Floor Statements

I want to thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding. I really want to thank him for bringing this jobs bill to the House floor.

This legislation, this EPA regulatory reform bill, is critical to saving tens of thousands of jobs--over 100,000 jobs--in America that are at risk if the EPA is able to get away with yet another radical regulation they're trying to implement.

When I go throughout southeast Louisiana and talk to job creators, our small business owners--the people who are struggling in this tough economy but who still want to try to create jobs--and when I ask them, What are the things that are holding you back from creating jobs, from having your business grow so that more people can have great opportunities to live the American Dream?, there is a consistent theme that they all say, that it's the regulations coming out of Washington, D.C., coming out of the Obama administration. That is the prime reason that is holding them back from creating good jobs in this country.

Of course, we've seen it in southeast Louisiana--we've got tough times--but if you go all throughout the country, you'll see the same thing. Just look at the numbers from outside groups that have actually tried to figure out just how devastating the impact would be of just this boiler regulation if it were to go into effect by the EPA. Over 1,500 boilers across this country are at risk, and you're talking about over 230,000 jobs. Just look at some of the States--I mean, the State of North Carolina, the State of Indiana, the States of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania. Each of those States will lose over 10,000 jobs if this radical EPA regulation goes into effect.

The President is running around the country, saying, Pass this bill. He was saying pass this bill before he even filed the bill. Here is an actual bill on the floor of the House of Representatives that will save over 230,000 jobs that will be lost; yet the President wants to ram through this radical regulation anyway in spite of the fact that all those jobs will be lost.

I think the American people understand what's going on. They're saying sanity needs to be reinvoked in Washington in this administration.

Stop running jobs out of the country. Let's put commonsense reforms in place. This bipartisan legislation does that.

Madam Speaker, this House and this Congress need to be focused on job creation. In fact, this House has passed scores of legislation out of the House over to the Senate that would create millions of American jobs. Yet the Senate refuses to take any action on them.

And what do we get from the President? We get more of the same class warfare and failed stimulus legislation. Of course, his first stimulus was such a disaster. We had a hearing last week that exposed the Solyndra scandal. That's the company that the President used as the poster child for the stimulus bill 2 years ago. And what happened? The taxpayers are on the hook right now for over $530 million of money that was thrown away by this company that the President called a year ago the ``future of this country.''

Well, I don't want a future of bankruptcy, I don't want a future of scandal, and I don't want a future of the radical regulations and this class warfare that this President has given to this country. We need to create American jobs. We need to get these crazy regulations off the backs of our small business owners and create jobs in America.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that when the House adjourns today, it adjourn to meet at 9 a.m. tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, tonight the President is going to be addressing this Chamber, and the focus is going to be on jobs. Frankly, I hope that the President doesn't give us an instant replay of the first 2 years of his administration, where he tries to push more stimulus spending that didn't work, where he tries to push more bailouts to States that didn't work. What we need to focus on are commonsense solutions that can bring us all together that will actually be proven to create jobs.

If you look at some of the legislation we've already passed out of the House, just to get our people back to work, exploring for American energy could create over 250,000 jobs. There are free trade agreements for Panama, Colombia, and South Korea sitting on the President's desk, trade agreements he has refused to act on, that would create over 350,000 American jobs.

There is bill after bill, but there is regulation after regulation that is holding back our ability to create jobs as you talk to small business owners across the country. The President even acknowledged when he rolled back the ozone standard that EPA is out of control.

We've got to roll back these crazy regulations that are killing jobs as well. That's the solution to this problem that will get our economy back on track.

Mr. Speaker, as we are dealing with this debate over the debt limit, I think one thing that's become clear as people have followed over the last few weeks is that Washington has a spending problem. And regardless of the resolution of today's action in the House and Senate, I hope nobody thinks that this is the end of this debate. Frankly, this is just the beginning of the debate to finally cut spending in Washington and put real controls in place.

I think as we look over the next few months, we need to continue to push for a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution because ultimately that's the kind of accountability that we need to ensure that we change the culture of spending in Washington. Clearly, tax cuts will not solve this problem, that will only make matters worse; but if the problem is spending, why would you want to send even more money up to Washington to let them spend even more?

We've got to control spending; we've got to start making cuts today; but we ultimately need that accountability that comes with a balanced budget amendment.

Mr. Speaker, after yesterday's action here on the House floor, we have sent not one, but two real solutions to this debt and spending crisis over to the Senate.

The Senate has yet to take action on anything. The President refuses to even submit a plan to solve this problem. All we hear from the President are these divisive class warfare speeches. A speech is not a solution to the problem, especially when you hear of all this foolishness about corporate jet owners and millionaires and billionaires. If the President got his way, if the President confiscated every dollar from corporate jet owners and millionaires and billionaires, he himself knows that wouldn't solve the problem.

And yet what you have is a spending problem in Washington. You don't solve a spending problem by sending even more spending to Washington so that they can blow even more money. What we actually need to do is not a balanced approach, we need a balanced budget amendment to our Constitution, so that you can finally invoke accountability in Washington to solve the spending problem.

Job-killing taxes, more tax increases that only gives Washington more money to spend. Instead of facing the problem, we have got to stop ignoring the problem. The President needs to get his head out of the sand and address the real spending crisis in Washington.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

If you look at the Reid bill, it doesn't even start to address the problem. With all of its budget gimmicks and shell games, I think most people recognize that if you had an honest conversation, you would know it doesn't even start to tackle the spending problem.

Now, hardworking American families back home know the problem in America is not that we have corporate jet owners and millionaires and billionaires; the problem is that Washington spends too much money. You don't solve that problem by sending more money up to Washington to spend even more. And so when the President talks about a balanced approach, what he really means is more job-killing tax hikes.

Families back home know what we really need is a balanced budget amendment to put accountability back in place in Washington to control this rampant, out-of-control spending in Washington and to finally attack the real problem, and that's Washington spending. I oppose the bill.

I thank the gentleman from Kentucky for yielding.

I rise in support of this jobs bill, the Keystone bill, that actually opens up another 700,000 barrels a day coming into the United States from Canada. First of all, this oil will be going to United States refineries in Texas to refine oil for Americans. On top of that, it will create another 20,000 American jobs.

If you look at what that means, first of all, China wants to get that oil from Canada. So if we don't agree to this, if the President, for whatever reason--because radicals don't want that oil coming in. They don't like oil at all. So I guess they're going to ride around on bicycles, and that's going to get them where they need to be.

We've got to live in reality. We've got a demand in this country for oil. It's either going to come from Middle Eastern countries, many of whom don't like us, or we can bring more of it in not only from America, where the United States has more reserves that they won't allow us to utilize, but here Canada is saying 700,000 barrels a day can come into America, where we can create those good jobs. What does that really mean? That means we don't have to buy 700,000 barrels a day from Middle Eastern countries.

Let's talk about the trade gap. The biggest part of our trade gap is all the money that we send to these Middle Eastern countries and other countries because we don't produce enough of our own in America because of these radical policies. So you bring that 700,000 barrels a day from Canada, that's $25 billion a year that we're not sending to Middle Eastern countries who don't like us.

If you want to talk about a trade gap, when we trade with Canada, think about this: When we trade with Canada, 90 cents on the dollar comes back to the United States of America. Canada is a great ally and a good friend of ours. It's a good trading relationship. We get 90 percent of that money back. When we trade with Middle Eastern countries, buying their oil, which we do right now, less than half of that money comes back to the United States.

So if you want to talk about this from dollars and cents, from jobs, from national security, all of that adds up to passing this bill to build this relationship, build this pipeline with Canada, who says they want to partner with us. Now, if we turn them down, they'll go to China. But they want this relationship. They want to increase our energy security and create those jobs.

I urge passage of this bill.

I have an amendment at the desk.

Madam Chair, the amendment that I bring would take $420,000 from the Secretary of the Interior's account and move it into the spending reduction account to reduce the Nation's deficit.

And the reason that we're doing this is that, over the last year since the Deepwater Horizon exploded, the administration came out with a policy not long after that imposed a moratorium on drilling, a moratorium that was found by Federal courts to be outside of the law. The administration unfortunately went forward with that moratorium, costing thousands of American jobs, hurting America's energy security.

But even after the lifting of the moratorium, they still maintain what they call a permitorium, a refusal to issue permits to explore in the Gulf of Mexico for American energy. Not only does it cost our Nation tens of thousands of jobs, but it also costs us energy security where now we're even more dependent on Middle Eastern countries for oil. It's led to higher prices of gasoline at the pumps. It's had devastating impacts. Yet there's been no accountability to the administration for their policies that have led to this destruction of our economic well-being and our energy security as it relates to American energy, and especially as it relates to jobs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Now, if you really want to get down to the details of this amendment, one of the things we've said for a long time is, a lot of these companies, these big employers that have been out there for a long time exploring safely for American energy, they want to continue to be able to explore for American energy; and they want to go back to work; but they haven't been allowed to because of administration policies.

But what's more absurd is that while the administration has had this permitorium, where they won't let people go back to work, they have also allowed the clock to continue ticking on the permits and on the leases. And you've got a finite amount of time for a lease; you've got a 10-year period of time. And if the administration is saying you can't properly develop your lease--now it would be one thing if they said, we're going to stop the clock while we, as an administration, go forward with this radical policy. But all outside experts have said is that it has nothing to do with safety, and it is hurting not only American energy production but American jobs.

But what the administration said is they're going to continue to let the clock run. It's like if you are playing a basketball game and the referee is holding the ball, and the clock's still running. You are sitting there saying, look, I just want the ball. I want to be able to go out and play by the rules, and the referee is holding the ball while the clock continues to run. That's just not fair. And yet the administration continues to do this.

This House, Madam Chair, passed legislation, H.R. 1229. It's called the Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act. This legislation that we passed here in this House with a bipartisan vote, sent it over to the Senate--they still haven't taken action in the Senate--but what this legislation did, among other things, is it addressed that problem and said, If this administration is going to tell responsible companies who are trying to go back to work, who are trying to do the right thing--if the administration is going to tell them that they're not allowed to play by their own rules, then the clock stops while the administration denies them the ability to be permitted.

So the legislation that we passed addressed this. But the Senate, for whatever reason, refuses to take that up; again, costing our country thousands of good, high-paying jobs and hurting America's energy security, making us more dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

What we're saying with this amendment is: if this administration wants to continue going forward with that radical policy, which a majority of the President's own hand-picked scientists in his report right after the explosion of the Horizon said is irresponsible to do, that would actually reduce safety by denying permits, by having this moratorium, and now permitorium, then there has to be accountability. We have to hold this administration accountable for their actions.

And the $420,000 number in this bill that we're setting aside and putting into the deficit reduction account was gathered by looking at the number of leases that expire at the end of this year. There are 350 leases that will expire at the end of this year, not through any fault of those companies that are out there trying to explore for American energy, but because the administration won't let them play by the rules.

So if they're going to be irresponsible with their policies, there has to be a price to pay. There has to be accountability that the American people say, You're not going to use taxpayer money to deny American jobs, to deny American energy, and make our country more dependent on Middle Eastern oil and make our country continue to have to pay these higher prices at the pump.

It's their policies that have done it, and it's clear, and everybody understands that. People in the Gulf of Mexico recognize that. But there has been no accountability by this Congress, and so that's what this legislation is intended to do. This amendment will address that problem. I urge its adoption.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Madam Chair, I ask unanimous consent to modify the amendment with the modification I have placed at the desk.

Will the gentleman yield?

What the amendment, as it's now revised, would do is it would still reduce the $420,000. It wouldn't go to the Spending Reduction Account; it would stay within the department, and I think that addresses one of the concerns that the chairman had.

But it would still make it clear that there's going to have to be accountability for those people who have played by the rules who are being penalized today. There's got to be some accountability and, in this case, there would be the ability for us to not only send a message but a message attached to a spending reduction in the Secretary's department, that he can't just deny people the ability to go back to work who are playing by the rules.

Madam Chair, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. Speaker, over the last few months, we've heard a lot of speeches about fiscal responsibility. Today, here on the floor of the House of Representatives, we're going to give Members of Congress the opportunity to put their money where their mouth is.

The cut, cap, and balance plan actually imposes real cuts to spending today. It puts caps on future growth, and it says that we're going to put an amendment in the Constitution that requires the Federal Government to do what States and families do, and that's actually balance the budget.

Yet yesterday, the President comes out and says he would veto this plan. Well, of course, this is a President who said he wants commissions to balance the budget, who blames other people for the problems in Washington, who makes you think that the corporate jet owners are going to mysteriously balance the budget.

This is a real proposal that actually gets us back to a balanced budget. The President, I think, has shown that he's not serious about addressing the problem of out-of-control spending. It's not that we're taxed too little in this country; it's that Washington spends too much.

Cut, cap, and balance actually addresses the problem and puts fiscal sanity back in Washington where it's desperately needed.

I rise in support of Cut, Cap and Balance.

If you look at what American families have been telling us for the last few years, during these tough economic times what they have been doing is they have been cutting back. They have been tightening their belts, and they sit around the kitchen table and figure out how to balance their budget and live within their means.

Yet today on the other side, all you've seen is a parade of Members coming and criticizing the concept of a balanced budget, actually calling it extreme, radical. Imagine that. Only a big-spending Washington liberal could think it would be radical to require Washington to start living within its means like families have been doing for years.

So, frankly, American families would say it's about time. Welcome to the party. And, instead, some people think you can just live in this fantasy land where you can just keep taxing, spending, borrowing money from China and act like the day of reckoning is never going to come and kick the can down to our children and our grandchildren and make it their problem.

Well, it's time to say enough is enough. We're not going to pass this on to the next generation. We're going to deal with our problems today. We're going to set priorities today and do the tough things people sent us to do. And that means cutting, capping, and balancing the Federal budget.

Mr. Speaker, tonight the House finally passed a real plan that addresses this Nation's spending crisis.

I think many American families out there already know that Washington has had a spending problem, because they have been living within their means for a long time. They have been sitting around the kitchen table figuring out how to make do with what they have got. And yet in Washington, it seems like liberal leadership over here wants to ignore the problem.

We have passed a plan today in the House with Cut, Cap, and Balance that controls spending in Washington and puts us on a path to a balanced budget.

And what's the President's plan? We have still yet to hear his plan. All we hear are speeches and class warfare where the President tries to pit one group of Americans against another, as if corporate jet owners and millionaires and billionaires can solve the problem. If he confiscated every single dollar they have, it wouldn't address the problem.

Now it is time to get real. If the President wants to get serious about addressing the spending problems in this Nation, it is time for him to confront what Cut, Cap, and Balance really does, and that is to finally tell Washington it is time to start living within your means, just like families across this country have been doing for years.

Thank you. I would like to enter into a colloquy with the distinguished chairman of the Energy and Water Development Subcommittee.

Mr. Chairman, section 501(a) provides to the Corps of Engineers more than $1 billion in emergency supplemental funding for disaster relief. The section makes those funds available ``for emergency expenses for repair of damages caused by the storm and flood events of 2011.'' Am I correct in my understanding that included in the ``damages'' to be addressed by section 501(a) is the loss of navigation channel dimensions caused or exacerbated by this year's floods?

I thank the distinguished chairman. As many of our colleagues know, it is critical in Louisiana and elsewhere throughout the Nation to restore as quickly as possible the flood control and navigation integrity of our inland waterway system.

Again, I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding.

Madam Chairwoman, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I first want to congratulate and thank the chairman of the Energy and Water subcommittee for setting as a priority making sure that our waterways, especially the Mississippi River, are restored after the devastating floods that we experienced throughout our country. It wasn't just in a few States; it was throughout many parts of the Midwest, South, and other parts of our country that experienced tornado damage and experienced unprecedented flooding going back to 1927.

But now if you look at where we are and you look at what is being done here, this is not money that is adding to the deficit. We are at a point right now as we face this debt ceiling--and there is a divide in Congress; there is a divide in Washington. And the question is: Are we going to start living within our means and truly setting priorities in this country or just continue going down this spending binge acting as if nobody is going to pay the tab?

And, of course, I think what the chairman, the full chairman of Appropriations and so many other members of this new majority have said is that game is over. The game of spending money we don't have is over, and we've got to make the tough choices of setting priorities in this country.

So if you look at some of the money that was moved over from high- speed rail--and there were billions of dollars set aside in the stimulus bill that was such a failed disaster, over $787 billion of money that we don't have with the promise that unemployment wouldn't go over 8 percent. It's very clear that that failed. But what we're saying is let's take some of that money and move it over into something that's much more important right now, and that is getting our economy back on track, getting people back on track and getting their families back together.

Look at what happened on the Mississippi River. Just a few weeks ago, I flew over the Morganza Spillway and looked at the Atchafalaya Basin where some of that flooding happened where you literally had people who were in harm's way and their areas were flooded to keep other people from flooding. And it was one of those terrible choices no one wants to have to make, but those families were put in that situation and their communities were flooded so other communities wouldn't.

The extra silt that came down the Mississippi River now threatens to impede the ability for us to move commerce through 30-plus States of this country so that we can get those exports, so that we can create more jobs and be able to be competitive with foreign countries. If you're a farmer in Iowa, if you're trying to move commerce in Missouri down the Mississippi River, if you don't have the ability now because we're not able to dredge the river, all of a sudden now Brazil is going to get that contract for that product because you can't be competitive anymore.

Not only are we talking about tens of thousands of jobs, but we're talking about priorities. If you look at the high-speed rail projects, many States have turned the money down. Why? Because they realize it's a money loser. They lose money on the deal because it just doesn't pay for itself. Of course, States have balanced budgets. Most of those States have to balance their budget every year, so they can't just take what looks like free money to go and engage in a process that's ultimately going to cost them money every year that they don't have. But because they have to balance their budget, many of them have turned that money away.

And so you look here in Washington, there is no balanced budget requirement, and it shows you, frankly, one of the reasons why we need a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution so that we are forced to live within our means, too, so we can't just keep spending money as if there is no consequence, because there is consequence. Our children and our grandchildren are counting on us to make those responsible decisions and to set the priorities. We cannot just tell everybody that comes in the door, You've got an idea, here's some money; you've got an idea, here's some money. Nobody has the money. We'll just go print it, raise the debt ceiling and just keep giving it as if it's not going to have an effect. At some point, it has a real effect; it has a real impact. And so we've got to make the tough choices and set the priorities.

So there was devastating flooding throughout our country. You had so many States that saw tornado damage and flooding damage, and they're trying to get back on their feet. And then there is this high-speed rail money. And so much of the money in the stimulus bill went to waste and was squandered. We have nothing to show for it. The promise of no more than 8 percent unemployment didn't work. It was a failure, and everybody recognizes it. And so we're saying we're going to make those tough choices.

None of these choices are easy, but we didn't come up here to make easy choices. We came up here because we've got to set the priorities of this country, and that means balancing our budget and not just saying everything can get all the funding it wants. If something is a priority, then that means we've got to find the money somewhere else. And so that's what's being done here. And that's why I commend the chairman for making that tough decision. And, yes, we're going to have to have a fight over this. We're going to have to have a discussion over this, as we should. This is the people's House.

That's what this discussion is about. It's about setting our priorities and shifting from the old way of doing business of just spending more money we don't have on every idea that sounded good. We can't keep doing that. So that's why I support what the chairman is doing.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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

Mr. Chairman, I offer this bipartisan amendment with my fellow Louisiana colleague, Democratic Congressman Cedric Richmond. And what our amendment does is it transfers $1 million out of the Corps of Engineers' expense account and into the Corps' construction account for critical coastal restoration efforts.

If you look at what we're dealing with here, what we're trying to address, not only can we maintain fiscal responsibility, but we need to also maintain and restore America's wetlands.

And just what is happening to America's wetlands? What are we trying to address with this amendment? Louisiana alone has lost 25 square miles of coastal wetlands every year.

And I want to hold up this football to represent that every single hour, Mr. Chairman, every single hour the State of Louisiana alone loses an entire football field of land, an entire football field of land that's eroded away. And what exactly does that wetland, America's wetland, protect that's eroding away?

I want to show a chart here of the oil and gas infrastructure, the pipelines that move America's energy throughout the country. In the gulf coast alone, just in Louisiana, we produce about one-third of America's energy. And we talk all the time about our interest in reducing our country's dependence on foreign oil, and I strongly, strongly support that effort. In fact, Louisiana is at the forefront of doing that.

But that energy that we produce, and we ought to be producing more of it, we have the opportunity to produce more, but the energy we do produce is distributed throughout the entire country through pipelines that are in jeopardy right now because of that erosion of our coast, this wetland in America.

And not only is it the oil and gas infrastructure that's at risk, but also seafood production. The gulf coast of Louisiana, we produce a third of the country's seafood. And just looking at this chart makes me hungry when you look at the oysters, and the crabs, and the fish, this great product that we produce off our coast. But all of that comes from America's wetland, from that wetland that's evaporating, eroding away. And we're trying, we're bringing a bipartisan amendment to stop that from happening.

Louisiana's put its own skin in the game to the tune of over a billion dollars, over a billion dollars of money that Louisiana's put in. But there was a project that was authorized by this Congress, because this is a national issue. And, in fact, Congress has recognized this is an issue that shouldn't just be left up to Louisiana, because we're talking about something that protects and serves the entire country. And that's why in 2007, the LCA project was authorized by Congress. And all we're trying to do is keep that project alive, moving a million dollars from the expense account over into the Corps' construction account.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the interest by both gentlemen in dealing with the backlog that the Corps currently has, and, in fact, that's one of the reasons why, when I worked closely with my colleague from New Orleans, Cedric Richmond, on this amendment, we first of all made sure not to take anything away from existing projects, so those existing projects in the pipeline are not affected at all by this amendment.

And, in fact, the Corps's overall budget is not increased by our amendment, and we worked very hard to get to that point that we weren't taking away from other vital projects but pointing out that this is not a Louisiana-specific issue, this is a national issue. And as we talked about that pipeline, that series of pipelines that goes throughout the entire country to supply the energy needs of our Nation, and we talk about the vital seafood production and the things that make our gulf seafood so appetizing to people all around the country and around the world, but I also want to go back to this football and talk about the football field of land that erodes every hour. Just the last hour we have been sitting here, an entire football field of America's wetlands has eroded away, and we can reverse that trend without taking away from any other projects.

I understand the importance of that and, like I said, that's why we worked so hard to put the amendment together in the way that we did. I would urge adoption from all of my colleagues.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.