Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the leader for yielding me this time.

I ask myself this question: If we are going to deal with this debate on embryonic stem cell research, what are the ethics of this? One can go to Google and do a Google search on permissible medical experiments. And I did that, and I found that there is a list of 10 things that have to be qualifiers for permissible medical experiments on human beings. One is the subject must be a volunteer. The second one is there must be no alternative. The third one is results of animal experimentation must be proven successful prior to their experiments. The net result in death or disability cannot be accepted. The seventh one is there cannot be even a remote possibility of injury, disability, or death. The human subject must be at liberty to end the experiment. And the likely result cannot be injury, disability, or death. The exception is if a physician wants to experiment upon himself.

Where do I find this information, Mr. Speaker? I find this information in the military tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, October, 1946, Nuremberg.

Madam Chairman, I thank the chairman for yielding this time to have an opportunity to address an issue that is so important to this country, and that issue is the energy that drives this economy.

We all know that everything that we purchase in this country has got an energy cost component in it; and so when we address the energy issues, we know that when we can provide more supply of energy, whether it comes from someplace else on the globe, whether it comes from the northern hemisphere, whether it comes from the United States, whether it is renewable energy or whether it is a consumable energy, that is at least in theory not renewed, all of those things add to the overall size of the energy pie.

It is our responsibility here in this Congress to be able to expand the size of that pie so we have more energy available to the consumers; and we know that due to the law of supply and demand, the more supply there is, of course the less relative demand there will be. The relative costs of energy will either be slowed in their increase or actually diminished in some cases, and we can see reductions in the price of energy.

It is critical to me, in the part of the State I come from. We are very vulnerable to energy. We use gas and diesel fuel for the production of agriculture, for example, and we also produce ethanol and biodiesel. So we are a renewable energy export center, as well as a consumer of energy.

I have watched this policy here in the United States, and we tend to take sides a little bit. That taking sides falls into a few categories: energy consumers who want all the energy they can get, as cheap as they can get it; and environmentalist interests that want to be able to preserve the pristine areas of America at whatever cost to the economy.

I would take the stand that natural gas in this country, for example, we have a huge domestic supply of natural gas in the North American Continent underneath nonnational park public lands. We have a tremendous supply of natural gas offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, Gulf of Mexico, and a lot of that is, as we stand here, off limits to producers. That has driven up the cost of natural gas in my district and all across this country and put an additional price on virtually everything that we sell and purchase.

So, Madam Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to address this House and the opportunity also to have some time yielded to me for this important subject matter.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I would point out that Iowa and the Corn Belt are held hostage to the price of natural gas in two ways. It is our input cost for nitrogen fertilizer. Ninety percent of the cost is the cost of natural gas. The other side is that we use it to dry grain.

We have to have a full energy picture. I congratulate the gentleman for bringing this amendment, fully support it, and I urge adoption of it.

Mr. Chairman, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Peterson Amendment to end the 20 year moratoria on natural gas production from the outer continental shelf and Gulf of Mexico.

High natural gas prices have not only affected the 61 percent of U.S. households that use natural gas for heating and cooking, but America's small businesses, including agriculture. The agricultural industry depends on natural gas for crop drying, irrigation, heating, farm buildings, food processing and nitrogen fertilizer production.

Undoubtedly, the most demanding use of natural gas by the farm sector is in the production of nitrogen fertilizer. It accounts for 90 percent of total costs of producing fertilizer. The surge in natural gas prices over the last four years has been a key reason why nitrogen fertilizer costs have jumped by nearly 50 percent at the farm level. This problem is not going away on its own, a recent report by Iowa State University estimates that farmers can expect to pay 20 percent more for fertilizer this year than they did last year.

Nitrogen fertilizer is an essential component in today's high- yielding agriculture and accounts for more than 40 percent of the total energy input per acre of corn harvested. The importance of nitrogen to crop production can be illustrated by the fact that it is applied to 96 percent of all corn acres, 86 percent of all wheat acres and 80 percent of all cotton acres. According to data from the University of Illinois, without nitrogen fertilizers, corn yields would reduce by one-third to one-half.

This 20 year moratorium has created a supply squeeze for natural gas. On one hand, electric utilities and other industries have been influenced to move away from using our plentiful supplies of coal and towards the use of natural gas. Natural gas has been the fuel of choice for more than 90 percent of the new electric generation to come online in the last decade. At the same time, access to natural gas is limited due to environmental policies. Clearly we can't have it both ways.

Our family farmers are already efficient. Since 1980, they have increased efficiency by 35 percent while still boosting corn yields by 40 percent. But they need Congress to produce the kind of policies that enable them to access the resources they need at a reasonable price.

American agriculture is being held hostage to high natural gas prices, yet we have a plentiful supply right here in the United States. A vote in favor of the Peterson Amendment will be a vote for agriculture.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

I point out that the U.S.-produced nitrogen fertilizer that American farmers have historically relied upon is being outsourced to foreign producers. Of the 16\1/2\ million tons of nitrogen fertilizer production capacity that existed in this country prior to the year 2000, nearly 20 percent has been closed permanently and there are another 4 million tons, 25 percent again at risk of closing within the next 2 years.

We have outsourced our nitrogen fertilizer protection to foreign countries like Venezuela and Russia, where they are subsidizing their natural gas. Here we refuse to develop our natural gas. And now we are faced with Chinese involvement in the Western hemisphere, who are involved in capital investment, and I know that there is drilling going on offshore for Cuba. I do not know if it is affected by this bill. But I know this: The gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) was right. It is not the question of whether we are going to drill for this oil. We will do it sometime. It is just a question of whether we do it before or after we lose the jobs, before or after we lose the production of this natural gas to foreign countries.

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman, and particularly the gentleman from California (Chairman Cox) for yielding me time and for working and participating on this amendment.

I rise today in support of the Cox-Sensenbrenner amendment which authorizes funding to train State and local law enforcement officers to perform immigration officer functions.

I submitted a nearly identical amendment to the Committee on Rules because I believe this amendment provides the help our local law enforcement needs to enforce our Nation's immigration laws and keep our citizens safe. I am proud to stand today with the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Sensenbrenner), my chairman, and the author of the underlying bill, the gentleman from California (Mr. Cox), the Committee on Homeland Security chairman, to urge my colleagues to support this funding.

Under section 287(g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act, State and local governments can enter into cooperative agreements with the Department of Homeland Security to train on Federal immigration law and be reimbursed for that training. This amendment would authorize the funds needed for that reimbursement for States all across this Nation.

There are two reasons to encourage local police to assist in enforcing immigration laws. First, while there are an estimated 8 to 10 million illegal aliens in the United States, ICE currently has only about 2,000 special agents to identify and remove them. Second, local officers come into contact with many of those illegal aliens, especially criminal aliens, daily in performing their duties. So it is a practical marriage.

The House Committee on the Judiciary has promoted and supported local immigration enforcement since section 287(g) was added to the INA in 1996. In January of 2002, the Committee on the Judiciary pressed the Attorney General to accept local assistance in enforcing the immigration laws. As the then-Immigration Subcommittee chairman stated, ``In light of the tragic events of September 11, 2001, and the growing problem of illegal immigration into the United States, this is perhaps the most pressing time for the Department of Justice to consider utilizing the power'' conveyed under section 287(g).

The Federal Government subsequently authorized officers to perform immigration enforcement functions with Florida and Alabama.

The Committee on the Judiciary has revisited this issue in evaluating interior immigration enforcement, in examining sanctuary policies in a number of major cities, and in assessing the inherent authority of local police to enforce the immigration laws.

This amendment is an improvement over a narrow provision struck from H.R. 1817 during the markup of the legislation on May 12. That narrowly tailored provision applied only to States with a location 30 miles from a border or coastline. In order to truly protect our citizens from those who have entered our country illegally to do them harm, this policy must be applied nationwide.

As an April 2005 Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims hearing revealed, alien gang violence has followed immigration patterns from the ports and borders into the communities of the interior United States. Similarly, new reports indicate that local police far from the nearest national border confront alien criminals and smugglers on a daily basis.

So in summary, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in support of this amendment that addresses the necessary cooperation between local law enforcement, both local and State, and the Federal educational support so that we can build that level of cooperation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take my Special Order at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this Chamber and address the Speaker and the House.

I would like to speak about the embryonic stem cell research that is a matter of discussion around this Congress intensively in the last weeks and months as we have been here. I would like to join some of my colleagues in explaining the progress and promise of adult stem cell research, and I would like to also dispel many of the myths promoted by those urging more Federal funding for the destruction of human embryos required for embryonic stem cell research. I am for stem cell research, adult stem cell research. I am not for ending human life in the process of trying to find a cure for the lives of others.

Among the favorite myths of proponents of embryonic stem cell research is the legend that there are 400,000 embryos stored at IVF clinics that are simply going to be discarded. So we should derive some benefit from them, my opponents say. This figure has become so fixed in their rhetoric that it now seems to be a fact. Members of both Houses, in a letter to President Bush, even cited the number, the 400,000 number, in an effort to get President Bush to change his current policy on the funding of embryonic stem cell research. These proponents then use that number to create the assumption that an equally large number of therapeutic stem cells can be derived from them.

Here is why this argument is wrong, Mr. Speaker: IVF embryos will not just die anyway. Most IVF embryos are designated for implantation, and the rest can be adopted. In 1995 about 500,000 women were seeking to adopt a child. That would be 500,000 families, most of them husbands and wives. Seventy-five children are alive and well today who started life as frozen embryos.

All of the frozen embryos have the potential to become an independent, well-adjusted human being. Only a small fraction, 2.2 percent, are slated to be discarded. Only another 2.8 percent of embryos in IVF clinics, that is, roughly 11,000, have been designated by their parents for research. That is a total of 6 percent of all the embryos presently in IVF storage that are intended for disposal or research. Only 6 percent. Ninety percent are designated for a future.

More than 90 percent stored in clinics are saved for later use by parents or donated to other infertile couples for implantation. That means of the original 400,000 frozen embryos, only 11,000 are actually available to be destroyed for their stem cells. Of those available embryos, less than 275 stem cell lines would be created. That can be with private sector dollars. It does not have to be dollars extracted from the taxpayer.

When we are asking the taxpayer to contribute money to the Federal Government and diverting those dollars, Mr. Speaker, to go towards embryonic stem cell research, which of necessity must end a human life, and a human life like those 75 children that have come from frozen embryos to childhood and on their way to adulthood, that is an immoral choice, a choice that we are imposing upon tens of millions of people that understand in this country that life begins at the instance of conception; and we cannot declare an embryo, a fertilized egg, that has all of the chromosomes and all the components of an individual little blessing, we cannot declare them to be something of science to be discarded.

And if we roll ourselves back into history, back to the time of the Second World War, the Nazi regime, Dr. Josef Mengele, he did research on people, people who saw more than half of their world population extinguished by the Nazi regime. He did research on people because they were Jewish and put them in chambers and froze them to death and put them in heat chambers to see how much heat they could stand and put them through a whole series of scientific experiments to find out the limitations of the human body, how much suffering could they take, how much weather could they take, how much deprivation of food and water, how much torture could they take, and documented that. And civil societies have refused to use the information and the data that came from the Nazi regime because it resulted in the death of human beings.

This embryonic stem cell research also results in the death of human beings, Mr. Speaker. It is the same kind of philosophy done in the name of science. We can find and have found better and other ways to produce similar and better science. We need to follow that path. There is no legal prohibition against embryonic stem cell research in this country. The debate in this Congress is about will we impose a tax upon Americans and compel them to dig into their pockets and contribute to this diabolical science that ends the life of an innocent human being for the potential of improving the life of others when we have other alternatives.

Mr. Speaker, I rise this evening to join my colleagues in explaining the progress and promise of adult stem cell research and to dispel many of the myths promoted by those urging more federal funding for the destruction of human embryos, required for embryonic stem cell research.

Among the favorite myths of proponents of embryonic stem cell research is the legend that there are 400,000 embryos stored at IVF clinics that are simply going to be discarded, so we should derive some benefit from them. This figure has become so fixed in their rhetoric that it now seems to be a fact. Members of both Houses, in a letter to President Bush, even cited the number in an effort to get President Bush to change his current policy on the funding of embryonic stem cell research. These proponents then use that number to create the assumption that an equally large number of therapeutic stem cells can be derived from them.

Here is why this argument is wrong: IVF embryos will not just ``die anyway.'' Most IVF embryos are designated for implantation, and the rest can be adopted. In 1955, about 50,000 women were seeking to adopt a child. 75 children are alive and well today who started life as ``frozen embryos.''

Only a small fraction--2.2 percent--are slated to be discarded.

Only another 2.8 percent of embryos in IVF clinics, roughly 11,000, have been designated by their parents for research.

That is a total of 6 percent of all the embryos presently in IVF storage that are intended for disposal or research. More than 90 percent of embryos stored in IVF clinics are saved for later use by parents or donated to other infertile couples for implantation.

That means of the original 400,000 frozen embryos, only 11,000 are actually available to be destroyed for their stem cells.

Of those available embryos, less than 275 stem cell lines would be created. So, behind the seemingly impressive number of 400,000 frozen embryos, the reality is that the actual number of stem cell lines. likely to be produced from them is so small as to be clinically useless.

In order to treat diseases--which is, as I will explain, still a very distant prospect using human embryonic stem cells--hundreds of thousands more embryos beyond those currently frozen and available for research would be needed. This could only be achieved by a deliberate effort to create new embryos for the sole purpose of destroying them-- an outcome that the use of the frozen embryos is supposed to avoid, but would most likely cause. Federal funding of this destructive embryonic stem cell research would, therefore, create an incentive to create and kill more human embryos for stem cells, which would lead to a US human embryo farm industry.

There is an ethical alternative to killing these embryos: Adult and cord blood stem cells are treating patients of over 58 diseases.

Even if these frozen embryos were going to be discarded anyway (which they are not), and even if there was no ethical alternative

(which there is), it would still be morally wrong to kill these human embryos for experimentation.

From the Nuremberg Code to the Belmont Commission, this utilitarian justification for harmful or fatal research has been soundly rejected in order to protect patients and the practice of medicine.

Civilized cultures have protections in place to make sure we do not allow research on, or use organs from, death row prisoners who are ``going to die anyway,'' and we do not do research on terminally ill patients unless such research has a chance to help the patient.

We take a great risk if we dehumanize human embryos and accept ``they are going to die anyway'' as how we judge what is acceptable treatment for our fellow human beings.

Examples of atrocities that would be justified by the statement that the victims are going to die anyway include: Harvesting organs from and experimenting on death row inmates (like China), harvesting organs from and experimenting on the terminally ill, and submerging 15 live human unborn children into salt solution to learn if they could absorb oxygen through their skin. One fetus survived for 22 hours in an actual U.S. case.

The second major myth is that the stem cells lines that could be derived from these frozen embryos have the potential to cure numerous diseases, but that such cures remain just around the corner and just out of reach because the administration refuses to fund research in which these embryos would be destroyed. This, too, is false.

Adult stem cells have treated over 58 diseases in human patients in published clinical studies. Embryonic stem cells have not treated even one patient, and have mixed results--at best--in animal trials.

Moreover, human embryonic stem cell research is completely legal. The debate is solely about federally funding research that requires the destruction of embryos, human beings in their earliest stages of life.

President Bush is the first president to federally fund human embryonic stem cell research. He determined that such research could be funded so long as the cells had been obtained from embryos destroyed on or before August 9, 2001.

Since then NIH determined that there are 78 derivations of embryonic stem cells that are eligible for Federal funding, and 22 cell lines are currently receiving Federal funds. According to the director of the National Institutes of Health, the Bush policy is sufficient for basic research.

There are 16 additional ``eligible'' embryonic stem cell lines in existence that have not been ``contaminated'' by mouse feeder cells.

NIH spent about $25 million on embryonic stem cell research in 2003, funding 118 research projects.

HHS reports that as of February 2004, embryonic stem cell providers had shipped more than 400 lines to researchers, and there are 3,500 vials of embryonic stem cells that are waiting to be shipped to researchers.

The ultimate goal of researchers is free and unfettered access to Federal dollars to create and destroy embryos for research purposes, and to employ human cloning as the method of choice.

Embryonic stem cell research will not, no matter what the claims of its proponents, become the cure-all it is touted as.

Of the fewer than 275 potential viable stem cell lines genetical diversity will still be lacking, since minorities are poorly represented among IVF clients.

Stem cells from IVF embryos will cause serious immune rejection problems if transplanted into patients. Researchers argue that to avoid immune rejection, we need to clone people to make stem cells that are genetically identical to the patient receiving the stem cell transplant.

Many of my colleagues, I'm sure, have been visited by members of disease organizations, desperate for cures for their loved ones. One of the myths promoted by some of these organizations--and I believe that the families, most of the time, do not know the falsity of their statements--is that somatic cell nuclear transfer is not cloning. This is absolutely false. Somatic cell nuclear transfer, or SCNT, is the process that created Dolly, the cloned Scottish sheep. This makes me irate, that some in the scientific community would mislead victims of disease and illness and their loved ones into fighting for research they would oppose were they told the truth, and making them believe that this sort of research will cure all that ails them if they were just provided the money.

Here are the facts: All medical advances (at least 58 therapies) from stem cells to date have been from ``adult'' stem cell research, which carries no ethical concerns. There have been none from embryonic cells, not even in animal studies.

The benefits of research that kills living human embryos is purely speculative and has been hyped by researchers who are after federal funding and by a media that doesn't understand or report the distinction between adult and embryonic stem cells.

Proponents continue to make the false claim that embryonic stem cells will cure Alzheimer's Disease. It almost certainly will not.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation has irresponsibly refused to promote or fund ethical adult stem cell research, despite the fact that is it shows far more promise in treating diabetes than does research on cells derived from human embryos.

This debate is purely about federal funding. Embryonic stem cell research is completely legal.

Americans do not support destructive embryonic stem cell research, especially when they are provided with the facts.

When respondents in a poll at the beginning of this month were told that scientists disagree on whether embryonic or adult stem cells will end up being most successful in treating diseases, 60 percent favored funding only the research avenues that raise no moral problem, while only 22 percent favored funding all stem cell research including the kind that involves destroying embryos.

Killing human embryos is morally wrong. A human embryo, a person in his or her earliest stages, must be destroyed to obtain embryonic stem cells. Destroying early human life shows a profound disrespect for human life.

The ends do not justify the means. Some pro-life members of Congress support funding of embryonic stem cell research on the basis that this research could save the lives of people with debilitating diseases. This obfuscation of the term ``pro-life'' is based on a utilitarian ethic. It is unethical to destroy some human lives for the betterment of the lives of others.

Even President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission concluded that embryos ``deserve respect as a form of human life.'' The Commission recommended funding of embryonic stem cell research, only if there were no alternatives. Adult stem cells are currently being used to successfully treat humans suffering from many diseases.

Taxpayers shouldn't spend their hard earned money on embryo destruction. Federal funding of the destruction of human embryos for research is unethical. The debate is over the use of taxpayers money, not whether it is legal. American taxpayers should not be forced to fund unethical research.

The fact is that patients and their loved ones need real hope, not hype. That hope resides in non-controversial, tried-and-true adult stem cell research. When this issue comes to the floor next week, please join me in returning our focus from destructive embryonic stem cell research to adult stem cell research, which has been proven to work, is not morally controversial, and holds true promise for disease victims.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I am offering this amendment to establish how $5 million is spent with regard to the homeland security.

I rise today to offer this amendment to promote participation of employers in the Basic Pilot Employment Eligibility Verification System, a program I like to call Instant Check. This program takes the guesswork out of hiring legal employees. This basic pilot program checks the Social Security Administration and Department of Human Services databases using an automated system so that employers can verify the employment authorization of all of their new hires. This program is voluntary and is free to participating employers. All an employer needs is a computer with an Internet connection, which most everyone has.

My amendment would make it easier for employers to hire legal workers. By using this program, employers no longer have to worry about whether the identification documents used to fill out the required I-9 form are real or forgeries. I have personally used this program and found it easy to use. It was Web-based and gave me an answer quickly. The longest wait for Instant Check that I could devise was 6 seconds.

My amendment would also improve the accuracy of wage and tax reporting. Employees would know after the check whether their information is properly recorded at the Social Security Administration and with the immigration services. If there were any mistakes, they could be corrected so that employees would get proper credit for their Social Security contributions.

This amendment also protects jobs for authorized United States workers. By using this instant check verification program, employers can be sure that they are hiring either U.S. citizens or aliens who are authorized to work in the United States.

The program began in November 1997 with five States in a pilot program, added a sixth State in 1999, and as of December 1, 2004, this basic pilot program has been available to employers in all 50 States. I hope that more employers will take advantage of this and verify their employees. Given that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has the authority to sanction employers for hiring illegal workers, it only makes sense that they should also encourage employers to use the free instant check verification program so that employers can avoid breaking the law.

We need to reduce and weaken the jobs magnet. This is something that does that, the Basic Pilot Employment Eligibility Verification System. I call it Instant Check. The Web page is www.vis-dhs.com/ employerregistration.

This amendment simply inserts $5 million and withdraws $5 million in a pro forma effort to direct that funding in a fashion that will promote the Instant Check program. That would be the most effective way of utilizing it. It seems to be somewhat of a trade secret that employers can now verify the employability of their employees.

Madam Chairman, I thank the esteemed chairman for yielding time to me, and Madam Chairman, I ask for this opportunity to say a few words in support of the bill that is before us and in compliments to the work done by the gentleman from Virginia who has announced to us that there is a number, the best estimate at 750,000 to 850,000, gang members in the United States.

When we think about the magnitude of that size number, 750,000 to 850,000, 75 to 100 percent, and a lot believe the number is very close to 100 percent, are illegal immigrants who have established a gang culture in the ethnic enclave that is a necessary result of illegal immigration. This ethnic enclave has created and fostered some of the worst gains we have ever seen in this country, people that cut off hands and arms and heads, people that have a network across this Nation that from a prison in California can order an execution on the streets of Virginia or from a prison in Virginia, order an execution in a prison in L.A. or on the streets of L.A.

That is what this culture has fostered; and that amount, that 850,000, that is roughly out of the 10 million illegal immigrants, that is about 8\1/2\ percent of the illegal population ends up in a gang. One in 12 people that come across the border illegally and stay here end up in a gang. By these numbers, it is an astonishing thing; and if we have 1.1 million that come across the southern border, these are the ones that stay here, calculate the numbers that turn out into gangs, the price to this society in hands and arms and heads.

Madam Chairman, I thank my colleague for this privilege to speak before this House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe), the judge, for the opportunity to say a few words about the future of this country, the history of this country and our beloved Constitution, and appreciate this opportunity to be here on this floor tonight.

As I watched the development here and the transition of history, and I am 55 years into this life, a little over a half a century, and I was raised with a deep and abiding love and respect for our Constitution and for the rule of law, the fact that a law existed meant that the judgment of the people had spoken. And according to the strong directive of my father, I was to then adhere to that law and adhere to that Constitution. And if I did not like the language that was there and the intent of the Constitution or the law, it was my job to step forward as a citizen of the United States and seek to change it; not to ignore it, not to amend it in a fashion that did not have the will of the people in support of it.

And so, today, Mr. Speaker, we have gone to this point where I look back upon this transition, this transition that has taken place over the 55 years of my life and the 45 or so years that I have paid attention to what is going on in the United States of America, and I have watched a dramatic transition take place within the judicial branch of government.

And I want to acknowledge at the beginning of this discussion, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe) will know this, that I had the privilege to sit down and have lunch with a group of Supreme Court justices today, and I very much appreciate them and the other justices that joined them. It was a very, very good gesture on their part to reach out and open up a dialogue and give us an opportunity to speak about and discuss the disagreements that we have between the legislative branch and the judicial branch of government.

It is a natural tension that exists between these three branches of government, and this legislative branch of government, which clearly has its duties to write the laws; the executive branch of government which has its duties to execute those laws, enforce those laws; and the judicial branch of government whose job it is to interpret the laws, interpret the Constitution. It is a natural tension that exists, and it will go on as long as this is a great country. And it is a great country.

And I want to compliment the justices of the Supreme Court for being part of this effort to open the dialogue and give us an opportunity to discuss our differences. And I look forward to those opportunities to continue to sit down and have those discussions, and I will take advantage of that.

But I have to say here tonight that I have watched a transition over the last 55 years or so of my lifetime. And I would go back to a case that would be about 1963, Murray v. Curlett, and that was the case when Madeline Murray O'Hare became the most hated woman in America, and she successfully went to the United States Supreme Court and removed prayer from the public schools.

That, Mr. Speaker, I believe started us down the path, down the path of bowing to the judicial branch of government, maybe the last time that the American public really questioned and challenged the decisions that were made over across the street in the Supreme Court building.

This country has accepted those decisions because they believe that they do not understand the Constitution well enough to second guess a judge, and they do not understand the letter or the congressional intent of the law well enough to second guess a judge's decision to overturn the clear directive and intent of Congress. That has happened time after time after time.

And we have seen justice after justice reach out into foreign law, reach into foreign law to find a conclusion that suits their intent and their belief of how this country ought to be shaped and how it ought to be formed. Murray v. Curlett, prayer out of the public, schools started us down a slippery slope, a fast and slippery slide down into an abyss which I do not know how we swim out of it.

And I asked this question, and I have asked it of the Chief Justice directly, and that is, in case after case after case, we have seen decisions made by

which we cannot recognize the Constitution any longer. One of those cases would be the affirmative action cases that were before the Supreme Court I believe it was a year ago last April 19. And in those cases, I sat and listened to that. I went to hear profound constitutional arguments. And where would you go in the world to hear profound constitutional arguments except in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court? There is no higher calling and no higher standard for constitutional arguments.

And yet as I listened that day, I heard one, one constitutional argument, actually relatively profound. The case had to do with affirmative action. Chief Justice Scalia asked the question of the Michigan attorneys: If we rule against you and it results in one minority in your school, 100 percent minorities in your school or no minorities in your school, what possible constitutional difference can that make?

Now, the answer was long. But it was not clear. The question is clear to me. He directed that question directly back to the Constitution, which is where the entire oral argument should have focused. And yet it happens less and less as I hear these arguments before the Supreme Court because there is an entire industry that has been built up on trying to analyze the particular personal viewpoints of each of the justices. There is quite a history there to analyze, and quite an industry that has been built up around that.

But the arguments that go to the Constitution itself are ever diminished year by year, case by case, to the point where I believe that the courts have, because of stare decisis, because of the belief that once a decision is made, they should honor that decision of the previous court, not overturn the decision of the previous court. I could name you exceptions.

Stare decisis says that the Supreme Court is painting themselves into a legal corner. And on the other side of that room is the doorway back to the Constitution. But unless that paint dries, they cannot get back out the door. And as long as they respect stare decisis, this respect for a decision that is made by the previous decision of the court, the paint never dries, and they are trapped further and further into a corner that prohibits them from going back to the Constitution.

And so if you cannot get back to the Constitution, on what do you base your decisions? Well, foreign law. Foreign law is a nice and convenient decision that can be made. I have a list of some of these here, Mr. Speaker, and it is quite an interesting list. Justice Breyer, in his dissent, and I always give credit for dissent, Knight v. Florida 1999, A growing number of courts outside the United States courts that accept or assume the lawfulness of the death penalty have held that lengthy delay in administering a lawful death penalty renders ultimate execution inhuman, degrading or unusually cruel.

Sounds a lot like some of the language in our Constitution. But how could a lengthy delay in administering a death penalty change the ultimate result of that?

If locking someone up in prison for an extended period of time is cruel and inhuman, then would we not have to then release everyone that is in our prisons?

And in the case of Pratt v. Attorney General of Jamaica, for example, the privy council considered whether Jamaica lawfully could execute two prisoners held for 14 years after sentencing. The council noted that Jamaican law authorized the death penalty, and the United Nations Committee on Human Rights has written that capital punishment is not, per se, unlawful under the human rights covenant; Jamaican law, the United Nation's Committee on Human Rights.

And then the Supreme Court of India has held that an appellate court which itself has authority to sentence must take account of delay when deciding whether to impose the death penalty. This cited by the Supreme Court of the United States, Jamaican law, European, United Nations Committee on Human Rights, Indian law, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, and I quote, the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, after surveying holdings of many foreign courts concluded that delays of 5 and 6 years were inordinate and constituted torture or inhumane or degrading punishment or other such treatment. Reference to the Zimbabwe law.

This proclivity for citing foreign law, when there is a clear directive to adhere to the Constitution and we have nothing else that directs us as Members of Congress as Members, of the executive branch who are sworn in or as Members of the United States Supreme Court, we take the same oath to the Constitution of the United States. And this Constitution is written and drafted and ratified by the people of this country. We shall never have another.

There is not another circumstance in history that could be reconstructed by anyone in this Chamber, by anyone in this city or anyone in this country that I know that could go back and say, well, if we lost this Constitution, we would just construct another one. We would find a way to get together in the blue zones and in the red zones of America, and we would draft up a Constitution that was living and breathing, and it would be a document that better fit the day of our age, and it would be something that would protect the interests of the minority against the tyranny of the majority, or the rights of the minority against the will of the majority. By the way, what protects the constitutional rights of the majority against the whims of the court?

And so, today, we have gone in my lifetime from a belief that this foundational document of the Constitution, which I carry in my pocket every single day, this Constitution that I believe is our covenant with our Founding Fathers, our guarantee of rights and our guarantee of freedom, that clearly spells out the responsibilities of each branch of government.

And, by the way, you can read this document through and through and through again. There is nothing in there that says separate but equal branches of government. It clearly lays out the responsibilities of each branch of government and, when read, gives the Congress the responsibility to be the final decision-maker on the courts themselves.

And so, Mr. Speaker, I propose that we, as a Congress, have an obligation, an obligation to defend this Constitution, an obligation to speak our minds when we disagree with the decisions of the court, but make a logical and a rational and a constitutional argument for our side, and call upon the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court to adhere to this Constitution, to adhere to their oath of office, to adhere to the laws of this land and to reject the directive that they might think they get when they travel to other lands, that intercedes with other ideas, other concepts, other cultures.

We separated ourselves from Great Britain for a good reason 200 and some years ago, and it was because we did not want to be Western Europe, and we did not want to be Jamaica, and we did not want to be Zimbabwe. We want to be a nation of free people, free people governed by a Constitution that a free people have ratified, not governed by foreign law.

And what is predictable about this foreign law? How can a citizen of this country aspire to move forward and invest capital and invest time and effort and build this future and be a good citizen of the United States of America when they do not know when a decision might come down from the Supreme Court that says, oops, there was a law over here in Zimbabwe; maybe there was a law in Ghana. Maybe there was a law in Costa Rica. Maybe there was a law in Russia, Israel, Belarus, anywhere.

How can we have predictability in our Constitution and our law if the courts can cite whatever, as the judge from Texas said, whatever might suit their whim of the moment?

So I believe we have to adhere back to this Constitution because we have migrated from its meaning. And even though the courts found in Murray v. Curlett that there was this separation of the church and State that was created there, took prayer out of the public schools. And by the way, I do not believe the Constitution calls for that for a minute. Once that decision was made and the letter of the Constitution and the intent of the Founding Fathers was ignored and we began to migrate away from the Constitution itself, we started down that slippery slope.

So is this Constitution what our Founding Fathers believed it should

be? Did the Framers draft this Constitution to protect the rights of the minority against the will of the majority, protect the rights of humanity against all forces whatsoever? They believed that this constitutional framework was for the gentleman and for me and for everyone in this country. But it has changed. And there are a number of people, in fact, I believe a growing number of people, that believe this Constitution no longer means what it says; that it is a living, breathing document, that nine Justices, a majority of nine Justices, five of them unaccountable to the people, should direct this society and this civilization.

But it is the vision of our Founding Fathers that those elected by the people should direct this examination and that the Judges should be ruling upon the letter and the intent of the Constitution, the letter and the intent of the law. And that is as far as it goes.

If this Constitution does not mean what it says, then what purpose does it have? It is either a living, breathing document that is flexible and can be malleable and can be shaped by any Justice that happens to have the good fortune to be appointed to the bench, or those words written on this document in my jacket are sacred and they are meant to be amended only by the people then whose description is in the Constitution itself.

It is a living, breathing document or we are originalists that believe in the original intent of this Constitution. If it is changed, if it is not, what it says, it means, then what does, Mr. Speaker, protect the rights of the minority against the will of the majority? What protects all of our rights as citizens? What preserves this great country if it can be shaped by the whim of the Judges?

This Constitution is either what I believe it is, and that is not a living, breathing document, but a document that is fixed for all time unless we amend it. And if it is not that, then the courts have turned it into an artifact of history, just a transitional document to get us from 1789 until today, where we could turn over the future of this country to the people in the robes that make those decisions. And if we do that, then we might as well board this place up and hand it over to the courts for their staff because there will not be any function for this legislature any longer.

I thank the gentleman for yielding to me. I appreciate the gentleman's contribution to this cause.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to address the House. This issue before us in this discussion this evening, Mr. Speaker, is the issue of an impending constitutional crisis that I believe is taking place over in the other body, and it is something that has been dealt with and worked with and rolled around by the Senate with regard to the confirmation of the President's appointments to the judicial branch of government. It is an unprecedented use of the Senate rules with regard to filibusters.

About 2\1/2\ years ago, something like that, this process began, and it began with a gentleman that was appointed to the D.C. Court of Appeals. His name was Miguel Estrada, a very, very highly qualified individual, an immigrant from Honduras, someone who English was his second language. He learned that, studied hard, and worked his way up through the process. He was very, very highly qualified.

But as highly qualified as he was, he was also apparently a political threat to the minority on the other side, Mr. Speaker. So Miguel Estrada hung on the vine because of this unprecedented utilization of the Senate rules called filibuster, requiring 60 votes to gain cloture so that they could go to a vote on the floor of the Senate.

In the history of this country, Mr. Speaker, there has never been, until these last 2 to 3 years, that rule, the rule of the filibuster used against judicial nominees when that nominee had a majority of the votes on the floor of the Senate. The unprecedented use of that hung Miguel Estrada on the vine for 28 months and 5 days, where he finally could not stand it any longer. He had to get on with his life. He had to make a living, had to take care of his family, and so he withdrew his name.

I think that should have been lesson enough, but what happened was that the minority in the other body continued with the filibuster process. They held up a good number of the President's nominees, and I believe that number was 10. Today, the President has pledged to reappoint those nominees that were held up in the 108th Congress, and so now those names are before the Senate again.

In speaking of this impending constitutional crisis, I would also, Mr. Speaker, address the situation and ask that we remember the nomination process for Justice Thomas, and the long, drawn-out grilling affair that was used on him when he was finally confirmed by the Senate by a majority vote. That process and what this country went through was an agonizing thing. It was an embarrassment to the dignity of the United States that we would bring out all those details. Yet now we have a jurist who sits there and whose opinions I read, respect, admire and appreciate. He is a Justice who reads the Constitution, understands the letter of the Constitution, the intents of the framers, the effect of the Constitution and its controlling factors within our laws and the interpretation of congressional intent.

I appreciate that in a justice, and apparently some of the other side of the aisle do not, so they have been filibustering this second round of appointments by our President in this unprecedented effort.

Now it does a number of things. It puts us into this pending constitutional crisis because we are always one heartbeat away from a vacancy on the Supreme Court. We are always one heartbeat away from another national circus and confirmation like we saw with Justice Thomas. This case, though, it would be even more intense, it would be more difficult. It would be fought out more intensely, and that one heartbeat away or one retirement announcement away, one that some of us do anticipate could happen fairly soon, within the next few weeks or the next couple of months, if that takes place, these appointees that are hanging on the vine now that are held up by a Senate rule, a Senate rule that I believe contravenes the Constitution, will become secondary issues and the vacancy on the Supreme Court will become the primary issue.

And if this precedent that they are seeking to establish is allowed to stand, then a minority in the United States Senate will control who is nominated and who is confirmed. I will say they will have influence on who is nominated and they will control who is confirmed for all of our courts in this land.

We know that it is difficult to get judges confirmed that rule on the letter of the Constitution, the letter of the law, the intent of the Framers, and the intent of Congress.

As we sit here with this impending constitutional crisis, this filibuster over on the Senate side, I would ask the body to take a look at the Constitution itself. And if we look to the directions that we have that are framed within the Constitution and ratified by the people, that would be Article I, section 5, it says, ``Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings.'' One might read that and conclude that the Senate can have their filibuster rules and they can hold up the judicial appointments if they so choose, but the Senate rules cannot contravene the Constitution. They cannot be outside the Constitution. We are all bound by the Constitution. We take an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

I would say that the controlling factor is not that each body, each House will establish its own rules, but Article II, section 2, where it says, and I think I should read this for the body, ``He shall have power,'' meaning the President, ``by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, to make treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur,'' and that is one specific time where we have more than a simple majority.

There are two others in the Constitution. Continuing to quote, ``and he shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appointment ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.''

So, Mr. Speaker, advise and consent of the Senate is the controlling constitutional question here. Certainly there is no shortage of advice from the Senate. We will concede they can have all of the advice they would like to deliver to our Commander in Chief and chief executive officer of the United States. We will concede that. They deliver that consistently. It is the consent portion that I object to because under consent, all analysis of the definition of consent is to a simple majority of the United States Senate, not a super majority. When this Constitution requires a super majority, it defines that in this Constitution without exception. It is a simple reading of the Constitution. The United States Senate needs to provide an up or down vote for these nominees that the President has put before them. They are qualified. They have a majority vote on the floor of the Senate. They are being held up by a Senate rule that contravenes the Constitution and it denies the representation of the people who elected the majority members of the United States Senate their voice.

That is the essence of this, Mr. Speaker. To get into it further, I would like to yield to the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina (Ms. Foxx) for her contribution to this cause.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Bishop).

I thank the gentleman from Utah. It would be interesting to have heard the gentleman say, no, I am not here and see that in the Record. That is a perspective that I appreciate being able to hear here tonight. At this moment I would also like to yield to a gentleman who has enormous experience in working with the judicial branch of government, former attorney general of the State of California and now a Congressman again, the gentleman from California (Mr. Daniel E. Lungren).

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from California for his comments, and I appreciate more insight into Justice Brown.

I also want to say that I looked to the gentleman from California for his viewpoint on the law and on the Constitution because of the experience he has and the fact that he had the opportunity to view her from up close and share that with us tonight.

We are asking for an up or down vote for Janice Brown and the others in the Senate.

And I yield to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence), the chairman of the Republican Study Committee.

Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Indiana for his comments.

Mr. Speaker, I now yield to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Franks).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Arizona for his eloquence, for his understanding of the Constitution, and for his willingness to share that with us here tonight. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Akin).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for his contribution to this important subject matter that is before us here. It is actually pending before the United States Senate.

A couple of pieces that I think came out in this discussion we have had tonight has been that even though we are asking Mr. Frist to utilize the Constitutional Option and to call for a rule decision that would be that in the case of a constitutional issue in the United States Senate, when the confirmation of judges are before the United States Senate, a simple majority vote will have to prevail. It is not unprecedented in the Senate rules. What it would do is it would set aside the filibuster option with regard to judicial appointments.

There is no filibuster right now for appropriations bills for obvious reasons, because if you allowed a single Senator or a minority of the Senators to hold up the spending, then anyone could hold the appropriations process hostage to their particular agenda and their particular wishes. Those rules reflect the reason for suspending filibuster for the purposes of appropriations.

Certainly, getting judges on the bench is as high a standard and something that should allow for a simple majority vote over in the Senate. If he exercises that option and the majority leader makes a decision that they will have a vote on the rule, the rule can be amended on the floor of the Senate with a simple majority vote. So if 51 Senators say, let us change the rule to a simple majority for confirmation of judges, it is entirely within the Constitution. In fact, it brings them back to the Constitution which says advice and consent. Consent is defined as a simple majority, not a supermajority, which is what prevails today.

I happen to have heard in the news media last week, or else early this week, the former Governor of New York was on the media saying, and that would be Governor Cuomo, saying that James Madison said the Constitution is here to protect the rights of the minority, meaning the minority in the United States Senate, from the tyranny of the majority. Well, this is not the case. I will say, yes, the Constitution protects those rights; it defines those rights. But what we have right now is the tyranny of the minority in the United States Senate setting policy and determining who will get through the confirmation process for everyone in the United States of America.

So Mr. Smith, after this rule is changed, will still go to Washington, we will still protect the rights of the minority by our Constitution, but we will then prevent the minority, who have been elected to serve in a capacity in the United States Senate, will allow them their rights, will let the people who elected the majority in the Senate make the decisions on who gets confirmed to the courts in this land.

There is far more at stake here than these judges that are before the court today. It is the impending nomination to the Supreme Court that is at stake here. The hostages that are sitting over there right now in the Senate include the energy bill, the transportation, the road bill, other pieces of legislation that we passed over there from the House, all sit there today waiting to be bottled up in a potential filibuster that has to do with the threat that the process will be shut down in the Senate.

Well, we know when somebody shuts down this legislative body by using the rules, however they might use the rules, they have paid a price at the ballot box. There are more Senators over there today on the majority side than there were before the last election because the public does not want obstruction. They want progress, they want an up- or-down vote for these justices consistent with the Constitution, and that is a simple majority.

My junior Senator from the State of Iowa is one of those people who has taken a position and actually led an initiative back in 1995 to change the rules in the Senate so there would not be a filibuster of the justices. That was his opinion then; I am asking that it be his opinion today. In fact, his wife was before the Iowa Senate to be confirmed to a position there before the Board of Regents. If those senators had determined, my former colleagues, my alma mater had determined they wanted to use their rights to filibuster to hold that up, the junior Senator from Iowa's wife would not be sitting on the Board of Regents today like she is.

We want to have the voice of the people in this country heard. We want to stay consistent with the Constitution. We want an up-or-down vote. It is a simple process, a simple concept, and something that, in 214 years of the United States, has not been utilized, the filibuster, to hold up these judicial appointments.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would ask this: let the people know that what we are asking, the Constitutional Option, the up-or-down vote in the United States Senate, let the people know that it is their voice that will be heard when that option is exercised. We ask for that action early in the United States Senate so that it does not bottleneck legislation that is there; and we ask for this decision before such time as we get into a real bare-knuckles brawl over a Supreme Court Justice that might well be nominated within the next few months.

So with that, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak before this House.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time on this important issue.

The stated purpose of the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act is to protect the health and safety of young girls by allowing parental involvement when their home States have thought it appropriate to require such involvement.

As a general rule, no one has a young girl's best interest at heart more than her parents. Where this rule is not the case, the law allows for judicial bypass of the parental involvement requirements. Therefore, the amendments introduced by the Democrats in the Committee on the Judiciary are unnecessary. Moreover, these amendments are dangerous.

As my distinguished Committee on the Judiciary colleagues have explained, the health and safety of these young girls is not protected by providing a blank exemption for those who may have sexually abused them. That is precisely what these amendments

did. They provided blanket exclusions with open doors for sexual predators to exploit to cover up their crimes.

Far too often, the adults transporting these minors across State lines to circumvent their home State's parental involvement laws are grown men who have sexually preyed upon the girls. We have heard those statistics delivered by the chairman.

To exempt certain classes which characteristics show are highly likely to be sexual predators would gut the intent of this bill, to protect the health and safety of young girls. The descriptions of the amendments in the committee report only describe the potential effects of the amendments if they had been adopted. They do not describe the motives of those offering the amendments as has been stated.

The minority had the opportunity to include dissenting views in the committee report and they did. And those dissenting views do characterize the motives of those who supported this legislation.

It has already been spoken to as the remarks by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Nadler) with regard to the Fugitive Slave Act, and so I would just say this, that I am amazed that this subject was brought up. I am amazed that the minority wants to have a national debate over this subject matter. When I look at these exemptions and exclusions, this open door, cabdrivers, bus drivers, professional transport people, clergy, godparents, grandparents, adult siblings, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, not the family cat, not the family dog, but everything else you can imagine including the pizza delivery boy are exemptions from this bill.

If those amendments had all gone on the bill, it would have been gutted in the bill and it would have gone down because I would have voted against it and so would the rest of us in the majority.

I think it is clear the result of the position that is taken here. What is not clear is the motive as to why we would want to have a national debate to talk this over again when we clearly understand that we are trying to protect the rights of parents, not the rights of grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters and siblings.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the rule and the underlying bill, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act.

Mr. Speaker, eight in 10 Americans favor parental notification laws, and 44 States have recognized the important role of parents in a minor child's decision to have an abortion by enacting a parental involvement statute. Even so, many of these laws are being circumvented by people who simply transport girls across State lines to States without parental notification laws for the purpose of getting an abortion.

All too often these other adults are grown men who sexually preyed upon the young girls, and they used the abortions to cover up their crimes. CIANA returns parental rights to parents.

Despite the strong deference it gives to abortion rights, even the U.S. Supreme Court recognizes that parents' rights to control the care of their children is among the most fundamental of all liberty interests. The Supreme Court has consistently recognized that parents have a legal right to be involved in their minor daughter's decision to seek medical care, including abortion.

The court has consistently affirmed a State's right to restrict the circumstances under which a minor may obtain an abortion in ways that adult women seeking abortion are not restricted. The Supreme Court has also observed that ``the medical, emotion, and psychological consequences of an abortion are serious and can be lasting,'' and that ``it seems unlikely that a minor will obtain adequate counsel and support from an attending physician at an abortion clinic where abortions for pregnant minors frequently take place.''

The Supreme Court has also stated that ``minors often lack the experience, perspective, and judgment to recognize and avoid choices that could be detrimental to them.''

No one has the child's best interest at heart more than her parents. Minors have to have parental permission to be given an aspirin by the school nurse. Twenty-six States have laws requiring parental consent before minors can get body piercings or tattoos, and in fact some States prohibit tattooing of minor children even with parental consent. Parents must be able to play a role.

The public, State statutes, and Supreme Court precedent all support parental involvement in a minor's life decision. Please support the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I stand today in support of the U.S.- Dominican Republic-Central America Free Trade Agreement and the benefits it will provide to hardworking American farmers. Currently, the U.S. market is already fairly open to agricultural products from Central America and the Dominican Republic, but U.S. farmers face a variety of tariffs and other barriers when exporting to the DR-CAFTA countries. This agreement will eliminate those barriers, reciprocate open market access, and put American farmers on a level playing field.

As the nation's top exporter of corn, with farm cash receipts of over $3.7 billion, corn producers from the great state of Iowa, which I represent, would benefit from the FTA. Recent price strength in U.S. pork markets is directly related to increased U.S. pork exports. Mexico is a good example. DR-CAFTA countries are also important export market for Iowa soybean farmers, who are the top exporters of soybeans. Nationwide these exports already account for 14 percent, a total of 1.0 million metric tons or 58 million bushels. Finally, the Iowa beef industry would benefit from the FTA. In 2003, the U.S. found bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a Canadian cow causing us to have export challenges with Japan. The U.S. has lost valuable beef exports, and this FTA would help expand access and market potential.

This Agreement will provide U.S. farmers with unequaled access to a large market with growing incomes and growing demands for agricultural and food products. The elimination of tariffs will provide American farmers with preferences over producers in Canada, Europe, and other countries. This will help to restore lost U.S. market share and increase overall exports to the five DR-CAFTA countries.

Mr. Speaker, I strongly urge my colleagues to support American farmers and to support this very important piece of legislation.

I rise today in strong support of H.R. 6, the Energy Policy Act. We need a balanced energy policy in this country, and this bill takes great strides towards achieving that balance.

As a founding co-chair of the House Ag Energy Users Caucus, I am concerned that the Corn Belt is being held hostage to high gas, diesel and natural gas prices. Farmers utilize diesel and gasoline to operate their equipment and transport their product. Farmers have had

to tighten their belts as prices have increased. Therefore, I am in strong support of this energy bill that allows for exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR), which will allow for more domestic supply of oil.

Nothing has caused more concern for agriculture than the price of natural gas. Natural gas is the primary feedstock for anhydrous ammonia and other fertilizers and accounts for 90 percent of the cost of making nitrogen fertilizer. The surge in natural gas prices over the last 4 years has been a key reason why nitrogen fertilizer costs have jumped by nearly 50 percent at the farm level. This rise in prices has contributed to the growing reliance on imported fertilizer. For that reason, I am in strong support of the natural gas provisions in this bill and would urge Members to oppose amendments that would weaken any natural gas provisions in the bill.

Finally Madam Chairman, most of my colleagues know that Iowa is not only a consumer of energy, but a producer of energy. The Fifth District of Iowa is an energy export center, exporting ethanol and biodiesel all across this nation. This bill includes a 5 billion gallon Renewable Fuels Standard that will be good for our energy independence while securing rural economies. However, I want to see the bill come back from conference with an 8 billion gallon standard.

I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the Energy Policy Act.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for organizing this Special Order, and I ask the gentleman from Idaho if he would pause a moment to engage in a brief colloquy with the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) because the gentleman holds some expertise, and that is the need to continue to build refineries in this country, crude oil refineries. Could you speak for a moment about what we expect will happen with refinery construction in this country if we pass the energy bill as it is presented.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

I thank the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. Otter) for his comments. I will get to some more of that subject matter of education as I go through this. I appreciate your patience with me tonight and indulgence.

I would like to first speak to the broad picture of energy across this country. There is this entire pie of energy here and different components and slices of this pie. Energy, first of all, is a component in everything that we buy. If there is any one item that adds to inflation in all the products that we purchase in this country, it is energy because it takes energy to produce anything, it takes energy to deliver anything, and it takes energy to go pick it up and buy it. So whenever we move, we are burning energy, and that is a part of the cost of everything we are. If we do not have an effective energy policy, we are paying more for all

goods and services in this country than is necessary and that means it makes us less competitive in the rest of the world. That is the big picture as to why energy is so important.

Some of the components of this energy are crude oil. We know how much energy we bring in across from the Middle East and Venezuela and other parts of the world that is imported into the United States. The crude oil cost includes also the military investment over there and the unrest and everyone, as was said earlier, the gentleman from Texas stated about every country must have their energy. Whatever it takes, we must have our energy. But we sit in this country on a significant supply of domestic crude oil. This bill puts in place the motion to construct the refineries that we need so that we can bring the crude oil in and get it refined. It also allows for us to go up to ANWR and do our drilling up there to bring that crude oil down to the lower 48.

I also have been up to ANWR to take a look at that. As I asked the people up there around the Kaktovik area, they said, yes, we have to go hunt the caribou during a certain time of the year but really the resident caribou in the drilling area are only in there from mid-May until the end of June. They come in to calve and then they leave about the end of June. That is the time when the permafrost thaws down to about a foot or 18 inches.

Nothing is going to move during that period of time except the caribou and when those young calves get old enough to walk back, they go back over to Canada out of the area, so nothing would be going on in that region when the caribou were there. It is kind of a caribou maternity ward in that part of Alaska. We need that domestic crude oil and any nation that is looking to its long-term best interests will be producing its own energy.

The concern about someday running out of crude oil, why would you keep it in the bank forever when we have other opportunities for different energy supplies that will be developed as science and technology catches up? We need to go there, get that crude oil, get it drilled, and bring it down the Alaska pipeline. By the way, the Alaska pipeline, if the North Slope oil runs out, and it looks like it is heading in that direction, that pipeline has to stay full almost all the time or it starts to erode inside the pipe, it turns to rust and it may not be able to be put back up on line. So it is important that we keep the Alaska pipeline up and going. That is a huge and valuable resource that began construction there in about 1972. It has been there a long time, it has served very, very well, and it can do a lot more. In that same region is all of the natural gas that is already developed that we do not have a good way to deliver it to the lower 48, that is the pipeline.

Yes, there are some things to work out within the State of Alaska. I hope that gets done. We have done, I think, what we can do here, at least for now, but we need that natural gas, we need it into the Corn Belt, we need it for a lot of the reasons that the gentleman from Colorado said, and I am glad he is in here talking about corn and ethanol with regard to energy.

In the part of the country where I come from, we have constructed ethanol production to the extent that within the next 2 years, we will be able to say that we have built all of the ethanol production, all the plants that we have the corn to supply in the Fifth District in Iowa, the western third of Iowa. We have started construction now on biodiesel plants, we have two plants up and running now, we are breaking ground on a third plant that happens to be about 9 miles from where I live as the crow flies on biodiesel.

Biodiesel is coming along in the same shoes as ethanol, only a lot faster, because they have learned from the people that blazed the trail in ethanol. We are going to have, I believe, within the next 5 to 6 years, all of the biodiesel production that we will have, the soybeans and the other bioproducts to supply. That has made already this district that I represent an energy export center with the ethanol production being up to almost all we can provide and the biodiesel, we have started on it very well.

We have tremendous wind energy that has been put in place there in the last 4 to 5 years. I will say 6 to 7 years ago, we had almost no energy production, we were an energy consumption region, and today we are an energy export center. It has changed that much. It has helped a lot with our energy independence and to become less dependent on foreign energy supplies of all kinds.

But we are faced with this need for nitrogen fertilizer and almost all of our nitrogen fertilizer is made directly from natural gas, directly from natural gas. Ninety percent of the cost of that fertilizer is the cost of purchasing the gas to produce the nitrogen from it. So we sit in this country without being able to get the pipeline down from Alaska where the gas is, it is already developed, and that is a process that if all goes well could maybe get done in 6 years. It may take 9 or 10 years to get there. Yet that needs to happen and it needs to happen quickly.

But within the lower 48 States, earlier we saw the map of the layout of the natural gas, along the east coast, the west coast and the outer shelf around Florida and in the central part of the United States. One of these esteemed gentlemen has made the statement on this floor, and I am going to repeat it, and I believe it, and that is that we have enough known natural gas reserves underneath non-national park public lands in the United States of America to heat every home in America for the next 150 years. That is almost a renewable energy resource when you look at that kind of a quantity. Yet natural gas is three times the price as it was just 5 and 6 years ago. Our natural gas that produces our fertilizer has done the same thing to our fertilizer prices.

People in the Corn Belt pay going into the ground with their fertilizer and then when they take that grain off the field in the fall, they have to dry the grain and most times what do they dry it with? Natural gas. So we are more susceptible to high natural gas prices than maybe any place else in the country and we have watched because of that the fertilizer production go offshore to places like Venezuela and Russia.

I remember what happened with the oil cartel in the late seventies when they shut down the oil delivery to the United States and the prices went up. We could be in that same situation with Venezuela and Russia if we let them take on any more of the fertilizer production. We need it here. We have got the gas here. We need to develop the gas. When we develop the gas, we will be able to keep our fertilizer plants. But if we do not, we will not be able to keep those plants which means we lose that fertilizer production and makes us dependent on those countries that I named. That is really critical.

We mentioned the solar energy as a component and that is going on in some of the parts of the country. Hydroelectric has been built and constructed. One of the other things I am concerned about is we have not built a nuclear plant in this country in a generation. The engineering technology that it takes to do that is leaving us year by year. That is another piece that has got to move along. We have got hydrogen around the corner and hydrogen may be the answer to much of this, but if we put all these pieces together, wind and ethanol and biodiesel and natural gas and crude oil, hydroelectric, the whole list, we have got the picture of the pieces that make us less dependent on foreign oil.

That is the picture, that is the energy bill, and that is why I support it.