Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Maine for giving us that wonderful quote about all of the benefits that have been provided to us by veterans. But when it comes to concurrent receipts, it has been the Republicans that have done the most to provide for concurrent receipts for veterans by making a progressive step in the right direction.

I will be glad to yield to the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh) to explain what has happened when it comes to benefits for the veterans.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York (Mr. McHugh), the chairman of the subcommittee that has jurisdiction on this area for all the progress that he has made for veterans in a long time. As it was stated here earlier by the Chairman, 140 years has gone by that this has been an issue, but it took a Republican Congress to act on it. And we have done more for veterans in the last 10 years since we have taken over the House of Representatives as the majority party than happened in the previous generation. So I thank him for his leadership and appreciate his time on the floor tonight.

Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to speak about three things. First, I want to talk a little bit about our economy and how it is growing, why it is growing, why the tax relief that we have passed has been so beneficial.

Second, I want to talk about what is going to be proposed tomorrow by the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey), the ranking member on the Committee on Appropriations. He is calling it ``America's Top Ten Obligations.'' That is the title for a tax increase on what he claims are the top 1 percent of taxpayers in America. We will tell you who those people are.

The third thing I want to talk about is how we are going to bring jobs back into America. It is an agenda we call ``Careers for the 21st Century.'' It is an eight-point plan to make America more competitive.

But first, Mr. Speaker, let me return to our economy. Our economy is robust. I have a chart here that shows how our economy is growing. It starts in the fourth quarter of 2002. As you recall, in the recent history of our economy, in 1999 we had a tech bust. It resulted in a dramatic drop in the NASDAQ because a lot of the tech industries lost value and many people were laid off.

Following that in about November of 2000, prior to George Bush being sworn in for office in January of 2001, the recession started. We saw other job losses. Then on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked our country using our own technology against us and dealt a severe blow to our economy.

In my home area in south central Kansas, our community had a greater percentage loss of jobs compared to the total number of jobs in the community than any other community in the United States. We were hit very hard. So the terrorist attack had a dramatic impact.

What happened in Congress then is that we passed the President's plan for tax relief. It was an across-the-board tax relief plan in addition to some targeted tax relief. That across-the-board plan affected every individual that pays Federal income taxes in America. Every individual. All of us got a tax break if we paid Federal income taxes. It was a very fair and reasonable thing to do. The percentage was equal for every American.

So that tax increase did one of three things for people who got money back

from the government, their money returned to them by the Federal Government. They either saved it, which was good, because that provided money for mortgages. As we have known, if one has been paying attention to new home starts in America, it has been dramatically growing. It has been the largest surge that we have seen in recent history. Two reasons: One, low interest rates; the second is there was money available because people took some of this money available from the tax relief and they saved it.

The second thing was invest it. By investing it it made money available to corporations to expand their companies and hire more people. And the charts will support that.

The third thing is that what Americans did with the tax relief is they spent the money. They went out there and they demanded goods and services. Those goods and services in turn created more jobs.

So the tax relief did those three things. All of it was good for our economy. The results are clear. The growth in our economy going back to the fourth quarter of 2002 they had a 1.3 percent growth. We were just seeing the effect of the tax relief. The next quarter, the first quarter of 2003, 2.0 percent growth. Then it started to climb, 3.1 in the second quarter. Third quarter spiked at 8.2 percent. It was really taking off. Then it leveled off to now 4.1 and then 4.4 for the first quarter of 2004.

The projection is the last half of the chart there looks like it is going to go to about 4.4. We are anticipating some increases in the interest rates from the Federal Reserve. So there may be a slight drop back. But this is the fastest growth that our economy has seen in the last 20 years, a tremendous advantage, and it was based on tax relief.

This surge has also created jobs. This is a by-month comparison of the jobs, the base level of jobs and then the month's increase of jobs. One can see the total number of jobs has grown dramatically in the last 3 months. We have seen in March of 2004, 353,000 jobs were created. In April of 2004 an additional 346,000 jobs were created. In May of 2004, this past May, 248,000 jobs were created. Since August of last year this economy has created 1.4 million jobs because we have had some tax relief and people have done one of those three things that I explained earlier.

Now, what does that mean when jobs increase? It means unemployment goes down. Unemployment now is down to where the average in 2004 is lower than the average of the 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s. In Kansas where we have had 13,000 aerospace workers laid off, they are coming back to work. Our unemployment has just dropped three-tenths of a point in just the last couple months. So we have seen a real reduction in unemployment, which has been good for our economy. Not only are there more jobs out there, but the people with those jobs are earning more money.

Now, we have heard complaints from the other side of the aisle that, oh, sure, there are some more jobs out there but they are minimum wage jobs. These are jobs that only poor people can have. It is not a living wage. The truth is the average wage is going up. The people with these jobs are getting high-quality, high-paying jobs.

Now, I know we can do better, but the fact is people are making more money and we have more people working. Exports are also picking up, a good indication that our economy is doing very well. Also our investments are very strong. This goes back to what I was saying about those three points.

The President's tax cut has reduced the marginal effective tax rate for new investments and that has caused a growth of investments in America. Very important fact. Housing starts remain strong. We talked a little bit about that. That is one of the second points I made when people save money. I guess it is the first point I made, that when people save money it makes money available for home mortgages. And then home ownership starts, people buy houses and they build new homes. And those homes that are vacated are then sold on the market.

We have more people owning homes today than ever before in America's history. Minority ownership is at an all time high, at 50.8 percent of families owning houses.

Other indicators in the housing markets are also strong. So this is good news for our economy. And it goes back to tax relief. Tax relief is very important to keep our economy strong.

Now, tomorrow the gentleman from Wisconsin is going to take a tip off the sheet of Mr. Kerry, the gentleman running for president, and that is going to be called America's Top Ten Obligations. Now, this plan, the intent of this plan is to scale back the tax cuts, the tax cuts that have been propping up this economy, as these charts have shown, propping up this economy during the terrorist attacks, the war against terrorism, it is a worldwide war, and the recession that we are coming out of.

But the problem is that Mr. Kerry and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) wanting to raise the tax burden, which they say is the top 1 percent of America, is actually raising taxes on the people that are creating the jobs.

Now, the Tax Foundation is drafting a report on the demographics of the top 1 percent of taxpayers in America. These are the so-called, quote unquote, ``millionaires.'' And they are millionaires. For example, 83 percent of taxpayers with an income above $1 million have it from business income. Well, what does that mean? It means that they are the people that are out there creating jobs. Many of these jobs that we have seen on the charts here tonight are created by small business. 83 percent of these people are small business owners, pure and simple.

If you look at the statistics, 13.2 percent of them are in finance, real estate, or insurance. 8.1 percent of them are in manufacturing of durable goods. 6.9 percent of them are in educational services. 6.8 percent of them are in medical, except hospitals.

We have 6.0 percent of them that are business and repairs, including computer processing and business services, and 4.9 of them are in construction/manufacturing.

These other categories include agricultural, farming in other words, mining, utilities, wholesale trade, retail trade. These are small business owners, and in Kansas, it is four out of five jobs.

Now, if you look at Kansas, you will find that in Wichita, for example, it has the largest facility owned by Boeing outside the State of Washington. We also have Raytheon which owns Beech aircraft where they make Beech jets, many different models, and also, their single engine aircraft. We also have Cessna, which is owned by Textron. All their aircraft are made in south central Kansas, either in Independence, Kansas, and a majority of them remain right there in Wichita.

We also have Lear jet which is owned by Bombardier where they make the Lear 35, the Lear 45, the Lear 60 and they are looking at some other Bombardier models that are moving in there.

We also have a design shop for Airbus, designing the wing for the A- 380, their new huge airplane that is going to be sold to airlines for passenger use. Plus, we have about 150 shops that supply the aircraft industry.

Well, a majority of those shops are just nothing more than small businesses. People look at, well, we have got 12,000 people at Boeing, 12,000 people at Cessna, 8,000 people at Raytheon, 4,000 people at Lear jet, 120 at Airbus, but then you look at all these small shops, and there are more people working in aerospace for small businessmen than there are for all the big corporations.

Well, those are the 83 percent of taxpayers in the top one percent that own those shops and hire those people.

Well, the plan that Mr. Kerry and the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) have is to raise taxes on those people. What impact will it have when they have less money available to hire people to run their business? It will result in layoffs.

Now, if you have listened to the rhetoric during the presidential campaign, you will find out that the gloom and doom perspective are coming from Mr. Kerry and from the Democrats here in the House, and they have sort of this dark, stormy night view of America. I have sort of the sunshiny day, the optimistic side, where if we can allow people to have a little more in their pocket, where we can allow small businessmen to go out there and invest in their companies, they will do well, they will hire people that will do well, and our

economy will do well, but instead, we have got to go down the path that they want to take us which is to raise taxes, take away jobs.

I found it interesting tonight that the gentleman from Maine created this scenario where rich people, it sounded like they were sitting on a beach somewhere in the Caribbean, sipping their Margaritas or whatever, Margaritaville maybe, and that they were just living a life of leisure and they just had money stuck in their pockets everywhere, and we should take that money away from them and give it to the veterans which are having trouble getting health services. Well, in the last 10 years since I have been here we have doubled the amount of money that veterans are getting for health care, doubled it, more than they did in the previous generation.

But we also realize that these people that they are talking about, the top 1 percent, are not sitting on the beach somewhere drinking a Margarita, they are out there working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. They are creating jobs. They are trying to keep their businesses together. They are giving people opportunities by hiring them, letting them get skills, letting them work, letting them buy clothes for their kids, buy cars for themselves, putting their kids through college. They are letting their employees live the American dream, but that is going to change if Mr. Kerry or the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Obey) have their way. They are going to take away the money that they have in order to make their businesses healthy and grow.

So, the proposal the Democrats have is to kill the jobs. The tax breaks we have obviously have created jobs by just the charts I showed you earlier. It seems the House Democrats want to bring up a page out of the Kerry economic playbook to raise taxes on job creators and grow the size of government, and Mr. Speaker, Republicans welcome this chance to debate and defeat this job-killing bill tomorrow, along with the spending proposals.

The third thing I wanted to talk to you tonight is something that is very exciting because I showed you how well the economy is doing, but we know we can do better. When things got tough in America, I started talking to the CEOs back in my area, and I met with them several times. I listened to their concerns, their problems, and I realized that they basically control only a couple of different variables in their businesses.

Number one is wages, and that is the thing that we seem to always talk about, and I think the reason we do is probably because unions feel that that is their prime objective in life today. It is not about whether the lights are on or off or how warm it is in the workplace anymore. It is about wages, and they feel like they are unjustified unless they get a good wage package for their workers. That is what they are there for, and what I found is that the employers basically do not mind paying a good wage. They want high quality workers. They are willing to pay for them, but that is one of the few variables they have that they can control. So there is a lot of pressure on employers to try to keep wages down. It is very unfortunate, but I will tell you why later on.

The second thing, though, is overhead. Overhead is a variable. That is how many square feet they have in a building. That is how new of machines they have. That is basically keeping the lights on and having the equipment for their employees to work on. They can control how big the building is. In fact, they can sell it off if they have to. Right now, the Boeing company is looking at selling off a large part of the facility they have in Wichita. They have about 12.5 million square feet under roof in Wichita. They could spin off as much as half of that and have another company buy that, and that would reduce their overhead burden. That is one of the two variables that they have to look at.

The other variables are things that they do not get a vote on. They cannot really have much control over, for example, the health care plan. Right now, employers must have a health care plan to be competitive, but they do not get to vote on how much it grows each year. In fact, some of them have told me in Wichita that the growth in their health care costs for their employees have gone up by 30 percent in the last year, 30 percent. Now, they are looking at ways that they have to increase deductibles, trying to put more of the burden back on the employees. Well, that is a very unfortunate thing, but it is something that they have very little control over.

So what do they do? They look at wages and overhead. The result of that has been a job loss. They have been looking at going overseas because it is more difficult. Well, health care is just one issue.

We have divided the issues up into eight categories. Now, these issues have really been a problem created by Congress over the last generation. They have created costs and expenses that businesses have to put up with just by the sheer structure of the system, and it has limited their ability to do business in America, and it has caused job loss, jobs going overseas.

The eight categories are health care security. We have talked about health care a little bit. The other one is bureaucratic red tape. Educational policy, we call it lifelong learning. Energy self- sufficiency, research and development/innovation. Trade fairness is the sixth one. The seventh one is tax relief and simplification. The last one is ending lawsuit abuse and litigation management.

We have a scorecard on what we have done to change the business environment in America and make it more competitive. We have taken on the first four of these eight issues.

The first one was health care security. With health care security, we passed three pieces of legislation. Let me say up front that we have not solved the problems in health care all together, but we have put policies in place that will help lower the costs. We will not see the same dramatic growth we have seen in the past.

The three pieces of legislation we passed were flexible spending accounts that allowed employees to control part of this money. The employer would set aside an amount of money like $1,000. If the employees did not use that money, they could carry it over to the next year, and by doing that, then eventually, as we worked with this policy, it could be a system where an employee, if they stay healthy their whole lives, they could use that money for long-term health care in their elder years. That is always a worry that people have.

My parents are having that same concern. They have gone out and bought long-term care insurance. It costs them a lot of money a month, and it grieves me because they have to cut back on their lifestyle. It costs them almost $400 a month. My father is 85. My mother is 77. So it is a little difficult for them to fit that in their budget, but they are so worried about being a burden on their children that they have gone out and purchased this insurance.

Well, if an employee working chose a healthy lifestyle, was allowed to put this money away through their working career, it would go into an annuity that could pay for long-term health care insurance through flexible spending accounts.

We also passed medical malpractice liability limits, and that was a very good thing because it limited the amount of liability, and it allowed lower costs for insurance, for physicians and hospitals, and those who provide health care services, and that, in turn, helps keep costs down.

Now, you can look on a State-by-State basis where people have not limited medical malpractice, and we have had some outrageous settlements that have gone way beyond what any medical costs were associated for the loss or the injury and basically made a lot of lawyers rich. Well, this is a reasonable way that we have capped liability costs, and we followed some of the States.

And in those States where this has occurred, they have seen dramatic lower costs in their medical malpractice insurance, and the cost of health care has gone down. It has been a good example. So we adopted here in the Congress and passed medical malpractice liability limits.

We also passed the Small Business Health Fairness Act, or AHPs, associated health plans. These are plans that allow associations to go out and procure, especially small businesses,

through their associations. They can go out and buy health care plans as a group rather than as an individuals.

If you take a small shop, like a small machine shop that is supplying the aircraft industry in Wichita, Kansas, they may have 10 employees. Well, those 10 employees have to buy their own package. The insurance company would come in and assess the risk for those ten employees. But through the associated health plans all the machine shops in Wichita, Kansas, some 40,000 employees, if they bought one package through the AHP it would not just be ten employees they would be looking at, it would be 40,000 employees. That would mean lower rates for all of them.

Because all that has that has to happen in a small shop of, say ten employees, is one of the spouses of one of the employees to contract cancer and go through a long severe medical treatment, and that would drive up the cost for the entire group. It may even make it so expensive they could not afford health the care costs. So by having AHPs, or associated health plans, its allows them to mitigate their costs over a larger group and lower the whole cost.

The next week we addressed the issue of bureaucratic red tape termination, and we focused on OSHA, or the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. We started out with the OSHA Small Business Day in Court, we went to OSHA Review Commission Efficiency Act, then we passed the OSHA Independent Review and OSHA Citations Act, and then we passed the OSHA Small Employer Access to Justice Act, and then we completed the week by passing the Paperwork and Regulatory Improvement Act.

All of this effort was designed to do two things: Number one is to remove the bureaucratic red tape; to limit it. What we found by talking to groups like the National Association of Manufacturers and employers themselves was that these costs are getting buried into our products and they are making us less competitive.

The National Association of Manufacturers says that 14 percent of the cost of any item manufactured in America is regulatory compliance. Well, just imagine if we could just cut that in half. We would be 6 percent more competitive worldwide. And I think that was the goal here.

The second part of what we were trying to do is to look at government agencies and realize that they do not have to work against our employers, against our small business owners, against our employees. They can work with them to achieve a common goal.

We still have legislation pending that will continue this process, but basically it will say to OSHA, let us go out to a facility and work with them to make it safer without any fines. Right now the way the system works is OSHA comes in and they do not leave until they have found something wrong. And it seems like they have to write a fine all of the time. Sometimes they stand off from the work site, through pictures or some kind of a judgment call, and they will decide that they need to assess some fine and they will send it to the employer in the mail. Sometimes they will go to a job site which has a contractor, a general contractor and ten or twelve subcontractors, and they will fine everybody there, even if there is just one of the subcontractors at fault.

Well, the new system we need to put in place would have OSHA go in and say, we have a ladder being improperly used and it is a danger to this work site, so we will educate your workers as to how to place it properly. They can come back in 6 months and see how people are handling ladders. That way both the employer and OSHA achieves the goal of safety on the workplace without assessing fines.

So that is a good place to work through bureaucratic red tape, reducing the amount of red tape and achieving the goals that are necessary.

The next week we went into life-long learning. In order to be competitive around the globe, we have to have people who are preparing themselves for the technical future we have coming up. We need people to be fluent in math and science and in engineering capabilities. They will have to have high-tech degrees. They will also have to be fluent in languages, as we are finding out today.

But we need to have a plan to create an environment so that people can get the skills they need in order to become ready for tomorrow, for the future, because it is going to be more and more technical, not less. So we passed the Teacher Training Enhancement Act, we passed the Priorities for Graduate Studies Act, the Back to Work Incentive Act, and the Workforce Research Investment and Adult Education Act. We had conferees appointed for that legislation.

The next week we went on to energy self-sufficiency. We passed the Energy Policy Act of 2004, the Renewable Energy Project Siting Improvement Act, and the U.S. Refinery Revitalization Act.

It is funny, because we have tried to pass energy policy several times. In fact, I have a chart that shows the activity of the House Republicans and what they have done to pass an energy bill. Back in January 1, 2001, shortly before George Bush took office, gas prices were about $1.32 in America. President Bush sent his energy plan to Congress and it was passed for the first time by the House on August 2, 2002. It then failed across the Capitol. We passed it again on April 11, 2003. We passed it a third time, after it failed again on the other side of the Capitol. We passed it a third time on November 18, 2003, and then we just passed it on June 15, 2004 for a fourth time.

Why is an energy bill so important? It is important because you can see, without it, gas prices are continuing to climb. We are now over $2. We must have a comprehensive plan where we can open up more energy reserves, where we can capitalize on renewable energy, and where we can open up new sites for refineries. We have not built a new refinery since 1976 in America. Even if we could produce more oil right now, we probably could not process it because we need more refineries to do that. So we are going to go into old sites, where old refineries are, and allow them to be opened up.

In the following month of July we are going to take on the last four issues that we have on this package of careers for the 21st century. We are going to take on tax relief and simplification. We are going to try to set up a system that is not so volatile in the way that it approaches businesses.

There is one success story I want to briefly mention before I run out of time, and it is called accelerated depreciation. In the aircraft industry, when you sell a business jet, it can cost $6 million. Well, through accelerated depreciation they can write off two-thirds of that aircraft in the very first year. Now, I have heard people on the other side of the aisle talk about what a great tax break for rich individuals and corporations that is. What they do not talk about, though, is all the jobs that are created in America.

Cessna Aircraft, which has seen the greatest benefit from accelerated depreciation, has sold every aircraft they had in the backlog, they are now building jets that are already sold, and it has put all their laid- off workers back to work, plus they have hired an additional 400 people. It is a jobs act. We need to get some more tax relief that will create more jobs in America, because we can do better.

Then we are going to move on to trade fairness and opportunity so that we can have a fair and equal trade policy and an enforceable trade policy. Then we are going to look at research and development and how we can spur innovation, and we are going to complete this with ending lawsuit abuse.

One of the beautiful things about trying to limit litigation is that, again, it will create jobs. And a good example back in the Fourth District of Kansas, back in 1994, Congress passed the statute of limitations which said basically that you cannot sue an airplane manufacturer for the design of the airplane after it has been flying for 23 years, if it is a heavy jet, or 18 years if it is a smaller aircraft. Now, think about that. If an airplane has been flying for 18 years, there is nothing wrong with the design. Yet every time a plane went down, these aircraft manufacturers always had to have some kind of defense system.

In fact, Raytheon told me that at Beech it cost them $300,000 for every crash, whether they were sued or not. So limiting liability is a very important part because, again, it will create jobs in America.

Well, these barriers, these eight barriers have been put in place by Congress. We can change the environment. The results of changing this environment will mean more jobs here in America, and it means we will have greater exports, we will be more competitive worldwide, and we will have a brighter future for ourselves and our children.

So, Mr. Speaker, I thank the staff tonight and the Speaker for hanging around. I think this is a very important issue, and I think it is the right debate to be having today.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from North Carolina for the time.

Now, there is a lot of concern here about the mechanics of what we are about to do: pass a rule, increase the debt limit, provide for the welfare of our young men and women in uniform. But I think when we are moving forward, mostly through all this rhetoric, we need to step back and look at the history of our economy, see how we got into this position and why it is important that we move forward.

I know a lot of my colleagues remember back in the late 1990s, we had an overheated economy. The Federal Reserve reacted by raising interest rates. Then we had the tech bust of 1999, followed by the beginnings of a recession in November of 2000. Then September 11, 2001, hit. We saw a huge blow to our economy. In my hometown of Wichita, Kansas, we had the highest percentage of jobs lost in the total community compared with any other city in the United States. Our aerospace community, the air capital of the world, saw more layoffs in aerospace than we have seen in a short amount of time since World War II.

During that period of time, the Federal revenue has dropped 14 percent. There have been increased demands on the Federal budget. We have increased homeland security to make our Nation safe. We have increased our spending on defense to fight the worldwide war on terrorism; but when our revenues dropped, nobody down here complaining today about how we are doing business said, well, let us cut Medicare by 14 percent so we do not have to raise the debt. Nobody came down here and said let us cut Social Security by 14 percent so we do not have to raise the debt. Nobody came down here and said let us cut education by 14 percent so we do not have to raise the debt.

Well, let us do the math: decreasing revenue because of the impact of terrorism and a recession that started around the year 2000, increasing demand on the battle to fight terrorism around the world and a higher Federal debt. So if we do not address this problem, if we do not use the most expedient means available, we will not be able to fund Social Security. The threat of not having checks going to seniors in America would become reality. No one wants that.

So where is the grief here? Where is the contrary opinion? Do those who advocate a different solution here want to come down and say let us not raise the debt? I think they know the practicality of what we have to do.

We have to move forward and conduct the business of the United States Government, and that includes addressing an issue that is very difficult for many of us to address. I did not come to Washington to raise the debt. I doubt if anybody came to Washington for the purpose of raising the debt, but we are pragmatic. We are realists. We know that there have been attacks by terrorists against our very culture, using our own technology against us. We know that we are being sabotaged around the world. We know that there is an increased demand on what the Federal Government is trying to protect our Nation.

Now, there has been some implication on the floor that there has been some misleading of Americans that perhaps we are not telling the truth. This is a free and open society. Everything we do is a matter of public record. There is no deceit here on the floor of the House, not when it comes to this issue, this bill, raising the Federal debt limit.

So I do not want to leave anybody with the impression that we are trying to hide a thing. It is all a matter of public record, and I think it is very important that as Americans we acknowledge that we have some tasks that are not easy to handle, but, yet, this is something necessary. The circumstances demand it.

So Mr. Speaker, I say that we should vote for this rule and that we should move forward with this legislation to continue the function of the government.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for the time.

I think it is very interesting that the gentleman from Texas would like us to do something about what is going on. Well, we have done something. It is hard to ignore that when we look at the economy today.

We passed tax relief that did one of three things for Americans, when putting money in their pocket. They either spent it, which was demand for goods and demand for more jobs; or they saved it, which made money available in the form of home mortgages, which drove the home building industry and created more jobs; or they invested it, which has allowed many American corporations to expand.

Right now, in the State of Kansas, unemployment just dropped three- tenths of a percent because we have an expansion in our economy. Well, what happens when we have an expansion in the economy is we have more Federal revenue, and our Federal revenue is going up. We are doing something about Federal revenue, but right here on the floor of the House we also passed a Republican budget that froze domestic spending. The results are that we now have more Americans working than we have ever had in the history of our country. We have the lowest unemployment and lower than average of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s; and we have one of the fastest growing economies, growing so fast that the Federal Reserve is now considering raising interest rates so they can slow it down a little bit.

We are doing something about this Federal debt. We are very proactive in that, but the gentleman from Texas said he was willing to do anything at any cost. He said at any cost. Is he willing to cut Social Security? Is the gentleman willing to cut even education? Is the gentleman willing to cut Defense? What does ``any cost'' mean?

I think a vote against this rule is a vote against funding the government and threatening Social Security, veterans benefits, and all of those things that we are doing right to protect our young men and women in uniform.

Mr. Speaker, I am a little amazed by the comments made by the gentleman from Mississippi. He said that we were cowardly Americans. Now, I know that words have been taken down for a lot less than that, and I think that that kind of language does not have any place on the floor of the House.

We have a free and open society. Everything we do is a matter of public record. There is nothing cowardly about what we are doing here. To try to turn this into something to be called a cowardly act, I think, is really incredible and it is grounds for taking someone's words down.

Let us talk about this Federal debt a little so we can define what Federal debt is. There are two parts to Federal debt: One is the public instruments held by people, like treasury bonds, like savings bonds. Those are financial instruments with a financial obligation that is hard and fast. It is in writing. It is black and white. The rest of the public debt is projections on the future; about how much we are going to need for my Social Security, for your Social Security, for my children's Social Security, for Medicare for all of us, for Medicaid for all of us that require it in the United States. It is a future projection.

Now, if you wanted to do something about the Federal debt, we could change the law. We could cut the benefits for Social Security. Are any of you

suggesting that we should cut the benefits for Social Security to manage the Federal debt? It is just a future obligation. Well I don't hear any of that. In fact, I hear zero solutions.

No, I will not yield. I think you referred to me as cowardly, so I do not think I am going to give you any time.

Cowardly Americans. I cannot believe it, Mr. Speaker. I think it was something that should not be tolerated on the floor. And as a warning, if I hear it again, I will ask for the words to be taken down.

Now, another allegation was made that we had cigars lit; that when it was time for the Committee on Rules to meet, that cigars were lit. Well, I was not in the Committee on Rules room. There were people here that were in that room. The last time I was in the Committee on Rules room, it was a no smoking policy. I saw no cigars being lit. In fact, there is a no smoking policy in the Capitol. We have places outside for people to smoke, but there are no cigars lit in here.

I think it is a little misleading to say we are in some dark room in the dark of night lighting cigars and dreaming up ways we can gouge people. Nothing of the sort is going on. We are conducting the business of government. And sometimes it is difficult. There is an old saying about how you do not want to see sausage, or laws being made. Well, this is the part they are talking about. Now. Right now. This is the difficult part.

If we do not address this issue, the rule happens to be the most convenient vehicle, but if we do not address this issue, there will be a shortage of funds in the United States Treasury. Now, what does that mean? The gentleman from Mississippi before me talked about funding the needs of our young men and women in uniform. And he is right, we have to do that. We have to provide them with the bullets and the backup and the vests and the hardened Humvees. All those things we have to provide for them but we cannot if there is nothing in the Treasury.

What we are doing here are the hard cold facts of trying to protect Americans, trying to keep the lights on in this government, trying to make sure that we are safe in our homes, where our kids are going to school, where we shop, where we go to church. And the way we do that is by addressing these tough issues. It is not cowardly. It is the furthest thing from cowardly. It is up front.

People are saying do not vote for the rule because it has this in it. Of all the Members I have heard speak, I do not think any of them have voted for any of the rules this year. It is standard practice for the opposition to vote against the rule. It is standard policy for the majority side to vote for the rule. That is not a reason to call somebody cowardly or to suggest cigars were lit in a dark room. That has not occurred around here.

What has occurred is we have moved forward on carrying out the business of the United States Government.

Madam Speaker, in the week following the celebration of President Reagan's life and the mourning of his death, I am reminded of the impact his legacy has left on our country and on my job as a Member of the United States House of Representatives. It also makes me think about my role as a father and the legacy I will leave for my family. What will my children say about me when I die? Will I have left a legacy to them worthy of praise and fond memories and strong self- confidence? Will they be better parents themselves because of the father I was to them? This is the legacy that will matter the most--the one I leave my children and future grandchildren.

The National Center for Fathering is based in Shawnee Mission, Kansas, and I am proud of the efforts of Founder and President Dr. Ken Canfield and his vision to equip and support fathers across the country. Thirty-nine percent of all children live in a home without their father. That's 27 million children without a stable male role model in their home. According to Focus on the Family, ``Children with married parents consistently do better in every measure of well-being than their peers who have single, cohabiting, divorced or step-parents, and this is a stronger indicator than parental race, economic or educational status, or neighborhood. The literature on this is broad and strong.''

The liberal Center for Law and Social Policy, a child advocacy organization, and Child Trends agree that ``children do best when raised by their two married biological parents. Young men without married parents are 1.5 times more likely than those with married parents to be out of school and out of work. Young girls without married parents are twice as likely to be idle. A major study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family found that boys and girls who lived with both biological parents had the lowest risk of becoming sexually active. Teens living with only one biological parent, including those in stepfamilies, were particularly at risk for becoming sexually active at younger ages.

White and black girls growing up in single-parent homes are 111 percent more likely to bear children as teenagers, 164 percent more likely to have a child out of marriage, and--if they do marry--their marriages are 92 percent more likely to dissolve compared to their counterparts with married parents. Where are the fathers? Single mothers have the hardest job in America, and it is past due time when fathers need to take responsibility and be a father to their children.

We celebrate Father's Day June 20th and I applaud my father-in-law and my father for the legacy they left my wife and me. I pray that my legacy to my children will be strong, loving, and proud. May God continue to bless America.

Mr. Speaker, tonight we are going to talk a little bit about the accomplishments of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, accomplishments that are going to help us bring jobs back into America.

Over the last generation, our government has consistently created policies that have prevented us from keeping jobs in America. The Republicans in the House have come up with a plan to change that environment so that we can quit the outsourcing of jobs and start the insourcing of jobs. We have divided the issues that have been created by the Federal government into 8 categories. Each one of those categories or issues is going to get a week of our time, a week of dedication to deal with this issue, bring important votes to the floor, and change the environment and bring more jobs into America.

We started out with health care the week of May 11, health care security. We then went to bureaucratic red tape termination, life long learning. This week was energy self-sufficiency and security. We have 4 more topics that deal with ending lawsuit abuse.

Now, under health care security we passed flexible spending accounts to allow employees more choices in their health care. We passed medical malpractice liability limitations to lower the cost of health care by lowering the liability insurance. And we also passed the Small Business Health Fairness Act which allowed small businesses and other associations to bond together to go out and purchase from health care providers and thereby lowering the cost of health care in the United States.

We went on to bureaucratic red tape termination, and we dealt with 4 bills with Occupational Safety and Health or OSHA. We had small business day in court for OSHA. We had OSHA Review Commission Efficiency Act. We had the Independent Review of OSHA Citations act. We had the OSHA Small Employer Access to Justice Act. And then we completed that week with the Paperwork and Regulatory Improvement Act.

We went on to lifelong learning the next week. We talked about the Teacher Training Enhancement Act, the Priorities for Graduates Studies Act, Back to Work Incentives Act, and we completed that week with workforce Reinvestment and Adult Education Act and having the conferees appointed as well.

This week we passed three pieces of additional legislation: the Energy Policy Act of 2004, the Renewable Energy Project Siting Improvement Act, and the U.S. Refinery Revitalization Act. Fifteen pieces of legislation have been passed. It is part of the plan that we have that is part of the aggressive nature that the House has taken on to bring jobs back to America.

Next week, we are going to be dealing with research and development.

Our opponents on the other side of the aisle, the House Democrats, have come up with an answer to our agenda. They have an alternate agenda, and that agenda is very interesting. It is on their Web site. It consists of 28 proposals compared to our 8. Thirteen of those proposals call for more government spending. Seven of those proposals call for more government regulation. Eight call for some outlandish schemes such as textile summits, other conferences, more lawsuits and targeted tax credits.

The business environment today has been forced to outsource jobs because of government regulations, because of government red tape, because of government policies, and the Democrats think the solution is more government. I think that that is wrong.

I have a quote here, Mr. Speaker. It starts out by saying, America must get to work producing more energy. The Republican program for solving economic problems is based on growth and productivity. A large amount of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our shores untouched because the Democrats seem to believe the American people would rather see more regulation, taxes and control than more energy. That quote was made by Ronald Reagan, July 17, 1980.

The problem is pretty much the same because we have not gotten any bipartisan support on trying to create jobs and improve energy sufficiency in America.

I have a chart here, Mr. Speaker, that talks about America's energy security, a lesson of supply and demand. We can see clearly on this first part of the chart that supply, which is the manufacturing of petroleum and coal product jobs, have gone down since 1995, and we are here at 2003. The consumer price index of energy prices has continued to go up.

You can see there was a dip that came down some in the recession, but our demand has continued to grow, and the reason it has is because our economy is growing. The reason our economy is growing is because of the tax relief that has been passed by House Republicans and signed by the President into law. So we have been fighting this battle for some time, and let me just show one other chart here before we go on to another speaker.

This is what the House Republicans have done to provide America with a comprehensive energy plan. It starts out on January 1, 2001, and indicates on January 3, George Bush takes office. Then we can see that we have made several efforts. President Bush released his energy plan, delivered it to Congress. We responded by passing a House energy bill for the first time. We set up another second passage over on April 11, 2003, almost a year and a half later. We passed it a third time on November 18, 2003, and yesterday we passed it for a fourth time. Each time it has been stopped by the Democrats. We have not had the ability to get it to the President's desk, but the result of not having a comprehensive energy plan is it has driven gasoline prices at the pump from below $1.50 up to in excess of $2.

It is time for us, Mr. Speaker, to move on with the energy policy and get a plan passed and to the President so that we can lower energy costs and create jobs.

I have with me a gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Chocola) who is going to address some additional issues about bringing jobs back to America as related to energy policy, and I yield to him at this time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry).

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Terry) for that very important information about how we are going to bring jobs back to America by passing comprehensive energy policies that will lower costs for natural gas and make it more economical to do business in the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from New Mexico (Mr. Pearce) to talk about bringing jobs back to America with a comprehensive energy policy.

Mr. Speaker, to wrap up as our time expires, we call our plan to bring jobs back to America ``Careers for the 21st Century.'' This week we have been talking about tonight is the energy self- sufficiency and security. Next week we are going to talk about research and development.

Mr. Speaker, on June 8, 2004 I was unavoidably detained in France for the D-Day ceremonies and missed Rollcall ``votes Nos. 229 and 230. Rollcall 229 was on agreeing to the resolution for H. Res. 663, expressing the profound regret and sorrow of the House of Representatives on the death of Ronald Wilson Reagan, former President of the United States of America. I also missed rollcall vote No. 230, approving the Journal. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on both H. Res. 663 and approving the Journal. I would ask that my statement appear in the appropriate location in the Congressional Record.

Mr. Speaker, we have lost a giant in American politics and world history. Ronald Wilson Reagan was not only a great President, he was a good man. He will be remembered fondly for his character and with great appreciation for his tremendous triumphs in spreading peace and freedom throughout the world.

In addition to tearing down the iron curtain of communism, rebuilding America's military, presiding over the Nation's longest period of growth and prosperity, it was the little things

that made him great. He cared about people, including the smallest among us. His heart of kindness reflected that of his Creator's in its compassion toward ``the least of these.''

Ronald Reagan comforted us when we grieved. Whether to the families of the 101st Airborne Division or to a Nation in shock after losing the space shuttle Challenger, President Reagan knew what to say and how to say it. He also knew when to be silent and simply offer a reassuring embrace. He was the most powerful man in the world, yet he exuded the warmth and kindness of a gentle grandfather. We respected not just the office he held, but the man who held it.

President Reagan earned his respect. He knew what he believed, established his goals upon those beliefs and committed to achieve his dreams. The world is a much improved place because he lived by his deeply held convictions.

Ronald Reagan knew you shouldn't penalize people for working hard, so he fought to enact sweeping tax relief that spurred unparalleled economic growth. He knew there was a difference between good and evil, so he called out the ``evil empire,'' and it ultimately crumbled. Ronald Reagan knew people wanted to feel good about this country again, so he told us it was morning in America--and we saw that it was.

He touched numerous lives in the Fourth Congressional District of Kansas. Every year I attend the Lincoln Day Celebration in Independence, KS, I am reminded by local residents of Ronald Reagan's visit there in 1966. They remember it as if it were yesterday. And they still love him.

We love Ronald Reagan. We have named our national airport, Washington's largest government building and more than 50 other sites across this country in tribute to our Nation's 40th President. He captured our hearts with his next-door-neighbor kindness, rekindled our patriotism with his effusive and infectious love for this country, and he inspired us with his principled leadership.

In his personal and moving letter disclosing his bout with Alzheimer's disease, the President conveyed the essence of his entire being. In that letter, he was optimistic about America, and he asked us to take care of his beloved Nancy because he was concerned about the burden she would bear. There was not a word of self pity or dread. Ronald Reagan wrote about the sunset of his life, but proclaimed for America, ``a bright dawn ahead.''

Mr. Speaker, we too believe that America's future is bright, but it pales in comparison to the place where Ronald Reagan now lives.

President Reagan had a strong faith in God and spoke of his reliance on prayer in both good and difficult times. During his address at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1982, President Reagan said he believed the United States was a blessed land that had been set apart in a special way. But, he also had the following warning:

Sometimes, it seems we've strayed from that noble

beginning, from our conviction that standards of right and

wrong do exist and must be lived up to. God, the source of

our knowledge, has been expelled from the classroom. He gives

us His greatest blessing, life, and yet many would condone

the taking of innocent life. We expect Him to protect us in a

crisis, but turn away from Him too often in our day-to-day

living. I wonder if He isn't waiting for us to wake up.

President Reagan went on to urge Americans of faith to get involved and to restore ``our spirit of neighbor caring for neighbor.'' In his conclusion he added:

We are told in II Timothy that when our work is done, we

can say, ``We have fought the good fight. We have finished

the race. We have kept the faith.''

Ronald Reagan's struggles on this earth are finished, but his work carries on. He indeed fought the good fight, and we are all better off because of it.

May God bless Ronald Wilson Reagan, and may God provide strength, peace and encouragement to Mrs. Reagan and the Reagan family in the days ahead.

Mr. Speaker, on June 9, I was unavoidably detained in France for the D-Day ceremonies and missed rollcall vote No. 231. Rollcall No. 231 was on agreeing to the resolution for H. Res. 664, mourning the passing of President Ronald Reagan and celebrating his service to the people of the United States and his leadership in promoting the cause of freedom for all the people of the world. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea'' on H. Res. 664.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Boehner) for his leadership as chairman on the Committee on Education and the Workforce. He is doing a tremendous job. I also want to thank the gentleman from Nevada (Mr. Porter) for this important legislation that he has introduced. I am also a cosponsor.

Education and retraining are the keys to ensuring that the American worker is the most competitive in the world. Now, this is week three of 8 weeks that the House is dedicating to addressing issues to bring jobs back into America. These eight issues are all very important because they are costs that are outside the control of employers. They are costs that are driven by the Federal Government. We are going to lower those costs by undoing some of the work Congress has done over the last generation and freeing up employers to bring jobs back into America.

This week, we also have passed the Teacher Training Enhancement Act, the Teacher Shortage Response Act, the Priorities for Graduate Studies Act, and now we are addressing H.R. 444, the Worker Reemployment Accounts Act.

One of the things I notice about the complaints about this bill from the other side is that we want to tell people what to do. This bill gives them flexibility. They can go out and get job training. They can get child care. They can provide for transportation or career counseling. The opponents of this bill do not want to provide choices because they do not trust Americans. They want to tell people what to do with their benefits. On the Republican side, we say we trust people to make good choices if they are given some opportunities.

Mr. Speaker, I want to give an example of a mother of three, who was working at the Ratheon Corporation in Wichita, Kansas. She wanted to finish her degree, and she got laid off. She could not provide for her child care, so she had to bring her mother back in from out of town to live with her while she went back to Wichita State University and completed her degree. With this legislation, she would have been able to carry on her education while her children were taken care of; and her mother would not have had to quit her job and move into her daughter's house.

This bill gives people flexibility so they can go out and get the child care they need. It is a good piece of legislation. It is part of bringing jobs back to America, and I urge all my colleagues to vote for it.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. Speaker, I wanted to spend just a little bit of time before we talk about how we are going to bring jobs back into America talking about the things we just heard about.

Now, a lot of the Democrats and liberals want to ignore what happened on September 11, 2001. They want to ignore that terrorists brought the war on terrorism right down home to America. It was an attack on America, just like Pearl Harbor was an attack on America.

They have forgotten that we are at war against terrorism, and it is on a global scale.

And what do the terrorists want? They want a Taliban-style society right here in America. They want us to lose our freedom. They want our women to lose their rights. They do not want our women to have any property. They do not want them to have any voting rights. They do not want them to drive without having a male partner with them. They want them to wear burqas and look out through a mesh.

This is a total change to what our western society is. If you just look at Fallujah where we tried to give those people in the terrorist organization a chance to peacefully surrender, we backed off, we allowed the Iraqis to go in, and what happened? Well, we have a Taliban-style government there. The women are threatened to wear burqas. The men cannot shave their beards anymore. What is at stake here around the world is our culture.

The liberals want the U.N. to take charge. We heard that just over the last hour. They want the United Nations to take over this battle. Well, let us look at the record the United Nations has.

In Cambodia, after we left Vietnam because of the pressure of the liberals, 2 million people died, another million in Vietnam. But the U.N. was in control. We should be comforted, we should be satisfied that they took over, where 2 million people died in Cambodia.

Rwanda, the U.N. turned a blind eye; and 500,000 people died in Rwanda.

Today, in the Sudan, there is a racist war going on where the Arabs are killing Africans. They are killing the black people. Nearly 100,000 people may be dead as of this point.

The U.N. cannot fight the war on terrorism. The U.N. cannot make the United States safe.

Well, then they said, the liberals just said earlier that we had a bad decision because of the ``neocons.'' What they were referring to is the neoconservatives. It is some kind of label they are trying to put on people who are serving this country within the Department of Defense.

They said that we made a big mistake because we trusted Chalabi who was an expatriate. Well, we did make a mistake trusting Chalabi, but I have to tell my colleagues that we trust people who are expatriates all over the world today. Why do we do that? We do that because we think they have the best information coming out of the nation, and we trust them because they have the freshest information, and we trust them because we have no other alternative, thanks to the liberals and the Clinton administration.

We totally decimated our human intelligence all over the global. We decided, according to a rule that was placed on the CIA, that we could not deal with any ``shady characters.'' Well, who knows this information? It is the people who are on the inside in these countries that are corrupt. They are all shady characters that we have to deal with, but we have no human intelligence to verify it.

That is why we trusted Chalabi. We trusted him because it was the only information we were getting was from him. We trusted it, but we needed to have some human intelligence to go inside the country of Iraq before we went in and say, yes, this is right, or, no, this is not right. But thanks to the Clintons and the liberals, we could not deal with them. We did not have anybody there to verify it. So we trusted him, and we made a mistake. I think we ought to admit that, and we ought to move on.

Chalabi passed on information to the Iranians. It was reported in The New York Times. How we got that information, the reporter from The New York Times, I do not know. We need to check that out as well, because we are talking about very important secrets that this Nation held.

But we wanted to verify what was going on in Iraq before we entered, we want to verify what is going on around the globe, and we are trying to rebuild that human intelligence network. But thanks to the Clinton administration and the liberals, we do not have any of those contacts right now.

But in Iraq what we have done as Americans is we have taken the fight to the terrorists. We are not sitting back and waiting for them to come to New York or Washington, D.C., or Wichita, Kansas. We are taking the fight to them.

Now the liberals want us to withdrawal from Iraq. We cannot do that. I think that we have to stay there.

I talked to a young soldier over in Iraq when I was there myself, and I said, what do you think about being here in this hot spot where all the terrorists from all over the globe are coming here, they are arming themselves, they are trying to take out Americans?

He said, you know, this is the one spot in the whole globe where every American here is carrying a gun. I want the terrorists to come here. I do not want them going to my home. I want them to come to Iraq. Because this is where every American is carrying a gun, and we can take care of our ourselves, and he patted his machine gun.

We have to take the fight to the terrorists. We cannot wait for them to come to us. We do not want them here on the floor of the House of Representatives. We do not want them on the streets of Washington, D.C. We do not want them in Wichita, Kansas, or New York City or anywhere else in America. We want to take the fight to them.

Well, the liberals say, now, we are in this because of the oil; and they quote people in France and in Germany. Well, if we check about the Oil for Food program that the U.N. had, all of the kickbacks that were coming out of the Oil for Food program went to France, Germany, some of them went to Russia. Does that not sound familiar when you compare that to the list of countries that would not support us in our effort to free Iraq and kill the terrorists? They are the same people that benefited from the Oil for Food program by

taking kickbacks from Saddam Hussein.

Well, it is not about oil. Because you know what? We could have bought oil from Saddam Hussein. It was on the black market. It was flowing out of Iraq, thanks to these European countries. But we did not do that because we thought about justice, we thought about right, we thought about making America safe.

Well, it is not just about oil, because we could have taken care of that. It is also about making our country safe. It is about our way of life. It is about western civilization. It is about making the American people safe at home and safe across this country.

Now, the liberals would rather fight this war at home. They want to back off, but that is not what we are going to do. Thanks goodness for George Bush, who has had the courage to take this battle to the terrorists.

Now, they said we got bad information, that we got bad information about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that we know that they gave us bad information and we went in, and, sure enough, there was not anything there.

Well, they are ignoring several facts. Number one, we have found sarin gas used in ammunitions against our troops. Now, certainly that qualifies weapons as mass destruction. Perhaps they do not think that is the case. We have also found mustard gas. We have found containers with radiation material that has been in it. What do you define as weapons of mass destruction?

They are present in Iraq. Iraq had the will. They had the potential. They had the equipment. They had the material. They had the gas. They had the distribution systems. They had the history. They used it against their own people and against the Iranians. They had the proof.

Denial is not an option about weapons of mass destruction. They did exist. They currently do exist.

But I just wanted to spend a little bit of time talking about those who spoke here earlier and the criticism that they brought forward. But it was not right, and I think the American people need to understand that it is time for us to realize how serious this battle is. We are fighting for western civilization itself, and we need to take the fight to the terrorists instead of waiting for them to bring it to our hometown, because it is our children, it is our way of life that is at stake.

I did not come down here to talk about that. I just wanted to set the record straight before we moved on.

What I wanted to talk about was lifelong learning, and this is part of an overall program that we have developed at the Republican Conference in the House to address the problem that we have had in America about losing jobs overseas. Now, many people want to blame the companies that hire and create and keep jobs in America. Even the Presidential candidate for the Democrat party, the Presidential candidate for the Democrats said that we have Benedict Arnold CEOs that are sending jobs overseas. Well, let me say, the guys that have made the decision to send the jobs overseas did not do it on a lark or on a way of doing something that was just light-hearted. They did it because they have very few options left.

If we look at the possibilities for CEOs today, they can only control a couple of things. They can control the cost of wages, and they can control the overhead, in other words, how many buildings they have, how many people they have working for them. But if you look at a lot of the costs that are in business today, many of them are way beyond the control of the CEOs. Most of them, as a matter of fact, fall on to the burden that has been placed on them by the United States Government.

These are things that have occurred over the last generation. People in Congress with good intentions voted on legislation that had bad consequences, and it is time to set the record straight, and it is time to do something about it.

We have divided these problems into categories. These eight categories are listed on this placard next to me.

First is health care security. Health care costs have been rising dramatically across America, and we are having a hard time containing the costs, and it is really hurting us as far as keeping jobs in America.

We have bureaucratic red tape. We are trying to terminate that. That has really caused us to have problems with keeping jobs here in America.

This week we are dealing with lifelong learning. We are going to talk a lot more about that today, but lifelong learning is very important for creating an atmosphere in the future so that we can attract jobs and keep jobs right here in America.

Next week we are going to talk about energy self-sufficiency and security. We are going to then deal with tax relief and simplification, and we are then going to deal with trade fairness and opportunity and then spurring innovation through research and development. We are going to end our 8 weeks on the floor of the House with ending lawsuit abuse.

All of these categories were created by Congress over the last generation. All of these categories need to be changed so that we can bring jobs back into America. If we do not, we are going to see a continued loss of jobs in America, and you are either with us or you are against us. Either you support these issues and support bringing jobs back to America, or you are going to turn your back on working Americans, turn your back on the middle class, turn your back on the future for our kids and our grandchildren.

These are the issues that we are dealing with. This week, it is lifelong learning.

I am going to turn it back over to the gentleman from North Carolina, but I just want to say in closing my remarks that lifelong learning is the way that we are going to give hope not only for our children and grandchildren but for those workers who have suffered a loss of their jobs.

I just want to end with this one example. My cousin was laid off from the Boeing Company in October of 2001. Now, the Boeing Company makes commercial airplanes. He worked in the sheet metal shop working on commercial airplanes. After September 11, when people quit flying, they laid off a ton of people at the Boeing Company in Wichita alone. At one time there were 24,000 employees. Now they are down to about 12,000 employees. One of those laid off was my cousin, Mark Smith.

What he has done is he has gone back to college. He decided that he was going to fulfill his lifelong dream of being a teacher. Through the unemployment benefits provided by the Republican House, through the ability to go back to college provided by the Republican House, he has gone back to school. He has fought against the trend. He has gotten his degree now. He is practicing teaching as we speak, and he will start next fall fulfilling his dream as an educator.

He has done it because he had a vision, and that vision needs to be passed on to other Americans who are currently laid off. Let them go back to work. Let them create a future for themselves and for their families and do it.

Because we are thinking about how we can put them back to work. We do not just want to extend unemployment benefits, because the best we can do for an unemployed worker is to get them back to work. That is what they want. That is what they desire.

So lifelong learning is a tremendously important issue. It is third on the list of eight. And as we deal with that tonight I think it is important to remember that if you are going to get workers back to work you have to give them the tools to do that. Lifelong learning is one of those tools.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from North Carolina for yielding.

I want to point out this placard I have about a statement that was made by Alan Greenspan before the Committee on Education and the Workforce. It says, we need to increase our efforts to ensure that as many of our citizens as possible have the opportunity to capture the benefits that flow from that engagement. For reasons that I shall elucidate shortly, one critical element in creating that opportunity is the provision of a rigorous education and ongoing training to all members of our society.

This proposal is not novel. It is, in fact, the strategy that we have followed successfully for most of the past century and a strategy that we now should embrace with renewed commitment. That is what we are talking about tonight, the renewed commitment to lifelong learning.

Mr. Speaker, I have a statement that outlines what we intend to follow this week, the legislation that we will bring before the committee, the commitment that the Bush administration has for education.

Mr. Speaker, I also have a statement about IBM and about their commitment to lifelong learning and how they average about $3,000 per employee and how they coordinate with different universities about lifelong learning that I would like to insert in the Record at this point.

Learning is indeed a ``lifelong'' endeavor. I'd like to highlight the efforts of IBM. IBM seems to understand what it takes to create a stronger workforce and is stepping up to the plate.

IBM partners with a number of colleges and universities around the country. For example, IBM's Scholars Program (http://www-306.ibm.com/ software/info/university/) allows colleges and universities to receive IBM software free to charge and also permits faculty to attend IBM training sessions at no cost to them.

In Vermont, IBM relies on the Vermont State College system to supplement the company's own internal training curriculum in a variety of engineering and computer courses. Similar relationships exist in Poughkeepsie, NY, with Marist College and Dutchess Community College; in Austin, TX, with St. Edwards; and in San Jose, CA, with Santa Clara Community College and UC Santa Clara. IBM also has a long standing relationship with the National Technical University which allows employees to take a full range of classes remotely, which will lead to advanced degrees.

It's worth noting that IBM will spend between $750 million and $800 million on employee training this year alone. Half of this will be for U.S. employees (which averages out to almost $3,000 per employee). In addition, IBM will spend $25 million more on training those employees whose jobs ``may'' be at risk due to global resourcing. This training is specifically aimed at equipping employees with the skills necessary to secure employment with IBM business partners, vendors, or customers if IBM does not have a position for them. Moreover, under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Labor, IBM is working with other business partners to potentially train IBM employees for positions in these other companies so that an individual displaced from IBM would never enter the public workforce system but would receive custom training that fits the needs of their new employer.

IBM's training programs work and have produced positive results. I encourage the Federal Government to join IBM and others to create a stronger workforce and keep American workers competitive in today's global economy.

Mr. Speaker, I also have a statement about a great example of a company taking the reins and bringing job training to their employees. That is about the Quaker Fabric Corporation of Fall River in southeastern Massachusetts. Their motto is, ``Hire the Best, Invest

in the Best and Keep the Best.'' It is an outline of their commitment to lifelong learning for their employees, and I will insert it in the Record at this point.

Mr. Speaker, in today's dynamic business environment, lifelong learning and job retraining are an essential part of the modern workplace. Businesses realize this, employees realize this, it is time for Congress to realize this.

A great example of a company taking the reins to bring job training to their employees is the Quaker Fabric Corporation of Fall River ion southeastern Massachusetts. Quaker Fabrics is a small business that manufacturers woven upholstery fabrics for residential furniture markets in the United States and abroad. Their motto is ``Hire the Best, Invest in the Best, and Keep the Best.''

Mr. Speaker, Quaker Fabrics realizes that new technology requires job retraining to stay competitive in today's global market. In order to compete, they opened the Quaker Learning Center to help their employees stay on top of new technology. This investment in their workers has paid them dividends. Their sales have increased by 55 percent and they have added new jobs for 1,000 people in their area. In the process, 12 of their employees have received their GED certificates, 20 employees now have certified computer training, and due to partnerships with local colleges and universities, 15 of their employees have graduated from MBA programs.

Quaker Fabric Corporation has gone a long way to empower their workers with the skills they need to compete in a global market. However, in their own words, ``We can't do it alone. We need our schools and teachers from K-16 to build the foundation of literacy, critical thinking, problem solving, mathematical and interpersonal skills required to be successful in today's knowledge based society. And it is critical that we have more programs and funding available for incumbent worker education.''

Mr. Speaker, lifelong learning creates new jobs and provides individuals with the skills they need to fill these new jobs. This is smart policy already embraced by American businesses across the country. The U.S. Congress should join businesses to help provide lifelong learning to American workers.

Mr. Speaker, I also have a statement about our Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, who is highly revered for helping lead Americans to independence and guiding the construction of our government but also talks about how he realized the importance of education and advocated not only for public education systems but also for adults to continually expand their knowledge. It follows with our concept of lifelong learning and what we are committed to, and I will insert it in the Record at this point.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin is highly revered for helping lead America to independence and guiding the construction of our government. But it is the lightening and key experiment that has endeared him to schoolchildren. Benjamin Franklin was even more of a Renaissance man than actual Renaissance men. He was an inventor, a printer, a scientist, writer, philosopher, statesman, economist, musician and entrepreneur. He challenged all he encountered--in person and through his writings--to think in different ways and improve themselves. Most important, he realized the importance of education and advocated not only for public education systems, but also for adults to continually expand their knowledge. Franklin wanted to ensure that Americans got the necessary training at home to compete with the best and brightest around the world.

Though his formal schooling ended at age 11 when he began his first apprenticeship, Franklin never stopped educating himself, constantly reading, writing and learning new skills. Franklin assembled philosophy and science leaders for discussions, set up a subscription library in Philadelphia and established the Public Academy in the City of Philadelphia to ensure that young people had a chance for formal schooling. His push to promote education at home as well as to attract the brightest minds to the United States has been successful.

Franklin's goal of lifelong learning holds true today, perhaps even more so. A highly-educated workforce is critical to America's competitiveness. Today's students are tomorrow's workforce, and for that reason, education is directly linked to America's ability to compete in a changing worldwide economy. Many working adults are trying to keep pace with the education required to stay ahead in their careers, or are in need of retraining to get them back into the workforce.

As part of our eight point competitiveness agenda, the House is addressing Lifelong Learning needs this week. Our public school system has given generations of Americans the tools to pursue their dreams, and it can certainly help prepare boys and girls for the demands of the new century. Now we need to make sure that our children are learning the fundamentals, that they become familiar with technology, and that math and science curriculums are enhanced so they can compete in the economy of the future. We will pass three bills to do so: the Teacher Training Enhancement Act, the Teacher Shortage Response Act, and the Priorities for Graduate Studies Act. We also highlight the need to continue to make sure that students have the opportunity to attend higher education institutions. Finally, we will address worker training and retraining needs. The Worker Reemployment Accounts Act offers new assistance for unemployed workers to enhance their skills and find new jobs and reenter the workforce.

This week the House is focused on the American worker, on how we can directly help the American worker compete in the global economy. We need to give our children the basic building blocs for 21st century jobs, make sure all Americans have access to universities and community colleges, and that workers have access to the training that will guarantee them high quality, high paying jobs.

Instead of political rhetoric, Republicans are offering real solutions. We invite our colleagues to join us in moving America forward and providing opportunity for U.S. businesses and working families.

Mr. Speaker, I would also like to point out that the Chamber of Commerce has addressed Congress, and they said that as much as 40 percent of tomorrow's jobs do not exist today. I believe that the only way that we are going to prepare for tomorrow is that if we continue our efforts for lifelong learning and heighten the awareness of people in America to their commitment to education, whether it is at the primary level, the secondary level or the graduate level or postgraduate level, so that we continue lifelong learning for all Americans; that the commitment that the Republicans have in the House of Representatives, that the administration has be carried out through our efforts.

This week we are addressing lifelong education. Again, it is number three on our list of the eight issues that we think are important to bring jobs back to America. These eight issues are issues that have been roadblocks to keeping and creating jobs.

Congress itself over the past generation through good intentions has passed bad legislation. We are trying to overcome that bad legislation by changing the environment so we can bring jobs back into America. We started out with health care security. Then we moved to bureaucratic red tape. This week we are talking about lifelong learning. Next week, we are going to move on to energy self-sufficiency and security. Following that, we will take a week and talk about tax relief and simplification. Following that, we will talk about trade fairness and opportunity. Then we are going to move to spurring innovation through research and development. We are going to end up with lawsuit abuse and changing that.

This is a commitment that the Republicans have made to address each one of these issues one week at a time over a period of 8 weeks so that we can keep and create jobs in America, bring jobs back. Instead of outsourcing, we want to insource jobs to America. This is one way that we can overcome the barriers that employers are facing so that they can bring jobs back to America.

I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina for spearheading the effort on lifelong learning. He has done a tremendous effort and a great success in the way he has brought other Members into the circle. He has brought this issue to the entire Republican Conference. He knows it is not only important in North Carolina but it is important in Wichita, Kansas, and across the United States.

So I want to thank the gentleman from North Carolina for allowing me this time to speak on behalf of this issue, working with him on this issue, as well as the others, and I would like to conclude my remarks and yield back to the gentleman from North Carolina to complete our efforts tonight.

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 432, 108th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. Speaker, lately, in a rare turn of events, House Democrats have adopted the old adage of Republican leaders and, in floor communications, they have posed the famous question from Reagan, Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?

Well, when the quote came, I think Democrats have found a moment of despair. We will welcome their call for comparison of today's economic, international and domestic status to that of 4 years. Yes, we are better off now.

Just look at the war on terror. The attacks on September 11 awakened the Nation to the threat of terror. Republicans have a clear strategy to keep Americans safe and to spread freedom and peace throughout the world.

In the past 3 years, we have seen great progress. Afghanistan is free, Libya is now disarmed, Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. Iraq is becoming a free country, making the heart of the Middle East more stable and America more secure.

The Republican-controlled House quickly passed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security in 2002. All border activity has been consolidated into the Department of Homeland Security, a single agency, doing away with the fallible INS, or Immigration and Naturalization Service, that allowed the September 11 hijackers to slip through our borders, rent apartments, find employment and train in flight schools, only to have their visas approved by INS after they carried out attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The Department of Homeland Security is implementing background checks on 100 percent of applications for U.S. citizenship and has registered over 1.5 million travelers into the United States VISIT program.

Over 500,000 first responders have been trained in weapons of mass destruction, awareness and response since September 11, 2001.

The USA PATRIOT Act has broken down unnecessary barriers between intelligence and law enforcement officers, ensuring that the best available information about terrorist threats is provided to people who need it most.

After two rounds of across-the-board, Republican-led tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, America's economy is strong and growing stronger, and we have overcome the triple shock of terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and recession.

Americans are seeing the benefit of the Republican progrowth agenda. In the eighth straight month of growth, the economy created 288,000 jobs in April, bringing the total increase since August to more than 1.1 million jobs created.

The real gross domestic product has grown at its fastest rate in almost 20 years over the last three-quarters. Productivity has grown at its fastest rate in 40 years. Homeownership is at an all-time high, 68.6 percent, with substantial gains among minority homeowners. We have the highest total number of people working in the history of America. Let me repeat that. We have the highest number of workers in the entire history of America on the payroll today. Unemployment today is at its lowest rate, lower than at the average of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. The average earnings by American workers is up, higher than it has ever been before. These are high-paying jobs that are coming to America. Manufacturing jobs have also increased for the first time in a long time, 1.1 million jobs in total since August.

Now, we have had some really good news on the economy, but we need to do much more; and we will talk about that later. First, let me talk about health care. Republicans have been working to see that the rising costs of health care are capped and lowered, accessibility to quality care is expanded, and jobs for more Americans are created in the process.

Millions of Americans are benefiting from lower prescription drug costs and increased access to health care. In December 2003, a prescription drug benefit was signed into law that will make Medicare prescription drug coverage available to millions of seniors and people with disabilities for the first time since Medicare's inception.

Health savings accounts were signed into law to give employees more control over their health care decisions and the opportunity to save tax-free income for future health care costs.

The number of children enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program increased from 4.6 million in 2001 to 5.8 million in 2003.

Now, let us talk about education. Under President Bush and the Republican-led Congress, No Child Left Behind was signed into law to ensure that all students become proficient at reading and math and to close the achievement gap that exists between students of different socioeconomic backgrounds. Students, teachers, and parents have seen the prospective effects of accountability, challenge, and incentive.

No Child Left Behind, or NCLB, funding for K through 12 has increased by 35 percent, and title I funding has increased 41 percent, the largest investment in education to date. While only 11 States are in full compliance with previous Federal education accountability standards in January of 2001, NCLB ensured that by June 2003 all 50 States had approved accountability plans to ensure that students become proficient in reading and math. Under NCLB, math scores have increased by 9 points for fourth graders and by 5 points for eighth graders since the 2000 National Assessment of Education Progress.

Under a Democrat watch, we would not be better off. With the Democrats in the majority, 34 million working families would not have received an average of $1,549 in tax relief each year; 47 million families would not have received the $1,000 child tax credit last summer for each child; 35 million Americans would still be paying the unfair double taxation on dividend income, discouraging them from investing in our economy; the defense of our homeland would still be spread among 22 different Federal agencies; 50,000 highly trained Federal screeners would not be protecting America's airports; 24 million Iraqis would still be living in fear under Saddam Hussein's hostile regime; more than 15 million Afghan citizens would still live under the oppressive brutal regime of the Taliban; two-thirds of al Qaeda's top leaders would still be on the loose, plotting attacks, while congressional Democrats treat terrorism as a law enforcement problem; millions of seniors would not benefit from access to discounted prescription drugs, and an eventual prescription drug benefit under Medicare; and millions of American employees would not be able to save pre-tax income towards future health care costs in personal health savings accounts.

The largest number in education to date, a 42.5 percent increase in funding, would never have seen its day in American classrooms; and only 11 out of 50 States would meet acceptable accountability standards in education today.

But things are better off under Republicans this year than they were 4 years ago. Now, every day we hear about how American jobs are going overseas. We have a chart here that reflects some of the issues that are going to be coming up and that I want to start talking about. But there is a reason why jobs have been going overseas. It is not Benedict CEOs, as we have heard before. It is not the wage levels in America. The responsibility lies right here in Congress.

Over the last generation, Congress has passed laws that have come back to haunt this generation and future generations, unless we act now. Republicans have divided these barriers that prevent Americans from keeping and creating jobs into eight categories. We have already acted on two of these categories. The first one was health care security. We have voted to limit health care costs and help provide health care security in America. This week we have dealt with the cost of bureaucratic red tape in our Bureaucratic Red Tape Termination group of bills, these five bills which I will discuss later on.

In the weeks that follow, House Republicans will bring up to the floor and vote on issues that address lifelong learning, so that we can have a skilled and talented workforce that focuses on math, science, and engineering skills.

We are going to deal with trade fairness and opportunity, so that we have fair trade policies to help assure jobs here in America. We are going to deal with tax relief and simplification so we can provide tax relief and tax simplification for Americans. We are going to move forward on an energy self-sufficiency and security plan. And we are going to encourage research and development by bringing legislation to the floor for research and development innovation. And we are going to end lawsuit abuse and deal with litigation management, which is the last issue we will deal with.

This is how we will make America more competitive. This is how we are going to ensure that our children and grandchildren have a strong economy, with opportunities to get a job if they want or start a business if they choose.

This week, we focused on bureaucratic red tape, and I want to read some facts. There are 65 words in The Lord's Prayer. There are 286 words in the Gettysburg Address. There are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. And there are 26,911 words in the Federal regulation governing the sale of cabbage. This was made in a speech by FDIC Vice Chairman John M. Reich. He said this because he wanted to emphasize that bureaucratic red tape termination is vital for U.S. competitiveness in a global economy.

Bureaucratic red tape termination means less government not only by granting the freedom to allow Americans to pursue their dreams, but it also means providing space for businesses to thrive. 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 when bureaucracy prevents businesses from starting or expanding; when doctors cannot even keep up with the ever-changing codes, and teachers are forced to spend more time filling out paperwork than teaching in the classroom? The total compliance burden on our economy of environmental,

economic, workplace, and tax compliance regulations is $850 billion; $160 billion on manufacturers alone, which is the equivalent of a 12 percent excise tax.

Of the $860 billion, we can see in the chart that it is spread between four categories: tax compliance, the total is $132 billion; workplace compliance is $84 billion; environmental regulations are $201 billion; and economic regulatory costs are $444 billion.

Now, if we compare that $860 billion to the gross domestic product of Mexico, we can see that the $860 billion is higher than the $574 billion that is the entire gross national product of Mexico. Our regulatory burden is higher than the $701 billion, which is the entire gross national product of Canada. It is a tremendous burden on our businesses.

The regulatory costs compared with individual income taxes and corporate taxes and corporate pretax profits, here again is the $860 billion of regulatory costs, the total individual income taxes that were paid last year were $949 billion, the corporate income taxes were $201 billion, and the corporate profits were $699 billion. So we can see this is a tremendous regulatory burden on our businesses, and it is keeping us from creating and holding jobs here in America.

But the Bush administration has made great strides in curbing the growth of regulations and is making a concerted effort to review existing regulations to the extent possible. They have utilized the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and its administrator, Dr. John Graham, more than any other administration. We must support them in our efforts and encourage them to do even more.

Congress should also do a better job of oversight. Too often my colleagues and I are overburdened with committee work and we do not have the time or the staff to completely review how agencies operate within what cumbersome and unnecessary regulations they are placing on our citizens. I hope, myself, to work with leadership and refocus the committees' efforts to take time to review what is in place as we do the work that must be done immediately.

I have come up with a bill called CARFA, that I will explain more later, but it is called the Commission on Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies. It is a base realignment-type committee, a BRAC-like effort. BRAC was used for the military to determine which bases should be closed. CARFA would be used by this commission to find out which parts of the Federal Government should be closed, but I will explain more about that later.

House Republicans are taking on these problems of regulations and overburdening of rules. Over the last generation, legislation has been passed with good intentions, but the disastrous consequences have come in the form of these regulations and policies. These regulations and policies have made it difficult to stay competitive; and Congress, the Republicans in Congress, intend to do something about it.

We divided these into eight categories, and we are going to continue for the next 6 weeks, after we return from recess, to take one issue a week in order to reach the compliance that we need. Our goal is more high-quality, high-paying jobs today and for future generations.

The Heritage Foundation asserts that regulatory costs are killing our jobs. They say that reducing the regulatory burden would do much to speed the economic recovery and create jobs as well as help consumers. There are opportunities for reform in a number of areas, ranging from the burdensome telecommunication rules that are slowing progress for the next generation of Internet technologies, to unnecessary costly environmental regulations that make economic growth difficult. It goes to outdated workplace regulations that also discourage job creation.

OMB, or the Office of Management and Budget, recently reported to Congress that the annual cost to society of major Federal regulations, just issued between 1992 and 2002, in other words for a decade, are estimated to range between $38 billion and $44 billion. Now these are dollars that are going to compliance and not towards investment. This estimate suggests that Americans spend about $1.50 in compliance costs for every dollar in tax costs devoted to regulation.

For firms employing fewer than 20 employees, the annual regulatory burden in 2000 was estimated to be $6,975 per employee, nearly 60 percent higher than the $4,463 estimated for firms with more than 500 employees. In other words, it is the most difficult for small businesses.

Instead of spending more on wages or health care for these employees, they have to spend nearly $7,000 per employee just complying with the paperwork that the Federal Government requires.

Over the last decade, small firms have accounted for 60 to 80 percent of the net new jobs in the U.S. economy. During and coming out of the last two recession periods, 1990 through 1992, and 2000 through 2001, small businesses created all of the new net jobs.

According to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the budgetary cost to taxpayers for funding regulatory agencies topped $25 billion in 2002 alone. The Code of Federal Regulations extends 19 feet. If you can imagine that, that is more than three times my height. If it was stacked from the floor up towards the ceiling, 19 feet high. From 1991 to 2000, the number of pages in the Code of Federal Regulations increased 28 percent.

This Republican Congress has made regulatory reform a priority. It started back in the 104th Congress when we passed the Federal bureaucratic reforms under the Job Creation and Wage Enhancement Act, which was part of the contract with America. That, among other things, has Federal agencies assess the risk and cost imposed by regulations.

To mark the passage of H.R. 1375, the Financial Services Regulatory Relief Act, had a myriad of bills and amendments that aimed at cutting red tape. According to the Congressional Research Service, the average number of rules issued each year, proposed and final, declined sharply during the Reagan administration, and dropped even further during the Bush administration, rose slightly during the Clinton administration, and has declined even further during the first 3 years of George W. Bush.

The average number of rules issued each year during the current Bush administration is 6,712. It is just over half as many issued, on average, each year during the Carter administration; that was 12,325. They have utilized the Office of Information Regulatory Affairs to do this through Dr. John Graham, and the U.S. Small Business Administration's Office of Advocacy has gone out of its way to stand up for small businesses and encourage fellow agencies to reduce the red tape and the regulatory burdens.

Bolstered by the President's commitment to remove regulatory barriers that can stifle entrepreneurial growth and job creation, it has incorporated the views of small businesses into hundreds of agency decisions. Those efforts have changed regulations and curbed new mandates resulting in over $31 billion of savings. Those savings have been reinvested back into the economy, and we are starting to see the improvement with a number of jobs. I support the administration's efforts and encourage them to do more.

Let me talk about competitiveness, because compliance costs can be regarded as the silent killer of manufacturing competitiveness. According to the Heritage Foundation, a global CEO survey shows six of ten company heads view regulations as a serious threat to the growth of their business, topping exchange rates, corporate governance issues, and even terrorism. Small business is leading America's economic recovery, but an overwhelming burden of Federal paperwork rules and regulations threatens their competitiveness and their ability to spur job creation.

Regulation imposes its heaviest burden on small- and medium-sized businesses because it is even harder for them to handle the necessary paperwork and overhead costs, and the attorney and the accountant fees that go along with it. Richard Vedder, an economist at the Center For the Study of American Business, finds that Federal regulations cause $1.3 trillion in economic output to be lost each year.

In order to give an idea of what a trillion dollars is, let us assume you started a business the day after Christ

rose from the dead, and you made a million dollars that day and each day until today. In other words, your profit was a million dollars a day for nearly 2,000 years; by that time you would not yet have made a trillion dollars. You would only be three-quarters of the way to earning a trillion dollars.

So the cost of $1.3 trillion to economic output is a tremendous cost to our economy. This is roughly equivalent to the entire output of the Midatlantic region which includes Delaware, the District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

According to a study done by the Manufacturing Alliance, entitled ``How Structural Costs Imposed on U.S. Manufacturers Harm Workers and Threaten Competitiveness,'' in terms of compliance, three areas of regulation are hit particularly hard: consumer safety, workplace safety and environmental protection.

The total compliance burden is the $850 billion we have been talking about. And again, for manufacturers, that is equivalent to a 12 percent excise tax. That means we are 12 percent less competitive. If we could cut that in half, we could make ourselves 6 percent more competitive worldwide.

The burden on the pollution abatement expenditures alone reduces the cost of competitiveness by 3.5 percentage points, in comparison with our nine largest trading partners.

In a recent working paper by the Mercatus Center, which surveyed 100 manufacturing companies and estimated that the total cost of complying with the 25 statutes and executive orders, just 25 statutes and executive orders that encompass workplace regulation, it was about a $32 billion cost in the year 2000. That is equivalent to a 1.6 percent excise tax on manufactured goods.

In addition to the problem of adding to the number of uninsured and employers losing work due to the inability to provide coverage, health care costs are making America uncompetitive in the global market as well. While I do not advocate socialized medicine, most foreign nations provide health care coverage through their government and this is a huge cost that our companies have to worry about, but foreign companies do not have to worry about.

The National Association of Manufacturers calculated that the benefit costs put American companies at a 5.5 percent disadvantage compared to our nine largest trading partners. Not only does the United States spend more on health care annually, but 7.7 percent of our gross domestic product is the private sector contribution to health care coverage, and that far exceeds those of our foreign competitors. If we add the public sector to that, it is 14 percent of our gross domestic product.

America has been blessed with the best health care system. However, we must keep working to make it available and affordable, and the bureaucratic red tape tied to it is driving the cost of health care up. The Kansas Hospital Association has told me that for every hour of health care they provide, there is an additional hour required for paperwork compliance. We must improve access to health care and reduce the demands on paperwork so the quality of health care does not diminish.

Now, this week we have dealt with four OSHA bills and one paperwork reduction bill and we are committed, the Republicans are committed to reduce the cost of bureaucratic red tape. Congress established OSHA in 1970. OSHA, which is the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA's mandate was to ensure for all workers safe and healthful working conditions, I am quoting from the original law which says, ``by encouraging employers and employees in their efforts to reduce the number of occupational, safety and health hazards at their place of employment.''

Yet, unsurprisingly, OSHA's 30-year record has been marred by failure. According to the regulatory analysis performed by the Cato Institute, while OSHA's supporters cite evidence attesting to the agency's effectiveness, the vast majority of studies have found no statistical significance in the reduction of workplace fatalities or injuries due to OSHA. Interventionists are hard pressed to maintain that OSHA meets even the minimum criteria for any government program. That criteria is, does it have any desirable effect on the problem it is supposed to solve.

OSHA's failure has been bad for business. A 1995 study by the Employment Policy Foundation found that 19 percent of the productivity slow-downs in the 1970s was directly attributable to regulations imposed by OSHA, and nearly half of those slow-downs in long-term productivity can be explained by rising governmental regulatory activity.

OSHA's poor track record even forced Vice President Gore to admit that the agency ``does not work well enough.'' Yet despite its failures, OSHA continues to intimidate businesses with the heavy hand of regulation, and it continues to make us worse off. As with almost any form of persistent government meddling, regulation stifles the very forces that drive growth and enhance prosperity here at home.

OSHA was created to ensure a safe and healthy workplace for workers throughout our Nation. Over the past 30 years, America's workplace has become safer and more secure than any time in our history, much of it through initiatives through the private sector. But in the last 3 decades, OSHA has developed an affliction which many Federal agencies share. Those same Federal agencies, while created to do good, have become unwelcome visitors, bearing gifts such as regulation and misguided oversight. The affliction to which I am referring is an insatiable appetite for too much control of the day-to-day lives of American workers and the companies they have worked hard to build.

This is particularly true in the residential construction industry. A few months ago, OSHA seemed to unfairly target the residential industry in Sedgwick County, Kansas. In June, I was contacted by the home builders from Wichita who were terrified by the prospect of having to stop work in order to avoid fines by OSHA. OSHA had targeted three counties in Kansas and they flooded these OSHA employees into those areas.

My constituents told me that OSHA was planning to fine builders for having plastic coffee cups on the ground and workers' failure to wear ear plugs while operating a wet-vac. These fines could be as high as $50,000, and would effectively put these small businessmen out of business.

OSHA claimed these reports were exaggerated, but there is no way I can exaggerate the impact of OSHA's hostility and excessive regulation on the fragile economy in Wichita. Allow me to explain, and prevent further harm to the small business sector.

As the Air Capital of the World, nowhere else do you find so many top-name general aviation aircraft manufacturers located in such close proximity. We also manufacture structural components for large commercial airlines. It has been said that what Detroit is to the automobile and what Silicon Valley is to the computer chip, Wichita, Kansas, is to the airplane.

Wichita proudly claims as corporate residents the Boeing Company, Cessna, Raytheon, Bombardier Aerospace's Learjet division. As a result, Wichita supplies components of two-thirds of the world's commercial airlines and manufactures 60 percent of the world's general aviation aircraft.

As you are aware, the aviation industry is the first to feel the effects of an economic downturn and the last to recover from it, and that is exactly what happened after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Wichita and surrounding area lost more jobs as a percentage of the total number of jobs than any other community in the United States. That resulted in the layoff of over 12,000 aircraft manufacturing workers.

The last thing Wichita needs is a Federal agency running around harassing small business and operating as though it would rather push paper and impose fines than working with employers to create a safe and healthy work environment.

In the case of the residential 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. Many small contractors were forced to stop working in order to avoid unfair fines which could have been as much as $7,000 per infraction, no matter how insignificant the infraction was.

Under this approach, OSHA was doing more to hurt employees than to help them by threatening the ability of the men and women in the residential construction industry to make a living. The work environment was safer; it was safe because there was nobody there. They were afraid to go to the work site in fear of being find by OSHA.

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. As a part of our Bureaucratic Red Tape Reduction Week, the gentleman brought to the floor this week several bills which are aimed at establishing the basic principles of fairness, reducing regulatory burdens and expediting administrative reviews that will increase business productivity among America's small businesses.

These four bills are H.R. 2728, the Occupational and Safety Health Small Business Day in Court Act; H.R. 2729, the Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission Efficiency Act; H.R. 2730, the Occupational Safety and Health Independent Review of OSHA Citations Act; and H.R. 2731, the Occupational Safety and Health Small Employer Access to Justice Act. I am pleased to say that the House passed all four measures despite overwhelming Democratic opposition to the measures.

As we continue to focus on Bureaucratic Red Tape Termination week, I would like to share with my colleagues legislation that I will be introducing to assist small businesses in their latest battle against Big Government. My legislation accomplishes five goals. First, the bill will streamline the amount of time businesses have to contest citations and the amount of time OSHA has to issue citations. Today, businesses have 15 days to contest citations while OSHA has 6 months to issue them. Under my bill, OSHA will have 30 days to issue citations and provide employers with 30 days to contest it.

Secondly, this legislation allows businesses the right to correct OSHA violations without immediate monetary penalty. Under my plan, safety would be improved because employers would be given the incentive to promptly correct conditions that violate OSHA standards, except in the case of willful violations where the employer had knowledge of the violation and made no reasonable effort to correct it.

This section of the bill would give employers 72 hours to correct a violation following an OSHA inspection. Once corrected, the employer must provide an abatement certification to OSHA of the correction. Upon completion of the correction and certification, OSHA would not issue a monetary penalty for the citation, although the citation would be kept on record.

Third, my bill addresses the multi-employer citation policy issue by more narrowly defining the multi-employer citation policy at OSHA.

OSHA's recent enforcement of this policy has potentially overstepped their statutory authority that was authorized by Congress in the Occupational Safety and Heath Act. The legislation that I will be proposing clarifies to whom OSHA can issue citations on work sites where multiple employers are operating and allows OSHA to issue citations for a violation only to the employer who has exposed their employee to that given condition.

Fourth, my legislation will change the criteria for issuing subsequent repeat citations by stating that ``other than serious'' citations cannot be used as a basis for repeat or subsequent citations.

Finally, the bill will require OSHA inspectors to provide to employers a written statement or summary at the conclusion of the inspection that lists the items which OSHA inspectors noticed during the inspection. OSHA must then use these summary items as the basis for their citations. Requiring a summary at the end of the inspection would provide employers with prompt notification of hazardous conditions on their job site, thereby improving safety on the work site by providing employers with the opportunity to correct hazardous conditions immediately.

Currently, employers are often unaware of what the inspector's concerns were until they receive the citation, sometimes up to 6 months after the inspection. The bill also includes the added benefit of providing OSHA with the incentive to ensure that their inspectors are well versed and educated on OSHA regulations prior to conducting the site inspection.

Mr. Speaker, I believe that OSHA's first approach to those who provide jobs in our communities should be cooperative and not combative. This agency should be driven to work with, and not against, America's businesses.

Since 1971, OSHA's safety guidelines have accomplished some decline in occupational injuries and illness rates, and workplace fatalities have been cut in half. And I am convinced that it is possible to continue job protection for the American worker while at the same time create a climate for more jobs and economic growth.

The fifth bill that was passed this week to reduce bureaucratic red tape and paperwork was called the Paperwork and Regulatory Improvements Act. It was H.R. 2432, and it requires the Office of Management and Budget, in concert with the Internal Revenue Service, to conduct a review and then report to Congress on possible actions to reduce tax paperwork burden imposed on small businesses. H.R. 2432 provides Congress with a needed permanent analytic capability to serve as a check and balance on the executive branch's cost-benefit estimates of its proposed and final regulations and their consistency with congressional intent. Under the current law, OMB is required to submit an annual regulatory accounting statement with the President's fiscal budget.

To date, the usefulness of these reports has been undermined since they have not been integrated with the budget. In other words, they do not permit Congress to review simultaneously the on-budget and off- budget costs associated with each Federal agency and each Federal agency program that imposes regulatory or paperwork burdens on the public. H.R. 2432 improves the utility of these reports to Congress by ensuring we have this simultaneous review.

Currently, there is no end to regulatory burdens imposed on the public including both large and small businesses, but H.R. 2432 requires the first-ever multi-agency study of regulatory budgeting to determine if agencies can better manage regulatory burdens on the public. This is a good government bill which makes incremental improvements in the existing processes governing paperwork and regulatory reviews, including strengthening tools for those of us here in Congress.

Mr. Speaker, tonight I also want to discuss another tool that I think can be used in eliminating unwanted and unneeded regulation and regulatory bodies in our Federal Government, and that is the creation of the Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies or CARFA.

It is certainly no secret that the Federal budget is filled with examples of duplicative, inefficient, and failed Federal agencies and programs. Many of these programs and agencies share regulatory oversight which very often ties the hands of businesses and employers due to the outrageous compliance costs these businesses must bear. I have introduced legislation that I believe would eliminate much of the fraud, abuse, and unnecessary regulation that persists in our Federal Government in a politically visible manner.

It has become increasingly clear that Congress's normal procedures cannot address the spending and waste problems that persist within our Federal Government. Time and again we see congressionally authorized programs become institutionalized, ultimately becoming a permanent fixture at the expense of taxpayers. This ties up precious Federal resources that could be used towards paying down the national debt or higher congressional priorities. By cutting out unnecessary Federal programs and agencies, we will send a strong message that we are serious about exercising fiscal responsibility and controlling government spending.

A first step towards a stable financial future for this country certainly can be found in H.R. 3213, the CARFA bill, which is also known as the Commission on the Accountability and Review of Federal Agencies Act. CARFA is based on a process with an established record of successful program elimination and

prioritizing of spending. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission, or BRAC as it is called, is similar only it deals strictly with military bases, whereas H.R. 3213 will establish a commission to conduct a comprehensive review of Federal agencies and programs and recommend the elimination or the realignment of duplicative, wasteful, and outdated functions.

CARFA provides for a disciplined spending review process for nondefense, nonentitlement programs. Congress will simply have to vote up or down on the commission's recommendations in their entirety. The congressional log-rolling that normally bogs down the process will be short-circuited. In this way, real reform can emerge and the deficit and debt program can be brought under control. H.R. 3213 offers Congress and the administration a unique opportunity rather than simply re-fund and increase funding for every Federal program. CARFA will eliminate unproductive, duplicative, and outdated programs.

Here is how CARFA would work. The commission would consist of 12 members appointed by the President no later than 90 days after the enactment of this bill. Members would be appointed for the life of the commission and would be required to meet no later than 30 days after the date on which all the members of the commission have been appointed. CARFA's duties would then include conducting a top to bottom review of all Federal programs and agencies, excepting the Department of Defense and any agency that solely administers entitlement programs.

CARFA would seek to identify those programs or agencies that could be considered duplicative in mission, grossly wasteful or inefficient, outdated, irrelevant, or simply failed. The assessment of these programs would be based primarily on the achievement of common performance measures, financial management, and other factors determined by the President. No later than 2 years after the enactment of this act, the commission would be required to submit to the President and Congress a plan with recommendations of the agencies and programs that should be realigned or eliminated and propose legislation to implement this plan. CARFA would require congressional consideration of the review's findings under the expedited legislative rules. In short, Congress would be voting up or down to continue or stop wasteful spending.

CARFA's main focus would be to make our government smarter and more effective and also to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not used to support programs such as the Federal Tea-taster, who until 1995 headed the Board of Tea Experts, which was created by the Imported Tea Act of 1897. Until this program's elimination just 8 short years ago, the Federal Government was spending $120,000 in salary and operating expenses per year to taste tea.

Obviously, this is only one example of the type of program that CARFA would target, but I am convinced that our Federal Government is replete with programs such as this that make a mockery out of our hard-earned tax dollars and that dramatically increase the costs of doing business in this country. Other examples of government waste that CARFA would target include surplus lands owned by the Department of Energy, which if sold would save taxpayers $12 million over 5 years. In addition, eliminating four duplicative bilingual education programs at the Department of Education would save taxpayers $800 million over a 5-year period. We could save $1 million every year by simply eliminating overlapping responsibilities and reducing administrative positions at the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The examples of inefficiency and wasteful government practices that CARFA could target are far too numerous to cite in this short amount of time. However, it is clear to me that the need for CARFA is very real.

The strict time limits governing the commission which would expire shortly after submitting its findings would ensure that its costs are kept to a minimum. I believe that the savings that would occur as a result of the commission's findings will more than justify the minimal expenses the study might incur. In addition, it is worth noting that CARFA requires that all funds saved by implementation of this plan can only, only, be used for supporting other domestic programs or paying down the national debt.

H.R. 3213 offers Congress and the administration a test: Can we address a real and present problem by adopting a method that has been successful in the past? CARFA is a realistic plan that will make genuine reform possible. We welcome support of this politically viable solution to government spending gone awry. If the CARFA commission comes to fruition, it will give Congress arms-length distance to do the right thing and vote down ridiculous, redundant, and outdated programs. Over 65 of my colleagues in the House have agreed to cosponsor this legislation, and our numbers are growing stronger. We hope to see the CARFA commission hard at work cutting wasteful spending and eliminating burdensome overregulation by this time next year if not sooner.

So in summary, Mr. Speaker, we have seen that, over the last generation, Congress through good intentions has created barriers to keeping and creating jobs in America. Republicans in the House have come up with a plan of dividing these barriers into eight issues, and over a period of 8 weeks we are going to address each one of these issues with the purpose of creating high-quality, high-paying jobs right here in America and bringing jobs home, jobs that we have lost due to the acts of Congress and the regulations and policies and rules that have followed these acts of Congress.

Again, Mr. Speaker, those eight issues are health care security, bureaucratic red tape termination, lifelong learning, trade fairness and opportunity, tax relief and simplification, energy self-sufficiency and security, spurring innovation, and ending lawsuit abuse.

Last week we dealt with health care security by passing health care liability reform and by passing Flexible Savings Accounts and Medical Savings Accounts.

This week we have dealt with bureaucratic red tape termination. We passed four bills relating to OSHA and the Paperwork and Regulatory Improvement Act 2030.

Next week we are in recess, so the following week we are going to deal with lifelong learning. It is our intent during that week to focus on those types of training and education that we believe will bring more jobs into America. We want to focus on math, on science, on engineering. We want to develop a system where we can teach our young men and women to be technical in their training, so they can be innovative and ready to accept the jobs that will be created by reducing these other burdens. So lifelong learning will be the week next after we are on recess.

So, Mr. Speaker, these eight issues are going to be dealt with. They are not easily overcome by businesses, small and large, because they are things they cannot control. Businesses can control wages, they can control overhead, but they cannot control their health care costs, they cannot control the bureaucratic red tape that burdens them down every day, they cannot control the trade issues and policies, they cannot control the energy policy we have and they cannot control the lawsuits that come and haunt them. So we intend to address these issues.

This is the debate that we should be having on the floor of the House now. This is how we are going to secure a future for our children and our grandchildren. We are going to, if successful, create a strong economy in the future, where they can either start a business or get a job.

For those who are in opposition to these issues, I want to ask you, why would you oppose an energy policy that would create 700,000 more jobs in America? Why would you oppose reducing red tape so we can create additional work in areas where we do not have jobs now? Why would you want to oppose lawsuit reform, because right now it is driving jobs overseas?

The Republicans in the House want to bring jobs back into America. This is our plan. It is the most aggressive and organized plan that we have ever had for bringing jobs back to America. I am very proud to head up this effort through a Jobs Action Team.

Mr. Speaker, I think we are going to be successful in bringing jobs back.

Mr. Speaker, news articles record that the first Armed Forces Day in 1950 was celebrated by parades, open houses, receptions, and air shows. Here in Washington, DC, 10,000 troops of all branches of the military, cadets, and veterans marched pass the President and his party.

In Berlin, more than a thousand U.S. soldiers paraded for the German citizens at Templehof Airfield.

In New York City, an estimated 33,000 participants initiated Armed Forces Day ``under an air cover of 250 military planes of all types.'' In harbors across the country, famed mothballed ``battlewagons'' of World War II such as the Missouri, the New Jersey, the North Carolina, and the Iowa, were opened for the public.

All across our land, the American people joined together to honor the Armed Forces.

I hope that today all Americans will show the same respect and honor to the men and women that are serving and have served this nation in our military. As President Dwight D. Eisenhower said in 1953, ``It is fitting and proper that we devote one day each year to paying special tribute to those whose constancy and courage constitute one of the bulwarks guarding the freedom of this nation and the peace of the free world.''

So let us honor the soldier, the sailor, the Airman, and the Marine who has put his or her life on the line to preserve freedom. It is their valor that gives renewed hope to Americans, the world and especially the citizens of Afghanistan and Iraq, that by perseverance and faith the ideals of freedom and justice will prevail.

Their efforts will once again allow the world to believe that a life without terrorism is possible. Their actions will once again allow the world to understand our resolve to fight for freedom and peace.

For more than 225 years, the men and women of America's Armed Forces have answered a nation's call to duty. As a Congress we affirm our resolve that the Armed Forces of the United States of America will remain the best in the world. The only place for America is first place.

God Bless our Troops.

Mr. Speaker, on Monday, May 17, 2004, I traveled to Topeka, Kansas, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education ruling in which the United States Supreme Court determined that separating students by race was inherently unequal and unconstitutional.

During my absence, the House of Representatives considered H. Con. Res. 420, a Resolution recognizing National Transportation Week, H. Con. Res. 423, a Resolution authorizing use of the Capitol Grounds for the dedication of the World War II Memorial, and H. Con. Res. 403, a Resolution condemning the Sudan for civilian attacks in the Darfur region.

Had I been present, I would have voted ``yes'' on all three of the above referenced bills.

Mr. Speaker, one of the most important domestic issues facing us and our children and grandchildren is America's ability to compete in the world market.

Over the last generation, Congress has passed laws and legislation, perhaps with good intentions, but with disastrous consequences, in the form of regulations and policies. These regulations and policies have made it difficult to stay competitive. We have divided the challenges into eight categories; and for a period of 8 weeks on the floor of the United States House, we will debate and vote on measures to change the system and make America more able to compete globally. Our goal is more high-quality, high-paying jobs. We call it Careers For the 21st Century.

The eight issues are lowering the rising cost of health care; cutting bureaucratic red tape; lifelong learning for a skilled work force; applying fair trade policies; tax relief and simplification for reducing the burden on tax preparation; energy policy that will create 700,000 jobs; research and development initiatives; and ending lawsuit abuse.

Real solutions for real problems, so that American working families can make their dreams come true.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to take the 5 minutes of the gentleman from Michigan (Mr. McCotter).

Mr. Speaker, over the last generation, Congress has acted with good intentions; but it has resulted in bad consequences. We have developed, through policy here on the floor of the House over the past generation, policies that have driven jobs offshore. We have forced costs on employers that they are unable to control, and they do not even get a vote, and the result, a loss of jobs and a loss of the American dream for those who want those jobs and a successful career.

I was speaking recently with the CEO of Raytheon Corporation in Wichita, Kansas; and we were talking about a wire harness shop. He had worked with his machinists union and tried to develop a way to keep that shop within the Raytheon Corporation. He realized after several tries that even if wages were at zero he would still be forced to move these jobs overseas in order to remain competitive. The reason these costs were driving jobs overseas was not because of the wages. It was because of the higher cost imposed by Congress over the last generation through their policies.

I spoke with the CEO of Convergy. He told me that it was about the same to build a building in New Delhi or in Manila or in Wichita, Kansas. Overhead, in other words, is about the same around the globe.

So if it is not wages and it is not overhead, Mr. Speaker, what is it that is driving up costs that CEOs have no control over and is forcing our jobs overseas? Well, we have looked at these costs, and we have decided it is time to change this environment that is keeping jobs from coming back to America. It is time we changed the status quo.

We found out that these costs can be divided into eight separate categories, and we have developed eight issues; and for this week and the seven weeks that follow, we are going to attempt to change that environment, and I believe the change is coming.

The first of these issues is health care security. These are costs that are driven by an increase of regulation, increase of lawsuits, increase of mismanagement from the Federal level; and the result has been a 12 percent increase in the growth of health care costs just this past year. This is now the sixth year where we have had double-digit growth in health care costs, and it has forced health care costs to double since 1999.

It has raised the number of uninsured in America. So this week, we passed association health plans which allowed associations to gather together and lower their health care costs by bargaining with a larger number of people.

We passed flexible savings accounts so that employees could save money for health care costs and become more involved in health care decisions and shop around for health care services, reducing the cost and increasing the number of people on the insured rolls.

We also limited medical malpractice costs by medical malpractice reform. That alone will increase the number of insured by almost 4 million Americans.

We also found out there is a second issue, and one we are going to be addressing next week is the costs that are

associated with bureaucratic red tape. We are going to try to reduce the amount of bureaucratic red tape next week by dealing with OSHA, but we know now from reports from the National Association of Manufacturers that 12 percent of the cost of any manufactured item in America is due to the cost of paperwork compliance.

The Kansas Hospital Association has told me that for every hour of health care they provide, they also have to have an hour to just comply with the paperwork. An hour of health care now equals an hour of paperwork compliance. If we could reduce that to just half, we would make our companies more competitive. That alone would help us bring jobs back to America.

Our energy policy needs to be addressed. We now are facing $2 gasoline in America, much of it driven by boutique gasolines demanded by the EPA. Blends that are designed for winter and summer in our limited number of refineries and limited number of pipelines cause temporary shortages and drive gas up. We should pass the energy bill that addresses and encourages ethanol and biodiesels, renewable resources that cannot only help lower the cost of energy but also raise the cost of commodities for farmers.

We also need to produce more energy. If we could pass the energy bill, it would create 700,000 jobs in America. Our tax policy needs to be addressed, but it is buried into the cost of our products. The loaf of bread that costs a dollar is increased by 2 cents just by taxes.

We also need to address lifelong learning, trade policy and litigation reform. We can change the status of these, status quo and bring jobs home.