Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, this Sunday, September 25th, is American Gold Star Mothers' Day. This important day honors not only fallen patriots, but the grieving families they left behind.

Throughout our America's history, brave men and women have left their mothers and fathers to take up arms in defense of this Nation and its ideals. Sadly, many of these heroes never return home. Although our nation will be forever grateful of their ultimate sacrifice, too often we do not remember the sacrifice of their families, especially mothers, who are left behind.

For over 75 years, the American Gold Star Mothers organization has stood strong in support of mothers who have lost their children in service to this country. Serving as a support group and a service organization, American Gold Start Mothers, Inc is a shining example of American compassion and strength. I am thankful to have an American Gold Star Mothers' chapter in Wichita, tirelessly serving and supporting one another in south-central Kansas.

This Sunday, I hope we can all take a moment to remember the sacrifices made for this country and say a prayer for the families that were left behind. I know that it is not natural for a parent to experience the loss of a child. They deserve our love, support and gratitude. We will never forget those who served and those who lost.

May God bless America, and may God bless our Gold Star Mothers.

Madam Speaker, I will spend some time this afternoon talking about how we can keep and create jobs in America. For almost two centuries the American economy has been the envy of the world. With its dynamic, hardworking, motivated workforce America has truly been the land of opportunity where innovation has thrived. But that status is changing.

We are now running a $670 billion annual deficit that is contributing to our Federal budget deficit, and it has slowed our economy over the past few years. This development is not a temporary blip on the radar screen. It is the culmination of a generation of increased regulations, unsound tax policies, languishing emphasis on math and science, education, unchecked health care costs, rampant lawsuit abuse, unfocused research and development funds, and a weak trade policy enforcement system.

In short, our government has made it difficult and less desirable to keep businesses in America. Over the past generation we have put up roadblocks to keeping and creating jobs in America. If these current trends continue, our economy will continue to lag and will no longer remain the most dynamic economy in the world.

Meanwhile, countries like China and other nations are preparing for the future. They are educating their students in math, science and technology and pumping out record numbers of engineers. They are reducing tax rates and other economic barriers to entice investments into their nations. These countries are pursuing aggressive trade policies to reduce America's economic dominance in world trade.

Some of the examples are Ireland. Ireland has shifted from a Third World nation of Western Europe to the envy of the European Union largely due to its tax policies. The Celtic tiger has lowered its corporate tax rate to 12\1/2\ percent, stimulating the economy and creating jobs.

India was languishing under a burden of a socialist government; but now through their concerted effort to reduce regulations, they have stimulated their economy.

China currently graduates more English-speaking electrical engineers than America does. Their focus on education, especially math and science and technology, is allowing China to build their own Silicon Valley and attract the world's technological business to their doors.

Brazil has achieved what some believe to be a pipe dream. They are projected to be completely energy self-sufficient in a couple of years. It took them years to develop renewable energy sources, but now they are the leaders in ethanol production, and their economy is not suffering from the current high crude oil prices.

Chile is becoming an economic leader in Latin America by breaking down the barriers and doing business in their nation. Their emphasis on signing free trade agreements has been very fruitful. Last year they signed free trade agreements with the United States and with South Korea. They are currently in negotiations with China, India, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Australia; and they will continue to thrive.

For these reasons, these nations and other world economies are poised to move ahead of the United States in the next decade. In fact, the 2005 Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage

Foundation ranks the United States 13th in the world. For the first time in 3 years we are not in the top 10 in the world in this measurement. This is due both to other nations' progress and economic competitiveness, as well as our own barriers to a thriving economy. Without attention to these matters, the United States is headed towards a third-rate economy, and 20 years from now we may no longer be the world's leader.

Congress needs to take these matters seriously. Last year the House began the competitiveness legislative agenda on the floor. Over a period of 8 weeks we discussed and voted on issues related to keeping and creating jobs in America.

Later this month, the Jobs Action Team is again bringing legislation to the House floor to combat this problem. But we need to take a long- term vision approach. For this reason, the House Economic Competitiveness Caucus has been created. The House Economic Competitiveness Caucus will be launched with offering opportunities to get Members involved in creating and keeping jobs in America by removing the barriers that Congress has created.

The House Economic Competitiveness Caucus will focus on ways to uncover and help the economic competitiveness in the global market as well. The caucus will provide and deepen the understanding and underlying problems that inhibit economic growth and will focus on long-term risks with current policies that make American businesses uncompetitive.

Our idea is to create and keep jobs in America. Of these jobs, the idea to keep jobs and create jobs, we have designated the problems into eight categories. These eight categories are going to be addressed, and I will go through them to tell you about what we need to do in each one; but these are the areas that Congress has created barriers to keeping and creating jobs, and we are going to help remove some of those barriers.

Health care security is the first issue. Costs related to health care are growing at a rate faster than inflation. The people who keep and create jobs here in America tell me that health care costs is their greatest challenge today. The CEO of Starbucks Coffee announced that his company spends more on health care than they do on coffee itself. Their raw materials are less than their health care costs. It is a huge problem that drives up the price of American products, and that forces jobs overseas. It is a complex problem whose policies are set through government policy primarily because of what is demanded in Medicare, Medicaid, and in lawsuit vulnerability. And this problem must be addressed in order to lower costs and improve our ability to compete.

The second area that we need to improve here in America is bureaucratic red tape. The Federal Government has become a creeping ivy of regulations. The total burden of the environmental economic impact at the workplace and through tax compliance, this regulatory burden mounts up and the total cost is $850 billion per year.

Eight hundred fifty billion dollars a year to comply with regulation in the United States; that amount of money is greater than the gross domestic products of either Canada or Mexico. For any product manufactured in the United States, the cost to comply with regulations is 12 percent of the cost of that product. In other words, if it costs $1 to build that product, 12 cents of that dollar goes just to comply with the paperwork.

What if we applied some common sense to our regulations and streamlined the application? What if we could reduce them by half? We would be 6 percent more competitive in the world and that would help us create jobs.

Lifelong learning is another issue where we need to remove barriers. Job training and retraining are necessary parts of keeping up in today's economic environment. Our children must learn the fundamentals of math and science and they must become familiar with technology and be exposed to a math and science curriculum in order to be able to compete in a global economy. We must help all of our colleges and universities produce graduates who enter science and engineering careers.

The nation of India graduated 85,000 software engineers last year. As I told you earlier, China graduated more English-speaking electrical engineers than the United States. We have to encourage more young women and young men to pursue technical areas of our economy.

Energy is a tremendous issue today and it is a barrier to keeping and creating jobs. We have all seen the price of gas at the pumps. It costs me over $40 to fill up my minivan. Imagine those on fixed incomes, those who are retired or farmers and truckers or anyone else who uses transportation to create or keep their jobs? Our gas prices are too high. Even before Hurricane Katrina, gasoline was on the rise.

We have not built a new refinery in America since 1976. The limited growth in new production of crude oil has been a tremendous problem. We once again were defeated in trying to open up the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve, or ANWR. I have always been puzzled after living in Kansas, what is so precious about ANWR? Kansas has been producing oil for 100 years. We cleanly and efficiently drill and discover new sources of petroleum right in Kansas near metropolitan areas, near urban settings and in rural settings, and we do it without disturbing the environment or polluting the environment. Why can we not do that in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve?

In the energy bill we were requesting only 1,800 acres to produce oil in an area of over 2.5 million acres. It just amazed me; the area is only about 3 square miles, and to produce the production that is all that would need to be utilized. And it is in an area in the North Slope of Alaska, which is the size of California.

We have to be able to develop new sources of production. Natural gas is also in limited supply with futures prices in the month of December peaking $12 per 1,000 cubic feet. What does that mean? It means higher electricity costs, but in comparison, that same unit of measure is only $4 in Europe and less than $1 in Russia.

Why is it so high in America? We have had environmental lawsuits and EPA regulations against developing new sources of producing electricity like clean coal production plants. We have had the inability to build a pipeline from the Canadian natural gas fields to the east coast of America. We can lower the energy costs by easing regulations and applying some common sense, by increasing the production of crude, by increasing the refinery capacity here in America, but we also need to improve conservation and increase alternative energy sources.

Today, in Kansas, we are building a windmill farm which will generate electricity and we are going to build four additional wind electricity generating farms in Kansas, and that is a good alternative source of energy. But we need to continue finding other alternative sources and new sources if we are going to be competitive in the future.

Innovation and investment is another area where we need to remove barriers. Technology is the engine of growth, yet America does not really have a comprehensive plan to encourage research and development. In Europe they have a different philosophy for research and development. Their money goes directly into product development and it is not available for other companies to expand. We have not seen it that way in America. We do not do things like they do with AirBus, for example. AirBus is subsidized by European nations, by their owner nations, and that research and development goes directly into a product that competes with products in America that are not subsidized, that are built by Boeing.

But in America we take our research and development dollars, like the ones that are spent at the National Institute of Aviation Research at Wichita State University, where we develop new manufacturing techniques for composite materials, research on their ability to withstand stresses, their ability to compare composites, and that research and development is made available to small businesses to develop new ideas and put them into practice and create jobs. It is available to Boeing, Beech. It is available to Cessna and LearJet and any small business. It is even available to AirBus, even though their research dollars are not made available to us. We need to be

more focused and more protective of our research and development discoveries.

We also need to encourage international investment. Capital dollars, the dollars needed or dollars that are needed for investment, capital goes where it is welcome. With good intentions to protect investors in America, Congress has created regulations that make it difficult to attract capital into America.

Now, in South Carolina you can find a BMW plant. That is a place where we have attracted outside investment in America. We need to do more of that, but it is very difficult when we have these barriers that have been created.

Trade fairness is another area where we need to protect American exports, and it should be foremost in any trade agreement and any policy that Congress reviews and considers. The ultimate goal should be to put American businesses at the top of the global supply chain which benefits small businesses and creates jobs.

Now, trade fairness can be applied to any time we have a trade agreement. So it is important that we continue to have trade agreements like we just passed this summer called CAFTA, the Central America Free Trade Agreement. These free trade agreements give us a vehicle to allow free and fair trade. If you look at the way some policies have happened through trade, for example, China, they have manipulated their currency. They have targeted manufacturing areas like hand trucks and auto lifters.

In Wichita we have a company that makes hand trucks. Hand trucks are what moves boxes around for one individual to use. Those have been targeted by China, and they manufacture them and they sell them below the cost of manufacturing them through subsidies, trying to run American manufacturers out of business so they can have a corner on the market. We need to combat that through trade fairness.

The one thing that we have an over-surplus of in America that we need to export is lawsuits. And the way we can export lawsuits is through our trade agreements, by taking these countries to task when they unfairly target our businesses.

Another thing we need to do is tax relief and simplification. Our tax structure puts American businesses at a tremendous disadvantage in the world market. We must simplify and eliminate the punitive nature of our current Tax Code. Incentives such as bonus depreciation will encourage investment which moves production lines and increases revenues. But we need to look beyond that. We need to have broader changes as well.

There is a movement now in America to take our tax policy and put it into something like a value added tax or a national sales tax or a flat tax. These ideas can help us become more competitive. But the real objective ought to be to remove the cost of taxes from the bottom line. Right now through our income tax system, the way it is structured today, the costs end up on the bottom line. The cost of all the labor, the cost that gets buried into the products that are passed from one supplier to a manufacturer to a retailer or a wholesaler, gets buried into our products and it makes us less competitive in the world market. So we need to find a way to remove our taxes from the bottom line and still accumulate the amount of money that we need to run the Federal Government.

The last item I want to talk about in the steps to competitiveness is ending lawsuit abuse. We can return integrity to our legal system by curtailing frivolous lawsuits and returning the courts' attention to upholding the laws of our land rather than legislating from the bench. We have seen lawsuit abuse. We have seen activist judges create a situation where America has difficulty in our costs.

One of the things we are going through now is an asbestos settlement. The asbestos settlement is going to create a trust fund, and we must be very, very sure that only those that have been actually impacted by asbestos receive money from the trust fund and that it does not become a cash or a slush fund for anybody who gets to slide into the fund. But it is going to be huge. It is going to be $180 billion. That money comes out of the profit lines, and it means it is going to drive up the cost of products in America.

We have lawsuits where 40 percent of the money does not go to the victims. Sometimes it is 50 percent of the money that does not go to the victims. We have lawsuits where too many people get involved in the lawsuit and the cost of going through our system becomes extremely high. That ends up buried in the cost of our products and makes us less competitive. The other side of the equation is the activist judges that have been involved in our court system in the debate.

In Kansas, for example, one of our judges decided that the State was not spending enough money on education. Well, that is a good debate to have and those decisions should be made by our legislature. We have this concept in America of separation of powers. We have an executive branch, a legislative branch, and we have a judicial branch. There is a balance in those powers. But what we have been seeing in America is a crossing of lines, a blurring of lines where the courts have encroached on the activities of the legislature.

In Kansas they were deciding how much money we were going to be spending, where it is going to be spent on educational issues. And that is a travesty and it is costly, and it ends up complicating things in America. I think that that is difficult when it comes to doing business in America because we cannot plan for that.

We have a legislative system that has a job that they need to do and it should not be encroached upon by the court system.

Those eight issues are issues we are working on through the Economic Competitive Caucus: Health care security, bureaucratic red tape termination, lifelong learning, energy self-sufficiency and security, innovation and investment, trade fairness, tax relief and simplification, and ending lawsuit abuse and litigation management.

If we can get these legislative initiatives through, we will lower the cost of doing business in America. That will help us create new jobs. We will be able to keep the jobs that we have, and in doing that, we will we will be the dynamic economic force in the future that we are today.

We have a wonderful opportunity that came through a horrible tragedy, and I want to talk about what things could be done in rebuilding in the gulf area in the south following the damage that was caused by Katrina.

Katrina was a horrible incident with the loss of life, the loss of property. The South is never going to be the same. If you look at the area we are told that 100,000 square miles were affected by Hurricane Katrina. Now that is larger than the State of Kansas. It is hard to get our minds around the area and the amount of damage that has been caused in the South by Katrina.

When you look at the property damage, the houses that are blown away, you cannot really picture the heartache that is created by the loss of a loved one or even the loss of pictures, items that you have from people who preceded you in life, and photos and journals and just things that are taken from us when we have a tragedy like that. Whether it is a flood or high wind, it is gone and you will never be able to replace those items.

I know when we had water damage in my own home and lost items that were precious to me, I could not put a price tag on it. My wife lost the Bible that she had that she wrote comforting notes in on the day she lost her father. Those kinds of things cannot be replaced. But what we can do in the South is, we can rebuild that area. We can give the people who live there hope. We can create an economic engine down there that can be greater with new jobs and new ideas and new possibilities.

Now we can do that, set up an experiment down there in how we can streamline the process of regulation, provide more energy, rebuild the area in a safe fashion, and do it so we can get that area back on track and get those people back on their feet and allow them to start their lives over.

In the area of regulations, we have such regulations like the Jones Act that has been temporarily waived to allow for a clean up of the region.

Today, the President waived the Davis-Bacon Act to allow for lower costs in reconstruction. That will allow us to get more people involved in reconstruction, but I would like us to

look at the banking regulations. That will help us reopen banks and access to accounts and mortgage processing.

We should expedite the EPA's siting and permitting process and the licensing process, especially when it comes in the area of small refineries. We should reduce the environmental impact statement requirements and streamline that process. That can hold up construction for months, if not years; and I believe that OSHA and other agencies that have a tendency and a propensity to be working in an adversarial mode or an adversarial relationship with employers should be encouraged on the site to work with employers through a process, and a good example of how that can work occurred in Wichita, Kansas.

A couple of years ago, OSHA decided to target three counties in Kansas. One of them was Cedric County where Wichita is located, and they targeted homebuilders. They went there and they showed up on job sites, and they started writing fines and assessing costs against employers for alleged violations of safety. They just struck a lot of fear in the whole home construction industry, and the result of that was that many areas just shut down.

If you think about it, a subcontractor, let us say a framing contractor, on a job site, if he has a job that it is a $100,000 house, the framing portion of it, his profit may be only a couple of thousand dollars. Well, if his fine is $5,000, it is cheaper for him, more economical for him, to stay at home and not do the job than to be at the job and have the potential of some kind of fine he did not even know about. Some of the alleged violations that were sited were a Styrofoam cup on the stairs, a cord that ran across the job site that was in the wrong location, a ladder improperly leaning against a wall. Anyway, the bottom line was that they shut down the homebuilding industry.

If we were going to get it started, we had to get OSHA together with the builders. So I was contacted by the Wichita Area Builders Association. I got in touch with OSHA. We got the two parties together, and they came up with a plan where they could work together, and it worked very simply. OSHA would show up and announced would walk around with the job superintendent or the contractor. They would make a list of any potential violations. They would discuss that list. OSHA gave it to the contractor, and then he said, I will be back in 6 weeks; I will tell you when I am coming and let us go through this list and see how you are doing.

We found out most of the problems that were created were caused because of a language barrier. Many of the workers were Hispanic, did not have good English skills, and they did not understand how you properly lean a ladder up against a wall. They did not understand you were not supposed to put your Styrofoam cup on the stairs, that it could be a trip hazard. Once that was effectively communicated, the environment became safe. It worked very well. The homebuilders went back to work. OSHA was satisfied because they created a safe work environment, and together they achieved a common goal of a safe working environment and getting the job done.

We could use that example down in Louisiana and Mississippi and Alabama as we rebuild down there where we have EPA, where we have OSHA, where we have other government agencies working with the private sector to get people back in their homes, to get them working and to get them back on their feet.

In energy, in order to immediately help the refinery capacity in the gulf region, as well as around the country, Congress needs to ease the roadblocks increasing the capacity to current refineries. Rather than the 3 to 5 years that it takes today to build a new refinery, current refineries could be increased in capacity in as short as 12 months, maybe as long as 18 months. In the long term, the government needs to be able to drill in ANWR, as I said earlier, and other locations to increase the supply of crude; but we need to start by streamlining the EPA process on permitting and reduce the time period involved.

We need to ease some EPA regulations, especially when it comes to some of the emissions and the Clean Air Act, and we need to take advantage of the natural growth and increasing capacity by expanding current sites as far as refineries are concerned.

But these are important to rebuild the refineries down there and increase the supply of gasoline, and that will have a general impact. Right now, we are all paying higher gas prices. By increasing the supply of gas, we will have lower gas prices. It is simple economics. We need to carry it out in the South, but look at other areas where we can streamline, getting a greater supply of fuel.

The infrastructure. In order to rebuild the area of highway, roads, bridges, train tracks and the ports, they all have to be restarted. The Department of Transportation and related agencies need to allow for the expedited planning and building, as well as expedited process for granting permits and waivers and licenses. The insurance community has to be involved.

There are many lessons to learn from Hurricane Katrina with relation to the flood insurance coverage and implementation and access to mandates for insurance in vulnerable areas and concerns about the definition of flood insurance versus the protection against high winds and a myriad of other provisions, but the government needs to make sure that the insurance claims are processed quickly for rebuilding.

There also needs to be an incentive in place for those to rebuild in high-risk areas and to purchase the proper insurance. Our government should consider a buyout of particular areas, especially those that are vulnerable for other flooding or vulnerable in polluted areas. If companies and people will not sell, then they are going to have be required to purchase insurance.

Liability can be a roadblock for the reconstruction. Lawsuit abuse needs to be prevented. We should probably look at a loser-pay or a blanket liability protection which needs to be instituted in the region. Otherwise, the economy could be completely strangled by junk lawsuits or liabilities that could plague the region for decades to come.

In health care, we have hundreds of thousands of displaced residents that need to be able to use their health care insurance wherever they are, even if they are temporarily relocated. The government needs to allow for health care portability. When we are in these regions to rebuild, we need to use programs like the associated health care plans and other ways for employers to afford and offer health care insurance, and it all should be implemented quickly.

The policies to allow for the purchase of insurance across State lines should be explored in order to encourage the growth of health care facilities and incentives for health care workers, and education training programs should be implemented.

Education portability is important. With dislocated families spread across the whole region and the Nation, education vouchers are needed to help pay for the cost of education for these kids who are temporarily in other areas and are able to go to school. School loan waivers, Pell grant extensions, and other higher education policies are needed to be implemented to allow students to continue their education during this time.

Job skills training, I think, is very important. Some of these jobs are not going to be re-created. We are going to have new industries down in that area. The government should work with the chambers of commerce and companies to set up public/private partnerships to train people for jobs that will be available in those areas and for jobs during the rebidding process.

I think there are a lot of skills that could be utilized and developed during that time, and tax incentives are probably a good thing that we need to discuss when it comes to rebuilding as well. Immediate tax incentives to encourage investment in the area should

be implemented, including a deduction tax for companies and individuals who build in the affected region, and accelerated depreciation should be available for capital and equipment and software investments as well.

These ideas can be used to quickly help reconstruct the area in New Orleans and in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. It is a way that we can get people back on their feet again.

In summary, I just want to go over the things that I think we need to do in Congress to not only help the South get back on its feet again but also to help America stay number one into the future, that is, that we need to address the issues in health care. We need to limit the growth in regulations of bureaucratic red tape. We need to effectively focus our education system on the future economy.

We need to develop new energy sources and increase the supply of energy, as well as the conservation of the energy and alternate energy sources. We need to look at research and development through innovation and investment. We have fair trade policies. We have to improve our tax system so that we can have some tax relief and simplification, and we need to end lawsuit abuse and have litigation management for America.

With these individual ideas, I think we will be able to grow a stronger America and retain our number one status well into the future so that our children and grandchildren will have the same opportunities that we have had to build a strong country and make our dreams come true.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of the Conference Report on H.R. 6. This comprehensive energy plan will help America become more energy self-sufficient, create hundreds of thousands of new jobs and spur innovation for accessing new energy sources.

Nearly every sector of our economy is affected by high energy prices. Manufacturing facilities, the transportation industry and agricultural businesses all depend on affordable and reliable supplies of electricity, fuel and fertilizers to thrive in today's international economy.

All Americans, directly and indirectly, pay for the price of products or services that depend on various forms of energy. No one is immune from rising energy costs, and I am pleased the House has taken the lead in passing this long-term energy plan to help address energy reliability, supply and prices.

The Conference Report provides tax incentives within five main categories to improve energy production, transportation and efficiency. This balanced approach helps ensure we are taking care of current energy needs while also planning for future demand.

If America wants an internationally competitive economy that can fully contend with emerging economic superpowers of the 21st century, we must take actions now to reduce barriers to competitiveness. Having a secure and reliable source of energy is vital to keeping and creating high-quality, high-paying jobs in America. The provisions contained in this energy conference agreement are reliable options the private sector can use to make us more competitive.

Other countries have been more pro-active than we have in preparing for future energy needs. Brazil is projected to be completely energy self-sufficient within a few years. What once was considered an illusory dream may now become reality because Brazil recognized a problem and committed to a long-term solution. It may have taken them years to develop renewable energy sources, but Brazil is now a leader in ethanol production. As a result, its economy has been able to curb costs associated with higher crude oil prices.

H.R. 6 provides a renewable fuel standard that requires 7.5 billion gallons to be used annually by 2012. This provision will help increase our ethanol and biodiesel production at a time when alternatives to foreign oil are greatly needed. By ramping up the production of alternative fuel sources, we are going to take positive steps toward more secure and reliable means of meeting our energy demands into the 21st century.

Kansas' agriculture economy will also reap the benefits of increased uses for crops. We are learning more and more that today's farmers not only put food on our tables but they also play an important role in reducing emissions and helping us become less dependent on Middle East oil for our fuel needs. By expanding markets for agriculture commodities, producers and rural communities will see new sources of revenue.

Another conservation provision in the energy bill is the 4-week extension of Daylight Savings Time. By simply extending Daylight Savings Time 3 weeks in the spring and 1 week in the fall, we will reduce energy consumption equal to about 100,000 barrels of oil per day for four weeks. This energy saving time provision will also contribute to lower crime and fewer traffic fatalities.

As we look toward the future, we also need to be realistic about current energy demands. That is why the energy bill helps oil and gas producers increase domestic production, expand distribution capabilities and increase refining capacity. H.R. 6 provides $2.6 billion in tax incentives to accomplish these goals. Currently, small refiners are eligible for percentage depletion deductions if their refinery runs do not exceed 50,000 barrels on any day of the year. The energy bill increases that barrel limit to 75,000 barrels, which will encourage greater production by America's smaller refiners.

The energy Conference agreement contains just over $3 billion in tax incentives that will bolster our electricity infrastructure. Measures such as reducing the depreciation period for assets used in the transmission and distribution of electricity from 20 years to 15 years will encourage more upgrades to the system. And tax credits, such as the one for new nuclear power facilities, will help investors and utilities take risks needed to create clean, reliable sources of electricity.

Three separate tax credits were established for investments in clean coal facilities that produce electricity, and power plants will be able to amortize the cost of air pollution control facilities over 84 months. These incentives help energy producers meet stringent air quality standards. By rewarding power plants that accelerate implementation of pollution controls, we are helping create a cleaner environment.

Kansas is known for many wonderful things; one trait not so popular is our abundant source of wind. But as we find better ways to harness this natural Kansas resource, Kansas' abundant supply of wind may prove invaluable. The energy bill contains numerous tax incentives aimed at helping expand alternative sources of energy such as wind. Many Kansas landowners have also expressed strong support for expanded use of wind energy. Small wind farms can provide increases in the local tax base while creating additional revenue for the landowners.

Hydrogen fuel cell technology continues to improve, and I am pleased the final energy bill included many options for integration of this emerging technology into the marketplace. I am hopeful we will see more and more public marketplace uses for hydrogen fuel cells. The fuel cell provisions in H.R. 6 help take us in that direction.

This is a good plan that House Republicans and the Bush Administration have been working on non-stop for more than 4 years. I am very pleased we are finally successful in sending a national energy plan to the President's desk.

Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, the concept of a BRAC, the Base Realignment Commission, is to remove the political process from the closure of bases in order to get us to the type of military that we need to meet today's demands to fight terrorism around the globe. And if we insert our will from another body, the Senate, into this bill, it will jeopardize that process. I do not think any of us want that here on the floor.

If we cannot relieve that dissension among our ranks on this bill, it will not pass on the floor tonight. We all would like to see this happen, because as the gentleman from Alaska has expressed, we need this bill. We need this to occur within each of our States. We need to build highways. We need the infrastructure for our economy. But if this provision is inserted, it will go beyond the concept of BRAC and take the political process out of getting the proper size and scope of our military.

So I hope that whatever provision we have within this rule will alleviate these provisions, because if they are not, the bill will not pass. I think there will be enough dissent on both sides of this great institution, on the floor, in the House, the Republicans and the Democrats, to keep this from passing.

So I hope we can correct this measure within the rule, because if not, I think we will have a failed bill. And that will not be good for this country or for the efforts that we have here tonight.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 438 I was inadvertently detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this action as well as others that involve the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

I want to remind Members why we are here. We are here because the PATRIOT Act will sunset. It will sunset so we can see if there were any violations of civil liberties during the time it was in effect, which will be approximately 4 years by the end of this year.

There were over 7,000 alleged violations filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, as Members heard before from the gentleman from Indiana. However, we have no violations of civil liberties under the PATRIOT Act. Of those 7,000 allegations, some were under other parts of the law, but none under the PATRIOT Act. So what we are talking about in this bill is sort of splitting hairs.

We have heard comments about how there is no judicial oversight for what is going on. There is judicial oversight for almost everything involved in the PATRIOT Act with few exceptions, like national security letters, which does require a certification of relevance before they move forward.

We use these tools in the PATRIOT Act so we can catch terrorists and prevent acts of violence against American citizens. We use these same tools in other parts of the law, like when we are trying to find patent infringement, when we are trying to catch organized criminals, when we are trying to stop drug trafficking. This is a good law. I hope my colleagues will support it. It does protect civil liberties, and we should pass it.

Madam Speaker, I plan on spending most of the next hour

talking about how we are going to create an environment in America to create and keep jobs here not only tomorrow and in the future, but for long, long term purposes.

First of all, though, I wanted to talk a little bit about the good news in our economy that we have seen lately. On July 8, the White House released some economic information that was very good for America. In the month of June, 146,000 new jobs were created. The payroll rose by that much. That makes 3.7 million jobs that have been created since May 2003.

We have seen steady gains over the last 25 months. And today, more Americans are working than ever before. It is also important to note that the average wage of working Americans is now higher than it has ever been before in the history of our Nation. The unemployment rate also fell to 5.0 percent in June. That is the lowest rate that it has been since September of 2001.

So our economy is strong, and it continues to grow. Our economic indicators show strong sustained growth, both in the real gross domestic product and in real income. Our durable goods orders are on the rise. They have increased 5.5 percent in May. That is the largest increase in 14 months. It is well above our early estimates.

U.S. manufacturing continues to expand for the 25th consecutive month. U.S. manufacturing expanded in June. The purchasing manager's index increased 2.4 index points to 53.8, indicating growth above market expectations. The nonmanufacturing sector has also showed strong growth. And consumer confidence is up by all indices.

The President's second-term agenda of creating jobs and growing the economy has been successful. We can attribute this economic growth to the tax cuts which we hope to make permanent, also to retraining Federal Government growth. That helps reduce the deficit. But we also want to go on to make a strong economic environment in the future.

One of the ways that we are going to do that here in the House of Representatives was started this morning. This morning, we kicked off the Economic Competitiveness Caucus. We started with a press event this morning that included the leader of the House, the Majority Leader of the House, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), the Majority Whip of the House, and the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Blunt).

We also had the Secretary of Commerce, Secretary Gutierrez, and we had a representative from the Small Business Association, Tom Sullivan. We also had former Governor John Engler, the President of the National Association of Manufacturers, along with about 20 Members of Congress.

For almost two centuries, America has been the envy of the world with our economy. It has been dynamic. It has been supported by a hardworking motivated workforce. We have truly been the land of opportunity where innovation has thrived. But our status is changing, and we must do something about it to address it. I have established the House Economic Competitive Caucus to take a long-term vision approach to addressing competitiveness issues.

Because the best ideas usually come from Main Street and not from Washington, D.C., we have joined efforts with business leaders to focus on removing barriers on the American economy, and that way, we can develop new economic goals for the future and find paths to get there.

The United States has the number one economy in the world. We have been the envy of the world. It is a dynamic economy. But we want to make sure that we can continue that status instead of dropping into a third-rate economy.

Last year, we ran a $670 billion annual trade deficit. It has contributed to our Federal budget deficit, and it has slowed our economy the past few years. We have seen other nations move forward, though, and do things that I think we ought to take into consideration when we build our future economy.

Ireland, for example, has shifted from a third world nation in Western Europe to the envy of the European Union, largely due to its tax policies. The Celtic Tiger, as it is known, has lowered its corporate tax to 12.5 percent, and that stimulated their economy and created many jobs.

India was languishing under the burdens of a heavy socialist government, and now, through a concerted effort, has reduced regulations, and they have stimulated their economy.

China is currently graduating more English speaking electrical engineers than graduate in the United States. They have focused on education, especially in math and science and technology. China is setting up an environment to create their own Silicon Valley, and they are trying to attract the world's technological business.

Brazil has achieved what some believe to be a pipe dream. They are projected to be completely energy self-sufficient within a couple of years. It took them years to develop the type of renewable energy that they needed, but now they are leaders in ethanol production, and their economy is not suffering from the current high crude oil prices.

Chile has become an economic leader in Latin America by breaking down the barriers and doing business within their nation. Their emphasis has been on signing free trade agreements. It has been very fruitful for them. Last year, they signed free trade agreements with the United States, with South Korea. Chile is currently working on negotiations with China, India, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan and Australia. And they will continue to thrive.

For these reasons, these nations and other world economies are poised to move ahead of the United States in the next decade. In fact, the 2005 Index of Economic Freedom by the Heritage foundation ranked the United States 13th in the world. For the first time, we have dropped out of the top 10. This is due both to other Nation's progress and economic competitiveness as well as our own barriers that have been rising up and stopping the growth in our thriving economy.

This development is not a temporary blip on the radar screen; it is the culmination of a generation of increased regulation, unsound tax policies, languishing emphasis on math and science education, unchecked health care costs, rampant lawsuit abuse, unfocused research and development funds, a lack of comprehensive energy policy, and weak trade policy enforcement.

In short, our government has made it difficult and undesirable to do business in the United States. We have put up road blocks to keeping and creating jobs in America. And we have done this to ourselves. If these current trends continue, our economy will continue to lag, and we will no longer remain the most dynamic economy in the world.

Without attention to these matters, the United States is headed toward a third-rate economy; 5, 10, 20 years down the road, we will no longer be the world's leader or even in second place. That is why we need to take these issues seriously today.

Last year, we began with the competitiveness legislative agenda on the House floor. And over a period of 8 weeks, we discussed and voted on issues relating to keeping and creating jobs in America. Starting this week, the jobs action team is again bringing legislation to the floor to combat this problem. We need to take a longer-term vision. For these reasons, we have established the House Economic Competitive Caucus, and this caucus is going to carefully examine issues facing our ability to compete economically for the coming years.

We will work to focus congressional efforts on removing barriers to the economy to make America more competitive. We are going to develop economic goals and find paths to get to those goals.

Now, the areas that we are going to focus on are in eight different issues. They start here on this placard that I have. We have health insurance. We have had the highest rising health insurance costs in recent history. And it has made it very difficult for small businesses to provide health care to their employees. It has been difficult for large corporations to meet their health care needs. And so health care costs has to be an issue that we address in making America more competitive.

We also have bureaucratic red tape termination as one of the issues that we need to work on. We have already focused on that earlier this week. I will talk about it a little more.

Lifelong learning is one of the issues, because we are seeing now other economies and other nations focusing on technologies, focusing on engineering, focusing on math and science.

And here in America we are having more and more problems.

I recently spoke with a college professor in the physics department of the University of Southern Alabama. He said they were looking for an associate professor, and they looked all over the United States to find an associate professor for physics. They were unable to find one to hire for that slot so they had to go outside the United States and look at applicants from other nations.

The reasons we are going outside the United States to look for associate professors of physics at the University of Southern Alabama is that we have not focused our education system on math and science and on engineering and on technology like other countries have. We need to change that in the future and focus our resources to prepare for tomorrow's economy.

Another issue is energy self-sufficiency and security. We know today every time we fill up with gas at the pump that our lack of energy policy has been a detriment to the cost of energy here in the United States. Five times the House of Representatives has passed an energy bill. And finally after passing it five times in the House, we have a piece of legislation in the Senate that is significantly different, but it is a basis for us to meet now in conference committees.

We hope to have a conference report available before the end of this year so that we can put into place energy policy that will help us become more self-sufficient and help us reduce the cost of energy in America. Because it is not only the fuel pump; it is also with natural gas prices. We pay more for natural gas than anywhere in the world. We use natural gas to generate power, to manufacture goods and to make fertilizer, a whole broad area, including plastics. But because of the high cost of natural gas, because of the high cost of petroleum products, we are seeing many of our industries go off shore.

We cannot have a competitive policy without dealing with energy. So energy is one of the issues that we are going to deal with, and hopefully we will have less of a need for foreign imports in petroleum products. Then we can lower our natural gas prices as well as our gas prices at the pump and continue to manufacture things such as plastics and fertilizer.

Another issue we will be dealing with is research and development so we can spur innovation. Our research and development is different than how they approach research and development in the European Union, for example.

What we see in America is a very open research and development policy. For example, in Wichita State University in Wichita, Kansas at the National Institute of Aviation Research, we do research on composite manufacturing, on stress loads for composites, on composite repairs; and that research is available to anybody inside the United States, anybody in the world. They can get online and find out the data, find out information that can be applied in Europe or in China or in Australia or anywhere.

If you look at Airbus and how they are focusing the research and development that they get from their member nations, such as Germany, France, Spain and the United Kingdom, they get research and development that helps them develop new products that is not readily available across the borders. It is not available to Boeing, for example. So we have a research and development policy that we need to focus to make ourselves more competitive in the future.

We also have trade fairness as one of the issues. We have seen time and time again where other economies are focusing their resources to try to drive certain American manufacturers out of the business, that way they can have a corner on the market and they can then raise the prices and make a higher profit level than they would necessarily get. So we have to have a trade policy that continues a fair, level playing field that does not allow our industry to be targeted.

One of the resources that we have in America, and we have plenty of it here, we have more of it in America than we have anywhere else in the world that we do not export, is lawsuits. Some people say, how do you export a lawsuit? Well, we have a lot of legal activity here in America, and it is driving up our costs; but the way you export lawsuits is through trade packages. When you see an unfair trade policy, then you go to the World Trade Organization or you go through an international court and you file a lawsuit in order to get a level playing field.

The other two issues we have are tax relief and simplification, and the other one is ending lawsuit abuse. Those are part of the eight issues that we will be dealing with in the Economic Competitive Caucus.

I am joined here today on the floor with the majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), and I yield to him for his remarks about competitiveness in the United States.

I yield to the gentleman from California.

Madam Speaker, I will be glad to yield to the gentleman from California.

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the majority leader for joining me here this afternoon, and also I would like to thank the chairman of the Committee on Rules chairman, the gentleman from California (Mr. Dreier), for spending time with us on the floor talking about the importance of the future economy and how the ideas that we have in keeping and creating jobs in America are going to get an opportunity to be openly debated on the floor of the House.

One of the things I deeply appreciate about the chairman of the Committee on Rules (Chairman Dreier) is that he has been fairhanded. He has guaranteed open debate on the floor, and he has ensured that each and every American has had a chance for their Representative to have time on the floor to speak freely about issues they believe are important to them.

We have talked about how good our current economy is. We have talked about the issues that are very important for the future economy and how these eight issues will bring legislation and ideas to the floor that we can implement to ensure we have a strong economy in the future.

But, Madam speaker, let me talk a little this afternoon about the problems we are facing with regulatory costs. That is one of the issues that we are dealing with this week, the bureaucratic red tape termination. Why do we need to deal with that? One reason is the tremendous cost that the regulatory burdens have put on our economy.

If you look at what we have in this chart that is provided to us by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, it says that in 2004, the regulatory cost in the United States is $860 billion. That is $860 billion, with a ``B.'' Now, that is the cost of implementing the regulations.

If we look at where that is evidenced in our economy, we do not have to look far. It is part of the cost of calculating taxes, part of the cost of implementing environmental procedures, and some of it is keeping up with health care regulations. Let us just talk a minute about health care.

If you look at health care regulations in America, you will find out that, according to the Kansas Hospital Association, for every hour of health care that they provide to a patient, it takes 1.1 hours to comply with the regulatory paperwork. More time to comply with paperwork than they provide in giving health care. There is something wrong with a system that demands more time to provide paperwork than it does to provide health care in our health care industry.

Last year it was $860 billion, as I said. Now, let us just compare that to the gross national product of Mexico. They only had $574 billion as their gross national product. Canada had $701 billion in their gross national product. We spent more complying with regulations than they saw in their total economies in both Mexico and Canada.

The message we should gain from this is that we need to put some commonsense applications to our regulatory burden. A good example occurred just a couple of years ago in Wichita, Kansas. I received a call from the Wichita Builders Association. They said that OSHA had targeted Sedgwick County, Kansas, Sedgwick County being the county Wichita is located in. They had been targeted by OSHA. The homebuilding industry had been targeted by OSHA. OSHA had sent their representatives down and made unscheduled visits to work sites; they set off a block or two from work sites and took pictures. They ended up sending citations and levying fines against some of the subcontractors and contractors that were responsible for building homes in Kansas.

The net impact is that many employers just shut down their homebuilding. If you think about it, if you are a subcontractor and doing framing for a house, the most profit you may possibly see on that job would be $1,000, maybe $2,000. So when you compare that to the $7,000 fine they were getting, which could have gone up to $50,000, it was cheaper for them to stay home than to go to work. And when it becomes cheaper to stay home because of regulatory burdens, we are not going to have a strong economy.

So I spent time with the Wichita Building Association and I spent time with OSHA, and I found out they both had the same goal. They wanted a safe work environment.

Think about a lot of the small employers and subcontractors in the homebuilding industry. They employ their friends, their relatives, sons, uncles, and cousins; and they certainly do not want them getting injured on the job. I do not think any of them want to go to the next Thanksgiving reunion they would have with their family and try to explain why their brother-in-law got injured on the job. Instead, they want to have a work environment that is safe.

We know that when there is an on-the-job injury, workmen's compensation kicks in, their insurance costs go up. Economically it is not good for small employers to have an injury on the job. So we knew they wanted to have a safe work environment. OSHA is tasked with trying to create a safe work environment here in America.

But the problem is we have this adversarial relationship where they work against each other for the same common goal. So by getting OSHA together with the Wichita Building Association, they figured out a way to work cooperatively to create a safe working environment. To do that, they had the OSHA representatives come on an announced visit, walk together with the subcontractor or the small business owner, walk through the workplace and list potential safety violations. After the visit, they would list the potential violations, and then the OSHA representative would give them some period of time, between 6 weeks and 6 months, to go out and fix that inequity in safety. Then OSHA came back and went through the checklist to see how they were doing to make sure that there was a safe work environment.

That was a cooperative effort, and people went back to work and had a safer work environment. A common goal was achieved by cooperation rather than an adversarial role.

Too much of our regulatory burden in America is created by an adversarial goal. Our Environmental Protection Agency, the way the law is structured, one company when involved in a potential violation of environmental law, is forced to sue all of their surrounding neighbors to get them involved in the lawsuit which comes from the Environmental Protection Agency to correct the problem. That drives up the cost of getting any potential environmental violation rectified.

Over half of the money spent by the Environmental Protection Agency goes to lawyers. That does not clean one drop of pollution. If we could work together in a cooperative fashion, we would have a cleaner environment, do so with less money, and it would make us more economically competitive, and it would bring jobs back to America.

Looking at other areas of our economy, for small firms that have less than 20 employees, the annual regulatory burden in 2000 was estimated at $6,975 per employee. That is 60 percent higher than it is for the $4,463 estimated for firms with more than 500 employees. What that means is small employers have a greater burden in trying to comply with regulation than larger companies. Larger companies have more resources. They can dedicate people to regulatory compliance. That means smaller employers have a harder time competing in a world market or in a local market.

In Kansas, four out of five jobs are small employers. If it is more difficult for them to be in business, there are less jobs not only in Kansas but across the United States. Over the past decade, 60 to 80 percent of new jobs in the United States economy came from small businesses. During the last two recessions, 1990 through 1992 and 2000 through 2001, small businesses created almost all of the net job increases. So it is important that we focus on how to have a competitive advantage for small businesses as well as large businesses so we can create jobs in the future.

According to the Mercatus Center, the budgetary cost to taxpayers for funding regulatory agencies topped $25 billion in 2002. So by applying some common sense reforms, we could save money in the Federal budget and reduce the amount of money going toward regulatory burdens.

The Code of Federal Regulations extends 19 running feet. From 1991 to 2002, the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations increased by 28 percent. Not long ago, FDIC Vice Chairman John M. Reich, said that there are 65 words in the Lord's Prayer, 286 words in the Gettysburg Address, 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence, and 26,911 words in the Federal regulation governing the sale of cabbage.

When you think about those documents that are very succinct and very clear, they do not take a lot of time or space. But when you look at regulations, it is cumbersome and burdensome, and it is keeping us from being competitive in the future. It is a tremendous burden on our economy. Of the $860 billion, part of that could be going to research and development, part of it could be going to creating new jobs and job training. It could be doing a lot of things that would help make America more competitive in the future.

To give some idea of how we can focus some of our efforts in the Economic Competitive Caucus toward reducing this regulatory burden, we can look at our tax laws. According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2002, the Federal regulatory cost of $860 billion, $132 billion was complying with tax regulations. It takes a lot of money for people to comply with how they withhold taxes, pay their own taxes, State taxes, local taxes, Federal taxes. It is a big burden.

Environmental regulations, $201 billion. The workplace regulatory burden was $84 billion. The economic burden for regulatory cost, $444 billion. This is an area that is very important for us to focus on. It is just one of the eight areas that we are going to be dealing with to make America more competitive.

To review, the eight areas are health care security; bureaucratic red tape termination; lifelong learning; energy self-sufficiency and security; research and development so we can spur innovation and investment; trade fairness; tax relief and simplification; and ending lawsuit abuse.

The last thing I want to talk about today is the agreement that is coming

up before the August break to deal with the Central America Free Trade Agreement, commonly called CAFTA. It deals with five Central American countries plus the Dominican Republic.

There has been a lot of opposition to CAFTA in Washington, DC. Much of it is by labor unions and by people who want to become more isolationist in their view of America. I think we need to look at some things, that not only are economic but also geopolitical, related to

Mr. Speaker, the United States has the number one economy in the world. For almost two centuries, we have been the envy of the world: a dynamic economy; a hardworking, motivated workforce; truly the land of opportunity where innovation has thrived. The status is changing, though. We are running a $670 billion annual trade deficit which is contributing to our Federal budget deficit and slowed economy over the past few years.

This development is not a temporary blip on the radar screen. It is the culmination of a generation of increased regulation, unsound tax policies, languishing emphasis on math and science education, unchecked health care costs, rampant lawsuit abuse, unfocused research and development funds and a weak trade policy enforcement. In short, our government has made it difficult and undesirable to do business in the United States. We have put roadblocks to keeping and creating jobs in America, and we have done this to ourselves.

If these current trends continue, our economy will continue to lag and we will no longer remain the most dynamic economy in the world. Meanwhile, China, India and other nations are preparing for the future. They are educating their students in math, science and technology, and pumping out record numbers of engineers. They are reducing tax rates and other economic barriers to entice investments in their nations. They are pursuing aggressive trade policies to reduce America's dominance in world trade.

Without attention to these matters, the United States is headed towards a third-rate economy; 5, 10, 20 years down the road, we will no longer be the world's leader or even second place. We will become a third-rate economy. That is why we need to take this issue seriously.

Last year, we began the competitiveness legislative agenda on the floor, and over a period of 8 weeks, we discussed and voted on issues related to keeping and creating keeping jobs in America. Later this summer, the Jobs Action Team will again bring legislation to the floor to combat this problem. We need to take a longer-term vision.

For this reason, I am initiating the House Economic Competitiveness Caucus. The caucus will carefully examine the issues facing our ability to compete economically over the coming years. We will work to focus congressional efforts to removing the barriers to American economic competitiveness and develop economic goals for the future and find paths to get there.

I encourage my colleagues to join me in finding ways to guarantee a vibrant, internationally competitive American economy now, 5, 10, 15 and 20 years down the road. Our goal is to ensure high-quality and high-paying jobs for all Americans today and in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding me this time.

I welcome the comments from the gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller). He talks about a lot of issues that are more important to making America more competitive. We may disagree on the track, but I think it is important that we do move forward with an R&D tax credit that is permanent. I think it is important that we do move forward to protect intellectual property rights. But he does make an additional point, and that it is always easy to be against something instead of for something. If we are going to make progress, we need to work together; so I would welcome him to join the Economic Competitive Caucus because I think together we could find ways to fund technology grants and technology schools. And I would like to point out that we have doubled the funding for the National Science Foundation, and we continue the strong funding of that.

The gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) also mentioned a couple of things that I think are important to be addressed in this debate. One is the effect that China is having on our economy, and I think the point was made by the gentleman from New York that regulation is not holding them back. But let me tell the Members what is happening in China. They have focused on technology. They graduated 350,000 engineers last year. They graduated more English-speaking electrical engineers than America did, and they have done that because they want to target certain areas. In Kansas they have targeted several industries: the hand truck industry, the auto lift industry. They are trying to run American businesses out of business so that they can have a corner on the market, and that is why we need to have enforceable trade policy, which is part of this resolution.

The gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) addressed education. That is why education and lifelong learning is part of this resolution.

But let me just tell the Members what China is doing that I think is important to the debate and why I think they should understand why we need to address these issues today instead of putting them off. The regulation barriers that we have are keeping us from doing wonderful things that could help create and start jobs. In China they are trying to create a Silicon Valley. They have set up a top-notch university. They have given venture capital to the area. They have office space available. They have property management for anybody who has a good idea. They have legal advice, patent advice. They even allow professors and students to start businesses on their own.

The way to address that is by changing our system and removing the barriers. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) mentions the trial lawyers, the $40 billion that came out of our economy for trial lawyers. Just think, if we apply some commonsense reforms, we can make jobs in America. One example is in 1995 when the Statute of Repose was passed, which put commonsense limits on the manufacture of airplanes, and the following year 4,000 jobs were created in Kansas alone, plus additional jobs all across the United States.

All we are saying in this resolution is let us step back from what we are doing today and say if we were going to start this system tomorrow, would we do the same thing? Will it impact jobs? Can we work together to create and keep jobs in America instead of seeing them slide off to other countries?

So I think this is a good resolution, and I would welcome the suggestions from the other side, and I think together we can help bring jobs back to America.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana for yielding me this time.

The gentleman from Washington (Mr. Smith) did talk about some issues that I think are very important, especially when he talked about education. I think education is very important for the future of this economy. If we look at education spending over the last 5 years, we have had dramatic increases in education, as far as the spending is concerned.

What we need to do now is focus on math, science, engineering and technology. We know this is the direction the future economy is going. The world is getting more technically complex, not less technically complex. Yet we have fewer people going into engineering. We have fewer young women going into science. We have fewer people going into the technologies, the maths and the sciences. It should be concerning to us, and we need to take steps today. I would welcome their support as to how we do that.

National Science Foundation money, the NSF has come up several times here. We increased the NSF again this year, again. Over $5.6 billion will go into NSF this fiscal year and we have plans to increase that funding in the future, too.

Innovative research is very important. We need help from the other side of the aisle to get research and development tax relief permanent, and I think we can do that. I just want to mention the supply-side tax cut did stimulate the economy. We have more people working today than ever before in the history of our Nation. The average wage is higher than it has ever been in the history of this Nation. We have more people owning their own homes today than ever before in the history of this Nation, and we have done it because we cut taxes. More money got into the economy, and jobs started increasing. But does that mean we should be satisfied? No. We have barriers that need to be removed so that we can increase the number of jobs and the number of opportunities in America in the future.

I think it is important that we work together. I look forward to working with the gentleman from New York (Mr. Owens) on issues like we addressed with Sarbanes-Oxley, corporate corruption, we had hearings. We had hearings; we had legislation on the floor. We made progress. We passed Sarbanes-Oxley. And now there are white collar criminals in jail today.

Corporate corruption was addressed and needs to be addressed in the future. But certainly we made some movement. But I welcome them. I know we can agree on creating more jobs. I think it is important that we work together to do that.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. Boustany) for his leadership on the floor today and his help in these very important issues of making America more competitive tomorrow.

Mr. Speaker, you know, when I listened to the debate today, I find that there are areas both Republicans and Democrats can agree on. And there are ways that we can work together to make a more solid economy in the future so that we can retain our number one status in the future instead of falling into a second or third-rate economy.

The danger is out there. We heard talk from the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich) that it is all because of NAFTA. That we have lost all jobs to NAFTA. Yet we have more jobs than ever before in the history of our Nation. We have heard that we do not spend enough money on R&D, that the tax credits are not permanent.

We need your help in making them permanent. We need to make these tax credits permanent. There are eight issues that we have confined the problems that we are facing tomorrow in, and these eight issues are health care, security, bureaucratic red tape termination, lifelong learning, energy self-sufficiency and security, spurring innovation, trade fairness and opportunity, tax relief and simplification, and ending lawsuit abuse.

Today we are going to take a giant step forward in dealing with regulation. The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) is going to lead the effort to reform OSHA.

And let me just tell you a little bit about why it is important that we take on these agencies and try to change the environment. In the past we have had this adversarial relationship between the government and the private sector. There are fines, there are citations, there are unnanounced intrusions into companies.

Employers are unable to deal with this without high expenses, without high cost, without hiring individuals to take care and track what the increasing regulation burden is.

Today we are going to start with OSHA, and we are going to deal with that today. We are going to try to create an environment where we work together. You know, we could work together. In fact this happened in Wichita, Kansas, where OSHA targeted Sedgwick County, and said we are going to go to the homebuilders and we are going to make it a safe place. They stood off. They took pictures. They fined, they created citations, and the housing industry shut down.

We got the Wichita Builders Association together with OSHA and we said, why do we not work together? Why do you not come in on an announced basis, make a list of the violations, let the company have time to make the safe environment at the work area, and then come back and see how they are doing? Well, they did that. The housing industry went back to work. And they created a safe work environment by working together, working together instead of against each other in an adversarial relationship.

That is what we are talking about in changing the environment in America so that we can create and keep jobs in the future, working together and not against each other. Now, this environment here on the floor of the House is an adversarial environment. But yet we can work together. That is what we are advocating here, the government working with private sector to make more jobs in the future.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia for yielding me this time and for his leadership.

Mr. Speaker, we just heard about how antiworker this legislation is, as well as the other three bills; but I would like to clarify a few things. This is not an antiworker agenda. What this does is simplify the rules that govern OSHA.

Now, there seems to be some thought that this legislation is going to make it more dangerous for workers or that it is antiworker, and that is really not the case. What we are trying to do is smoothly process the help that OSHA should be giving to employers for a safe workplace. There is no economic benefit for employers or those who keep and create jobs in America to want injured workers.

Quite the contrary. If a worker gets injured on the job, their insurance rates go up, there is loss of productivity, and quite often, small employers especially, hire family members. The last thing they would want to do is to go to the next family reunion and explain why their brother-in-law or their sister or some member of their family was injured on the job.

What we would like to see is a cooperative effort between the OSHA folks and people who keep and create jobs in America, working together for a safe work environment. One of the ways you do that is you have the timely processing of cases so that you do not have a backlog. This particular bill would simply help that backlog be alleviated.

This is a pro-worker piece of legislation. It does more to keep and create jobs in America than anything I have heard from the opposition both today and for the balance of this year. So I am very pleased to be supporting this piece of legislation.

I want to make the point that it is a pro-worker agenda that we are moving forward here because it will help us keep and create jobs in America.

I thank the gentleman from Ohio for yielding me this time, and I appreciate the leadership that he has presented to this Congress on making America more competitive in the world economy.

Mr. Speaker, this week, Congress embarks on an important agenda to make America more competitive in the global marketplace. Over the next several weeks, the House will pass significant legislation as part of the Republican Congress' competitiveness agenda. Globalization is not something we can ignore, nor is it something we can stop. As Thomas Friedman says in his book, The World is Flat, globalization is a reality of our world today. How Congress

deals with this reality will determine whether America remains the dominant economic superpower or whether we are relegated to a second- class economy.

America's businesses and workers have the skills and talent to compete and succeed in the global economy when given the opportunity to succeed. Unfortunately, over the past 40 years, Congress has constructed barriers to competitiveness. This institution now has a responsibility to break down these barriers and allow workers and businesses to prosper. This week of the competitiveness agenda is dedicated to eliminating bureaucratic red tape. Over the years, regulation after regulation has been levied upon our businesses, hindering their growth and development. Some of these regulations have proved helpful, but far too often these policies work simply to constrain our businesses from effectively competing and thereby keeping our workers from earning the best wages and benefits. OSHA is an excellent example of a good idea poorly executed that now hinders our businesses and workers.

The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Norwood) has been a leader in the fight to keep American businesses competitive without sacrificing workplace safety and health protections. The four bills that we are considering today will establish basic principles of fairness, reduce regulatory burdens and expedite administrative reviews that will increase business productivity among America's small businesses. I want to thank the gentleman from Georgia for his vision and hard work on all these issues.

In 1971, OSHA was created to ensure a safe and healthy workplace for workers throughout the Nation. However, the bureaucracy has led OSHA to develop an adversarial relationship with our small businesses, defying common sense, good government principles and congressional intent. In order to successfully create a safe work environment, OSHA must be cooperative, not confrontational or punitive. People who own and operate businesses do not want dangerous workplaces or injured workers. They want to do the right thing, and OSHA should be there as a guide and resource, cooperatively working for a safer work environment. Unfortunately, this is simply not what is happening with OSHA.

This is particularly true in the residential construction industry where OSHA seemed to unfairly target small homebuilders in Sedgwick County, Kansas. In June of 2003, I was contacted by a group of homebuilders in Wichita who were frightened by the prospect of having to stop working in order to avoid fines from OSHA. These constituents told me OSHA was planning to fine builders for plastic cups on stairs and for workers' failure to wear earplugs while operating a wet vac. While seemingly minor issues to most of us, these fines, which some in the community claimed could be as high as $50,000, would effectively put small businesses out of business.

While OSHA claimed these reports were exaggerated, there is no way I can exaggerate the impact OSHA's hostility and excessive regulation can have on the still-recovering Wichita economy. In the case of these small construction companies, OSHA chose surprise visits, ill-conceived compliance guidelines and an adversarial demeanor to achieve everyone's goal of a safer, more secure workplace. The results were that many small contractors in my area of the country were forced to stop working in order to avoid unfair fines which could have been as high as $7,000 per infraction, no matter how insignificant. Under this approach, OSHA was doing more to hurt employees than to help them, threatening the ability of the men and women of the residential construction to make a living. That is why I am a strong supporter of the gentleman from Georgia's OSHA reform legislation, including H.R. 741. This is important piece of legislation would establish an independent review of OSHA citations.

The American political structure is based on a system of checks and balances, Federal and State, the executive, legislative and judicial branches. However, OSHA currently acts both as the prosecutor and the judge for the disposition of OSHA citations. Not only is this inherently unfair and inconsistent with our political system, the structure of the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission does not live up to congressional intent.

As the gentleman from Georgia has eloquently explained, when Congress established the OSHRC, it was designed to be an independent judicial entity to provide proper and nonbiased review and adjudication of OSHA citations.

This independent citation is critically important to the integrity and fairness of OSHA. Restoring this independence will help OSHA and the workers it serves.

I support the competitiveness agenda for America, and I support eliminating bureaucratic red tape, and I support the gentleman from Georgia's (Mr. Norwood) OSHA reform legislation.

Mr. Chairman, on rollcall No. 350 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''

Amendment Offered by Ms. DeLauro

Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume, and I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) for this opportunity to talk about some issues that I think are very important to America and to our current economic and future economic environment.

My amendment is very simple. It says ``none of the funds made available in this Act may be used to promulgate regulations without consideration of the effect such regulations have on the competitiveness of American business.''

Recently, just about an hour ago, we had an amendment on the floor here from the gentlewoman from Michigan expressing her concern about the sale of Unocal, an American company, to a Chinese company. Now, I too am concerned. But perhaps we should ask the question: How did this company get in the situation where they are so susceptible to a hostile takeover by a Chinese company?

Perhaps we can learn a lesson from this situation, with this threat of a hostile takeover. The problem that has occurred with many businesses, including Unocal, is that they have to face barriers and overcome barriers that have been created by Congress over the last generation. The barriers have made American companies less competitive and more vulnerable.

The less competitive American companies always will have to struggle against having some outside business, especially if it is subsidized by a foreign government, taking them over. The barriers that have been created by Congress include unbridled rising health care costs. The costs have been driven up by Medicaid and Medicare and the government bureaucracies that control them.

It is also litigation abuse that has driven up the cost of insurance. In the average settlement, Mr. Chairman, 60 percent of the cost now goes to lawyers instead of those who have been taken advantage of.

Also, we have the regulation costs to comply with, which drive up costs for companies complying with confusing red tape.

We have a tax policy that punishes success. We have an energy policy that we have passed five times in the House of Representatives, and yet we have not been able to get it into law. And we could be creating 700,000 jobs and bringing down the cost of energy for our companies.

We have a trade policy that fails to open up new markets like Central America and the Dominican Republic. We have research and development that we need to focus on the future economy, and we have lifelong learning issues and barriers created by Congress that have failed to address the needs of a future economy and provide the engineers and scientists and those in math and other areas of technology that will be needed in the future economy.

These policies are preventing the creation of jobs, and the result has been the loss of high-quality, high-paying jobs here in America.

The amendment I have focuses on regulations because regulatory costs are killing jobs. Less government regulations will mean granting the freedom to allow Americans to pursue their dreams, and it also means providing the space for business to thrive and create opportunities.

Instead, our Federal Government has become a creeping ivy of regulations that strangle enterprise. Unrealistic, impractical, unnecessary environmental prohibitions, OSHA mandates and the like are literally driving our industries and small businesses and our health care system to a grinding halt.

How can we expect our economy to develop and grow when bureaucracy prevents business from starting and expanding jobs; when doctors cannot even keep up with the ever-changing regulations and codes; when teachers are forced to spend more time filling out paperwork than they do in the classroom. It is estimated that the total regulatory burden as of the year 2000 was $843 billion. That is $8,000 per manufacturing worker. The regulatory compliance burden on U.S. manufacturers is equivalent to a 12 percent excise tax. It is no wonder we are having trouble competing worldwide. It is no wonder our companies are more vulnerable to hostile takeovers by foreign companies.

As we approve spending allocations by the Departments of Transportation, Treasury, HUD, and related agencies, including the OMB, we need to remind them of the importance of their actions with that funding.

Each and every Federal agency should take into consideration the effects of proposed policies on competitiveness of U.S. businesses, and they should be held accountable for those effects.

We should be concerned when a U.S. company is threatened by a hostile takeover by a foreign company. We need to change the economic environment today so we can look forward and create jobs.

I intend to withdraw this amendment, but I want to thank the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Knollenberg) for looking out for American jobs. I am confident we can work together to make this possible to bring jobs back into America and to keep and create more jobs by changing the economic environment.

Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent to withdraw my amendment.

Mr. Speaker, the U.S. Supreme Court this week effectively changed our Constitution by removing the protection of a fundamental right of a free people--the right to private possession of land and property. Our Founding Fathers knew how vital private land ownership is to a democratic society. Article V of the U.S. Constitution states, ``nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation.'' For centuries Americans have relied upon this article for protection against abusive land transfers from one person to another.

Yet last week, five Supreme Court justices ruled that private property can be taken by a government and then transferred to another private owner if such a taking will supposedly result in greater economic benefit to the community.

With a weak majority ruling, a massive blow has been dealt to Americans' basic right to own and manage private property, without fear of the government taking that property. History reminds us that nations that disregard the rights associated with private property ownership disregard other fundamental rights of the citizenry. In fact, our own Supreme Court at its inception in 1789 called eminent domain a ``despotic power.''

We have recognized there are times when governments need to purchase private land to build a road or construct a school for use by the general public, sometimes against a landowner's wishes. Our Founders believed that only under these extreme reasons should land be taken from a private property owner for the greater public good. However, the idea that a government would use this eminent domain power to take land from one private owner and transfer it to another private owner for economic reasons smells of Robin Hood gone corrupt.

Local governments and States will now be able to use this case to seize any land believed to make a higher profit if it were owned by a more entrepreneurial owner. Houses of worship, charitable organizations and other non-profits are extremely vulnerable to land grabs by greedy governments seeking more tax revenue.

Even the icon of the American spirit, the family farm, could effectively be forced to sell to another private owner who has grand plans for an economic development project. Farmers and ranchers whose families have worked the land for generations could have to unwillingly forfeit their heritage so a shopping mall can be constructed.

A mom-and-pop business could be forced to sell its property to a corporate competitor, or simply an entrepreneur who wants the land for other revenue-generating purposes. First-time home owners in poorer neighborhoods could easily be targeted for development projects against the will of the community. These are not over-hyped scenarios. The very case the Supreme Court ruled on this week forcefully removes longtime Connecticut homeowners out of their homes so a developer can build a hotel and office buildings.

This distorted ``public use'' definition is nothing short of public abuse. Under the Supreme Court's new definition, everyone's property is suddenly for sale, and the auctioneer is any government that wants more tax revenue.

If we do nothing and the Court's ruling goes unchallenged, the public good submits to the whim of the wealthy abetted by government's insatiable appetite for more money.

I urge my colleagues to join me today in supporting Mr. Gingrey's resolution that appropriately expresses outrage at this misguided decision by the Nation's highest court.

Offered By: Mr. Tiahrt of Kansas

Amendment No. 21: At the end of the bill (before the short

title) insert the following:

Offered By: Mr. Tiahrt of Kansas

Amendment No. 21: At the end of the bill (before the short

title) insert the following: