expense their research and development projects. Pharmaceutical companies, IEC specifically targets U.S. oil and gas companies. It will discourage innovation in the energy sector at a time when we need more innovation, not less. Disallowing the expensing of intangible drilling costs will put the American consumer in a worse position and endanger American jobs.

The second idea that's talked about in raising taxes for oil companies is to do away with the write-off, the dual capacity rule. The dual capacity rule was to ensure that income that is taxed by another nation is not also taxed by the U.S. It's something that the U.S. has been alone on in taxing double. We tax not only the amount that is made here but the amount that is made in other countries, the profits made in other countries. That's a tax inversion that has cost us many jobs.

Now then, we have the allowance of dual capacity rule in place to stop that, and yet our friends on the other side of the aisle are saying that we must stop this practice. All it's going to do is make the U.S. more inhospitable for investment in energy resources. At a time when we're seeing $4 gasoline, at a time when our economy is struggling, when we need jobs, we're talking about making American businesses less competitive and making American jobs more scarce.

The final section is maybe the most egregious of all, that is, the repeal of section 199 manufacturing exemptions for oil and gas companies. In 2004, the Congress enacted section 199 for manufacturing companies to encourage them to bring jobs back to this country. From 2004 to 2007, the oil and gas industry was responsible for 2 million new jobs that were created. The oil and gas companies currently support 9.2 million jobs. Almost all manufacturers receive a 9 percent credit. That's, again, in order to encourage them to come back to this country.

The oil and gas companies have only been receiving a 6 percent credit because they've already been picked on by the people in this town. But now they're suggesting that we would want to completely do away with the manufacturing credit. Keep in mind, that's the refining of gasoline. That's the definition of manufacturing in oil and gas.

So at a time when we're starving for jobs, we're going to make U.S. manufacturers, the U.S. refineries, less competitive. We're going to encourage Venezuela and Hugo Chavez to send more jobs there, to take more jobs and to send more gasoline here. It just doesn't make sense.

Tonight, I'd like to wrap up with this one picture about the status that our country is in. Our country right now has a tremendous problem with its economy. The problem is this: in Washington, we spend $3.5 trillion. Our revenues to the government are $2.2 trillion. That's a $1.3 trillion deficit. The accumulated deficits over the lifetime of this country are almost $15 trillion.

I show those deficits running out the end of the pipeline into our debt barrel to show the accumulated debt to the Nation. I also show a green sludge pouring over the edge of the barrel because we've got $202 trillion of accumulated costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These are the things that are wrecking our economy.

This chart given by OMB and CBO, the Congress, and the White House both show that our economy is going to fail in 2038 because of these practices. At a time when we're starving for jobs, this administration has a war on western jobs. It has a war on our energy. It has a war on the jobs in the timber industry. It has a war on our way of life.

This is not the time to be conducting partisan politics in this town. It's a time for us to create jobs. With each job created, the 2.2 is greater because each person pays in increment more taxes, but they also are no longer receiving welfare, unemployment, and food stamps. So the 3.5 decreases.

The path forward is simple. We simply ask that the President get on board.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove my name as a cosponsor from the bill, H.R. 1380.

I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1230, a bill that will restart American jobs.

The current 5-year lease plan would have allowed for the sale of four leases, one off the coast of Virginia and three in the Gulf of Mexico. The President and his agencies are continuing to block these sales. It's time to stop that blocking.

We're talking about jobs. The Nation is faced with 8 to 9 percent continuing unemployment. The jobs offshore are good, high-paying jobs-- $400 a day, $50,000 per year. Recently, the President had strong rhetoric to Georgetown University, saying that he's going to increase oil and gas production in America. Yet the administration's actions are moving us the opposite direction.

Tax increases kill jobs. That's an economic truth. Our friends across the aisle want to kill American jobs by raising taxes at a time when unemployment is too high, when we're dependent on too much foreign oil. In his speech last month at Georgetown, President Obama said, ``The fact of the matter is, is that for quite some time, America is going to be still dependent on oil in making its economy work. We're exploring and assessing new frontiers for oil and gas developments from Alaska to the Mid- and South Atlantic States.''

Mr. Chairman, we are with this bill giving the President the bill that he is saying that he's going to implement. Now let him sign it.

I appreciate Chairman Ryan for bringing this issue to the floor.

Mr. Chairman, basically the entire discussion that we're having in Washington right now centers around two figures: We spend 3.5 T, trillion, and we bring in 2.2 T, trillion, in revenues to the government from taxes. Now, it's the bringing together of those numbers that's a difference of opinion here in Washington.

I read the text of the President's speech yesterday--I did not get a chance to listen--and he says that we can close that gap by taxing the millionaires and billionaires. And it sounds so fluid. It comes off so easy. But I will tell you, it's a process that many nations have followed before: tax the millionaires.

I don't know what Bill Sweat in Artesia is worth, but he tells me to create a job it costs $340,000 to buy a new bulldozer and he needs a new pickup truck. So he needs $400,000 in the bank to create a job.

Now our friends on the other side of the aisle--and the President's speech--said we need to be taxing that money away from him. Nancy Pelosi said a couple of years ago we need to tax the profits of the corporations and spend them. But what you do is you take away Mr. Sweat's $400,000 and he doesn't get a new bulldozer, and we don't get a job.

So what we have here is this differential, $1.3 trillion in deficit on these top line figures. That's what we're accruing. Then that goes into our debt barrel, $15 trillion. That's what we have over the life of our country, from George Washington until today, approximately $15 trillion, and we're bringing in 2.2.

Now if we begin to give the tax increases that the President says, we're actually going to squeeze down to 2.2 because companies will not be hiring people. For instance, off the shore of Louisiana, we are now choking off those jobs. And so every job off Louisiana that the government kills takes one person from paying taxes and puts them up here receiving welfare, unemployment and food stamps.

Economic growth is the only thing that can cure this Nation's economic problems. The Ryan budget does that. The President's budget does not do it. Let's support the Ryan budget.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to address the body tonight.

I was not able to hear the President's speech today, but I was able to then get a transcript and read it. I note in the opening of that speech that he says, on page 1, that the debate that we're having here in Washington is about the kind of future that we want. It's about the kind of country we believe in, and then he describes that's what his speech will be about today.

As I read the context of the speech, I realize that the President and many Americans believe in very dramatically different models of country, and the kind of future that we believe in is dramatically different. I find in the President's speech that he centers many of his comments around taxing. Maybe it's taxing the millionaires and the billionaires. So I think that if we're going to talk about the kind of country that we live in, the kind of future that we want for the country, for our children and grandchildren, it is imperative that we begin to discuss this policy of taxation, this idea that we should and can tax the rich greater proportionate shares. It is that which I would like to address tonight.

Now as we talk about the future we believe in, understand that economic growth and vitality are critical concepts. And so one must then ask, How does the country achieve economic growth? How does it fail to achieve economic growth? That would be a key question. One of the core economic truths of economic growth is that when we tax the citizens more than approximately 23 percent, that we find an economy that will be stuck in stagnation. When we lower the taxation rate, then we find an economic vitality, creation of jobs. And so somewhere in that threshold of about 23 percent, we understand that every time we raise taxes, we kill jobs; and every time that we lower taxes, we create jobs. That was the essence of the argument that President Kennedy levied when he said we need to lower the tax rate in order to create more government revenues.

I often talk about the economic chaos that we're facing in our world right now, in our country; and it begins at this point. We begin with looking at the chart; we have basically an imbalance. We are spending $3.5 trillion every year, and we're bringing in $2.2 trillion every year. Our economy is stuck in stagnation. We don't have the ability to create jobs. And the President is talking about raising taxes in order to create revenue. President Kennedy would understand that when we raise taxes, we actually diminish the 2.2 figure, we actually lower the 2.2, because jobs are lost, productivity is lost; and, therefore, those jobs don't pay taxes to the government and the government's revenues begin to decrease.

I hear my friends on the other side of the aisle often describe the necessity to tax away Exxon's profits, that we should take every single dollar they make. In fact, we had one Presidential contender in the last race on the Democrat side saying we should tax Exxon's profits and spend them. We heard the Speaker of the House at that point using that same language, that we should tax the profits of Exxon and spend them.

Now let's take a closer look at that. Exxon makes good profits. They have a

good business. They have good investments. But almost every year, Exxon spends the majority of its profits reinvesting them in new drilling. As they drill wells, people are hired to work on the drilling rigs. They're hired to work on the logging rigs, on the cementing rigs. They're hired to do the tasks of finishing the well, putting it into productivity before Exxon can ever make a profit. So as we take away that profit from them, we take away the future drilling. We take away, then, the jobs from the economy, and that is the reason that higher taxes penalize and kill jobs.

Another example that I have about job creation was from Bill Sweat in Artesia. I asked at one of my town halls, What does it take to create jobs? He held up his hand and said, It takes me $340,000 to create one job. That's because we drive bulldozers in our work. And actually they won't let me drive the bulldozer down through the main streets of Artesia, so I have to buy a pickup truck, too. So he said basically for $400,000 that he can create one job.

When the government, when Washington taxes away those obscene profits--those obscene profits in the eyes of some--then what happens is Mr. Sweat takes longer and maybe even never gets to the point of having the $340,000 in the bank in order to pay for that new bulldozer and hire one more person.

So as the President begins to tell us that his view of this country is one where we're going to tax the people who are producing, then we have to wonder what we're going to get. Often a truism is that what you tax, you get less of; so if he's going to tax the producers, the millionaires and the billionaires, you're going to get less of them. I think that's a question we should ask: Is that a course that we want to chart for our future?

My friend from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) is here tonight, and maybe he has some insights; but I would like to suspend my conversation on the idea that we can tax the rich and find prosperity for our Nation. I think the rich should pay taxes the same as everyone else, but when we raise the tax level beyond that 22, 23, 24 percent threshold, then we need to understand the result is going to be economic stagnation. That's what we're finding right now.

So when Mr. Obama concentrates his speech today on taxing, taxing the wealthy, that they would pay their fair share in the society, understand he is talking about a future that looks somewhat like Cuba's. Cuba taxes wealthy people, and they haven't had job creation for decades. The Soviet Union taxed wealthy people. They didn't have jobs. Europeans even tax at a greater rate than we do, and they've had economic stagnation up until recent times when they began to cut the cost of government, cut the size of government and lower taxes and found themselves creating jobs.

I would like to yield to the gentleman from Michigan at this point for comments that he might have.

I thank the gentleman for his comments. And he pointed out that we cannot sustain this course, that actually this course is doomed to fail. I draw attention to my chart again, the far right-hand corner of the chart in which we show here exactly what the Office of Management and Budget says.

This is the President's own economic arm of the White House that says that our prosperity through time has been increasing--that's the upward sloping line--but now it's flattening out to the red zone in the chart. But then we see the chart absolutely stops at some point in time, that's about 2038. That is the point that Mr. McCotter refers to that we are on the path to stopping our economy. Our economy will actually fail because of the policies that we have now. And this is the future that is being demonstrated by our President today in his speech.

Now, as he talks about taxing, understand that we have lost jobs because of our tax policy and we've lost jobs because of our regulatory policy. Now, in the speech today, he talks about tax policy, but it's going in the wrong direction. In previous speeches, he has talked about the need to reform corporate taxes. In his State of the Union speech, he acknowledged that we are

taxed too high, that we can't create the economic growth that we need because we are taxing corporations in a fashion that exceeds other nations in the world. So he acknowledges it there.

I was hoping today in his speech that he would clarify, that he would begin to set a target, that he would set a timetable where we can start pulling back those manufacturing jobs because of a reform in tax policy. But curiously, in defining our future and in defining the way that we are looking at the values of the country--that's his declaration for what he wants to do in his speech today--he omits the job creation piece of taxation policy toward our corporations. He acknowledges that in his State of the Union speech. In his State of the Union speech he said that we are taxed at too high a rate, that he wants to cure that. He said that we must have reform. He said we need to use our savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years, and that was what I think Americans were looking for.

Americans maybe can't express the companies that have left this Nation to find lower tax rates and better economic regulations in other countries, they might not be able to name them, but they implicitly know that they exist. I will look at, again, my chart.

The revenues in this Nation are $2.2 trillion. That's the accumulated taxes that we've paid to our government. The expenses are 3.5. Yes, we can cut our expenses, but we should be concentrating and growing the jobs and having people go back to work. As they go back to work, they begin to pay taxes, and our $2.2 trillion begins to increase. But as every single individual is hired, they come off welfare, unemployment and food stamps, and then they go down into the productive part of society, so we find our economic imbalance collapsing toward itself. The costs collapse as we are hiring people and putting them back to work. And that should have been the concentration of President Obama's speech today.

In the past, because of our policies, we have lost the producers in this country, a list of them: Fender Guitars, Converse, Etch A Sketch, Radio Flyer, Levi's, Craftsman tools, Stanley tools, USA flags, Rawlings baseballs, Brach's candy, IBM computer, NBA uniforms. These are just a partial list of companies that have decided that it is cheaper to manufacture somewhere else because our policies make it too difficult. If we're going to rebuild our economy, we need to rebuild that manufacturing base, and we do that through tax policy. That should be the concentration of both parties at this time in our Nation's history.

The President also mentions, on page 2, that we're amassing alarming debt levels back in the 1980s. If I look at my chart--again, I show our deficits. This year our deficit is $1.3 trillion; that is, our spending exceeds the revenues by $1.3 trillion. That deficit runs over and I show it going into our debt barrel, that accumulated debt for generations past. And Mr. Obama mentions adequately that that debt in the eighties started reaching alarming levels. But from the time of George Washington until the first President Bush--that's after 1980--we had an accumulation of about $5 trillion worth of debt. If you look at the chart, you can see that we have an accumulation today of almost $15 trillion. So we had $5 trillion back in the mid-eighties, and now we're at $15 trillion.

I would point out to the President, when he says we were amassing debt at alarming levels in the 1980s, that the debt he has accumulated in his Presidency is almost equivalent to what we accumulated from the time of George Washington to the first President Bush. That is alarming.

It's an alarming statistic that we have a deficit today in this budget of $1.3 trillion, but in 2007--the last budget written under a Republican Congress and with President Bush as President--the last deficit was under $200 billion. That would be the equivalent to 0.2. Today we are over $1.1 trillion, and even up into when the President came into office, our annual deficit was less than half a trillion. We now have over $1.5 trillion that the President is suggesting our debt levels should be next year. So in his time alone we have increased deficits from the billion dollar category, increased them to the trillion dollar category, and that is alarming debt.

That is what has got other nations pointing to us and saying that is not sustainable. They're afraid when they loan us money, that it is not going to be paid back. So nations are increasingly reticent to lend us money.

That then results in the Federal Reserve buying most of our debt. This year, our Federal Reserve is on track--now keep in mind they get much of their money from the government and then they're loaning us money from the other hand--our Federal Reserve this year is on track to lend us about 60 to 70 percent of the money that we borrow.

Now, Mr. Bernanke expresses deep belief that there are buyers for those Treasury bills out there. There are people who are going to lend our Nation money. But as they look at the economic instability that we're facing, they understand the need that we have to, number one, correct spending but, number two, to grow the economy and create jobs.

Now, there are those skeptics who do not believe that tax cuts will create jobs. Again, I follow the example of Exxon. When you take their profits away, you tax them more, then you actually decrease the amount that they're spending with drilling companies, offshore platforms that they're spending in different communities to get services done to their wells as they drill them.

Also, I would remind the listeners today of Mr. Sweat and that $340,000 for the bulldozer. Those are the evidences that we get that tax cuts will create jobs.

But if we want to look at the other model, tax increases killing jobs, we can look no further than our own country at a time of the tax cuts of 2003. Over the next 4 to 5 years, our economy created over 5 million jobs. As the threat of taxes loomed, as the economic slowdown came in, as the uncertainty of the current administration began to take hold, then we have lost almost 3 million jobs.

So just the talk of taxes, the talk of the cap-and-trade tax permeated the discussions in 2009, it began to cause people to shy away and say we better not invest because we're afraid we're going to be taxed.

The discussions of the health care bill also related the belief that the people had that Washington was going to raise taxes in the health care field. And so again, consumers began not to purchase as much, investors began not to buy new equipment, people everywhere were becoming more cautious, and we slipped into stagnation. Our economy began to stagnate and lose jobs and has not yet been creating those jobs at any significant rate. We're still above 8 percent unemployment, and that was to be the floor we would find if we spent the money on the stimulus in a previous vision that the Obama administration gave to us.

As we think about other examples, I always like to use the example of Ireland. Fifteen or 20 years ago, Ireland began to lower its corporate tax rates. They believed, as I'm saying tonight, that if they would lower tax rates to corporations, that the companies would actually come flooding into the country. They would come there to produce. And it created the Irish miracle, the economic miracle of growth that was caused by Ireland cutting its corporate tax rate from about 36 percent down to around 12 percent. A significant decrease.

Companies began to flood into Ireland. The contrast is also given by Ireland. As they began to find prosperity, they began to spend more than they bring in, this same model that we're looking at here. They began to raise taxes. And now corporations are flooding away.

Just today I was visiting with the managers of a cheese plant that is on the east side of New Mexico. They're an Irish company. They've come here to produce because it is just too difficult, too high, the taxes are too great in Ireland. My brother-in-law works for Hughes Tool. He was at Hughes Tool back when they moved factories, production facilities back into Ireland. This year, my brother-in-law went to disassemble the last plant in Ireland because they've gone up on their tax rates and no longer was it a good place to operate.

If we're interested in solving the economic chaos that we're facing, we can't

get there simply by spending cuts; we can't get there by taxing the rich. In other words, taxing the rich is going to drive us further away from the goal, further into stagnation, further into job losses. If we're going to rebuild our economy, we must concentrate on economic growth.

And the nice thing is that the actuarial tables tell us that if we will grow jobs at about 3\1/2\ percent, that this imbalance begins to disappear, that the worry of the future begins to dissipate simply because we grow the economy, we create jobs, we take people off of unemployment, we take people off of welfare, off of food stamps. Our 3.5 cost to the government begins to diminish, the 2.2 begins to grow, we find ourselves reaching balance, and over the long term, we find ourselves beginning to reduce this $15 trillion debt. We find ourselves able to sustain the $202 trillion worth of unplanned expenses--excuse me, they're not unplanned, they're simply unpaid for--the expenses of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That's where the real threat lies.

And nowhere in Mr. Obama's plan did I see a dealing with those significant drains on our economy. His only plan is to tax the rich, the millionaires and the billionaires, by making them pay their fair share. And that, he says, is going to fix the economy.

That, my friends, is going to wreck the economy.

When we choose that course of making the rich pay more than their fair share, they owe it to us. It's only fair, he says in his speech, that they would pay a little more. When we do that, we're going to choke jobs off even more. Other nations, our 2.2 is going to be less. We're going to put those people out of work, just like we did offshore in Louisiana. We put about 100,000 people out of work there. We're on the way to putting them out of work.

Those people, instead of paying taxes, are going to pay no taxes, but they're now going to cost us unemployment benefits; they're going to cost us in Medicare, Medicaid. They're going to cost us in food stamps, welfare. And they're not going to be producing.

So with this vision of taxing the rich, we're going to move more to an unproductive society because you cannot create more productivity by taxing it. If that were the case, every nation would be productive. Every nation can always go up on taxes. But not every nation can create the environment to where innovators are allowed to produce.

The innovations in the oil and gas industry have been dramatic, and yet that's the single area it appears that President Obama is going to kill first, that whole specter he refers to as ``yesterday's fuel,'' ``yesterday's energy.''

If it is yesterday's energy, let the President take the lead and cease using it. Use the energies of tomorrow. Stop using that energy of the past. Let him fly an airplane on something besides jet fuel. Please. Give us that bold vision and courage and leadership. Let him show us the way if fossil fuels are a thing of the past.

But I suspect, like you and me, that the President is going to continue to drive his limousine on petroleum-based products. He's going to continue to fly Air Force 1 not on solar power, but on jet fuel. I suspect that all of Americans are going to do it. The only thing that we're going to have as an outcome is less plentiful energy, fewer jobs, a greater imbalance in our government and our government spending, greater uncertainty for the future.

That's a shame that that's the leadership that we're getting. Because at this point in our world's history, it would be possible, if we are literally looking to recreate our economy, to draw back the manufacturing jobs of the past, to put them back to work here, to rekindle the industries that are gone so that we do have a bright future, so that people have not just jobs, but careers to face; that they are able to plan for their future; that they are able to save for a house, save for the kids' education; that they are able, truly, to live the American Dream.

That's what has made this country great in the past, and I think that Americans at this point in time will find that leadership for the future.