Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, it is not every day that Members of this Chamber come to the floor and share personal stories of sacrifice and ultimately triumph. But this week, a colleague of mine that I deeply admire and respect came to this floor and did just that, and I think she deserves to be recognized for her tenacious courage and even her willingness to be vulnerable.

We both came into Congress the same year, but we come from different parts of the country, we are of different parties, and we don't always agree on the answers for the issues the people of our Nation face every day.

Even so, as we in the people's House continue to busily deal with our national concerns, we should never fail to recognize the courageous that are among us, those who are bold and strong.

Let me explain, Mr. Speaker. This Monday, the gentlelady from Florida (Ms. Wasserman Schultz) shared with us a deeply moving story about the personal battle that she has had with breast cancer. It is a situation that many of our mothers, wives and daughters have also struggled with. About 1 year ago, Ms. Wasserman Schultz was diagnosed with breast cancer. And after medical treatment and, in the end, surgery, the cancer was removed from her body and she is now cancer free.

What makes Representative Wasserman Schultz so remarkable is the way she responded to this difficult situation. Rather than become discouraged by her circumstances, she decided she was going to help other women who might also be battling breast cancer and other forms of cancer that really affect America's women.

So, this week she is introducing legislation meant to empower women to know how to deal with breast cancer and teach women and doctors alike about the risk factors and the warning signs. I was pleased to become one of the first cosponsors of this legislation to make America's women healthier.

Mr. Speaker, I don't know how many people who would have the courage to use their own personal story to help change the lives of others. But as the father of three daughters and the grandfather of four girls, it doesn't surprise me that it is a woman who is setting the example for the rest of us. Representative Wasserman Schultz is a model of courage and conviction. I'm proud to serve along with her in the people's House.

My grandmother used to tell me that nothing is more powerful than a woman that has made up her mind. Grandma was right. And Debbie Wasserman Schultz is one of those women who has faced the enemy of cancer, fought it, defeated it and has made up her mind to help other women of this Nation do the same.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, over the last few years, numerous reporters in the United States have been subpoenaed about their confidential sources.

Law enforcement, namely prosecutors, hear about a story that a news reporter covers regarding scandals, corruption, crime, or coverups, and then has the reporter subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury. The purpose of the grand jury investigation is to find out who gave such information to the reporter, with the goal to bring the confidential source before the grand jury to testify.

Most States protect journalists from having to reveal that source. However, there is no Federal law to shield the identity of confidential sources. The protection of the source's identity is important because, without such a guarantee, sources would be fearful of possible reprisals if they revealed the information. Thus, the public would never know about the information.

With a few exceptions, prosecutors should not depend on reporters and their sources to root out crime. If whistle-blowers and reporters are protected by a shield law, the public's right to know will be enhanced with the free flow of information.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, 188 years ago, the Greeks brought forth another democracy, but their philosophy started hundreds of years ago. They did not just bring the world a relentless warrior who was willing to give everything to defend the sacred honor of the Greek Nation, but they brought the world a concept that was novel, because of no other country can it be said that they brought to the world a philosophy that it was the individual that is more important than government, itself, more important than the State, because always before in all cultures the State was the supreme power over the individual. Yet the Greeks had the novel concept that the human being, the individual, is worth more than the State. Because of that seed, democracy was planted, and democracy now flourishes throughout the world with the basic premise that it is the individual who is all important.

So we honor them tomorrow because of their great heritage, because of their great influence on our democracy, but we also honor them because they gave to the world a concept of freedom and worth of the individual that had never before been known to any civilization.

Mr. Speaker, in 1918, the war to end all wars was over. It was called World War I. It started in 1914, ended in 1918. And during that time, it was a stalemate until 1917 when the United States entered the war. The United States went overseas to Europe. Those doughboys fought in a land they did not know and for a people they did not know. They broke the trench warfare stalemate, and on the 11th day of the 11th month at the 11th hour of 1918, that Great War was over.

Fifteen million people in the world died because of World War I. And the casualties for the United States? Well, 4,734,991 Doughboys and Marines went over there to fight in that Great War; 116,561 were killed representing and defending our country. They fought in the woods, in the forests of Belleau Wood, the Argonne, and the fields of Flanders. Many of them are still buried in those forests in graves known only to God. When they came home, thousands more had contracted the Spanish flu, and they died here in the United States.

When the war was over, America moved on, and now 101 years later, we honor troops from that last century. We have on the Mall here not far from this Capitol the Vietnam Memorial where we honor the 55,000-plus that were killed; we honor the Korean veterans with the Korean Memorial that has those American soldiers going through a minefield in the snow; and we honor the Greatest Generation with the World War II Memorial.

But in the tall weeds of the Mall, there's a little-known memorial for the D.C. veterans that fought in World War I. It is decrepit, it is falling apart, and like I said, it is in the high weeds. It was built largely because the kids here in Washington, D.C., saved their nickels so that memorial could be built.

But Mr. Speaker, we do not have a memorial on the Mall for all of the Americans who fought in the great World War I. America just never got around to it. So I have introduced the Frank Buckles Lone Survivor Act to expand the D.C. memorial so that it honors all that fought in World War I.

Why Frank Buckles? Because you see, Mr. Speaker, Frank Buckles is the lone American survivor from World War I. He's 108 years old. In World War I, he lied to get into the Army: he was probably 16; he should have been 18. But he went off to war in Europe and drove an ambulance and rescued other doughboys that had been wounded in France. After the war was over, he came back to America. And during World War II, he was captured in the Philippines by the Japanese and held as a prisoner of war for 3 years. And now he lives in West Virginia.

Mr. Speaker, here is a photograph of Frank Buckles, 108 years old. It is taken in front of what is left of the D.C. memorial. And what I am asking Congress to do is authorize the expansion of the D.C. memorial to include all who fought in World War I.

You know, the men that fought there should be honored by America. Even though I have offered this bill into legislation, government bureaucrats are opposed to this memorial, saying we don't need any more memorials on the Mall. That dishonors America's war dead, Americans the bureaucrats never even knew.

But kids across the Nation are answering the call of Frank Buckles. And let me explain. What is occurring is, service-learning projects in schools throughout the country are teaching their kids hands-on about World War I and those that lived and fought and died in World War I. It started in Creekwood Middle School in my home district, and now it has spread to

schools in Kentucky, Connecticut, Michigan and Ohio. And because of that, these kids are raising funds to build this World War I memorial for all that lived and died in this war.

Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that we as a Nation honor all that fought in the four great wars in the last century. And it is a shame we haven't built a memorial to them. But I can tell you something, Mr. Speaker. America's school kids will not be denied because they are the grassroots campaign to build that memorial, and they are raising funds to do it.

Mr. Speaker, there is nothing more powerful than American school kids that have made up their minds, and they have made up their minds that America shall honor the war dead of World War I, the Frank Buckles and all of those four million-plus that served with him. And we're going to build this memorial whether the Federal bureaucrats like it or not.

And that's just the way it is.

Schools Involved in the Effort

Terryville High School, Terryville, CT

Bristol Eastern High School, CT

Kingwood High School, Humble, TX

Creekwood Middle School, Humble, TX

Riverwood Middle School, Humble, TX

Zeeland public schools, Michigan

Buckeye public schools, Ohio

University of Arkansas at Montecello

Michigan State University ROTC Program

Hudsonville Public Schools, Michigan

I thank the gentlelady for yielding, and her comments especially.

Mr. Speaker, we are discussing the proposed budget. And disregard whether it has some good projects in it or not. It breaks the back of the American citizen. And we hear a lot of numbers about how much it is costing and, of course, it does cost too much. But I will try to put it in perspective.

I have four kids, 7\1/2\ grandkids. Mr. Tiberi just had triplets. Mrs. Bachmann's got a handful of kids. And when kids are born, every parent remembers that they are given an arm band, and the arm band usually says who that child is. My kids all had an arm band that said ``Poe kid.'' They're going to have to change arm bands on my grandkids from Poe kids to just poor kid because every child born after this budget passes will have to pay off the debt to the tune of $70,000 a piece. So when kids are born in America, if this budget passed, give them an arm band that says, you owe Uncle Sam $70,000.

Mr. Speaker, that is disgraceful that we are saddling debt on kids yet to be born in this country. So much for freedom. They are going to be enslaved to the Federal Government to the tune of at least $70,000 a piece. And that doesn't count all these other spending programs that we are seeing going to come down the pike later this year.

Maybe we should remember some of the things that Thomas Jefferson said. Of course he helped write, or he did write the Declaration of Independence. He wrote a lot while he was President. Here's a quote from Thomas Jefferson, Mr. Speaker. He said it in 1821, shortly before he died. He said, ``There does not exist an engine so corruptive of the government and so demoralizing of the Nation as a public debt. It will bring on us more ruin at home than all the enemies from abroad.'' Wise Thomas Jefferson. Maybe we would do well to read some of the things that Thomas Jefferson wrote about saddling American taxpayers with public debt. It is worse than our foreign enemies we have got all over the world.

We cannot afford to pay for this budget because we don't have any money. We have spent it all. We have given it to, you know, these banks that can't fail, and all these other special interest groups. So we are broke. So we are going to have to borrow the money. And we are going to have to borrow the money from foreign countries. Number 1 on the list, the Chinese. You know, our good friends, the Chinese. We are going to borrow their money.

It was embarrassing to me, as a citizen, to see our Secretary of State go to China and beg to allow us to borrow money from them in the future. Even they are a little worried about whether we can pay off this great debt that we are incurring and putting on kids yet to be born. It is disgraceful, Mr. Speaker.

And the second thing is, if we can't borrow enough money, the government's answer is, we will just tax them. Tax them to death. You know, the old statement goes, if something moves, regulate it. If it keeps moving, tax it. And if it stops moving, then subsidize it. We are doing all of the above right now. Things that aren't doing any good for the economy, oh, we are subsidizing those. But we are taxing the American taxpayer to death, those that work for a living. And we are also taxing those small businesses.

I want to make one thing clear about jobs. We hear so much about the budget is going to create jobs. Jobs, jobs. Well, we have to define what a job is. There are government programs, and those are not jobs. A government program takes taxpayer money and gives it to different projects to build something. Now, that is not a job because that is subsidy by the American taxpayer to this entity.

Jobs are not created by government. Jobs are not created by government. Small businesses create most of the jobs in this country because, you see, when small business has money, we call that capital, thus the term capitalism. When they have money they hire people. The taxpayers don't have to subsidize that worker, whereas the taxpayers have to subsidize the government program worker.

So let's be clear about that. There are jobs, and then are real jobs. And so we should do everything in our power to help small businesses, because they create 70 percent of the jobs in this country.

But this new budget, loaded down with borrowing, is also loaded down with taxes. And it taxes the producers of this country. Like I said, if something keeps moving we just tax it. And that is the plan.

And it seems to me, this is just my opinion, this whole philosophy that we are moving to in this country is a government-controlled culture, government-controlled society; kind of makes us look like the French socialist society, in my opinion. And I don't think that is what liberty is all about. So maybe we should go back to some basics.

Like most American taxpayers, they don't spend money they don't have. Maybe the government shouldn't spend money it doesn't have. Maybe we shouldn't be borrowing money because we have to pay the debt on it. And we are not going to live to see it, so we are passing that debt on to our kids yet to be born, to the tune of $70,000 a piece. And that ought not to be.

But that's just the way it is.

I yield back my time.

Mr. Speaker, the proposed budget is going to double the national debt. What that means to Joe Sixpack is every American will be responsible for $70,000 apiece to pay off this massive debt incurred by money-grabbing government. Does anyone know there's a recession going on?

Government cannot spend America into prosperity with somebody else's money. We shouldn't even be borrowing more money during these hard times. The Treasury Secretary says part of the reason government got into this economic mess was government borrowing. Also, government has plans to raise taxes on working citizens to pay for all these fancy projects in the budget.

Americans already pay too much in taxes during this recession. Americans don't want more taxes. Americans don't want to incur more debt. Americans don't want government to spend money it does not have.

Government is taking America's money to reward failure, and sending money to special interest groups.

Meanwhile, Americans are losing their jobs. Americans are tired, weary, and mad about government ``ripoffs, payoffs, and layoffs.''

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, the government answer to government- created problems is to tax people and businesses that are producing. The economic philosophy is simple: Punish success by the power of the tax.

The latest government tax plan is the energy tax. The idea is, tax anything that uses energy. And it contains several philosophies. The first one is raise the gasoline tax 10 cents. I guess the government bureaucrats don't think gasoline prices are high enough already. Americans pay 18 cents in Federal gasoline tax, about 20 cents in State tax; and gasoline is approaching $2 a gallon, so they are going to raise taxes and make it harder for us to drive.

But that is not all. The idea also is to tax mileage of cars. It is called the car user tax. In other words, for every mile an American citizen drives, they are going to get taxed for that mile. Of course, that hurts people in rural areas, it hurts people who don't have mass transit and don't have a choo-choo train to ride to work. But it is the car user tax, and we don't know yet how much that is going to be.

But we have more. The idea also is to tax the use of energy in your home. In other words, when you turn on the lights, you are using electricity and you are going to get taxed for using that energy. If you have hot water in your home and you use a hot water heater that is run by natural gas and you turn on the hot water, since you are using natural gas you are going to get taxed again for the use of energy. And of course in the winter in some places in the United States they use home heating oil to keep warm in the winter. And since they are using energy, they are going to get taxed for that. It is the home use energy tax on all Americans. And of course the same is going to be applied to businesses. But businesses, they are going to pass their taxes on down to the consumer who has to pay all of those taxes as well.

There is more. There is the cap-and-trade tax, or the cap tax as I call it. What that is, it is based on the unproven mythical theory of global warming and the use of CO2; so if you use any CO2, you are going to get taxed for that.

There are other taxes. Those include taxes on energy production. What that is, is those businesses--we call them oil companies--that produce energy for the rest of us to use, they are going to be taxed with so many different taxes I don't have time to go through it; but what it amounts to, it will cost the American consumer another 41 cents per gallon of gasoline to pay for that tax on energy production that is being passed from the oil companies down to the American consumer. And, of course, the effect of that, whether intended or unintended, will be to send those energy-producing companies, those oil companies, somewhere else. We already find out that some of them are moving to Switzerland.

When that happens, we will get less tax revenue to begin with. You see, we already have the second highest corporate income tax in the world. And why would we fault oil companies for moving overseas when they are already paying so much taxes? And these energy taxes will increase and encourage people to move offshore and to other places.

Mr. Speaker, whether people know it or not, we do not have alternatives for the use of crude oil or gasoline yet. Some day we might have one of those electric cars that we all get to drive around in, but we don't have it now. So if we keep sending energy companies overseas, make it harder for them to produce, tax the energy consumption, it is going to be more difficult for us to exist in this world.

So why don't we do something a little novel. Why don't we allow more energy exploration, instead of continuing to subsidize the Middle Eastern oil countries who don't like us anyway.

If we explore more, that will create jobs that stay in America. It will bring revenue to the American Treasury, because those oil companies have to pay for those leases. We can then get more tax revenue from those oil companies, and money will stay here, instead of shipping it overseas to foreign countries. A novel idea. And there is not a tax included in any of that.

But it seems to me, Mr. Speaker, that the current bureaucrats never saw a tax they didn't like. So we will all just get to ride bicycles and freeze in the cold dark of winter, and for light we will have to use candles since we can't afford to pay the electricity tax on our homes.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the historical comments my friend from Vermont has said regarding Union troops from his home State. The Battle of the Wilderness took place in May 1864.

On the second day of the 3-day battle with a statement made by General Lee, ``Texans always move them,'' the Texas Brigade successfully forced back Grant's Union troops. However, the Texans sustained 60 percent casualties.

There were 165,000 troops, Union and Confederate, in this Battle of the Wilderness. That is the number of troops that we have in Afghanistan and Iraq put together on one battlefield. There were 29,000 casualties. The fighting was so fierce in the dense woods it caught fire, and hundreds of wounded on both sides burned to death. Their graves are only known by God.

Mr. Speaker, those troops from the North and South were all Americans. Mr. Speaker, here is the battlefield. It is outlined in this black line. On this hallowed ground right here, you can see this X is where Wal-Mart wants to build one of their beautiful stores. There are other locations available for Wal-Mart. So we from the North and South in a bipartisan way want Wal-Mart to build someplace else.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, AIG took bailout money and then gave millions to executives in bonuses. Now Congress is bent out of shape about it, and rightfully so. But the truth is in the last stimulus bill that Congress quickly passed with little or no debate was an attached amendment to allow AIG to do exactly what they did--give out high- dollar bonuses.

Congress is responsible for this irresponsible spending and must deal with the consequences. To make matters worse, AIG gave bailout money to foreign banks, like in France. The French are the same people who vilify the United States, blame the world's problems on us, and have a disdain for everything American.

Mr. Speaker, I think the U.S. has bailed out France enough. We helped save France in World War I, saved them again in World War II, and took over in Vietnam after they failed there--but with little or no gratitude from the French.

And AIG also gave billions to German and English banks. We can't afford to give away taxpayer money and reward failure while making working Americans pay for all of this nonsense. ``No'' to more bailouts, foreign or domestic.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, tonight and today we have been hearing a lot about the economic crisis throughout the globe. Parallel to the concern about the economic crisis is another concern that we have been told about, and that is the fear of global warming. It preoccupies much of what we do here in this House, and it preoccupies much of what is in the media, not only in the United States but throughout the world.

I would like to read a portion of a Newsweek article, Mr. Speaker. It says:

There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically, and that these changes may bring a drastic decline in food production with serious political implications for just about every nation on this earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps in only 10 years.

The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and Russia in the north, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas, parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indo-China and Indonesia, where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoons. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it.

In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by 2 weeks since 1950, with the result overall loss in grain production estimated up to 100,000 tons every year. During this same time, the average temperature around the equator has arisen by a fraction of a degree, a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation.

Last April, the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters, killed more than 300 people and caused one-half billion dollars worth of damage in 13 States in the United States.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advanced signs of a fundamental change in the world's weather. The central fact--and you note here, Mr. Speaker, it is a fact. It says: The central fact is that after three-quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the earth's climate is beginning to cool down. That is right, Mr. Speaker, this article says the world is cooling down.

Meteorologists disagree about the cause and extent of this cooling trend as well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions, but they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will produce agricultural productivity for rest of the century. If the climate change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic. A major climate change would force economic and social adjustments on a worldwide scale, warns a recent report by the National Academy of Science.

This article goes on and on, Mr. Speaker, to talk about the new Ice Age affecting the world; how we are going to have a new Ice Age that will come to the United States, all parts of the world, how our whole attitude about the world will change because it will be a cold place. Basically, Mr. Speaker, Newsweek in 1975, April 28, said we are all going to freeze in the dark.

Now the people who said this--and I remember all of this taking place back in the seventies, and I believed this nonsense, that we are all going to freeze, that the Earth is getting colder, and that we can't do anything about it and that it will never correct itself. I believed all that, as did a lot of other Americans, because it was based on, as this articles says, scientific fact that the earth is getting colder. And these same people in 1975 that predicted that the earth was going to get colder are the same people today, in the year 2009, saying just the opposite: That the earth is getting hot. We are all going to roast. It is the same global warming crowd.

The difference is a few years have passed. And our attention span is so short as Americans, and other people in the world, we forget these predictions that occurred just 33 years ago. And that is unfortunate.

The people in the weather business, meteorologists, for example, who predicted the global warming and some that predicted the earth getting colder are the same people who can't predict tomorrow's weather. You know, these folks are the only people that I know of in our culture that can be consistently wrong and keep their jobs, but they do. They can't predict tomorrow's weather, but they are telling us, we are all going to roast because of global warming. I am not so sure that that is true.

The article goes ahead and points out that the earth is already one- sixth of the way toward the new Ice Age. And, of course, history proved the experts in 1970 wrong; that we did not all freeze. Now, in fact, they are predicting the opposite.

Mr. Speaker, last week we had the global warming crowd here in Washington, D.C., protesting how we provide energy for this building. Now I have nothing against folks who want to peaceably assemble and talk about issues. That is great. That is part of the American way. But it is interesting, they showed up on a day, March 2, where we had 10 inches of snow and one of the coldest days in recorded history in Washington, D.C., 18 degrees, and they were here protesting the way we find energy for this Capitol. And it is how inconsistent the global warming crowd is. They are against everything that produces energy, especially those bad, nasty oil companies.

They were wearing, and I thought this was interesting, green hard hats. Which is fine. I asked one of the young ladies that was with the group, do you know what that hard hat is made out of? And she said, plastic. And I said, what do you think plastic is made out of? And she said, well, plastic is made out of plastic.

Contrary to what some people believe, plastic is not an element. It is not a mineral. Plastic, like many things that we see every day, is a derivative of crude oil. I told her that, and she didn't understand it or believe it, but whatever. The problem they see is the fact that humans are the problem; that we use energy, and that they wish to, I guess, eliminate humans on this earth because we are the problem, they say, in global warming.

Well, first of all, global warming is not a scientific fact even though some

say that it is. There are other scientists who say we are not having global warming. Unfortunately, we have been basically told here in the House of Representatives that global warming is a scientific fact, and all of our legislation is going to be based upon the absolute fact of global warming. That is unfortunate. We should still continue the debate on, first, whether or not global warming is occurring; and, second, and most importantly, is it man's fault that there is a climate change? Scientists certainly disagree.

I think the bottom line in global warming and those that advocate that we are having global warming is it is real basic: It is all about money.

You see, those who advocate that we have global warming want more Federal dollars to study that issue to convince us that there is global warming, and they get those Federal dollars. Those meteorologists and scientists on the other side who say maybe we are not having global warming. Maybe climate change does occur, but man is not the fault; see, there is no money in saying that. There is only Federal dollars in saying, yes, there is global warming. It seems like those people who advocate global warming are just saying that because they are getting paid by the Federal Government.

Of course, the second issue is man, the culprit. I am not so sure man is the culprit. The jury is still out on that, and I think we should not be so fast to rush to judgment.

The last thing I wanted to point out is that, in the name of global warming, it really means more government control over our personal lives. That is what it is about, it is about money and it is about the fact that there is personal control over our lives by the Federal Government.

For example, soon the Federal Government is going to tell us all the type of light bulbs we can have in our homes. We have to go to those Chinese-only-made light bulbs that have mercury in them, because it soon will be the law that you can't buy any light bulbs except these energy-efficient light bulbs. The Federal Government wants to tell us what the kind of cars to use. The Federal Government wants to tell us what kind of energy to use, all in the name of global warming. But it is really control of our personal liberty in the name of global warming.

So the jury is still out on that issue, and I think we have an obligation to the American people to debate the issue of climate change, global warming, whether the earth is getting warmer or hotter, whether there is a climate change, and whether man is the culprit. I think that we should do that.

At this time, Mr. Speaker, I would like to yield such time as he wishes to consume to my good friend, Mr. Rohrabacher, from California.

I want to thank the gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) for his insightful evaluation of the entire global warming concept, and I appreciate the research that he has done.

It is important that we have a debate on this issue because our entire energy policy under this administration is based upon the myth that there is global warming. It has been pointed out that the Earth goes through cycles of different climate changes--it gets cooler, it gets warmer--and whether man is at fault or not, I think not.

I would like to enter into the Record the Newsweek article I referred to earlier from April 28, 1975, the article that says we are all going to freeze in the dark.

[From Newsweek, Apr. 28, 1975]

There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns

have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may

bring a drastic decline in food production--with serious

political implications for just about every nation on Earth.

The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only

10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact

are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and Russia in

the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient

tropical areas--parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,

Indochina and Indonesia--where the growing season is

dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon.

The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun

to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-

pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen

their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950,

with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated

at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the

average temperature around the equator has risen by a

fraction of a degree--a fraction that in some areas can mean

drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating

outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more

than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of

damage in 13 U.S. states.

To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents

represent the advance signs of fundamental changes in the

world's weather. The central fact is that after three

quarters of a century of extraordinarily mild conditions, the

earth's climate seems to be cooling down. Meteorologists

disagree about the cause and extent of the cooling trend, as

well as over its specific impact on local weather conditions.

But they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will

reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.

If the climatic change is as profound as some of the

pessimists fear, the resulting famines could be catastrophic.

``A major climatic change would force economic and social

adjustments on a worldwide scale,'' warns a recent report by

the National Academy of Sciences, ``because the global

patterns of food production and population that have evolved

are implicitly dependent on the climate of the present

century.''

A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reveals a

drop of half a degree in average ground temperatures in the

Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to

George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos

indicated a sudden, large increase in Northern Hemisphere

snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study released

last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of

sunshine reaching the ground in the continental U.S.

diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and 1972.

To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature

and sunshine can be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the

University of Wisconsin points out that the Earth's average

temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven

degrees lower than during its warmest eras--and that the

present decline has taken the planet about a sixth of the way

toward the Ice Age average. Others regard the cooling as a

reversion to the ``little ice age'' conditions that brought

bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between

1600 and 1900--years when the Thames used to freeze so

solidly that Londoners roasted oxen on the ice and when

iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as New

York City.

Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages

remains a mystery. ``Our knowledge of the mechanisms of

climatic change is at least as fragmentary as our data,''

concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. ``Not only

are the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in

many cases we do not yet know enough to pose the key

questions.''

Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term

results of the return to the norm of the last century. They

begin by noting the slight drop in overall temperature that

produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper

atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds

over temperate areas. The stagnant air produced in this way

causes an increase in extremes of local weather such as

droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes, delayed

monsoons and even local temperature increases--all of which

have a direct impact on food supplies.

``The world's food-producing system,'' warns Dr. James D.

McQuigg of NOAA's Center for Climatic and Environmental

Assessment, ``is much more sensitive to the weather variable

than it was even five years ago.'' Furthermore, the growth of

world population and creation of new national boundaries make

it impossible for starving peoples to migrate from their

devastated fields, as they did during past famines.

Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will

take any positive action to compensate for the climatic

change, or even to allay its effects. They concede that some

of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting

the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or

diverting arctic rivers, might create problems far greater

than those they solve. But the scientists see few signs that

government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the

simple measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the

variables of climatic uncertainty into economic projections

of future food supplies. The longer the planners delay, the

more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change

once the results become grim reality.

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 59 minutes p.m.), the House adjourned until tomorrow, Thursday, March 19, 2009, at 10 a.m.

Mr. Speaker, last week was International Women's Day to proclaim human rights for all women.

Obviously, Saudi Arabia didn't get the memo. In the name of religion, the

official Muslim religious police arrested a 75-year-old woman for accepting bread from two young men. The crime: She had the arrogance to be with males who were not blood kin.

To the religious police in Saudi Arabia, her behavior cannot be tolerated. So the 75-year-old woman was hauled off to court, and a judge ordered her to receive, get this, 40 lashes and 4 months in jail with deportation to follow. And the two boys who were kind to her by giving her bread: lashes and prison for them too.

The official Muslim religious police are feared by women in Saudi Arabia because they enter homes to enforce dress codes, prayer times, and segregation of the sexes. Flogging women in the name of religion for accepting bread from young men seems to be anti-social action and contrary to basic human rights.

So much for the idea of helping the widows and the orphans. Maybe next year grandmas in Saudi Arabia can celebrate International Women's Day without being flogged by their government.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, America's new economic policy is real simple; spend a lot of money, borrow a lot of money, and tax everybody, all in an effort to make the United States a country like socialist France. And the method to pay for these high-dollar programs that the administration is now funding is to tax everything, especially energy.

The first part of the ``tax energy plan'' is to tax energy consumption. Now we understand that every homeowner in the United States will be taxed approximately $3,000 a year every year for the consumption of energy in that home. So every time you turn on the lights, you turn up the taxes. You use a little bit of heat to keep warm in the winter, you're going to pay the heat tax, all in an effort to bring revenue in for these high-dollar programs.

There are more ideas to tax energy. One is to increase the gasoline tax--not that we aren't paying enough for gasoline already, now we're going to pay 10 cents more a gallon in the gasoline tax. We use gasoline, we're going to give the government more money.

And then, thirdly, there is the mileage tax that is being proposed. What that means, Mr. Speaker, is for every mile you drive somewhere in the fruited plain, the government is going to track you with GPS, and at the end of the day you are going to get taxed on mileage tax. Being tracked by GPS by the Federal Government sounds a little bit like Big Brother out of ``1984'' to me.

Contrary to some places in the United States, where I come from we don't have mass transit. We don't have choo-choo trains that run and take everybody to work. I have an area made up predominantly of rice farmers, suburban areas, petrochemical areas, and we don't have high- dollar trains like the one that is being built from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, or from La La Land to Fantasy Land. People have to drive work trucks, that's what they drive, but now they are going to be taxed for driving. And of course that is taxing the American worker and the consumer.

And now there are going to be new energy taxes on energy companies-- you know, those mean old energy companies that produce energy to keep the lights on in this place and other places, and so we can drive our vehicles and

that sort of thing. But the energy companies are going to pass that tax on to the rest of us. And what that means, you cut through all the taxes, because of the new energy tax on energy companies, every American is going to add 41 cents to their gasoline; in other words, that's passed on to us. You add on the mileage tax, you add on the 10- cent tax for using gasoline, and now we've got another 41 cents that will be passed on to the American consumer.

Now the new cap-and-trade idea--it really should be called cap-and- tax--is sending energy companies packing their bags. Mr. Speaker, what I mean by that is, they're leaving town. The taxes are too high. They're not going to stay here any longer. It's been reported by different media sources that the new country, the new place for energy companies to move is a place called Zug, Switzerland. You've probably never heard of it. You have to look it up on a map to find it. But the tax rate for corporations in that area of Switzerland is 9 percent. The corporate tax in the United States on those energy companies is 35 percent. No wonder they're leaving town. They can't afford to do business in the United States.

The U.S. energy companies are going someplace else because of the overwhelming tax structure here.

Mr. Speaker, the answer is not to tax more but to allow more energy production, novel thought that that is. Rather than run energy companies out of town, maybe we ought to let them expand in the Outer Continental Shelf. That would actually create thousands of American jobs. We wouldn't be sending money overseas to OPEC. We'd keep that money in the United States. We'd keep the lease revenue that those oil companies have to pay for to get that oil out of the Outer Continental Shelf. We'd keep that lease revenue in the United States. And we'd also keep the tax revenue in the United States.

But, Mr. Speaker, the new French economic plan is tax anything that produces in this country, and now we're going to tax energy out of the energy business, including consumers that use energy. I guess next year, Mr. Speaker, we'll all wonder why we're just freezing in the dark because we don't have any energy because it all left town.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, Uncle Sam keeps giving away taxpayer money to businesses that claim they are too important to fail. Some of these irresponsible corporations helped bring on this economic crisis.

Our government seems to be just as irresponsible in the way that it spends America's money. AIG received $85 billion in bailout money from our gracious government, but the Feds put little or no restrictions on that money. So, AIG is giving $165 million of that money in bonuses to its own employees. You know, those are the same people that put AIG in this economic turmoil.

To make matters worse, since $85 billion wasn't enough, irresponsible Uncle Sam is promising to fork over $30 billion more of somebody else's money to AIG. Now we learn AIG is sending some of that taxpayer money to Europe, including French banks.

Normally the government should not tell private businesses how to operate, but when 80 percent of the business is run by the government, as AIG is, the government has the duty to protect taxpayer money. Thus far, Uncle Sam has had a reckless disregard for the way it throws citizen money around.

And that's just the way it is.

Mr. Speaker, the crime committed in the United States by foreign nationals is hard to determine. The statistics are all over the map. But let me give you some tonight.

The 9/11 Families For a Secure America say that 32 percent of all people incarcerated in the United States are in the United States illegally.

Recently, I had the opportunity to go to south Texas to visit some of our sheriffs on the Texas-Mexico border. There are 16 counties in Texas that

border Mexico. Two of those are Culberson County, where Sheriff Oscar Carrillo is the sheriff. The other one is Hudspeth Country, where Arvin West is the sheriff. I was their guest over the weekend a couple of weeks ago.

And I was asking them this very question, ``How can we determine if the cross-border travelers are committing crime in the United States? Does it all stay in Mexico, where we know there is corruption and violent crime, or does it come over to the United States?''

Well, Sheriff Arvin West gave me this statistic. There are two jails in Hudspeth County, one has a little over 100, and the other one is a private jail of over 500. He said most of the people in both of those jails are foreign nationals.

And I asked him, ``Are these people charged with immigration violations or are they charged with other crimes?'' He said, ``No, they are charged with committing crimes in my county.'' He said, in fact, the jail that has a little over 100, every person in the jail is illegally in the United States except for one person. He said, ``If I didn't have cross-border travelers committing crime in my county, I wouldn't need a jail except for two people, one for a male and one for a female.''

So we do understand that crime is coming into the United States from cross-border travelers because the United States does not enforce the rule of law on the Texas-Mexico border or the southern border of the United States.

The Justice Department has said that 80 percent of the crime in the United States now is drug related or gang related. Newsweek recently reported that Phoenix, Arizona, is the No. 1 kidnapping capital in the United States, and most of it's related to the drug cartels and human trafficking.

Recently Sheriff Arpaio from Maricopa County in Phoenix has been arresting folks that are illegally in the United States pursuant to a Federal program called the 287g Program. Federal funds go to local communities to train local peace officers to enforce immigration violations.

It's been so successful that he's now being investigated by the Federal authorities, not for seeing how successful it is, but to see if he is following the rule of law, because some people who want open borders are complaining about his work. Of course, he says, he welcomes the investigation because maybe the Federal Government could do their job better. But it's important that agencies all work together. We are all in this together.

Even my hometown in Houston is changing its attitude. For years the City of Houston has been accused by some of being a sanctuary city, like San Francisco. It claims it's not a sanctuary city, even though the Center For Immigration Studies says there are over 400,000 illegals in the City of Houston.

So at least 400,000 doesn't make you a sanctuary city, but be that as it may, violence has occurred against our peace officers, Officer James Harris, Officer Andrew Winzer, Officer Florentino Garcia, Officer Guy Gaddis, Officer Rodney Johnson and Officer Gary Gryder, a personal friend of mine. You may not know those names, Mr. Speaker, but those are all Houston police officers killed by foreign nationals, most of them illegally in the country.

As recently as March 5, Officer Richard Salter was trying to arrest an individual with an arrest warrant, and he was shot in the face by that individual. He was an individual from El Salvador who had been through the criminal justice system five times, ordered deported, and apparently he never went back to where he came from or he crossed the border again.

It's important that foreign nationals understand that we will not tolerate crime committed by them in the United States. And it makes no difference whether those people are legally in the United States or illegally in the United States.

You come to America, and you commit a crime, and you are a foreign national, those people need to be sent home first. We need to tell them to pack their toothbrush, you don't have a right to stay in this country. And our government, working with local authorities, ought to do everything it can to send those people back home.

You don't have a right to come here and commit crime and stay here. And we should enforce the rule of law first with those foreign nationals that commit crime in the United States. After all, it is the duty of our government.

The first duty of government is not building roads and bridges and naming a bunch of post offices. The first duty of government is to protect the country, protect the citizens that live here. And the government that we have, the United States of America, needs to enforce the rule of law in this country because that is the duty of government.

And that's just the way it is.