Floor Statements

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

The motion was agreed to; accordingly (at 8 o'clock and 31 minutes p.m.), under its previous order, the House adjourned until tomorrow, Tuesday, March 20, 2012, at 10 a.m. for morning-hour debate.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the University of Arkansas at Little Rock women's basketball team for securing a spot in this year's NCAA basketball tournament.

The game that put them into the tournament was an exciting one. The Lady Trojans came back from a 22-point deficit in the second half against Middle Tennessee and went on to win by one point in overtime.

With Taylor Ford's game-winning shot, the lady Trojans earned their second straight Sun Belt Conference tournament title and their third straight NCAA berth.

Congratulations to the entire UALR community, to Coach Joe Foley for his leadership this championship season, and to the student athletes on this year's team. Thank you all for representing your school, the city of Little Rock, and our great State of Arkansas.

Good luck.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in honor of Arkansas Children's Hospital, which is celebrating 100 years of service to Arkansas' children and families. Since it was founded in 1912 as an orphanage, Children's has grown to become one of the largest pediatric hospitals in the Nation. Children's is the only Level 1 pediatric trauma center in Arkansas, and they provide care to all 75 counties. For the past 3 years, it has been included in Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For.

Medical breakthroughs, intense treatments, unique surgical procedures, and forward thinking have led to Children's international reputation. This is due to Children's more than 4,000 employees.

I congratulate Arkansas Children's Hospital on their contribution to the health and well-being of our children and families, and to Arkansas' economy.

Mr. Speaker, I came here to the floor tonight to talk with some of my colleagues and the American people about what I believe is the most pressing issue facing our country.

A lot of us have been home working in our districts over the last week, seeing our constituents, speaking at local Rotary clubs, visiting with constituents in the office and around the district. It is clear to me that the top priority for the American people over the last year remains the same, and that is jobs. People back home are encouraged and are optimistic about the future, but they need some signs that jobs are increasing here in the United States. Jobs remain the number one issue.

Since I got here a little over a year ago with some of my freshman colleagues, a lot of us have made jobs our sole focus. There are a lot of different things that we can do to encourage job creation. My focus has been on the private sector. Private sector job creation, in my view, is the way that we get our economy going again, not through government stimulus. We've tried that to the tune of about $1 trillion--almost $1 trillion--and it has not done what the President promised.

It seems to me the best approach is to create an environment here in this country where the private sector can flourish, where people want to take risks, where they want to invest and compete with other countries. How do we do that? There are a variety of ways and that's why we're here tonight, to talk about some of these.

I'm joined by some of my colleagues, and I think that they would agree that one of the ways that we can encourage the private sector to grow and create jobs is through fundamental tax reform. Another way is regulatory reform. Job creators around my district tell me what a lot of us know and that is that not regulation but overregulation, not regulation but excessive regulation, is a tax on businesses and it is a tax on job creators. So we need tax reform and we need regulatory reform.

We need to further pursue our energy resources here in the United States. We need to construct, for example, the Keystone XL pipeline that the President first delayed and then denied. Thirdly, we need to further explore our energy resources. Fourthly, we need to live within our means as a government. That means dealing with our spending problem, our spending addiction, our debt, our trillion-plus-dollar deficit.

If you were to ask me what is your plan, what would you do, what are you trying to do, what have you been fighting for over a year to try to encourage the private sector to grow jobs in this country with, I would say tax reform, regulatory reform, increased energy exploration and development here in the United States, and making the Federal Government live within our means. Those four things, if we can address them in bold ways, we can change the course of this country's fiscal situation and the economy and ultimately grow this economy and create jobs.

I'm going to turn now and yield to the gentleman from Virginia if he'd like to comment on some of this.

I would like to comment on something the gentleman just said. I think it is a great point.

A lot of times some of us think about this country and pollution here. I think what I hear you saying--it is a very good point--is that this is one world and we in this country through the processes and the regulatory structure that we have, we burn coal cleaner and we are a better steward of the Earth when it comes to using some of these traditional energy sources. What I hear you saying is--and I think it makes a lot of sense--if you believe that coal will not be used if we do not use it here, then that's not exactly accurate. Somebody is going to burn it. The question is: Do we do a better job with some of these traditional energy sources? Do we do a better job than other countries that will burn it if we don't? The Chinese can burn the same coal, yet regulate it in a way where they do a lot more damage to the environment.

That brings me actually to the Keystone pipeline. The President first delayed it, then he denied it so that the extreme environmentalists would be happy with him. If you apply what you are talking about, it seems to me we would rather be refining the oil sands from Canada in this country instead of the alternative that Canada has talked about, which is shipping it to China for refining. Why? Because we refine cleaner, we refine safer, and we do a better job.

Those oil sands are going to be refined. The issue is not if we don't refine them, no one will. The fact is they will be refined. The issue is do we refine them or do the Chinese refine them? I think what you're saying, and I wholeheartedly agree, we do a better job here.

I want to comment a little bit on the all- of-the-above strategy that you were talking about.

I'm an advocate for an all-of-the-above strategy. We've heard the President mention that, but we here in the House have been advocating for that. I have since I got here. That includes alternate energy sources, renewable energy sources, biodiesel, wind, solar. I'm for those things. But I'm also for the traditional energy sources and, in addition, nuclear. We have a clean, safe nuclear energy plant, power plant in Arkansas that we count on to provide safe, affordable energy. We also have coal plants, other sorts of energy sources.

In my district, we make the windmill blades that go on these massive windmills. We also have Welspun Tubular in my district, in the Second Congressional District of Arkansas, and they've recently been in the news because there has been a lot of uncertainty about their future as a result of the President killing the Keystone pipeline, or denying the permit. The happy news that I have to report is that Welspun is doing some diversifying. They did have to lay some people off after the Keystone pipeline was delayed, but they're doing some diversifying so they can make some other sorts of pipe, and they're actually going to expand. I believe we will ultimately win the battle on the Keystone pipeline; and once we get the Keystone pipeline in full swing, the construction in full swing, then that will further help Welspun.

So I'm for all-of-the-above, but I know that in my lifetime we are still going to be using a lot of these traditional energy sources. It's not an either/or. We can continue to pursue wind and continue to pursue solar and continue to pursue biodiesel and alternate energies, renewable energy sources, but at the same time pursue the traditional sources, particularly, natural gas.

Natural gas is abundant and, best of all, it's American--and, in my case, it's Arkansan. We've got a lot of natural gas in my district and other districts in Arkansas. It is abundant and it is cheap. Where ethanol can increase the wear on a traditional car engine, natural gas can extend the life of that engine.

I want to turn the conversation over to my friend from the Third District of Arkansas, Congressman Steve Womack. He's got a lot of natural gas in his district as well.

Before I do, I just want to recap.

We have jobs as our main goal. And there are pillars under that goal of jobs, and those pillars are: tax reform, regulatory reform, further energy exploration, and getting our spending under control so that we deal with our debt and we live within our means. Those are four pillars. They're not separate from job creation. They are a critical part of encouraging private sector job creation and giving certainty to job creators.

Now I'd like to yield to my friend from Arkansas.

I hear what the gentleman is saying. I agree wholeheartedly. Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're saying is that the issue is not regulation. The issue is excessive regulation. The issue is overregulation.

I've got a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. I love them dearly and hate to get on that plane when I have to come up here from Arkansas and have to leave them back at the house. I want them to have clean air and clean water, and I don't know anyone--the folks here tonight included-- who are against all regulation. Regulation when used properly protects us, the kids, et cetera.

This is not about whether to regulate or not. This is about excessive regulation, overregulation, the regulatory process that does not consider cost-benefit, that does not consider the impact on jobs, that does not employ common sense, Washington regulators who don't speak with folks impacted on the ground, well-intentioned though they may be, who don't look at the impact and at the potential impact of their overregulation. That's what I hear from my colleagues.

I agree wholeheartedly, and I think that is a critical distinction to point out because we always hear folks saying, You just want no regulation.

That's a false choice. That's a straw man. That's not anyone's argument that I've heard. The issue is one of overregulation, of excessive regulation.

I thank my friend from the Third District of Arkansas and appreciate his comments here tonight.

I'd like to continue a little bit tonight talking about tax reform since Representative Womack was talking about some aspects of the President's proposal. I think most of us around here are certainly excited that the President has even started discussing fundamental tax reform. Unfortunately, I think that the President's proposal has a lot of aspects that would be burdensome to the businesses and the job creators that he purports to be trying to help, and so I don't think that it has much chance in the House or the Senate, and I think he knew that when he proposed it. But at least he is having that conversation. That's a start, that's a start.

As we talked about, whether you are talking about tax reform, energy exploration, regulatory reform, our commonsense budgeting, making the Federal Government live within its means, all of those relate to jobs. They all are directly related to encouraging private sector job creation.

We've been working on a highway bill recently. Infrastructure is a critical part of this equation. That's part of the spending our money wisely under the budgeting side of things because we need a strong infrastructure so that we can compete with other countries, continue to have economic development in this country. So that's a critical part of it.

But with regard to the President's tax plan, it raises taxes at least a dollar for every dollar in tax cuts that he provides to simplify the corporate tax code. It creates a whole new category of taxes for our companies that do business overseas.

And most glaringly, it doesn't do anything to address individual tax rates, the tax rates that you pay at home, I pay. And why is that important for job creation? Well, for a number of reasons. First of all, the code we have now is complex. It doesn't always reward hard work. In fact, sometimes it punishes it.

But one of the real specific reasons why we must deal with the individual tax rates to grow jobs is because many businesses pay their taxes, particularly LLCs, sole proprietorships, partnerships, mom and pop businesses all around the country in Arkansas and in my district, they pay their taxes using the individual income tax brackets. So you can't just address corporate tax code, although the President's corporate tax ``reform'' has got a lot of tax hikes in it that will make our businesses, our job creators in this country, less competitive.

But you can't just reform the Tax Code by dealing with corporate tax reform. You've got to look at individual tax reform, corporate tax reform across the board. You have to make it simpler, fairer, and flatter. Some of the terms that we've talked about, we've certainly advocated for that in our budget last year, and we are going to do it again this year.

It's critical, not only for job creation by larger businesses but by small business, mom and pop businesses. So tax reform is a critical part of what we need to do to get jobs going.

As I've talked about earlier, some of my colleagues talked about, there are a number of reforms that we have been pursuing for over a year now that relate directly to private sector job creation.

As I indicated earlier, it's tax reform. It's regulatory reform. It's more energy development. It's living within our means. Individually, these issues may not have jobs in the title, but they are the columns, the supports, that hold up the private sector job building, if you will.

I want to say a couple of things about the regulatory issue because I've just introduced a bill, H.R. 4078, Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act. Again, as a lot of us said, I'm not antiregulation. I don't know anyone that's against regulations across the board. What I'm against is the Federal Government failing to apply common sense when regulating. What I'm against are excessive regulations, overly burdensome regulations.

I'll give you an example. I had a jobs conference down in my district in Little Rock at the Clinton Presidential Library. We had a jobs conference. We invited a number of job creators. It seems to me if you want to know what to do to create private sector jobs or encourage private sector job creation, you'd ask someone who had actually created them, folks from the private sector, experts on this issue. We invited them in and said, Hey, what's the biggest obstacle to job creation? We had Democrats and Republicans both. And we asked them just point blank, and the number one answer was regulatory uncertainty.

What does that mean? Well, it means that folks have money that they might want to invest, but they hold on tight

to that money because they're not quite sure what's going to happen. They're not sure whether we're going to get our debt under control or not. They're not sure how much ObamaCare, the President's health care law, is going to cost them. They're not sure whether the regulations that they've heard proposed by the EPA as potentially being proposed, they're not sure whether those are going to be implemented or not. It's just uncertainty everywhere. And I had someone say to me the other night, Well, there's always uncertainty.

Yes, there is always uncertainty. If you're a farmer, there's uncertainty whether there will be enough rain for the crops that year. There will always be some uncertainty in life because we don't have crystal balls. I get that. But what we don't want is a Federal Government that needlessly creates additional uncertainty.

You know, sometimes we say, I had enough problems before this came along. Well, that's what we're talking about. You have enough to deal with naturally. You have enough uncertainty as it is. You don't need the Federal Government creating more uncertainty.

If you talk to community banks who have been impacted by the President's Dodd-Frank law, they've got a lot of uncertainty. They're having to hire new folks to comply with the law. What are the new regulations going to be? We don't know yet, just know they're coming. Don't know what they're going to be yet, just know they're coming and they're going to be burdensome. The same with the health care law.

Here's a quote from, actually, a well-known Democrat businessman, commissioner on the Arkansas Highway Commission appointed by our Democrat Governor in Arkansas, former chairman of the Arkansas Economic Development Commission, John Burkhalter. He said at my jobs conference:

Every project I look at now, I've got to wonder if I'm

going to get to build it because, are the regulations going

to stop me? I've got to admit that I pass on over 50 percent

of the projects that I would like to do because of the

burden, the hurdle of the regulations.

Now, the President recently said in his State of the Union Address that he has approved fewer regulations in the first 3 years of his Presidency than his Republican predecessor did in his. Well, the President said that, sitting right here on the floor of the House during the State of the Union this year, so I think it deserves some attention.

Well, is that true? If you just look at the numbers, it's true, if you just look at the number of regulations. But if you look at the number of what are called major regulations and the burden that it puts, the cost of the regulations, what this President has done far exceeds what we've seen before.

The previous administration issued an average of 63 major regulations per year. This administration has issued an average of 88, an increase of 40 percent. Under President Bush, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs reviewed an average of 77 economically significant regulations biennially. These are the ones that really impact business. I'm not talking about a minor regulation here or there. We're talking about the ones that really impact job creators. Under President Bush, his Office of Regulatory Affairs reviewed about 77 every 2 years. Under this President, it's 125. Not quite doubled, but not far from it. If the administration maintains its current pace, it would add nearly $150 billion annually in new regulatory costs over 8 years.

I'm going to yield to my friend from Virginia, but before I do, I just want to mention that I have proposed the Regulatory Freeze for Jobs Act, H.R. 4078. What it would do, it would basically freeze the introduction and progression of major regulations, those having an impact of $100 billion or more. It would freeze those with exceptions for emergencies, health issues, what have you. There are exceptions in the bill. But it would freeze them until our unemployment rate gets down to 6 percent to show that we're getting our footing, because what the regulatory environment is doing to our job creators is stifling their ability to create jobs.

I'm going to yield now to my colleague from Virginia.

Sure.

I have heard story after story from small- town bankers, community bankers, who say that not only are they deciding not to loan to folks based on character and based on relationship, but they're being told they can't. They're being told they can't. They are community banks, the sources of credit. The source of money for small-town America are being told who they can and cannot lend to. Their judgment is being taken away from them, and they're saying, Look, you don't have to decide. We're going to regulate that. We'll tell you who you can loan to and who you can't loan to, never mind the fact that you've known them for 20, 30, 40 years, generation after generation. We're going to control this from Washington.

This President talks about his financial reform bill going after Wall Street. Actually, the folks on Wall Street backed it. What it ended up doing is hurting the folks that had nothing to do with the financial collapse in the first place. Small-town community

banks got the brunt of a lot of this because the big banks can afford the extra regulation and compliance. The small banks cannot. So, what the President's bill did is it ignored Fannie and it ignored Freddie-- the problems--and then it went after banks. It made Wall Street happy in many ways. Many of them got on board and endorsed it. And then who took the brunt of the burden, the regulatory burden? Small-town banks. Small-town banks.

I thank the gentleman from Virginia. I know we're running short on time, so I just want to say to the folks listening out there, wherever you may be, these are not new ideas. Some of the ideas you've heard tonight on tax reform, regulatory reform, energy exploration and making the Federal Government live within its means and investing in infrastructure, these are not ideas that just came up this week. You may ask yourself, why haven't we passed these a long time ago? Why haven't we worked on this before? Why are we just talking about it now? We have been for over a year. For over a year we have been working on these issues.

Many of these ideas we've passed. Let's take tax reform. We talked about that in our budget over a year ago--it will be a year, I guess, in April. Regulatory reform, I can't count the number of bills--not including mine, I just introduced mine--but we have passed bill after bill after bill that deals with regulatory reform. What about energy exploration? I literally can't count the number of bills that we've passed that deal with energy exploration, particularly the Keystone pipeline, bill after bill after bill.

If there's any softening in the President's position on the Keystone XL pipeline, you can bet it's because we have been relentless in this House--relentless in this House--pushing the President to allow for the construction of that pipeline. We've got a long way to go, but we'll keep pushing.

On the issue of the budget and living within our means, we've been fighting this battle for over a year. So none of this is brand spanking new. A lot of these ideas we've been fighting for for over a year, and we'll continue to. But we've got to keep talking about them, keep talking about them.

So what's happened after we passed them? Well, a significant number, about 30 or so, have passed this House, and they go right down to the other side of the building, and they sit in the Senate. Many of us grew up in the 1970s and saw the little cartoon, ``Schoolhouse Rock,'' the little bill sitting on the Capitol Hill steps out here somewhere. That little cartoon taught me the fundamentals of our democracy, how a bill becomes law. It passes this House, and then what happens? Well, it has to go down to the Senate.

Unfortunately, they haven't passed a budget out of the Senate in over a thousand days. So you can bet they haven't passed our bills, either. So we've addressed a lot of this stuff. And we're going to keep talking about it and keep pushing and keep pushing. But a lot of it is sitting right down there in the Senate waiting for action, going nowhere. So if you're wondering what's happened to these ideas, that's where they are. And we are continuing to work on them here, continuing to pressure the Senate and the President to try to work with us to get this stuff done, because these pillars--tax reform, regulatory reform, energy exploration, getting the Federal Government to live within its means and having a commonsense budget, and as part of that, addressing our infrastructure issues, all those together, they all relate to jobs. So we'll keep fighting for jobs.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to honor and recognize the life and work of one of my constituents, Mr. Leon Helms, who will retire at the end of this month.

Leon received his B.A. degree from Henderson State University. From 1954 to 1956, he served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army at installations at Nuremburg and Munich in Germany, and Fort Benning, Georgia.

Since that time, Leon has enjoyed a distinguished banking career, spanning 55 years. Leon, a graduate of the National Trust School and the Louisiana State University School of Banking of the South, began his career in the area of personal trust at Commercial National Bank. After this, he spent a number of years at First Commercial Bank where he was manager of the bank and the personal trust administration department.

For the past 11 years, Leon has served as a senior advisor at Delta Trust. His service there has proved instrumental to the growth and success of the trust department.

Leon is also a distinguished member of Arkansas's legal profession. He received his J.D. from the School of Law at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and he is a member of the Arkansas State Bar Association as well as the Pulaski County Bar Association. He was the 2005-2006 President of the Pulaski County Bar Association.

Leon's dedication to his community is demonstrated through his volunteer activity with a number of organizations. He also serves on the boards for the American Lung Association of Arkansas, the Arkansas Lighthouse for the Blind, and the Central Arkansas Estate Council. He also serves on the advisory board of the Jones Eye Institute.

Leon and his wife, Ardith, reside in Little Rock, Arkansas, which is in my Congressional district. It is here that they will enjoy Leon's retirement.

It is an honor to represent Leon, and I congratulate him on his long and distinguished career, on his retirement, and for his dedication to his community and his nation.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 3261.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 919, my battery went out on my beeper, and so it never went off. As a result, I missed the vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Stated against:

I rise in opposition to the motion, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you.

Eleven months ago on the floor of this House, the President of the United States promised the American people to ``reduce barriers to growth and investment. When we find rules that put an unnecessary burden on businesses, we will fix them.''

Those are the words of the President of the United States in this body. I couldn't agree more. That very month, the President issued an Executive order that said, ``Our regulatory system must promote economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation.''

I couldn't agree with the President more. The President said our regulatory system ``must identify and use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends,'' and that it ``must take into account benefits and costs.''

I couldn't agree with the President more. He was right. The President's words were correct. He was right when he spoke here. When our regulatory system doesn't meet this standard--the President's supposed standard--it kills jobs, suppresses economic growth, and locks us ever further into stagnation.

We see the evidence all around us. I recently hosted a jobs conference in Little Rock, in my district, at the President Clinton Library, which brought together a diverse group of over 60 private sector job creators. They were there to discuss how Federal policies affect their ability to succeed in the marketplace. The job creators that I heard from in Little Rock that day overwhelmingly agreed and were of one voice, almost unanimous: the Obama administration's over- regulation of the private sector injects uncertainty into the market, which stifles job creation.

One of my constituents, Susan Gunaca, a constituent of mine who owns a number of International House

of Pancakes restaurants, said this, ``As a business owner today, I am in a constant posture of defense.''

Let me be more specific. Some of the jobs conference participants worked for companies that provide low-cost electricity to Arkansas families and businesses, but even their mission is under siege by the Obama administration's EPA, which is intent on forcing some power plants offline. The compressed timeline for many recently issued regulations requires too much in too short a timeframe for these electricity providers to comply.

Sandra Hochstetter Byrd of the Arkansas Electric Cooperatives put it this way: ``As a for instance, the two most prominent rules, Utility MACT and the Clean Air Visibility Rule, could actually cause us to have to shut down our coal plants if they're not extended.'' If plants get shut down, electricity costs will go up and more jobs will be lost.

We will not sit idly by and watch as this administration kills jobs in Arkansas or in any other State in this great country. The President hasn't been to Arkansas in a long, long time; but I would be happy to show him the impact of over-regulation firsthand.

Republicans in Congress took the President at his word on regulatory reform to heart. We said, Hey, you're right, Mr. President. We're going to do something about it. We saw the evidence of overly burdensome regulations all around us. So what did we do? We got to work. We wrote a bill, the Regulatory Accountability Act, to reform a regulatory system so that it does exactly what the President said it should do.

We built the bill on the very terms of President Obama's Executive order. It calls on agencies to consider the benefits and the costs before they regulate. It calls on agencies to use the best reasonably available science. It calls on agencies to ``use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends.'' And it does so while ensuring that agencies will achieve every single statutory objective Congress sets before them.

Recognizing the soundness and goodwill of this effort, several of our Democratic colleagues joined us to cosponsor this bill. A bipartisan group of Senators introduced companion legislation in the Senate.

It's time to adopt this legislation. It's time for the President to match his actions to his words by signing this bill.

But today, when this legislation comes before us, we hear a different story from too many on the other side of the aisle. When legislation comes to the floor of this House that will at one and the same time protect the American public and free business from unnecessary shackles on job creation, we hear a different tune.

When it's time to really take action to help America's job creators, many of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle run from their responsibilities to protect a regulatory status quo that is killing job creation as we speak. Mr. Speaker, if you want to know how to create jobs, then just ask job creators. If you want to know what's stifling job growth, ask the job creators. They know. It's their job to know. They will tell you to pass this bill now.

When we have the opportunity to pass regulatory reform, President Obama shows his true colors: All talk, and no action. What a shame. He threatens to veto a bill that is built directly on the terms of his own executive order on regulation. He threatens to veto the very bill that would make his own words permanent for the benefit of the Nation.

And this political motion to recommit is laid before us in an attempt to assure that the President doesn't have to do what he promised. And it makes no sense because our bill addresses the precise issue of reducing drug costs raised by the minority.

Luckily, the majority of this House will vote to pass this bill. I urge all of my colleagues to support this bill, reject this motion to recommit, and show America that Congress can act for the good of job creators and the Americans who desperately want those jobs.

Mr. Speaker, I have joined some of my colleagues here tonight to talk about the most pressing issue in this country, which is job creation, private sector job creation and what we need to do to get our country back on the path to prosperity and job growth.

I had a jobs conference in the Second Congressional District, my district, down in Arkansas in Little Rock a couple of weeks ago. We held it at the Clinton Library. It really was an extension of the 25 or so town halls that I've had this year in that we talked a lot about jobs. And I thought that a jobs conference would be a good idea because who better to ask about job creation than job creators. So we had five panels, over 60 panelists, and I wanted to hear from the job creators in the Second Congressional District. I asked them two main questions: What are the obstacles that you face in creating jobs, and what opportunities do you see?

As I indicated earlier, this was really an extension of what I've been talking to constituents about for the 9 months I've been in office, and even before that. I expected I would hear answers to those questions consistent with what I have heard in town halls, in meetings in my office, and throughout the year, and I wasn't surprised.

What I heard from the over 60 panelists that gathered at the Clinton Library in Little Rock a couple of weeks ago, what I heard was uncertainty is the number one obstacle to job creation in this country--uncertainty. Now, I've heard that word used a lot since I've been here. I heard it a lot last year when I was traveling around my district before I ever came to Congress. And it was pretty clear, has been pretty clear to me, and still is, that uncertainty is the biggest problem we face.

The job creators that gathered in Little Rock at the jobs conference were from the manufacturing industry, energy industry, health care, retail, financial services, aerospace, infrastructure, construction, real estate, you name it, agriculture. We had folks from all across the spectrum, and they all indicated that uncertainty is the biggest obstacle to job creation.

What kind of uncertainty were they talking about? Well, the number one type of uncertainty cited by job creators was regulatory uncertainty. They indicated at the conference, this jobs conference, that, number one, in many instances they know new regulations are coming, but they have no idea what they're going to be. So they have no idea whether they're going to be able to comply with those by spending a little extra money, no extra money, or a whole lot.

They're also concerned about regulations that are floated. They're floated out by the agencies as a potential regulation that may or may not be implemented. And those sorts of regulations give these job creators great pause because they don't know whether they're going to have to comply with them. And it's not just one agency and it's not just one industry.

I will say that the EPA's name came up more than any other. The job creators made it very clear that there are a number of regulations coming out of the Federal agencies that they are concerned about, and the EPA has issued a number of regulations and some that are yet to be enacted that these job creators were very concerned about.

I heard from the panelists the common theme that they're not against regulations. We've always had regulations, at least since I've been around, and we're going to continue to have regulations. And we need reasonable regulations to keep our water and air clean. I have a 4- year-old and a 19-month-old, and I want them to have a clean and safe environment. But we're not talking about just regulations, reasonable regulations; we're talking about excessive, overly burdensome regulations that in some cases require such drastic steps to comply that they just run people out of business. We've dealt with a lot of those here in the House trying to reverse some of the stuff coming out of the administration.

I heard from our energy industry, the energy corporations and the electric cooperatives--some of the panelists represented those companies--and they indicated if some of the EPA rules are implemented as they have been proposed, they could result in the shutting down of several power plants in Arkansas, with a potential impact of raising energy costs 25 percent. Now, these same panelists said, Look, we're not necessarily against this sort of regulation, the sort of regulation they're referring to, but the time frame for compliance is so short that there's no way, it's almost humanly impossible for them to comply with some of the EPA's mandates. So we heard a lot about the EPA, but not just the EPA. HHS, the Department of Labor, many other agencies here in Washington put out regulations often with no or little regard to the impact those regulations are going to have on the folks back in my district and around the country.

So regulatory uncertainty was specifically identified as an obstacle to job creation in this country. In addition to regulatory uncertainty, there's uncertainty over the health care law. Is the health care law even going to be implemented or not? Certainly I voted to repeal the health care law that passed in the last Congress. I think we need health care reform, but not the health care reform we got. Now the courts are looking at the health care law and there's a good chance in some folks' opinion and my opinion that the Supreme Court might strike the individual mandate portion of the President's health care law, the health care law that we have now. So there's a lot of uncertainty surrounding that.

There's also uncertainty over our fiscal situation. The President had a perfect opportunity to lead after his bipartisan debt commission came out with some recommendations. I don't agree with all of them, but it was a good place to start.

But instead, right after they came out with their recommendations late last year, early this year the President came out with his budget--no reform of Medicare to save it, no reform of Social Security to save it, no reform of Medicaid, just keep on spending. So we missed an opportunity there.

But the debt is a part of that uncertainty. The debt impacts our currency valuation, and it impacts our markets. You don't have to look far. Just look at what's going on in Europe. It's sort of like you're looking in a crystal ball, and what's going on in Europe is potentially--not identical--but potentially, in some regards, our future. That's where we're headed--more uncertainty.

So, it was very clear, after listening to all of these job creators, that the problem is not that the Federal Government hasn't spent enough money. We've spent $1 trillion on the last stimulus at a cost of about $300,000 per job.

Discretionary spending has gone up 84 percent under this administration. I don't think, in fact, I know, that spending is not the problem. It's the uncertainty that the job creators addressed. So what we're going to talk about here tonight is what we've been doing for the last 9 months to address the uncertainty on regulations with regard to the debt and our spending, and with regard to our Tax Code so that we can remain competitive.

What have we been doing here in this body, in the majority in the House, to address the uncertainty that I think, beyond dispute, is the biggest obstacle to job creation in this country? And I'm citing the job creators of my district. We've been doing a whole lot over the last 10 months. We passed a lot of legislation. I think we've had about 800 votes. Unfortunately, a lot of those good ideas are stacking up like cordwood over in the U.S. Senate. We pass it, send it down to them, and they stack it up. That's the way it's worked for the last 10 months or so.

I am happy to be joined by my colleagues here. I thought we'd talk a little bit about the different things that we passed that the American people would have heard a lot more about if they had been acted upon and become law. But most folks don't hear a lot about them because they go down to the other end of the building and they just sit there like that little bill sitting on Capitol Hill that some of us grew up with as a cartoon. It's just a bill, it's not a law.

I am happy to have my friends join me here tonight on the floor to talk about jobs and what we've been doing in the House over the last 10 months.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

If I can mention one thing, on the issue of the debt, we don't have to solve it overnight. We didn't get in this mess overnight, and we certainly aren't going to solve it overnight. But I sort of analogize it to going on a trip. If you're going to travel from Arkansas to Washington, D.C., you don't have to get there instantly, but you need to have a roadmap. You need to know where you're going, and everybody in the car needs to have confidence that the person driving is taking you in the right direction. If you're driving from Little Rock to Washington and you start seeing signs that say ``L.A. 100 miles ahead,'' you're going to wake up everybody and figure out what happened.

So we don't need to deal with this debt overnight, but we need a credible plan that brings us back to balance, that brings us to a sustainable path and that gives people confidence--not confidence that it's going to be fixed immediately, but confidence that the path we're on will eventually get us back to where we need to be.

I yield to my friend.

I thank the gentleman from New York for his thoughts. Before I yield to my friend from Wisconsin, I'd like to just revisit some of what you said.

We've identified the problem as uncertainty. I think we're all confident of that based on talking to our constituents and job creators. And we, over the last 9 months, have passed a number of bills that support the different aspects of our plan to get this country moving again and creating jobs.

Number one, fundamental tax reform. We need it on the individual side; we need it on the corporate side.

Regulatory reform. We have passed countless bills that reform the regulatory process or address specific regulations.

And dealing with the debt. We've been trying to raise the issue of spending and overspending--and have raised it successfully numerous times over the last 9, 10 months. We haven't been able to do as much as we'd like; we are just one body here in the House. But dealing with the spending and forcing the Federal Government to live within its means has been and continues to be a priority.

And also, what the gentleman from New York mentioned, is the importance of energy exploration and energy development to our national security, because we want to depend on our own energy sources or at least on our friends in Canada; but it's also very important in terms of job creation. The energy development that we could have in this country could create up to, some say, at a minimum, 1 million jobs.

I was watching a new show on the networks last night, on NBC, and they had a whole segment on what's going on in North Dakota with some of the shale drilling and how there are just tens and hundreds of jobs waiting to be filled in this country, in that part of our country, because of energy exploration.

So tax reform, regulatory reform, dealing with the debt so that we can invest in infrastructure, which is so important to economic development and energy development, those are critical.

And if you want to talk about a jobs plan or what have you, or jobs bills--it's not jobs bill; it's jobs bills. We've been passing jobs bills since January. In fact, as I indicated before, they're piling up like cord wood in the Senate.

I yield to my friend from Wisconsin.

I thank the gentleman.

Before I yield to my friend from Colorado, I just want to follow up on a few issues. We call the jobs-related bills that we've passed here that will help the private sector grow the forgotten 15 because these are the bills that made their way down to the Senate and just sat there. The only problem with that is it's not 15 anymore; it's 16 or 17 or 18. And they're not one bill. It's more complex than that. They're plural.

There are a number of jobs bills, a few of them: the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act, H.R. 872; the Energy Tax Prevention Act, H.R. 910; Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, H.R. 1230; Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act, H.R. 1229. These are all related to job creation, getting the private sector creating jobs again, and the list goes on and on.

Now, one of those is the North American-Made Energy Security Act, H.R. 1938. Now, this bill is also just sitting in the Senate. It passed the House July 26 of this year.

Now, we're up here talking about bills and legislation and what have you, but speaking for me, and I think I can speak for my colleagues here, we're talking about bills and legislation and laws, but ultimately we're talking about policies that will allow folks who are hurting back in our districts who

have been out of work--we're talking about how bills that have passed into law would help job creation, which will help those folks who are still looking.

I'll give you a specific example.

There's a company called Wells Fund in Little Rock. And they make massive pipe. And they're talking about expanding. Well, what are they waiting on, or what is one of the things that they're looking at that is a potential obstacle? They make the pipe for the Keystone pipeline. Why are they in Little Rock? Because they're right there at the port of Little Rock. So they can really haul a lot of steel in those barges, and they've got a huge high-tech, state-of-the-art facility. It's an Indian-based company, lots of jobs right there. They want to expand, they want to create more jobs. They're building up that pipe.

And we've got an administration that's not sure how they feel about the Keystone pipeline that's going to allow for more energy to come from our neighbors through the north instead of from around the world? They're not sure about the Keystone pipeline that will create energy- related jobs right here in the United States?

Where I come from, the Keystone pipeline's a no-brainer. That means you don't even have to think about it. And now I read actually a few minutes ago, I got a news clip that the President now has decided that he's going to make the ultimate decision on the Keystone pipeline. If I was making that decision, I'd take about 2 seconds. It's absolutely critical that we build this both for national security and for energy here at home in terms of jobs.

Now, on the issue of regulations, I want to touch on it real quickly before I pass to my good friend from Colorado.

At my jobs conference that we had a couple of weeks ago, senior vice president Ken Kimbro of Tyson Foods--we've all heard of Tyson. My kids and I, we love the chicken. We've all heard of Tyson. Ken Kimbro, senior vice president, says this about regulations in general: ``I understand the intended consequences of regulations, but it seems like we turn a blind eye to the unintended consequences of what that's going to mean to us in Arkansas, our industry, to the State of Arkansas, and to the jobs that support everything that we do. And it seems to be lost in an academic exercise without the consequence of what's going to happen. And we face it across the full spectrum of government agencies, and it's terribly frustrating because we all want to do the right thing.''

Now, on the regulatory front, he's identified the problem.

I had another panelist who owns ten International House of Pancake restaurants. I love them. I like to eat breakfast there. Here's what she said, ``As a business owner today, I am in a constant posture of defense.'' Is that what we want? We want job creators in a constant posture of defense?

So I just want to put in a plug. I have just introduced a bill called the Job Creation and Regulatory Freeze Act. It's somewhat similar to a bill introduced on the Senate side by Susan Collins of Maine, and it puts a moratorium on all major regulations coming out of this administration until January of 2013. And my colleague on the Senate side, hers is for a year. I didn't think a year was sufficient because at the end of that year the administration could just implement regulations that are waiting.

So I say let's take it through January to Inauguration Day of 2013 because this administration has not gotten the message on overregulation.

This bill would stop major regulations being implemented, new ones, until 2013.

I yield to the gentleman from New York.

In fact, on the Keystone bill that I mentioned, H.R. 1938, that was passed on July 26, 2011, the North American-Made Energy Security Act, looks like there were 47 Democrats that joined with us on that bill. Many of our Democrats joined us in a bipartisan effort.

But again, stacking up like cordwood on the steps of the Senate.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I thank the gentleman from Colorado. I just want to make a few points, and then I'll yield to the gentleman, my good friend from Wisconsin.

First of all, I want to make clear that the number of the bill that I have just introduced, the Job Creation and Regulatory Freeze Act, is

I thank the gentleman, I thank all my friends for being here tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

I've been listening here on the floor today, and I heard some folks mention the need for action on the issue of jobs. I agree. Some of them said, hey, there hasn't been much action. There has been a lack of action, I think was the quote that I heard here on the floor earlier. I'd like to talk about that a little bit.

There has been a lot of action on the issue of jobs in the House. When folks talk about the Congress, they sort of group the House and the Senate together. I understand that, but the House and the Senate are two separate bodies, and the leadership in the House and the leadership in the Senate have two different visions of where this country ought to go.

As it relates to the House, there has been a lot of action. We've passed about 90 bills in the House this year. During that same timeframe, the Senate passed 20. A lot of those bills that we've passed here in the House directly relate to the issue of job creation and in helping our country get back on its feet.

Many of us understand that government is not the key job creator in this country. The private sector creates jobs, and the government can make things better or make things worse for job creators. My hope is that we're working to make things better--to create an environment where the private sector can then flourish, can innovate, can advance, and create jobs.

Now let's talk about the action here in the House.

We've got a number of bills that we've passed that relate to job creation, bills that were then taken down to the other side of this building and given to the Senate. That's where they rest. They're just sitting there. A lot of us grew up in the seventies. We remember ``Schoolhouse Rock.'' We remember that little bill sitting on Capitol Hill. That bill can't become a law unless it passes this House, the Senate, and then the President signs it. Well, that little bill was passed out of here. It's waiting on the Senate to do something about it, that little jobs bill, and there's a whole host of them down there with it. Let me mention a few of them.

First and foremost, when we got here in January, we voted to repeal ObamaCare, the health care law that recently passed. Why did we do that? Because it is a source of angst, uncertainty, out-of-control government spending, and excessive regulation the likes of which this country has never seen before. We voted to repeal that on the first day of the first week back. The first week we got here we sent that over to the Senate, and they didn't pass it.

We passed H.R. 872, the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act. No Senate action.

We passed the Energy Tax Prevention Act to block some of the EPA's controversial excessive regulations. No action on that.

We passed H. Res. 72, asking our House committees to inventory regulations and look for places we can trim them back, reform them and save. No action like that in the Senate.

H.R. 1230, Restarting American Offshore Leasing Now Act, a bill, along with several others that we passed, to encourage energy exploration. No action in the Senate.

The Putting the Gulf of Mexico Back to Work Act. No action in the Senate.

Reversing President Obama's Offshore Moratorium Act. No action in the Senate.

We can go on and on and on.

One of those things that we passed here that the Senate hasn't passed is a budget--a fundamental document for managing one's finances. We passed one here. They haven't had a budget in the Senate for, I think, about 2 years now. For 888 days, no budget in the Senate.

So we've done a lot here in the House. Congress as a whole hasn't acted on a lot of this stuff, but we've done our part, and we've sent it down to the other side of the building, to the Senate. We're waiting for action on many pieces of critical legislation that can help this country get back to job creation.

I would now like to yield to my friend from Illinois.

Reclaiming my time, I just want to point out that in Arkansas the President predicted that the stimulus would create 30,000 jobs. I think, in the end, the government funded about 4,800 jobs at a cost of around $300,000 per job.

Now, if someone would've just given me the checkbook, I could have created more jobs writing people checks and could have saved people all the work. I mean, the idea that you create jobs at $300,000 a job is just unbelievable.

I thank the gentleman from Illinois. It's stimulus, the sequel.

I would just like to point out that you made a really good point. The government is not going to be the answer in terms of creating jobs. The government can help create an environment where the private sector can innovate, can grow, and can create jobs. We can assist by creating an environment in a country where businesses and job creators flourish, and that's what we want do.

I yield now to the gentlelady from Alabama.

I thank the gentlelady from Alabama.

I would say, when I sit down and meet with constituents, whether it be here or back home in Little Rock, one of the complaints that I hear the most is that Federal Government continues to over-regulate, continues to burden us with regulations that are excessive, that just don't make sense, and they're implementing them without checking with the folks that they're going to most impact, or ignoring the folks that they will most impact.

There are a number of agencies that are doing that. We hear a lot about the EPA, but it's not just the EPA. You can just go right down the list of Federal agencies and they're issuing new regulations, many of which are almost impossible to comply with.

Today we voted on the concrete MACT and the boiler MACT legislation to help prohibit, to prohibit the EPA from implementing some of these harmful rules. And I can just tell you, talking to folks back in my district, these rules will have a specific impact on them. It will cost them millions of dollars to implement; and ultimately, it costs jobs.

I yield to the gentlelady from Alabama.

That's the real impact that these rules will have if they're implemented. I would like to say, before I yield to the gentleman from New York, these regulations continue. It's almost every week there's a new one. I don't think anyone here is against regulation. This is not an issue

of do we regulate or not. Of course we need regulations. We need commonsense regulations that protect Americans.

What we're talking about are excessive regulations. What we're talking about is an unprecedented growth of regulations over the last few years that are stifling and crushing business.

One thing I'll mention with regard to health care, businesses aren't just concerned about the regulations that exist. They're concerned about the regulations that are in the pipeline that they haven't seen yet because it adds uncertainty to doing business. So a business may have some money set aside that they want to invest and expand their factory and they want to hire new people, but they don't yet know what the impact of the recently passed health care law is going to be. So they put that money aside and they sit on it.

I've had constituent after constituent tell me that if this health care law that recently passed is fully implemented, it will have a devastating impact on my business, and we will start paying an additional $100,000 or $200,000 or $300,000, or whatever the amount is, for that particular business. So they're putting money aside waiting to see what they'll have to spend to comply with this new law.

The same situation with Dodd-Frank and a lot of the new financial regulations. There was a gentleman speaking earlier. He talked about small businesses needing access to credit. Well, let me tell you, the Dodd-Frank bill is part of the problem. If you really wanted to inspire confidence in job creators, the President ought to call a press conference today and say he's going to do everything he can to repeal his two big mistakes--ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank. That would give job creators a shot of confidence, and I guarantee you the markets would respond likewise.

I now yield to the gentleman from New York.

I thank the gentleman from New York. I will in a minute yield some time to the gentleman from Michigan, but I want to first yield some time to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

Reclaiming my time, what you have just described is the fact that we can't mandate companies to come back to the United States. We can't mandate companies to invest in the United States. We have to attract them. We have to create an environment where they want to do business, and we've got to create an environment where they want to invest. We want people to look at the United States and say, that's the only place in the world to do business, that's where I want to create jobs, that's where I want to innovate, and that's where I want to invest. And as you say, a lot of the rules that we've set up have run folks off. So they're creating jobs, but they're creating them somewhere else.

I yield to the gentlelady from Alabama.

I would like to now yield quickly to our friend from the other side of the aisle who has joined us, the gentleman from Michigan.

Thank you for joining us here on the floor today. We appreciate it very much.

I now yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I yield to the gentlelady from Alabama.

I would like to say a few things, if I could, about the President's so-called jobs bill.

We've heard about the desire for bipartisanship. We've heard about the desire to work together and find common ground. Well, not too long ago, the President visited us here in the House. He spoke from the podium and he talked about his new jobs bill. Well, he didn't talk about finding common ground. He didn't really talk about meeting us halfway, finding areas we could agree on. He just said, Pass my bill; pass it as it is. Then he ran around the country saying, Pass my bill; pass it as it is. Well, at that time there wasn't even a bill here in the House to pass. And when we finally did get the text of it, we saw that it certainly didn't reflect bipartisan agreement, certainly didn't reflect meeting halfway. It was stimulus 2, stimulus the sequel, and we know how ineffective the first stimulus was.

I'm here to work with other folks, find areas where we can agree and move forward. But there hasn't been a shortage of bills and legislation passed in this House. As we talked about earlier, we've passed bill after bill after bill that will help create an environment in this country where the private sector will want to do business and grow jobs.

When the President's bill finally got here, the so-called jobs plan, we found out there are not even enough Democrats to pass it in the Senate. I see just a few minutes ago the Republican leader in the Senate wanted to have an immediate vote on the President's jobs bill, and he has been blocked. He has been blocked by the Democrat majority leader in the Senate. He doesn't want to allow a vote on the President's jobs bill. I suspect that has something to do with the fact that most of the Democrats over there aren't going to vote for it either. They didn't just get here. They were around when the last stimulus passed and they realize how ineffective it was. And so the President can't even convince his own party to support his so-called jobs bill.

I think at the end of the day we can agree here that we want to pass legislation that will help the private sector grow and create jobs, no question. No question. We've passed a number of those here, and we're willing to work on more. What we need is the Senate to actually take up some of the stuff that we've passed, because I'll just say this: I've talked to a lot of job creators in the Second Congressional District of Arkansas, which is basically central Arkansas, with Little Rock at the core, and a lot of them, they have money to invest and expand and create jobs, but they're holding on to it. Why? Because they're uncertain about the future. They don't have confidence in the direction of this country. They're worried.

So businesses, job creators do what families do. They hold tightly to their money, save up, hoping that things will get better, hoping that they will gain some confidence in the direction of the country so that they can then spend that money to expand a plant and hire more people and what have you.

So what makes them uncertain? What makes them worried? Well, what I hear is overregulation, the need for tax reform so that we can be competitive with other countries, the health care bill that passed last year. That's got a bunch of folks worried because they don't know what the impact is going to be. The Dodd-Frank bill is absolutely killing our small town community banks that are a critical source of credit for small businesses and families. They're worried to death. All of this stuff. And let's not leave out the debt.

People are concerned about the debt because the national debt affects the markets. It affects interest rates. It affects the value of our currency. And folks see what's going on in Europe and they say, man, if we don't get this under control, we're next.

All of that, all of those different concerns, those worries, add to the uncertainty.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I think you were there yesterday when we had a visit from some folks in the cement/concrete industry. I was taught yesterday the difference between cement and concrete. Cement is what we use to create concrete. And he sat there, and he said, Look, I've got a lot of employees. I want to hire more. I want to grow. But this regulation, this Cement MACT regulation is going to kill a lot of our businesses because it's going to set a standard way beyond the European standard, and it's going to set a regulatory standard that our businesses cannot meet no matter how much they spend. I think he mentioned that one company had spent $20 million trying to comply, trying to tighten up their operations to meet some of these regulations. He even said, This regulation is so stringent, you can't even measure what the EPA is trying to achieve. It's beyond our ability to measure.

It's not that these guys are against regulations. He said in our meeting, We've been regulated for years. We're going to continue to be regulated, and we're cool with that. We get that. We understand that. But this type of regulation will put us out of business, and the only people making cement will be elsewhere. He said, The cement business is growing big time in China, and to compete, we've got to have commonsense regulation.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I yield now to the gentleman from New York.

Get things done.

I appreciate it.

I yield to the gentleman from Wisconsin.

I thank the gentleman.

I yield to the gentleman from Kansas.

Can I interject that overregulation kills jobs?

I thank the gentleman.

I want to use a little analogy and have a little fun here for a second.

If you have two runners and they're lined up ready to race and one runner is simply going to run straight to the finish line and the other runner has to run through an obstacle course, who do you think is going to win? I think we would all agree that the one who's just going to run straight, not going to have to jump over anything, not going to have to swim or climb a rope or whatever, go through tires, just run straight to the finish line, that runner is going to have a big advantage over the other runner. The other runner is going to have to climb a rope, go over a wall, go through the tires, do all the things that you do in an obstacle course.

The obstacle course, that's regulation. We need basic, fundamental regulation to keep us safe, keep our kids safe. I understand that. But that shows you what we're dealing with. You've got some countries who have little or no regulations, so their runners are just running down that track straight, unimpeded. We're putting up walls for ours, and then we wonder, Why can't we compete? Why aren't people investing? Why aren't they creating jobs in the private sector? Well, it has a lot to do with Washington, DC., my friend.

I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

I would make a quick point on that if I could.

Some folks who want to invest, they've had the dream all of their life to create a small business, a little shop, maybe it's a bike shop, but to create that business. A lot of them are going to look at the metaphorical race, see the obstacles, and refuse to enter the race.

I thank the Speaker, and I thank the gentlemen for joining me tonight here on the floor.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

``If America sits on the sidelines while other nations sign trade deals, we will lose the opportunity to create jobs on our shores.'' That was President Obama, President Obama in January of 2010, recognizing the importance of trade agreements to creating jobs in the United States.

Today, the President finally submitted to Congress, over a year and a half later, he finally submitted to Congress three critical trade agreements for our approval. Because of what these trade agreements mean for job creators, this is welcome news. But the fact that these three trade agreements, one of which was signed nearly a half decade ago, have been stalled for so long cannot go unnoticed.

Korea, the Korean trade agreement was signed on June 30, 2007. But that South Korean agreement is not the only one. The one with Panama was signed in June of 2007, and the one with Colombia, November of 2006.

President Obama even stated on July 8 of 2011 and during his August tour through the Midwest that all three of the trade agreements would be law by now if it weren't just for that obstructionist Congress. He said that the deals

are something ``Congress could do right now.'' Well, that's not true. It wasn't true then. We couldn't pass the agreements because they were still on his desk waiting to be sent to Congress. Well, we're glad they're here now, and we will join the President in moving quickly on these agreements.

While we have waited on President Obama to act on these long-pending, job-creating export agreements, our foreign competitors--Europe and Canada, in particular--are rapidly increasing their market share and cultivating relationships with trading partners in those countries while American businesses sit on the sidelines.

Make no mistake: More American exports mean more American jobs.

In my home State of Arkansas and in the Second Congressional District, these trade agreements will be very helpful for job creation. Arkansas unemployment is above 8 percent, and we need pro-job creation policies in Washington to stop that from going even higher. We need pro-American export policies to sell more of our products overseas so that Arkansans get the jobs and our manufacturers and farmers get the business.

The three pending export agreements with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea will increase U.S. exports and will create over 250,000 new jobs. Right now, more than 320,000 Arkansas jobs depend on exports, and these agreements will only increase that number. Full implementation of the South Korea trade agreement alone could generate more than 2,500 new jobs in Arkansas.

Manufacturing exports are the strongest part of Arkansas' economy. Exports directly support 14 percent of Arkansas' manufacturing jobs, and 66,000 total jobs in all sectors of the economy are supported by manufactured goods exports.

Since 2003, Arkansas manufacturing exports rose twice as fast as the State's overall economy. Seventy-seven percent of Arkansas exporters are small businesses. And, in fact, Arkansas exported over $2 billion of manufactured goods to free trade partners in 2010. That's 45 percent of Arkansas' total. That number will only continue to grow with the approval of these agreements.

These agreements are critical not only to the country at large, but to Arkansas in particular. With 95 percent of the world's consumers outside the United States, we now need to give American businesses the opportunity to build stronger trade ties with countries seeking our goods and services, the best goods and services in the world.

Now that the President has finally sent the three pending export agreements to Congress, we can pass them and help American companies compete and create jobs.

I am confident that Congress will act quickly to approve these important bills.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 2218, the Empowering Parents Through Quality Charter Schools Act.

This bill strikes close to home for me and my district in Arkansas where one charter school program, the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, as it is called, has had a profound impact on the lives of its students and their families.

In one of the poorest cities in America, the town of Helena-West Helena has instituted a charter school that empowers students from high poverty communities to develop the character, knowledge, and skills necessary to follow their dreams and, more importantly, learn to value a life in pursuit of knowledge and truth.

KIPP students go above and beyond what is required; and for that, our country is a better place. These students have their parents and teachers to thank. They are always accessible and always committed to their education and their well-being. The KIPP approach shows that high standards overcome the obstacles created by socioeconomics and circumstances, as evidenced by KIPP Delta's first graduating class, 100 percent of which now attend college, and the establishment of a new KIPP school in Blytheville, Arkansas.

I urge my colleagues to pass this bill so children and their families all across the country have the opportunity to empower their own lives, their families, and their communities.

I thank the chairman for yielding me time.

Mr. Speaker, when I announced and wanted to run for Congress, my focus primarily was on the debt, on the issue of the debt and the impact that the debt was going to have on my daughter and my little boy. My daughter, Mary Katherine, is sitting with me right here today for this historic day. It's critically important to me. And a lot of the folks back home that I hear from, when they contact me, they contact me about the debt and about spending.

Now I came up here to do something about it, and I have been watching this debate closely, and I have been a supporter of the Speaker both on the plan last week, and I am a supporter of the agreement that is going to come before us today. Is it perfect? Absolutely not. Is it great? Absolutely not. It is good? It's a good first step.

I would say this: If a President and a Senate that I agreed with put this type of plan forward, I would reject it out of hand.

If a deal, an agreement like this, came from a President with which I generally agree, and a Senate with which I generally agreed, I would reject it out of hand. But that's not what we have. We have divided government. We have this Chamber controlled by a different vision for America.

So I believe this is about as good as we are going to get, and I am supporting it because it is consistent with my principles. There are no tax increases. It controls spending now, controls spending in the future, and allows us to vote on a balanced budget amendment.

These are all things that I can support. These are the principles that we have been fighting for over the last few months. And I would say this: If this were the only step ever in dealing with the debt, I would vote ``no,'' but it's not.

It's only the beginning. We didn't get in this mess with one bill or one piece of legislation. It took a long time and a lot of votes, and it's going to take a long time and a lot of battles to get out of it. And this is a good first step.

Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore

I have an amendment at the desk.

Offered By: Mr. Griffin of Arkansas

Amendment No. 58: Page 10, line 21, insert after the dollar

amount the following: ``(increased by $3,000,000)''.

Page 65, line 19, insert after the dollar amount the

following: ``(reduced by $3,000,000)''.