Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 6 o'clock and 21 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Friday, April 25, 2008, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the privilege to be recognized here on the floor.

I would ask, as a point of information, do you anticipate Democrats coming to the floor for the next hour?

I appreciate being recognized to address you on the floor of the House, Mr. Speaker.

In the 28 minutes that I have been allocated, I think it's important to address some of the issues that were raised by the gentlemen in the previous hour, the 30-Something Group. That is that, gentlemen, you simply cannot suspend the laws of gravity or the laws of nature, and what goes up must come down. Water runs downhill. And supply and demand control the prices in the marketplace.

I have fought this energy issue on this floor of Congress for some years now. And the lamentations that I'm hearing that come from the gentleman from Florida, his concerns about motions to recommit used to be concerns about the Republican majority. They still remain concerns about President Bush, and they still remain allegations about why we have high gas prices, why it is people can't pay their bills. But the Pelosi majority would suspend the law of supply and demand. There wasn't any discussion about that. It was all about profiteering of the corporations.

Well, the first point I will make is that we have got to have some people producing energy. And let's just say, for example, if Exxon makes $10 billion a quarter, and that adds up to 40 some billion dollars a year, and if this Congress steps in and says we have a different deal, we want to change the deal, we want to put some windfall profit tax on you and every other American corporation that is now making some profits off their investment in the oil fields, and as this leadership on the Speaker's side has done through the farm bill in particular, which is push to change the deal on our oil leases and renegotiate them because of their belief that the people who signed those contracts, those companies that are providing oil and gas and diesel fuel for us are making too much money, Mr. Speaker, a deal is a deal. And when the Federal Government signs a deal for oil leases and those companies agree to pay royalties on the oil they pump out on a per barrel basis, if the value of that barrel goes up, the Federal Government's deal can't change, just as if the value of the oil goes down. If it costs more to explore and find the oil and more to get it on the market, Uncle Sam is not standing there. Speaker Pelosi is not standing there with her checkbook saying, well, it didn't work out so well for you; so we want to fill in the hole of the loss that you had. No. A deal is a deal. And when you shake hands on it or you just say, yes, that's what I agreed to, that is by definition a contract. And when you have a congressional piece of legislation, when you have the Federal Government negotiating a lease, you don't change that deal.

And this Congress steps in and makes noises about windfall profits tax. And there are people sitting on the board of directors of these energy-producing companies, these companies where the more energy they produce, the cheaper gas gets for the American people because the law of supply and demand commands the price. Gas gets cheaper when you have more of it produced. And when companies make money, they invest that profit into research and development and exploration. When they do that, that puts more gas and more diesel fuel and more oil on the market, not less. And that keeps the price from inflating or it lowers the price. So if this Congress, led by this Speaker, steps in to change the deal, the people on the board of the directors of those oil- producing companies, if they're logical, rational people and they control capital; so by definition they are logical and rational in my book, some of them are going to start to discuss how they can take those profits out of their oil company and invest them in someplace else where they might not be so vulnerable to a windfall profits tax or so vulnerable to a Congress that has shifted to evermore class envy, evermore resentful about capital returning to the stockholders, and when that happens--the mutual funds, the retirement funds, the 401(K)s, the investment funds of America that are our pension funds that supplement Social Security are many times invested in oil stocks and reserves and futures. The portfolio of America's retirement is what's being attacked by this Congress. And we have to let people and have to let companies make a profit when they invest and take the risk. You cannot suspend the law of supply and demand. But this Congress has. And I think you're off in Pah-la-la-losi Land thinking that you can suspend the law of supply and demand. You cannot.

If we have more energy on the market, the price increase will either slow or it will diminish and be reduced. If we have less energy on the market, the price will go up if the demand also goes up. That is the equation that works here.

So we have high gas prices, and it's pretty easy to figure out why. The American people that are awake tonight, Mr. Speaker, and especially those out on the west coast and in the mountain States, they will understand this equation, I think, fairly simply. There are three reasons that the gas price has been increasing. One of them is the world demand on gas and diesel fuel, on oil. That's why the per barrel crude oil price has gone up. By any

measure it has gone up. The world demand has increased. We see the Chinese increase their demand, and as the Chinese demand increases, that puts more demand on the supply, and when the supply gets tighter, the price goes up. U.S. consumption has not diminished. It has marginally increased over the last few years. That uses up more.

The oil reserves are being diminished some. And we're finding also oil in other places where we thought we couldn't produce it. There was an announcement here last week. USGS had announced what I believe was 3.4 billion barrels of oil in an oil shale a couple of miles down, most of it in North Dakota and some of it in Montana. That's a huge oil find. The tar sands in Northern Alberta have a massive amount of oil, and we're preparing to bring a pipeline down from there and build a refinery in the Midwest if local people are willing. And if we can do that, we can keep the gas and diesel fuel prices in America from inflating out of sight. And, in fact, if we can bring enough supply in, we can cause those prices to go back down. Supply and demand is one component of this, and it's a pretty important component.

The use and consumption of more energy globally is another component of it.

And a third component of the high gas price is a cheap dollar. This dollar has been diminished in its price. And the commodities across the world, it takes more American dollars to buy things overseas to purchase into the Euro environment, the European Union, for example. It takes more dollars to purchase in Asia. But their currency buys more. So because their currency buys more, it takes more American dollars to compete against that. So perhaps 35 percent of the value of this crude oil on the marketplace is because the value of the dollar has been diminished. If you could take 35 percent or roughly a third out of the gas price today, you're down there near $2 a gallon.

But the point that I want to make about this in this poster, Mr. Speaker, is this: The remarks made by the previous presenters are not consistent with this factual information that I have in this chart. And it works this way: On the day that George Bush was inaugurated as President, and I mean the first day, January 20 of 2001, the average gas price on the street was $1.49 a gallon, Mr. Speaker. That price stayed fairly flat. It appreciated some. And by the time we got out to 2007, January of 2007, when this new Democrat majority in Congress was sworn in and Speaker Pelosi took the gavel where you're seated, Mr. Speaker, the gas on that day was $2.33.

Now it's been about 15 months perhaps, perhaps 15 months of this Pelosi Congress, and gas has appreciated, gone up in price, from $2.33 a gallon to $3.51 a gallon. That's a 50 percent increase in the price of gasoline in America in 15 months. And that isn't because President Bush has done something to increase the price of gas. It isn't because he hasn't been helpful and supportive and worked to try to get us more domestic energy supplies. It's because the people on that side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, the people on the Democrat side of the aisle, have blocked everything since I've been in this Congress that put more energy on the market. They blocked everything.

And we fought this on this floor to open up ANWR for drilling, a massive amount of oil up there. There's no environmental concern in ANWR. We were successful in drilling the North Slope. And I will submit that there is not an environmental spill in that part of the country that has a lasting and damaging effect. There was a tanker, the Valdez, that did run ashore and have a spill. But that was a matter of transport. It wasn't a matter of drilling, and it wasn't a matter of processing or pipelining it out of Alaska. It was after it left Alaska that that happened. But there was not a measurable spill up north that caused a problem. There is no environmental impact that's been a negative up there in Alaska, and there is no rational reason to prohibit drilling in ANWR. Yet the vast majority of the Democrats blocked the drilling in ANWR. When we were close, when we were within a handful of votes of being able to punch those holes up there and have that oil flowing down in here into the domestic United States, that would have been back when gas was, let's say, about $1.80.

Today, it's $3.51 and rising because of the barrier that was put in place by environmental extremists that do not have a rational argument that they can put up. All they do is put a green label on a bill, and as soon as it's green, the chicken littles on that side will run and vote for a green bill. I had people come to me and they said, We had the bill to drill in ANWR that allowed for, out of those millions acres, and I think it's 19.2 or 19.2 million acres, 2,000 of them to be used to punch holes down into the oil field. Two thousand acres. As the vote went up on the board, Mr. Speaker, people came to me and said, You are from Iowa; you know what an acre is. You have farms there. How much is an acre? I said, Well, 43,560 square feet. That didn't mean a thing to them, that is the size of a country school house lot. That didn't mean a thing to them. How about the size of a football field? Oh. Okay. Two thousand football fields. I think I will be a no because, after all, it's green. It's labeled green.

Environmentalists don't want to punch holes up there. It's the best place God could have put oil, that I can imagine. You go up there and do it in the permafrost and you drive out on the ice. And when the frost melts in the summertime, there's no sign that there was any traffic there at all. The most extreme environmentalists you could come with on that side, Mr. Speaker, I could fly them over ANWR and they couldn't point down to an oil well. I will fly them over the north slope. I will fly them over at 2,000 feet and they can't eyeball an oil well in the north slope of Alaska because it's not what they imagine and it's not drilling up there in a pristine alpine forest.

I am here to tell you there's not a single tree up there, Mr. Speaker. Not one. Even though the Sierra Club ran adds that said we can't disturb--well, the images on the screen were pristine alpine forests. There's not a native caribou herd. But the one on the north slope of Alaska, where we did drill successfully, went from 7,000 head to 28,000 head, for those of you out there in Rio Linda. That is 28,000 caribou where there was 7,000 before because now they don't drop the calves into the cold water on top of the permafrost, but get next to the nice warm pipeline and have their calves and they get nice and fresh then they gallop across the tundra.

It's been a good thing for the environment, a good thing for the oil supply. Drilling in ANWR is a good thing. Drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, especially around Florida, is a good thing. These prices would not be this high if we had been successful in those efforts, if there hadn't been a Democrat green coalition that blocked every effort to try to put more energy on the market, more Btus on the market. Because the equation is this, all of our energy is all wrapped up together. British Thermal Units ties it all together, whether gas, diesel fuel, ethanol, biodiesel, solar, hydroelectric, whether it's nuclear, whether it's wind energy, whether it's clean burning coal, whether it's latent solar heat, all of those things put energy out of the market. They are all part of the overall energy pie chart. The more energy we can put there, the cheaper it's going to get. And the more things that you do to take energy off the market, the more expensive it's going to get. And your thoughts are either denying the law of supply and demand, or the thing that I heard many of you voice, this thing you have convinced me now is that you want to see more expensive energy. That is what I believe. Because I hear the dialog, I hear the debate. You want more expensive energy because somebody will park their car and get on their bicycle and ride that instead of driving their car. Doesn't work for grandma out there in Iowa that has got ten miles in January to go to town. But it might work for somebody in Florida to get on their bicycle.

More expensive energy why? Because we get more quality of life? No. Because you have this myopic vision that you can somehow save the planet if we had $6, $8, $10 gas. That is why you're taken by every energy action of this Congress since Nancy Pelosi took the gavel that has taken Btus off the market, shortened the supply, tightened

this thing up. The demand has gone up, the supply has gone down. The price has gone up 50 percent in the 15 months that Nancy Pelosi has been Speaker of the House. And I have to listen to the drivel that says there is some other reason because what, we didn't go after the windfall profits of the oil companies? I don't think so. That means everybody delivering oil is a crook and everybody is fixing prices and going along with it. It is supply and demand. That is the bottom line on this energy piece.

As I look at my colleague from Michigan, who actually comes to the floor with a significant amount of expertise, I would be very pleased to yield such time as the gentleman may consume. Mr. McCotter from Michigan.

I thank the gentleman from Michigan for coming down to the floor and adding to this dialog.

Mr. Speaker, as I listen to Mr. McCotter and reflect upon his remarks that corporations are tax collectors, that they actually don't pay taxes, it's Ronald Reagan's position, my position, Mr. McCotter's position. They will pass those costs along to the consumer because in the end it's the last stop of the retail that pays the taxes. That is the people in the end. The consumers in the end will pay the price. If they raise the taxes, we will see the prices go up. If we make energy more scarce, the price will go up. If we are punitive towards companies that are producing this energy and risking their capital, their capital will go elsewhere.

If that happens, then there will be less oil on the market, not more. The price will be higher, not lower. The energy will be more scarce, not less. Because of these policies that have come forth in the beginning of this 110th Congress, we see the action that has taken place here. We see what has happened from the very first day, Mr. Speaker, of the new 110th Congress, the day that Nancy Pelosi took the gavel, and it became clear that there was going to be an energy scarcity policy. Gas went from $2.33 over 15 months to over $3.51 a gallon, perhaps more than that today. That is a 50 percent increase in just 15 months. I have stipulated the reasons for that. Energy is more scarce, it's less certain. This economy is also in a decline.

It's interesting to me that I don't hear a lot of discussion about the real reasons for that, Mr. Speaker. I look at it this way. When the new hands took over and picked up the gavels here to be chairs of the committees in Congress, in the House and the Senate, and we had the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, from New York, who a long time had waited to become chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, we had pushed pretty hard to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, those tax cuts that slowly the authorization expires and will automatically kick in as dramatic tax increases in the next couple of years. I watched as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee went on the talk show circuit all over television, and I presume radio too, and he was constantly asked by the pundits, What will you do with the Bush tax cuts? Will you make them permanent?

Are there some there that you will commit right now that you will want to save and protect of those tax cuts, or will you just simply want to see them all expire and have that automatic, huge, unprecedented record tax increase?

Well, the chairman didn't address that subject matter, by my recollection, one at a time or in groups. But eventually as he did enough of the talk show circuits, the talk hosts would ask the question, and by a process of elimination, the capital investment in America pretty much concluded that no part of the May 28, 2003, Bush tax cuts would the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee want to see made permanent.

Capital saw that and realized that by about late January-early February of 2007, just about the time gas prices started to shoot up here, Mr. Speaker. That is the time that the capital investment of America understood that capital was going to be more expensive, because the Bush tax cuts were not going to stay or be made permanent.

When capital gets more expensive and it is looking down the line, it tightened things up. And you can go back and look at the record, Mr. Speaker. You saw industrial investment decline indexed directly to the period of time that Nancy Pelosi became Speaker, Charlie Rangel became the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and that gas began to shoot almost straight up here on this chart, going on to its 50 percent increase in prices over a 15-month period of time.

At that same time, capital got more expensive, and because of that more expensive capital, industrial investment declined. That was the first indicator that we were going to have an economic problem on our hands. That was the lack of investment in industry that led all of this. Along behind it came the subprime mortgage component of it, which in the grand scheme of things isn't as big a hit on our economy as the higher gas prices.

Then, as Adam Smith said, there are two components to the price of everything. One is the cost of the labor and the other is the cost of the capital. The capital price went up, then the cost of goods and services went up, and capital investment went down.

We can expect this decline in our economy because of a number of things: Energy prices are skyrocketing because the policies that are coming out of this Congress are taking energy off the market, and capital prices are going up because the tax cuts are unlikely to be made permanent between now and 2010. So automatically those tax increases will kick in, and the investment markets see that.

Those are the reasons that are watching this economy decline today. The subprime is a small part of it. But it is such a small part of it, when you think of what the subprime really is, it is about a $150 billion loss. We will burn about 142 billion gallons of gasoline. Those 142 billion gallons of gasoline, $1 a gallon for one year would pay for the subprime.

So let's keep our rules straight. Let's understand we can't suspend the laws of supply and demand. Let's put some energy on the market. That includes conservation.

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

I rise to address the legislation as so eloquently laid out by the chairman of the full Judiciary Committee. And, first, I would like to remark that I appreciate the cooperation in the negotiations that have taken place between Ranking Member Smith and the chairman of the Immigration Subcommittee, Ms. Zoe Lofgren, as well as Chairman Conyers. And this is the right spirit to deal with a religious visas extension type of a bill, and the timing of this is perfect as well for it to be the very week that Pope Benedict XVI is arriving tomorrow morning here in Washington, DC, and I think a lot of our activity will be suspended while we commemorate the glorious day.

I have looked at a number of the statistics throughout this, and I have some reservations about what has transpired with the religious worker visas over the last several years, and I expect to take up some of those issues a little bit later in the debate.

But as the gentleman who is more eloquent in laying out this entire case is to my right, I would be very happy to yield 3 minutes to the ranking member of the full Judiciary Committee, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Smith).

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

Madam Speaker, I want to make sure that I am on record here as supporting religious worker visas. And one of the things that was well publicized during the Reagan administration was our ability to exchange students and business relationships and all parts of our culture with the rest of our world and bring people into the United States to get a feel and for us to learn from them and for them to learn from us. And I very much support that approach, and it has been important from the standpoint of promoting peace throughout the world.

I find that whenever you get to know people, you find out that people are human everywhere with the same values, the same interests and the same ideals at our core. We have different religions sometimes, we have different economics, different clothing, different food, different building structures and different climates. That all comes together as components of who we are as nations and nationalities. But inside of us, we are all one people. And that is my belief, and it is my profound commitment to continue to support the religious workers' visa.

Now I get to the ``or what?'' And that is that I have seen a significant amount of fraud in these applications. And I want to point out that where we will be welcoming Pope Benedict XVI here in Washington, D.C., and as I look through the statistics on the Catholic religious workers' visas, the fraud rate is very, very low as a proportion to the overall applications. So there is no implication in my remarks with regard to Catholics in particular, and many other denominations from that standpoint.

But the special immigrant religious worker visa program was created in 1990 and has been a magnet for people not only to come and share their faith with us, but also a magnet for people to be able to utilize the program in the system that it wasn't intended for.

The State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs in September 2005 in their Fraud Digest reported that ``religious worker visas are known as some of the most difficult to adjudicate.'' The Fraud Digest then goes on to discuss various cases in which people were prosecuted for fraudulent use of the program. So, for instance, in 2004 a Venezuelan national was convicted in Virginia of visa fraud. He had filed 179 fraudulent petitions for religious ministers. In addition to creating fraudulent certificates of ordination, diplomas and other supporting documentation, he also obtained a valid 501(c)(3) tax exemption from recognized religious organizations without their knowledge.

The Immigration Subcommittee has long been aware of fraud in their religious worker visa program. In 1997, a GAO investigation was requested by our subcommittee. The State Department conducted a field inquiry. They did that to get the views of consular offices as to the level and type of fraud. And in 41 percent of the 83 responding posts, some type of fraud or abuse was acknowledged. And the State Department also noted that under the program's regulations, almost anyone involved with a church, aside from the explicitly excluded occupations of cleaning, maintenance and support staff, arguably could be qualified as a religious worker. So this was an open door. And I recognize the chairlady of the subcommittee acknowledged that we need to tighten that up a bit. And that, I think, is the biggest reason why, in that particular quote from that report.

In 1999, the GAO released a final report. The agency noted that the types of fraud often encountered in the processing of religious worker visas ``involved petitioners making false statements about the length of time that the applicant was a member of the religious organization and the nature of the qualifying work experience.''

The report went on to say that evidence uncovered at that time by INS agents suggested that ``some of these organizations exist solely as a means to carry out immigration fraud.'' That is what we should be guarding against. That is what we hope to be able to do with their new regulations that will be written as a result of the bill.

At his motion, I would be happy to yield to the chairman of the full committee, Mr. Conyers.

Mr. Chairman, reclaiming my time, no good deed goes unpunished.

I'm simply complimenting the Catholics without reference to Protestants. However, I do have some data I could bring out perhaps a little later in the debate.

I said, ``No good deed goes unpunished.'' I complimented the Catholics and didn't remark with regard to the Protestants.

I thank the chairman for his levity in this debate and I reclaim my time.

Madam Speaker, most recently, in July of 2006, the U.S. Citizenship and

Immigration Services Office of Fraud Detection and National Security conducted a fraud benefit assessment on the Religious Worker Visa program. They selected 220 cases at random and found an astounding 33 percent fraud rate. That means one out of three was fraudulent. That is their finding.

In 32 of the fraudulent cases, the religious institution either did not exist or only existed on paper, and 39 of their fraudulent petitions included fraudulent supporting documentation or material misrepresentations within a document. Other instances of fraud included cases where the petitioner could not be located or connected to any religious entity and where the petitioning religious entity was unaware that the petition had even been filed and was unaware of the beneficiary.

Now that this Nation is involved in a global war on terror, we must be extremely vigilant, Madam Speaker. We must protect the safety and welfare of American citizens. We can't do that with an immigration policy that includes programs ripe with fraud.

Another example would be in 2003 Mohammed Khalil and three of his sons were arrested in connection with submitting false applications to bring over 200 individuals to the United States using the Religious Worker Visa program. Prosecutors revealed that Khalil made statements to an undercover witness professing allegiance to Osama bin Laden. He also allegedly stated, ``Hopefully another attack in the United States will come shortly.'' These are the kind of people that we don't need in this program. We must be ever vigilant.

This program needed some improvements before it was ready for reauthorization. Historically it has been reauthorized as a 5-year reauthorization. The initial proposal was to reauthorize it to make the program permanent. I appreciate the negotiations that have taken it down to a 7-year reauthorization. I would have preferred it be substantially less.

However, information that has been made available to me after such time as we took action on the bill in the Judiciary Committee gives me some hope that USCIS, the U.S. Citizenship Immigration Services, has already taken some steps that likely would have reduced the percentage and certainly reduced the number of fraud cases.

As I look at the verbal report from Director Emilio Gonzalez, the 2005 Religious Worker Visa applications were something slightly above 4,000 out of the 5,000 cap that is in the authorization. That was 2005. So that would be the year by which we have seen the highest percentage of fraud in the reports that I have seen, Madam Speaker.

In 2006, the applications, by the report language that I received, is 3,048. So we have seen these numbers going down, presumably because of the increased scrutiny on the Religious Worker Visa applications. Then by 2007 we only saw, and this is by a verbal report from the director, 454 Religious Worker Visa applications. That is a dramatic 80-some percent reduction in the number of visa applications. I think it is safe to conclude that a significant amount of this, Madam Speaker, is the result of increased scrutiny on the part of USCIS.

We need to be taking a particular look still, and I intend to sit down with Director Gonzalez and talk this through so I can get a full understanding of the decisions they made, the timing of their decisions and how that might have affected the Religious Worker Visa applications.

But as I look through their report, I see a couple or three places that we should be looking. One is the special registrant countries. These are the countries that required extra scrutiny post-September 11th, and we know which countries those are. They are listed in the report. That happens to be the source of, depending how you want to evaluate the information, those countries that made those self-attested reports show that either 70 percent, 73 percent or 80 percent were fraudulent in the special registrant countries category.

Then the non-affiliated groups, the groups that are not affiliated with a religious denomination, showed 63 percent fraud. That is worthy also of significant scrutiny, and I am hopeful that this has been addressed. And those numbers I believe also are shrinking. Then I looked at, for example, the countries of origin. There was one county that had 100 percent fraud of the report that was issued. That was Jamaica.

So these are things that I think are red flags. I intend to sit down and have this conversation with Director Gonzalez and get a better feel for it. But that is the statistics we are dealing with today as this bill to reauthorize and extend for 7 years Religious Worker Visas is before this Congress.

Then I would submit also that there is something that is actually missing in our policy. A nation that should be a nation that believes in free trade and smart trade also should believe in free and smart trade of our religious workers. I believe that we should have reciprocity. For us to welcome religious workers from countries that will disallow American religious workers from going to their countries and particular religions that come from America to go to those countries, I think is a great big gap in our oversight.

Recognizing the time of this legislation and the inability to offer an amendment in a closed rule, I have drafted a bill, and I have that bill with me today and I won't be able to introduce it unless there is a request for unanimous consent, and I don't intend to do that, but this bill is the Religious Worker Reciprocity Act of 2006.

What it does, it just extends reciprocal immigration treatment to nationals of the United States who are seeking resident status in order to work in religious vocation of other countries. In other words, it would simply say you send your religious workers here, we want to be able to send our religious workers there. I think that is the intent. And I would ask for support of that across the bipartisan effort, and particularly those that have taken particular interest in this issue. But I will be introducing that legislation in a subsequent day.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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

In fact, I don't recall the unanimous consent request. Was that responded to by the Speaker?

Okay, I didn't hear that. And I certainly don't reserve nor do I object to that e-mail from USCIS being introduced into the Record. In fact, I would like to read it into the Record.

It says, ``The religious worker BFA non-immigrant had a 32.73 percent fraud rate out of a sample of 220 cases. The public version of the BFA did not further break down the 220 cases into religious categories. The fraud rate for Muslim organization has been spoken of many times on the Hill for some time. The reality is that because the population sample for Muslim groups in the BFA is so small, the rate of fraud is statistically insignificant. I am still waiting on the site check data.''

I believe that is the e-mail referenced by the gentlewoman from California, and I reference it here to speak to the data that is in the report rather than a comment about the data that is in the report.

These 220 cases were drawn to give indicators for further scrutiny. When you see a 70, 73 or 80 percent fraud rate, there is an obligation to look into that and verify the sources of that fraud and also the indicators that it might be greater, not less. I don't imply it is, but we can draw just as much inference that it is greater than it is less from these statistics.

I pointed out that Jamaica has a 100 percent fraud rate out of the sample in this study. That doesn't mean there aren't other denominations we shouldn't be looking at. But I am looking at each one of these cases, and I referenced the special registrant countries that are part of that list. The special registrant counties would be, for the record, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Eritrea, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Egypt and Pakistan.

For the record, when I referenced then the special registrant countries, those are the countries. This is the record. It is the data we are dealing with. I think that it is something that we need to pay special scrutiny to. But we should encourage the reciprocity and the exchange of religious workers.

Madam Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

If the gentleman would yield, I would like perhaps 30 seconds just to wrap it up.

Madam Speaker, I think this has been a very healthy debate. It has brought issues out into the Record that are going to be useful for us to reference. I pointed out that I do have data here that hasn't become part of the Record and I have withheld it for some reasons of discretion.

I look forward to reaching across the aisle and working with the Members across the aisle to look into those concentrated areas of fraud and work together to see if we can find a way to establish a policy of reciprocity for religious workers, and, at the same time, celebrate the great religions of the world and the exchange of those religions.

Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding, and I appreciate the privilege to address you here on the floor of the House with regard to integrity in the ballot system.

I will say as a compliment to Mr. Holt, he and I have had a number of conversations about integrity in the electoral process. We share concern that the electoral process here in America have the highest level of integrity. I, for one, actually sat in my chair for all but a couple of 37 days following the election of the year 2000 watching television, scooting around and surfing the Internet, chasing down the rabbit trails. I was on the telephone. At the time I was the chairman of the Senate State Government Committee in Iowa, and I didn't want Iowa to become a Florida.

As I educated myself, it was a crash course in the electoral process. I found fraud in elections in a number of States, at least solid newspaper and journalistic reports of fraud, and I became convinced that it was scattered throughout this country. And the pattern is hard to follow, but the conclusion I drew was if this country ever loses its faith in our electoral system, this constitutional republic will collapse due to a lack of faith of the people.

So integrity in the electoral process is important. I would rather lose an election than lose the integrity of the electoral process.

I come to this floor today to oppose this bill, however, because this is Tax Day, 2008, election year 2008, and we are watching the Presidential debates unfold and soon we will hear the congressional debates light up. To try to jump on this horse in the middle of this fast current of stream that we have racing toward an election, I think is a bridge too far for us to be able to get there without further damaging the integrity, rather than improving it.

I would urge this House to step back, take a look, take a deep breath, and come together with some legislation that would provide, of course, for a paper audit trail, which I support, but one that does so in a reasoned fashion, not in the middle of an election year, not something that's designed to patch some of the flaws that came with the Help America Vote Act, but something that's well thought out, something that's bipartisan, something that's reasoned, something that's cautious, and something that will preserve the integrity of the electoral system that we have. And that's why I come to the floor, Mr. Speaker, for that purpose.

And I support the position taken by the ranking member from Michigan and my colleagues, although I intend to continue to work with Mr. Holt. Another point that I would make is that we do have a disagreement in our viewpoint, and that is that I think we should, at the very last resort, impose obligations on the States. The States have run this electoral process. The Federal Government has a minimal involvement.

And so my view is, if the States have integrity, we have to be very careful because the voters within the States will be determining the next leader in the free world. I think the number was just 527 votes in Florida made the difference on who the leader of the free world was in the year 2000. That integrity is important. We must hold it together.

But I urge a ``no'' vote on this bill at this time.

I thank the gentleman from California for yielding, and I thank him especially for gathering us together here for this Special Order.

Being mindful of the clock, there are a few points I would like to make. And one of them is to address our trade deficit. We have had a trade deficit over the last several years that has grown an average of about 20 percent a year. Now, it's flattened out in this last year because the weaker dollar has shifted so that we have more exports in proportion. However, I believe the dollar needs to be shored up. And why would a nation that has a trade deficit refuse to allow a trade agreement that would open up a country to allow our goods to go in?

I'm astonished continually at the continuing shift on the part of the Democrats. And I looked through the trade agreements that we have dealt with here since I have been in this Congress, and I'm thinking of trade agreements like Singapore and Chile and Australia and Morocco, the Central American Free Trade Agreement, DR-CAFTA. All of those gave us opportunities that were advantageous to us. And the logic in this is just as clear and simple: If you market something or if you're doing business with people, where you buy it from is where the jobs are. That's where the production is. We have production in the United States. We need to market more goods overseas. If we shore up the dollar, and I think we should, we're going to need to be more aggressive marketing our goods overseas. Colombia's sitting there waiting to open that up.

I have to say a couple kind words about our pork producers. They sold $8.5 million worth of pork into Colombia last year, not a lot. They're losing money on every head today. They need to open up this market. It would be in multiples if we would simply allow that tariff that's in Colombia to disappear, which would happen immediately if we could sign into this free trade agreement. That's some of the components.

But I am also more concerned about our relationships in the Western hemisphere. And as we watch Hugo Chavez teaming up and picking up the legacy of Fidel Castro and watching the unrest that's being promoted or watching tanks roll up to the border, these things are taking place in our hemisphere. And this Monroe Doctrine, I think, calls upon us to be good diplomats, good stewards of the money, and good promoters of trade, taking care of American jobs and protecting our opportunity to compete in the rest of the world. All of this comes together in this Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

What happened here in this Congress was a shameful act. And Americans have to be viewed as having character, the kind of character that holds up when a business deal is a deal. We did more than shake hands on this. This Congress passed it. The President signed it. This agreement was negotiated under terms that said this trade agreement will come to the floor of this House and it will be brought forward for a vote, up or down, in 90 days. That's the deal. That's the deal it was negotiated under. That's the deal that it should have been brought to the floor of this House under.

If we took that position with every country on the globe, you could virtually guarantee our economy would collapse, not get stronger. We need to make every move that we can make to improve this economy. I'm really not as concerned as the pundits are, but it's prudent for us to open trade. Free trade, fair trade smart trade is a better code word for this, and it means jobs in America. The U.S. market is open to Colombia. They're saying, let's open our market to you. I'm happy to send Caterpillars down there. We buy them in my business. And I'm happy to send the pork down there that we produce and everything that we can compete with. This global market that we're involved in demands that we export, and the Western hemisphere demands that we lead. And that means we need to promote strong, strong relationships in the Western hemisphere. And as we watch the bullying tactics of Hugo Chavez, I think that cries out for us to shake hands with President Uribe and complete this Colombia Free Trade Agreement.

I thank the gentleman from Georgia and appreciate your yielding, Mr. Gingrey.

Mr. Speaker, I come to the floor tonight to join with my colleagues to raise our voices in unison in support of our Commander in Chief and the Commander of the Iraqi forces, General Petraeus, with whom I have had a significantly long working relationship for quite some time, and for all the troops that have fallen in line behind the Commander in Chief and behind General Petraeus all the way out across the board.

I have personally made five trips to Iraq. I've been to Afghanistan. Each time that I go over there, I stop in at Landstuhl. I visit the wounded. I see the price that's being paid. I see the dedication in their eyes. And I believe it's a little stronger in the eyes of those at Landstuhl than it is in those who are standing at attention in Iraq or those that are on duty in Iraq. But all them, all of them, have put their lives on the line. They are all volunteers.

And I think back to a time at a Thanksgiving dinner in Baghdad actually, and the command sergeant major gave me that look that was like I'd like to talk to you off on the side. And I walked over to the side, and he said, I know war is expensive, but we're all volunteers here. We are not just volunteers for this mission. We have volunteered for the military. We've all re-upped since the beginning of this war, and we all knew that we had a very high likelihood of being deployed here. We want to come here. And I volunteered for this because I want to take this fight from my children and my grandchildren. I want it done in my time. I know war is expensive, but you can't say ``no'' to us. You cannot pull us out now, not after this sacrifice, not this time. We have got to finish this fight that's before us.

And that's a conversation I will never forget, and I will never forget the look in his eye as he delivered that to me. That's some of the best that we have, our command sergeant majors. And this one fried that into my memory. And I think he has expressed for the fighting men and women over there what they want us all to hear on the floor of Congress and what they want the American people to know. If they're willing to take the risk, if they're willing to provide the sacrifice, how are we to say ``no''?

I thank the gentleman from Georgia. And I just left a table of marines that are all on multiple tours of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, and a couple of them were decorated with Purple Hearts and serving in places like Fallujah. And you look them in the eye, and you see what they're asking us to do: Just back us. Just stand behind us. Don't undermine us. Stand behind us.

I take us back to the Vietnam war. I picked up the book written by General Giap, who was credited with what they call their victory for the Vietnamese, for North Vietnam. In that book on page 8, as I recall the page, page 8, there's a little phrase in there where he says they got our first inkling that we could defeat the United States when we saw that they didn't press for a total victory in Korea. A negotiated settlement in Korea gave Vietnam the inspiration to fight the war against us not only on the ground in Vietnam, where they paid multiple prices in lives beyond ours, but to do it in the public airwaves across the country. The protests that went on in the streets here and across in Europe were all part of their war strategy. The liberal media undermining the effort was all part of their war strategy. That doesn't mean they called the shots for the media, but they were complicit in this. And as the will of the American people was broken down by biased information and sometimes misinformation, they understood this: The bottom line in the book Principles of War by von Clausewitz, a summary of his analysis is the object of war is to defeat the will of the enemy.

So the voices that come out from this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, are the voices of defeat, not the voices of victory. They are undermining the will of the American people. The press is playing into that. We should be standing with our troops.

And I walked down the steps in the Cannon building, and I presume he was a veteran. He reached up and he said, ``Support our troops,'' and shook my hand. And I said, ``I will and I will continue to be there.'' But I missed a beat or I would have said ``and their mission'' because you can't support the troops without supporting their mission. You can't ask people to go off and put their lives on the line for something you don't believe in.

I believe in this. The Iraqi people believe in this. And today they know something they didn't know a year ago or 4 years ago, two big points that they understand, that's part of their national understanding: One is the Americans and the coalition forces are not there to occupy. We don't want to be there to occupy. We want them to have their freedom. The second thing is we're not there for the oil, or we would have taken it by now. We want the Iraqi people to live and breathe free.

Yesterday I had a lunch with an individual who was instrumental in bringing Benazir Bhutto to Iowa as she gave a keynote address shortly after September 11. I sat down with her on a couch afterwards one on one, and I asked her, How do we get to the point of victory? How do we defeat al Qaeda and our enemy?

And her answer was, You've got to give them freedom. You've got to give them a chance at democracy. If you do that, they'll change their focus from hatred towards taking care of their families, their communities, their neighborhoods, their jobs, and their mosques.

And I look back on that conversation. Sadly, we have lost her, her voice for freedom, but there is a piece of wisdom in that that the American people need to understand. Iraqi people are now breathing free. They weren't free before. The Afghani people are breathing free. They weren't free there ever. Today there are 50 million people that are free because of the sacrifice of U.S. and coalition troops and because of the inspiration that we provide for the world, and that is a very big thing to hand on to the next generations.

And as we watch the Bush administration move towards that last month in office, and we have many months to go yet, but when it gets to that point, I'm going to say this: I believe history will treat President Bush a lot more kindly than the media has treated him in this time when they write objectively what it means to have the strong leadership in the Commander in Chief, to have an all-volunteer military that's doing a better job than we could have ever asked anybody to do, and they say let us finish our task. The Iraqis say let us finish our task. They're paying their price. We need to hold up our end of this bargain, and we need to support General Petraeus.

And I yield back to the gentleman from Georgia, and I thank him.

I thank the gentlelady from Tennessee for organizing this Special Order and for the privilege to address you, Mr. Speaker.

This budget issue that rolls out in front of us, I'd like to take us back to anchor it a little bit on what's really going on. And we haven't gone very far into all the news and the indicators we have on this economy, but this budget is the largest tax increase in the history of America; it amounts to $683 billion in tax increases over the next 5 years. That's almost triple the largest tax increase in history that took place in 1993. We remember that year, 1993, that was a $240.6 billion tax increase, about a third of what this one amounts to in `93. We will look back and remember what happened in 1994, Republicans took over the majority in the House of Representatives partly because of overspending.

But as we followed this economy a little over a year ago, I remember the swearing-in ceremony here on the floor of Congress when Speaker Pelosi took the gavel for the first time. I watched what went on when all new committee chairs for the first time in 12 years picked up the gavel and began to manage their committees. And I watched as the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee went on the talk circuit all around the country, media stop after media stop after media stop, and he was constantly asked, are you, Chairman Rangel, going to make the Bush tax cuts permanent? Are you going to preserve any part of the Bush tax cuts? And he demurred on a straight answer time after time. But by a process of elimination it became clear to the American investor that those Bush tax cuts were not going to be made permanent, that every one of them was going to be designed to end, expire and fail at some point.

Now, these tax cuts, the big ones, the ones that matter, was on May 28, 2007. That was when we had the real tax cuts that inspired this economy. And we have been on a growth pattern ever since that time and today we're still on that growth pattern in spite of what they say about our economy if you just track the DOW. But when the public understood and the investment community understood that the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was going to continue down this path of spending, that he didn't see a tax cut he liked and he didn't see a tax increase that he didn't like, they stopped investing in industrial investment.

The reduction in industrial investment that took place January, February, March, April and onwards of 2007 was the lead indicator for this economic inactivity that we're seeing today. That was item number one, the understanding that there would be tax increases, this understanding that we know, according to Adam Smith and Wealth of Nations from 1776 when he said ``the cost of any goods is the cost of the labor that it takes to produce it and the capital required to support the labor.'' And the cost of capital went up because of the tax increases that were around the corner, the tax increases that were implicit in this budget. When the cost of capital went up, capital is always reactive and smart, and capital investments declined. That led us into the subprime, and we know about the subprime, but that's only really about $150 billion in real losses. There might be a greater reaction on that in this Congress, but about $150 billion. That's equivalent to a dollar a gallon on gasoline. By the way, there's no energy policy either.

But what this matters to us in this country is, we want to slow this growth in spending. We want to balance this budget. We want to bring a budget that gets us down to a responsible budget. And we want to get into the entitlements, fix Medicaid, fix Medicare, fix Social Security. And if we go down this path and we see the tax increases that were part of this, we put in it in one term that's relevant, what's relevant to us, how does this affect the family of four, mom, dad and two kids that are making $50,000 a year? The result of this budget and the tax increases that are part of it to a family of four making $50,000 a year, it will cost them annually $2,100 in additional taxes.

And additionally, we're paying more for gas. We have no plan for a balanced budget coming out of the majority side. This economy has been driven down into the drink because of lack of confidence, lack of an energy policy, because of the tax increases that reduce the capital investment, especially in industrial investment, and because of the subprime.

Things that you do in a bad economy are not increase taxes, not increase government spending. You don't take a larger share out of your gross domestic product and roll that into government, that's the nonproductive sector of the economy. That's one I'm not feeling charitable; I call that the parasitic sector of the economy. We need to have more dollars in the productive sector and the private sector of the economy; that means less taxes, less government, more personal responsibility, more fiscal discipline on the part of this Congress and this House where we start the spending here.

So, I applaud the gentlelady for leading this Special Order. I look forward to many more. I look forward to the day when I can say, I stood on the floor of this Congress and voted for a balanced budget that made it through the Senate to the President's desk, and fiscal responsibility, and letting people keep the money that they earn.

Thank you for yielding. I appreciate it.

I yield back to the gentlelady from Tennessee.

Will the gentlelady yield?

As I look at your chart, it occurs to me that that's Federal spending. And I'm going to speculate here, though, that if we would add to that the State and the political subdivision spending on to that, because that also is a share of the GDP, we have a significantly higher percentage. And I would think that that percentage today may well go to 37 percent.

I've seen some studies by some very well-respected and highly credentialed economists that make the argument that there's a right size to government, and that right size to government, when you add all the taxation across the spectrum, from Federal to State to local, that right size of government taxing a percentage of GDP, they believe, falls somewhere between 17 and 23 percent. So I'd just argue that we've passed that already, and we've got to go down in those numbers. I'd like to see those bar charts go down.

I thank Mr. Smith, the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, and the chairman for his graciousness.

I appreciate the privilege to address this issue under these circumstances. And I make no pledge about taking advantage of the situation, but I will stay with the attitude and the comity that the chairman demonstrates always, and that is that I come to the floor here to rise in opposition to this bill.

First I want to explain that premium processing is in the event that the normal application for the visa isn't processed in time, then the performing arts organization, which is a 501(c) nonprofit organization, can then apply. If they want to pay $1,000 premium to turn that around quickly, they can do that today.

So, I'm looking at this thing from the perspective of this is a fee- based system that we have. We fund USCIS through fee-based, and we had hearings in the committee and we brought that forward and it's clear. So, it becomes a zero sum game. If you decide that you're going to provide a premium processing service for one organization, that means the burden of the cost of that gets distributed across all the other applicants.

So, I'm stuck with this image of, let me just say the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I'm very convinced, and have not been there, that people arrive there in limousines wearing tuxedos and formal gowns, and at the same time, I know that they have a foundation that is quite significant. For example, assets of $2,424,000,000 in the foundation, an annual revenue stream of $326 million. Now, out of $326 million in annual revenue or $2.4 billion in the foundation, it seems to me that those kind of very wealthy, not-for-profit wealthy organizations could come up with the extra thousand dollars, particularly because people are arriving in tuxedos and getting out of limousines at the expense of the poor person who is in blue jeans and sneakers. And that's my argument here.

I yield to the chairman.

Reclaiming my time, I would submit that the wealthy foundations have the revenue to be able to provide for the premium processing in the event that they didn't plan far enough ahead to get their application in on time. I would think those with the highest wealth should be the ones that have the most ability to plan ahead or to pay if they fail to plan ahead.

I thank the chairman and I appreciate his remarks. And there is probably some basis for him to make that argument.

Just to close this argument, I will argue first that I offered a series of amendments which Mr. Smith addressed, and I exempted those foundations with less than $1 million in annual revenues. Then I went up the line to $10 million and then $50 million. I was trying to find that place by which it would get to somebody's conscience on the Judiciary Committee or in this Congress that we should say, you have enough money to manage this yourself. We never found that plateau. I actually wrote one that would have been a googolplex, kind of an unlimited number, but I'm confident it would have been rejected as well.

So, I would just submit that the one organization that I've singled out here, Metropolitan Museum of Art, would have revenue in the 5 minutes we've discussed this to be able to pay for the premium processing of a single artist and accumulate in that hour about enough for 14 artists.

So, I think we should have drawn the line at taking care of our small foundations, and for that reason I am opposing this bring. And I appreciate the sentiment that brings it to the floor.

I thank the ranking member for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, you know, we are here not really talking about the issue of rights. I haven't found anyone yet who has had their rights trampled on, their rights to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, as the chairman announced from the beginning.

As I look at what is going on here in policy, there is a situation going on right now in New York, in that area, where you have contractors that answered the call and the crisis of 9/11, and they are under lawsuits by the thousands, and I think we are in pretty much unanimous agreement that we should indemnify them for answering the call to protect America. I don't understand the difference between why we would not want to indemnify an information company that answered the call to protect America.

To me, those are the closest two comparisons that we can get. If we protect contractors when they went to that smoking hole in that war zone, why won't we protect telecommunication companies when they stepped up on good faith and believed that they were legally operating under the law?

Where is that first citizen that has had their privacy violated? I haven't found one yet. None have been brought forward. I sat in hours of classified briefings. No one even uttered the name of a person who had their rights violated.

The chairman talked about restoring the proper balance. Well, here is the thing that sits behind this restoring the proper balance. This is from page 8 of the AT&T letter. ``The legal paradox has implications not just for the carrier defendants, but for the Nation's security in general. It suggests to private companies that even good-faith cooperation is apparently authorized, and lawful intelligence activity can expose them to serious legal and business risk. This creates incentives to resist cooperation.''

That sets up a scenario where we are saying to companies, cooperate with us, but you might have to face, and will face, billions and billions of dollars of lawsuits, two score more of lawsuits, two dozen or more aggregated under a single court, Ninth Circuit, San Francisco, and they are watching their share values go down and watching their opportunities diminish around the world. And then we put them in the face of the paradox, what do you do if there is another attack on America?

These scales of justice are now out of balance because the trial lawyers have put this thing out of balance, and the political pressure and the risk to the American people of the security of being attacked again are what is weighing on the other side. When the fear of attack gets greater and when the political benefit becomes that point, then we will offset the trial lawyers and we will get a bill.

Madam Speaker, I was detained in the elevator while attempting to reach the House floor to cast my vote on rollcall 142 earlier this evening. Had I been able to reach the floor before the vote was closed, I would have voted ``yea.''

Madam Speaker, Iowa State University is one of the most respected land-grant universities in the Nation. Created by the Iowa General Assembly in 1858, the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm was designated the first land-grant college when Iowa became the first state to accept the terms of the Federal Morrill Act in 1864.

The act allowed Iowa to sell Federal land to finance a new college open to all, regardless of wealth, race or sex; offering a practical education in engineering, agriculture, and military science as well as classical studies; and sharing research knowledge with all Iowans. Iowa State University officially opened in 1869 and was the first coeducational land-grant school. Today, we are proudly celebrating the 150th anniversary of Iowa State University.

Iowa State University has been a leader in science in technology throughout its long history. The world's first electronic digital computer was developed at Iowa State by math and physics professor John V. Atanasoff and graduate student Clifford Berry, in the late 1930s. Their invention, the ABC computer, has been called the most important technological innovation of the 20th century.

The university is a leader in virtual reality research and its most advanced virtual reality theater, the C6, is the Nation's first six- sided theater that totally immerses the user in images and sound.

Iowa State is one of the top three U.S. universities in the development of patentable biotechnology. Last February, the Iowa Board of Regents approved a $32 million budget and conceptual design for a new biorenewables research laboratory at Iowa State University. The laboratory is the first piece of a new biorenewables complex planned for the university.

Biorenewables research is the future of ISU and the State of Iowa. I congratulate Iowa State University on 150 years, and wish them many more. Go Cyclones.

Madam Speaker, I rise in support of this 15-day extension to the FISA law, but I ask the question, why are we here? And the reason we are here is because of a court decision that I think appropriately defined the letter of the language in the 1978 FISA law. But because the technology changes, that court decision was made. And that opened up this can of worms, this Pandora's box of who's concerned about whose civil liberties versus how we provide this balance in our intelligence. And I would point out that this is a two-front war that we're fighting: One is in the Middle East, successfully I will add, and the other one is the surveillance that protects us domestically here at home and provides for our military to have the tools to work with overseas. That is the highest constitutional responsibility that we have. We have congressional oversight. We can look into this and see what's going on with the FISA law anyway, but the effort to protect our retroactive liability of those companies that cooperate with our intelligence community is essential. We will lose our ability to do surveillance if we lose the ability of the companies to cooperate with us. And this is not a trial lawyer's issue; it's a national security issue.

Madam Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Michigan for yielding, and I appreciate the privilege to address this House.

This is a cynical attempt here to bring up a veto override attempt on an issue that's been decided, an issue that's been decided and a bill that's been signed by the President, is now enacted into law, to get us past the silly season of Presidential politics and on beyond November of 2008 so we can then have a legitimate discussion about what, if any, better options might be available to the American people. This is a big deal. This is already a victory for the taxpayers, and it's a victory for the kids that we're trying to take care of.

I say it this way. I said I would come back and report to the American people on how much money was saved because some of us held the line, and that dollar figure is $35.6 billion. That's billion with a B. How much money is that? The ranking member of Energy and Commerce might want to know. We could build 178 ethanol plants at 100 million gallons each and quadruple our ethanol production with that kind of capital investment money. You could put a new car in every driveway in my State for that kind of money, but no kid was even threatened to lose their health insurance premium, and we took care of the kids. We're taking care of the taxpayers.

$35.6 billion is what's on the line here. And who's paying the bill? Not us, not those of us in my generation, not those of us who are serving here in the United States Congress. Maybe our kids, more certainly our grandchildren will have to pay this price if we don't step up and draw a bright line. $35.6 billion, $6.5 billion going to illegals getting access to Medicaid because of the language that's in this legislation that erodes the standards that are required.

This is a responsible thing to uphold the President's veto and turn down this veto override attempt.

I thank the gentleman from Arizona for organizing this Special Order tonight on this day that culminates a long period of time here in Washington across America where we have gathered together to march and to speak and to appeal and to pray for the end of this holocaust of abortion in America.

I have enjoyed those experiences that I have been able to share with my pro-life colleagues. As I went to the mass last night in the basilica and looked out across that sea of faces, more than 10,000 strong on the ground floor of that magnificent cathedral up on the hill in northeast Washington, realizing that there are 10,000 people in the main floor and another 5,000 in the basement, 15 to 16,000, many young people, who have done the pilgrimage from all across America, gotten on a bus and ridden for hours, maybe 18 or 20 or more hours to get here. They will go to the service, and they came to the march, the march for life today on The Mall in the cold and in the drizzle. They got back on the bus, some of them without even getting a chance to get warm, and headed back to their homes again. Those are people with conviction. Those are people that understand the two simple and basic questions that are before us here.

The first question is, and so when I ask many high school students in public auditoriums, do you believe in the sanctity of life? Is human life sacred in all of its forms? Is the person sitting next to you, is their life sacred? Is your life sacred? And I get the answer, the universal answer is yes, yes from all of them. I have never had a dissenter.

Then I asked them, there is only one other question you need to ask to determine your position on life, and that is, this sacred life, your life, the person sitting next to you, at what instant did that life begin?

We know that there is only one instant, and that is the instant of conception. But once a person understands and comes to a faithful conviction that human life is sacred, and it begins at the instant of conception, we also will never lose the debate, will never lose our conviction.

I would invite anyone in this Congress to come to this floor and debate me on those two points. I would like to have someone stand up and tell me their life began at some other instant than conception, but it will not happen, because they know that the minute, the instant that anybody over here takes a position other than this sacred life begins at the instant of conception, they have instantly lost the debate.

That's the point that I think all Americans should understand. If they do, this Nation will one day put an end to Roe v. Wade.

I am a Catholic, an active Catholic, and I understand the church's teachings on this. I wonder, sometimes about some of the active Catholics in this Congress that do not necessarily reflect the church's teachings. I would love to see, and I would call out an invitation next year for the special mass at the basilica, for the Speaker to join us there in our public prayer for those 50 million lives of those little babies, those little babies that will never have the opportunity to laugh, to love, never be hugged at night, never be kissed at night, not a single night, 50 million babies, 50 million little empty pairs of shoes, 50 million empty baby cribs, 50 million toys never played with, 50 million children, innocent as could be, denied the right to life.

I reflect upon the appointments to the Supreme Court that the President made in this past term, two magnificent appointments to the Supreme Court, and that would be Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Alito. We got a Supreme Court decision that upheld our ban on partial birth abortion finally, finally a measure that came from this Congress that was not denied by the Court.

When I looked across the sea of faces that filled The Mall as far as the eye could see today by the tens of thousands, and perhaps by the hundreds of thousands, and reflected that they all came here to this city today because the Court injected themselves into a policy decision, not a constitutional decision.

Roe vs. Wade and Doe v. Bolten, both need to be ripped out and both need to be overturned. The two magnificent appointments to the Supreme Court that understand this Constitution to mean what it says and mean what it was understood when it was ratified by our Founders, those appointments are wonderful appointments that move us down the line.

This Constitution will protect life; it will protect marriage. But we must have a Supreme Court that protects the Constitution, that does not amend it with their liberalism and their activism.

Mr. Speaker, the next two appointments to the Supreme Court will be more important than the last two. The next two appointments to the Supreme Court will determine whether we preserve and protect life and whether we preserve and protect marriage. Those two are transformational issues before this Congress. We must stand up for life.

We said goodbye to the elegant statesman and the great lion for life, Henry Hyde, Chairman Henry Hyde. Many of us count him as a friend. I counted him as one of the honors of my life to be able to call him as a friend and someone whom I admired.

The words on the program at Henry Hyde's funeral were a quote from him that say this: ``When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I've often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates. You are there alone standing before God, and a terror will rip through your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there will be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world, and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, 'Spare him because he loved us,' and God will look at you and say not 'Did you succeed?' but 'Did you try?'''

God bless his life and his effort, and may he save the lives of the unborn.

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment that I offer to this bill that is before us today is an amendment that strikes the requirements for Davis-Bacon wage scale and prohibits any of the funds from going to Davis-Bacon wage scale. And for the information of the body, Davis-Bacon wage scale is a Federal wage scale that was imposed over 75 years ago in this country; and I could go back into the history of it, but the essence of Davis-Bacon wage scale is this: it imposes union scale on all projects and any projects that are $2,000 or more, which essentially are all projects.

I am a Member of this Congress that has worked and lived under Davis- Bacon wage scale, and I have done that for well over 30 years. I have done the homework, I have done the paperwork, I have put together the spreadsheets, and I dealt with all the employee dynamics that were involved there.

And I make the point, Mr. Chairman, that labor is a commodity like corn or beans or gold or oil or gasoline, and the value of it needs to be determined by the marketplace, not by the government. And for the Federal Government to intervene in a relationship between two people, and a contractual relationship in particular, at the cost of the taxpayer that always favors going to a union scale and is not a prevailing wage but it is in effect a union scale, this authorization as written, if my amendment is not adopted, will cost the taxpayers an additional $26 million.

And the inflation to construction projects runs between 8 percent and 35 percent. I use the number 20 percent. It is a low average. But I am pledged here to protect the taxpayers, and I believe we need to protect the relationship between the employer and the employee. And if unions want to negotiate, I am all for their ability to do that, but I don't think it should be imposed by statute, a statute that cannot keep up with a change in the wage scale, a statute that is not effective, and one that, according to a Department of Labor Inspector General study, nearly 100 percent of the data cannot be relied upon. It is time to end this practice. It is archaic, and it is time to strike this provision out of here and eliminate Davis-Bacon wage scale.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, may I inquire of the amount of time remaining for each party.

Mr. Chairman, first of all I say to the gentleman from California, that is offensive to me to say that my 28 years of meeting payroll, my 1,400-some consecutive weeks of making payroll, of providing health insurance and retirement benefits and year-around work for employees and a career path for them is, to take his words, poor wages and poor working conditions. My employees didn't think so, and neither did the people that applied for a job that I didn't have room to hire. That is not the way it works out there in the world. And who in this Congress has some experience that can step forward and say otherwise?

I lived it. I lived it all of my working life. I know what happens when you pay the excavator operator $28 an hour and the shovel operator $12 an hour. You can't get the guy on the excavator to get down and pick up the shovel to move a clod. You can't get him to pick up a grease gun. It destroys the relationship on the workplace, and it rearranges everybody's assignments. And so the guy running the finish motor grader is rolling clods out there because he doesn't want to get off the machine and pick up the grease gun, and your machines wear out. And the boss has got to come to work at 3 o'clock in the morning to do the maintenance. That's what happens when government gets in the way. And it costs money. The inflation goes up; 8 percent, 35 percent. I pick 20 percent. There is $26.4 million in this bill that is unnecessary.

We have a shortage of labor. We are bringing in millions of people to unskilled jobs here in the United States because we say this economy cannot survive without that. And now we can't go without a union scale. That is union scale, Mr. Scott. And you can't show me any statistical evidence otherwise. It is the union operations that file the reports because those that are not union get organized and they get picketed.

These people are smart. They are not foolish about this. And this is a Jim Crow law. We went through this before. This was New York City. It was a Federal building back in 1930 or 1931, and a contractor in New York City decided that he wanted to keep out the low bid that came from Alabama. The low bid came from Alabama because the labor could come from Alabama. Those didn't happen to be white people. Those were African Americans that came up and undercut the union wages in New York and that brought about this ``Republican'' bill.

So I call it a Jim Crow bill. And I call it a racist bill, and it is one that has been now shoehorned into this economy, into this bill, into this legislation, in order to protect union wage scale.

I have pledged to come here to preserve and protect the free enterprise side of this, the competition that is necessary for the efficiency that is here. And I will also protect the right of individuals to organize and negotiate for a good wage and good benefits. That's also a right we should have in this country.

But this is not about prevailing wage. This is about union pay scale, and it was a bill that was rooted in Jim Crow laws that has now been transferred into union scale.

I urge the adoption of my amendment. Save $26.4 million and protect the relationship between employers and employees and let me provide a 12-month, year-round job with benefits and retirement funds so that people can plan their future, not hire them for 3 hours and let them go for the next rest of the week.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.