Floor Statements

Well, good evening, Mr. Speaker and my friends. We have just heard from the Democrats talking about their new foray into solving all the problems with health care, and boy, did it sound good to me. I have to say it really sounded good.

The promises, essentially what I was hearing talk about, first of all, the costs are coming down and you're going to get free medical care and the quality of the care is going to go up. And gosh, if you were given a proposal like that, I don't see why anybody wouldn't say, Yeah, let's just march right ahead with socialized medicine. Let's let the government run it because they're going to bring the costs down, they're going to give you free medical care, and you're going to get even better coverage than you get now.

I also was hearing the fact that they talked about the muck of our health care system and how bad the health care system is, and how, if we don't immediately pass this legislation, that things are going to get even worse. But what we have in front of us is this absolutely euphoric view of a great health care system.

Well, first thing off that strikes me is a little bit of a problem with common sense, the first is, if our health care system were so bad, then it would seem like, to me, that Americans would be going to some foreign country to get their health care. But what I'm observing is that if I got sick--and I have been sick--the place that I'd like to be treated is in good old U.S.A. I don't want to go to Canada. I don't want to go to Great Britain. I don't want to go to France or Sweden. I don't want to go to Russia. No, I'd like to be sick right here in this country.

So it strikes me that a health care system that most people even around the world recognize as probably the most sophisticated and the best quality health care system in the world, we're saying that it is full of muck and that the system has to be completely changed around.

And so it's okay if you want to believe these promises, that what's going to happen when the government takes over the health care system is that it's going to cost less money. The trouble is the Congressional Budget Office doesn't say that and the estimates of the costs don't say that. And the States that have tried using the same approach that's being proposed here nationally, they don't say that either, because those States are almost bankrupt for trying to do this kind of a system, and yet, we're going to try to copy those bad examples.

We are just actually a few weeks, a couple, 3 weeks away from dealing with the other big problem that the administration has identified, which is the fact that the climate and the Earth is going to get worse and worse, hotter and hotter, and we are going to melt down. So we've got to deal with the problem of global warming by, what would you expect, a very, very large tax increase, the largest tax increase in the history of our country. I guess it was about $787 billion. That was the largest tax increase that we've done. We did that.

It was an 1,100-page bill that was brought to the floor, and then at 3 o'clock in the morning, in a special committee hearing, another 300 pages of extra text were added to the 1,100 pages, and the 300 pages being in the form of amendments to had to be collated and put into the 1,100 pages. So, as we were debating this wonderful bill on the floor, they were busy trying to collate this amendment that had been passed, 300-page amendment, at 3 o'clock in the morning. They're busy trying to collate that. So, as we're debating it here on the floor about to take a vote on it, there isn't even a copy of the bill that we're going to vote on.

So here we go again. Perhaps we did learn from our last experience that it's easier to pass something that people don't know what it is. And so here we go now with about 1,000 pages of bill in terms of what we're going to do to have the government take over 20 percent of the U.S. economy. The health care business is about 20 percent of the money that's spent in America. It's about 20 percent, or close to it, of our economy, and now we're going to have the government take--well, if you take a look at it, about half of it the government's already running with Medicare and Medicaid. So we've had some experience with the government running these programs.

The Medicaid program, of course, is noted for the tremendous amount of fraud and abuse that it has, but if you add the Medicaid and Medicare money, if you take a look at the total money we spent in health care, government's doing about half of it right now, but we're talking about having the government do the rest of it. And so that's where we're going, and I think we need to take a look at that.

When the government does take over various things, what tends to happen?

Is it noted for its efficiency? Well, usually what happens when the government takes over programs is you get tremendous excess in amount of spending. You get a lot of bureaucratic rationing. These are typical things in government programs. There's an inefficiency and a degraded quality. Those are the kinds of things that history would tell us happens when the government takes something over. That's what's being proposed here. Make no doubt about it, what's being proposed is the government is going to take over the health care system. And that has left people with this particular quip that, if you think health care is expensive now, just wait until it gets to be free. Then you will see what real expense means.

Well, let's take a look at how well this has worked in the past. One way you can tell whether it's a good idea to make a move or to do something particularly is to take a look at other people who have tried the same thing.

The State of Massachusetts decided in 2006 that they were going to require universal health care coverage that's very much like the current Democrat plan where people are required to purchase specific levels of health insurance.

Well, here's what happened. Health care costs have risen 42 percent since 2006--42 percent increase. Now we were just hearing from the Democrats that this thing isn't going to hardly cost anything. This is going to be a break-even because there's so much efficiency.

Well, what sort of efficiency is a 42 percent increase? And yet, health care access is down and the patients have to wait more than 2 months to try to get to see a doctor. So, is this the kind of thing that we think is going to improve what most people think is the best health care system in the world?

Health care costs now up in Massachusetts, they're 133 percent of the national average. Well, that doesn't seem to me to be producing these glorious results that I hear the Democrats talk about.

I just don't think that these people may have gotten over their euphoria from just managing to put 1,100 pages, with 300 pages that nobody could read or know what it was, and pass that within a day of the three o'clock in the morning when they made the amendments.

So here we go again. We're going to see if we can't pass another 1,000 or 2,000-page bill this week or next week--and it's a lot easier to pass them when people don't read them.

I'm joined here this evening by some very, very good friends of mine and some people who've done a number of years of study on the health care issue. I think that we need to talk a little bit about this. Before we go racing off to make some snap decisions, I think that we need to do that.

I'm joined by a number of my colleagues. I would yield to the gentleman. If you want some charts, help yourself.

This is Congressman Shadegg. He's from Arizona.

Just reclaiming my time, gentleman, I think you have asked an absolutely great question, because we just heard an hour from the Democrats. That was their whole point.

Their whole point is: We're going to somehow make the costs go down, which is a little hard to reconcile with a $1.5 trillion estimate. We saw 3 weeks ago that we jammed through the biggest tax increase in the history of this country. What was it--a $787 billion tax on energy? Anybody who flips the light switch is going to get taxed. And that's just a drop in the bucket compared to what we want to spend. And somehow this is supposed to be efficiency. That really stretches long on the conscience.

We have a number of medical doctors here today, and what I was just thinking about, Dr. Roe is from Tennessee. Did you put a program similar to this into Tennessee, and did you find that it really helped the economy of your State? I'd like to yield a little bit of time, then go to the doctor from Georgia as well in just a moment.

I wasn't going to blame you for that, gentleman.

Reclaiming my time for a minute. One of the troubles with doctors is you guys are so smart, you go pretty fast. You're going to have to slow this down.

What happened was the State government said, We're going to give you medical insurance. And so a bunch of people signed up for that. Then the companies that had the private insurance, they dropped theirs because you could go get the freebie stuff from the government. Then, guess what happened? The government stuff got really expensive and now the State's in trouble.

We have a Congresswoman that I greatly respect, Congresswoman Blackburn from Tennessee also. Do you have some more facts? I mean, you lived with it. I yield.

Wait a minute. The Democrats just said this is going to be really cheap. It's not going to be hard to pay for.

Reclaiming my time, the Governor of the State said it was a disaster in Tennessee?

Reclaiming my time, what you're depicting sounds like to me is one of those things they used to do, they charge people money. They get a railroad track with two huge steam locomotives, they charge them money, and they'd run them. It was a classic train wreck.

It sounds like basically what happened was the government engineered a train wreck in health insurance.

Dr. Roe, you were the doctor--you're a medical doctor. I assume you got into the doctoring business because you wanted to take care of people. What was it like to be there?

I yield.

Just reclaiming my time for a minute, I'd like to introduce the gentleman, because you're a medical doctor also. You got in the business to practice medicine. You're not from Tennessee. You're from Georgia. But Dr. Broun is a respected expert on the subject of health care because you have been doing it all your life. And I'm just thankful that we have you here. I'd like to you to continue commenting where we are because this is a very important discussion.

Reclaiming my time a second, now this supreme court justice, she was no right-wing conservative?

By politic standards of America, she would be considered liberal. Yet she is saying that this socialized system doesn't work. And access, just because you have insurance, doesn't do you any good. You can have a free C-section, but if you have to wait 12 months, it doesn't do you much good.

I yield back to Congressman Broun from Georgia. I think you had the floor for a moment there, and then I'm going to go to Congressman Gingrey, another medical doctor we have joining us. We have a lot of doctors here tonight, and I'm very thankful for your expertise, my friends.

Reclaiming my time, the laws passed here in Congress shut down a lab that you had to be able to treat people that had an upper respiratory type of infection?

They shut it down?

Reclaiming my time, I think you have really given us several very concrete examples in the health care business where the government involvement has basically run the cost of health care up. That is not a big surprise, is it? Because as we look at the regular marketplace, I think one of the examples would be the idea of Lasic surgery for eyes. That is one thing the government didn't get its big fingers into meddling, right? And laser technology has come along, and what used to cost thousands of dollars for a procedure now is done for hundreds of dollars. And so we have seen a dramatic decrease in the cost of good quality care just because the government wasn't tampering in it. Yet every time we see the government gets it fingers into things, the costs invariably go up.

I would like to get over to Congressman Gingrey from Georgia, another medical doctor joining us with many years of medical practice, also a former senator from Georgia and a great colleague. I yield time.

We are going to repeat this? Please continue.

Just reclaiming my time for a minute, what you brought up is an absolutely critical point. It is part of how they are going to try and pay for this humdinger bill. And what you are saying is they are going after small business.

Now a lot of us know small businesses have 500 employees or less, and they create 80 percent of the new jobs that are created typically in the economy. So if you target small business, now you are going to drive down employment. And that is significant.

I yield the gentleman from Arizona time.

I do yield.

I would like to yield time to Congresswoman Blackburn from Tennessee. I think you had a point.

And also the stack of that, that is just the beginning of the bill, and it has already given my eyes a headache from looking. What do you have, close to 9 or 10 inches of paper stacked up there, Doctor? That is just where we are now. We haven't done the amendments at 3 o'clock in the morning yet.

I do yield to the gentlelady from Tennessee.

Reclaiming my time, I just heard promise this thing doesn't cost that much, and yet the Congressional Budget Office, the original version was 3.5 trillion, and they've whittled it down to only 1.5 trillion is what we understand. And you're only talking $300 billion. And we did that huge, the biggest tax increase in the history of our country on energy taxes which is going to hurt our productivity, and that's only not even 800 billion. We're not there yet.

Reclaiming my time just a second, I'd like to go back over to Dr. Roe.

You were there. You're in Tennessee. You saw this experiment. Even the Democrat Governor said it was a failure. I'd like you to just finish fleshing--we have just a few minutes left. If you could finish, and then I'll close.

Let me just, I told Congressman Shadegg from Arizona I'm going to get him in. He had a couple of points, and we're going to jump over to you, Doctor. We'll get right over to you. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Reclaiming my time, so what you're saying is, if you like it, you won't be able to keep it. That isn't true.

I promised I was going to yield over to the gentleman from Michigan, my good friend Mr. Hoekstra, and I will come back over to you, Doctor, in just a minute. Congressman Hoekstra.

Are you sure you're spelling that word right? It doesn't say ``czar''?

Reclaiming my time, gentleman, we're talking about the President of the United States firing the President of General Motors. We got ourselves into the insurance business, into the banking business, and now health care. What is it, 20 percent of all of American business? And we're going to have this commissioner, we're going to take another 20 percent the government's going to run?

I would yield.

I promised Dr. Broun that we would give him a chance here. We're getting close to closing.

Reclaiming my time, I would like to introduce another gentleman here who has been joining us at a number of key points and junctures, Congressman Scalise from Louisiana. I would appreciate your jumping into the conversation here for just a minute or two.

I thank the gentleman.

That's a great summary, and I appreciate your perspective from Louisiana. I think a lot of other people are seeing it this way, particularly the gentleman from Michigan, Congressman Hoekstra, with all of those--and he kept reading that word ``shall,'' ``shall,'' ``shall,'' ``shall.'' This doesn't look like any kind of free enterprise to me.

I would like to recognize the doctor from Georgia, Dr. Gingrey. I thought you said you wanted to do about a minute or so before we call it here.

I think that, perhaps, may be the Democrats' biggest nightmare--the fact, if we have time to read the bill, that the people will see that what is promised and what the bill says are two different things. That is certainly what we're dealing with here. You have the Blue Dogs. These are Democrats. They're asking their leadership to have this flexibility, and the bill goes the exact opposite of what they're saying.

I would yield to the gentleman from Michigan, Congressman Hoekstra.

You know, I really appreciate your summary, and we're getting close in time. A number of you have come to this same basic position. What we're really talking about here is freedom, isn't it? It's a subject of freedom.

Okay. I'll finish up and reclaim some time. Go ahead.

Thank you, Congressman King. I appreciate your love for free enterprise and for your willingness to stand up for freedom.

We've been joined here over the last hour by a number of distinguished doctors, by doctors who have given a large portion of their lives to providing good quality health care--by Dr. Roe from Tennessee, by Dr. Gingrey from Georgia, who just left, and by Dr. Broun from Georgia. They all, of course, know health care far better than a lot of us because they've lived it for 30 or 40 years of their lives; but there's something that I've lived for about 9 years of my life, and that's what is called cancer.

People in America, when you hear the word ``cancer''--they call it ``the big C''--you pay attention to it. When I got here as a freshman Congressman, I waltzed down to the doctor's clinic that's provided by the Navy in this Capitol building. I felt bulletproof and fit as a fiddle at barely over 50. They said, Yeah, you're in pretty good shape except for one little detail: you've got prostate cancer. So, when you hear the words ``the big C''--cancer--pay attention to it. So, although I'm not a doctor, I've had some experience.

There was one set of numbers that jumped out at me that we really didn't talk about, although it was mentioned by the gentleman from Arizona, Congressman Shadegg. He talked about prostate cancer and breast cancer, but let's generalize those numbers a little bit more. Let's talk about survival rates. What we're talking about here is that, for the sake of 4 percent of the people who are chronically uninsured, the Democrats want to remake the best health care system in the world even though they were throwing rocks at it an hour and a half ago. Nobody goes from America to get health care somewhere else. They all come here to get their health care. Now what they want to do is turn us into something like Canada or England or Tennessee, which had a bad experience, or like Massachusetts.

Let's take a look at their track records before we jump too fast off this cliff. Let's take a look at the survival rates of cancer among men. In the United States, there is a 62.9 percent survival rate. That says, if you get diagnosed, there is a 62.9 percent survival rate.

Let me just get to the other one.

Look at this one in the U.K.--that's your socialized medicine: 44.8. You're talking an 18 percent difference in the survival rates between these two systems. We want to move from the U.S. system to be more like Canada or the U.K.?

I will yield, and I have to yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

That's my understanding. These numbers here are the survival rates of all cancers among men and of all cancers among women. Now, as you know, Doctor, prostate is the most common among men and breast cancer for women, but this is the whole deal.

It's hard for everybody to be able to see the chart here. Regarding the cancer for women, you're at 66.3 percent survival. You're better off if you are a woman in the United States than if you are a man in the United States; but if you go to the U.K., women are still 14 percent worse in terms of cancer. So, in other words, if you're a man in England, you're really in trouble. That's the worst you can be is a guy in England--okay?--with cancer.

But if you are a woman in England with cancer, you're still at a 14 percent worse condition for survival rates than if you're in the United States. So, in other words, it's 18 percent worse in England for a cancer patient than it is in the United States.

No. If you are a woman in the United Kingdom, you have got a 52 percent. So you are a little better off than a man in the United Kingdom, but not as good as a man in the United States at 62 percent.

But still the point of these numbers is that this government-run health care system is not producing results. It's doing just what our doctors are telling us is happening, and that is, that you have all of these mandates in the government that are making it so that it can't be effective. Of course the place where most of us, when you get to be my age--there are a few old geezers here, like me. And what do you do when you get a government that can't afford to pay for the health care? Well, they start to ration care. And who are they going to ration it to? It's the older people. They are going to say, Yes, it's fine, but you don't qualify for this kind of care. You're not enough of a benefit to society. We're going to cut you off.

How many bureaucrats can dance on the head of the pin, huh?

Is there a medicine to treat nausea?

I need to interrupt. I am so hopelessly confused. I really need some help from my colleagues tonight.

I remember we were promised if we don't pass the stimulus bill, we're going to see unemployment over 8 percent. And so, of course, we didn't vote for it. But they passed the stimulus bill, and now we've got 9.5, or whatever it is percent, unemployment

This is part of the plan. By golly, it just seems like to me maybe we shouldn't have passed that.

Your 20 million people are the number of people almost that don't have health insurance. So now we've created 20 million unemployed through this wonder of economics, this Keynesian economics that supposedly says the government goes on a spending spree, everybody is going to be doing great.

I think that we've had chance a little bit to take a look, and I think in a constructive way to, lampoon this method of doing business. We already saw the 1,100- or 1,200- or 1,400-page bill and then 300 pages of amendments at 3 o'clock in the morning, all this kind of gobbledygook, and the equivalent of a czar to take over 20 percent of our economy, which is health care. And yet, the fact of the matter is those of us standing here--and we can do this a little bit with a sense of humor, almost crying at the same time--know that there are some very plain English principles which we have all seen that make health care work, things that we all stand for and believe in.

We believe in the fact that there should be a relationship between a doctor and a patient, and the bureaucrat shouldn't get in the way. I think an awful lot of Americans believe in that, too. I think that those of us standing in this Chamber tonight believe in the fact that we don't want some government bureaucrat rationing our health care and telling us that we're too old and that it is too expensive for us. We would rather have a competitive system and let us see what we can buy with our own dollars rather than having a bureaucrat rationing our health care.

There are other things that we believe in. The gentleman has introduced another bill that he didn't talk about tonight, my good friend from Arizona, and that's a bill that says that you can go shopping for health care. And what it does is it prevents any health care provider from cornering some section of the market. It says you can go buy your health care from across State lines. If an insurance provider wants to allow you to buy the insurance, you can go to a different place to get that. So we create legitimate competition in the marketplace.

What we have always stood for is freedom, and what is being proposed here is the same rubber-stamped baloney that we have seen all the last 6 months. It is more taxes and more bureaucracy. The solution to every problem to a liberal is more taxes and more bureaucracy. The only thing is it is escalating. This is $1.5 trillion worth of taxes that's going to be required to make this work, and there's no idea anybody has of how they are going to come up with that. There goes more deficit.

There are plain English things that make health care work, and to try to destroy the best health care system in the world with this bureaucratic stuff is a travesty. It's really wrong.

Well, that's right, and what we're talking about here, though, is if you get it done late enough at night and nobody has a chance to read it, you can sneak it by. And that's not a principle that Americans should be proud of. We heard an awful lot about transparency, but we've seen none of transparency. All we've seen is dark-of-the- night, backroom deals, and more taxes, more regulations, more bureaucracy, and this one threatens the lives and livelihoods of our constituents.

Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 525, had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Madam Speaker, in accordance with House Republican Conference standards, and Clause 9 of rule XXI, I submit the following member requests regarding H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2010.

Project: Air Filtrations Systems for Helicopters

Account: Department of Defense, Army, Aircraft Modifications

Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Aerospace Filtration Systems, Inc.

Address of Requesting Entity: 4 Research Park Dr, Suite 200, St Charles, MO, USA

Description of Request: To provide $2,000,000 to install barrier filtration systems on National Guard aircraft. This request would allow the National Guard to obtain dramatic savings by reducing engine replacements and thus maintenance, keeping overall engine performance from being reduced due to erosion and Foreign Object damage (FOD), and increasing readiness rates of the ARNG fleet. The earmark will address a portion of the ARNG fleet to include: AH-64A APU Barrier Filter--32 Aircraft; AH-64D APU Barrier Filter--48 Aircraft; CH-47 APU Barrier Filter--80 Aircraft; OH-58A/C Engine Barrier Filter--50 Aircraft. AFS Barrier Filtration Systems capture 99% of the dirt and debris that would otherwise enter the engine or APU and cause a significant loss of performance. This prevents engines/APU's from being removed from the aircraft for costly maintenance or overhaul. Engine overhaul costs could cost as much as $300,000 on one engine. By extending the life of the engine/APU up to 11 times, the savings from one installation kit could be as high as $6.6M on one AH-64 helicopter alone. AFS barrier filters in use by the U.S. Army in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan have been proven extremely effective. These kits have allowed engines to reach TBO and have been a major part of unprecedented readiness rates for the aircraft fleets.

Project: Hyperspectral Imaging for Improved Force Protection (HYPER-

Madam Speaker, I am the ranking member of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower. We have talked a lot about climate change and global things and taxes, but my concern is very specific with this bill.

I have had a chance to tour the huge shipyards where the steel frames go up and the nuclear reactors go into the ships of our mighty Navy, and every single step of the way, there is energy involved in making the steel, in making the aluminum for the aircraft, heavy, heavy uses of energy in welding the steel together.

If this bill passes, it is a major threat to heavy industry because it increases the cost of energy. When we increase the cost of ships and planes, we are going to be able to buy less because we are not going to have enough money in the defense budget to be able to buy as many, and in that regard we become more vulnerable as a Nation.

This bill, while it has not been talked about in this regard, is a serious threat to our industrial base and, therefore, a threat to the security of our Nation.

Mr. Chairman, we've been talking about missile defense here and an amendment that relates to missile defense. I think one of the things that is important, and maybe a little confusing, is the fact that there are different kinds of missiles that an enemy might send against us, and so we have different kinds of missile defense depending on the nature of what is sent against us.

The debate here centers on the very long-range missiles that are known as intercontinental ballistic missiles. We have only one way to stop those missiles, and that is what's called ground-based defense. Now, we have started. We have dug the holes and built the silos for some additional ground-based missiles, and this budget is cutting the funding for something that we have already started. The amendment would restore those and finish something that we agreed to so we are not wasting money starting something and stopping it partway. So that is part of the amendment. And this is missile defense, which is important, along with the other kinds of missile defenses which are supported in this bill and have been done very well by the committee overall.

The second component of this amendment restores what is known as the Airborne Laser, a very promising technology which is based more on trying to stop a missile as it's being launched. It has the benefit of being as fast as a flashlight beam that you put on the missile and you kill it right over enemy territory when it's being launched. The bill, the way it is proposed, is going to cut the funding for the Airborne Laser. This amendment restores that important funding. Again, this is a program that we've started, invested a whole lot of money in, and it needs to go forward.

Mr. Chairman, I ask for adoption of the amendment.

Mr. Chairman, the amendment that we're bringing to the floor

here is dealing with a situation that has become increasingly difficult between the legislative branch and the executive branch, but specifically the Pentagon. That is that the leadership at the Pentagon is requiring generals or admirals to sign nondisclosure agreements; that is, they're not allowed to share their opinions with Members of Congress.

In the past, our relationship with the Pentagon has been one of openness and trying to work together as a team. The Armed Services Committee has always been a very bipartisan committee who worked well together. We've always tried to have a win-win kind of situation both between the parties, but also between the legislative branch and the Pentagon. Unfortunately, these nondisclosure statements have a tendency, we are concerned, with muzzling our admirals and generals and preventing them from giving us data that we need to be able to do our job.

This amendment is being brought also by the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Forbes), and I would yield 2 minutes to him.

Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

I yield 1 minute to the distinguished ranking member of the Armed Services Committee, the gentleman from California (Mr. McKeon).

May I ask the Chair how much time is remaining?

I very much appreciate the tremendous cooperation that so existed on the Armed Services Committee. I'm sensitive to your concerns about this being overly broad in its drafting. I hate redtape and paperwork and am very open-minded to work along these lines. I think our concerns are very much the same on this issue. And I look forward to working with you.

Unfortunately, in trying to get the thing drafted the way we wanted, we ran out of time today. So we're just going to go ahead and offer the amendment, but I look forward as we have time in the weeks ahead.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Chairman, I demand a recorded vote.

I rise now to yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Kentucky (Mr. Whitfield).

I rise in support of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. As ranking member of the Seapower and Expeditionary

Forces Subcommittee, I applaud the efforts of Chairman Taylor and his staff, who have done an excellent job in meeting the needs of our sailors, aviators, and marines.

With respect to aviation, the bill takes an important step toward addressing the Navy's strike-fighter shortfall. The Navy completed a study required in last year's bill to evaluate the potential benefits of a multiyear procurement for the F/A-18 Super Hornet, which is the only ``hot'' production line we have for fighters for the Navy.

Unfortunately, the Secretary of Defense refused to allow the report to be submitted to Congress. In the absence of any analysis of this issue from the Department, the committee used its own judgment and included a multiyear authority for the Super Hornet.

We also provide sufficient long-lead funding to allow the Navy to execute this multiyear contract. I believe this is imperative, especially as the Navy continues to find more and more areas of concern on the legacy fleet that may make it challenging to extend the service life of these aircraft. I want to thank Chairman Taylor for working with me on this issue, as well as a number of others.

For the Marine Corps, the bill fully funds the Marine's Expeditionary Fighting Vehicle program, Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles, known as MRAPs, and all of the items on their unfunded requirements.

Despite the fact that the Department of Defense refused to provide the 30-year shipbuilding program required by law, which made this committee's work difficult, the bill largely supports the President's budget request in this area.

At the full committee, Representative Conaway and I, along with Chairman Taylor, introduced an amendment that would put some teeth into the changes made to the Littoral Combat Ship program cost cap. The Navy needs to know that we're serious about controlling costs and do not adjust cost caps lightly.

The main concern I have with this bill does not fall under the Seapower Subcommittee, but I must mention it. Cutting missile defense by $1.2 billion makes no sense, particularly when North Korea and Iran are both working on nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. A cut of this magnitude is unacceptable.

I also continue to have one other overarching concern. We're not investing enough in the future of our military. The top line provided by the administration and, frankly, by this Congress, is too low. While we seem to be throwing money into every other problem under the Sun, we're tightening our belts on defense. This makes no sense.

But, again, this is a good bill overall, and Chairman Skelton has done his best with these constraints. We're very thankful for his leadership.

Finally, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to give my best wishes to our former ranking member, John McHugh, who has a fine record in this institution, and I know he will continue to serve and fight for the men and women in uniform. Nevertheless, he will be missed on this committee.

Mr. Chairman, I ask my colleagues to support this bill.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to welcome Archbishop Robert J. Carlson who was installed as Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Saint Louis.

A native of Minneapolis, Minnesota, Archbishop Robert J. Carlson began his seminary education in 1962 at Saint Paul Seminary in Saint Paul, Minnesota, earning a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy in 1966 and successfully completed his studies earning a Masters of Divinity degree in 1976.

Archbishop Carlson was ordained to the priesthood on May 23, 1970 and served the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis for several years until 1977 when he began graduate studies at the Catholic University of America, where he earned a Licentiate in Canon Law.

Thirteen years after his ordination to the priesthood Archbishop Carlson was named Auxiliary Bishop of St. Paul and Minneapolis by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, choosing for his episcopal motto: ANTE CRUCEM NIHIL DEFENSIONIS (``Before the Cross There Is No Defense''). Archbishop Carlson was later named Coadjutor of the Diocese of Sioux Falls in 1994 and succeeded Bishop Paul V. Dudley as the 7th Bishop of Sioux Falls in 1995. Less then ten years later he was named Bishop of Saginaw by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II in December 2004 and was installed as its 5th Bishop in February 2005 by Archbishop Gabriel Montalvo, Apostolic Nuncio to the United States of America.

Archbishop Robert J. Carlson was appointed Archbishop of St. Louis by His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, on April 21, 2009. He is the 9th Archbishop and the 10th Bishop of St. Louis since its establishment as a diocese in 1826.

The St. Louis Archdiocese comprises more than one-half million Catholics, who worship at its 198 churches and chapels. More than 48,700 children attend the 152 Catholic schools in the Archdiocese.

I ask that my colleagues join me today in welcoming Archbishop Carlson and congratulating him on his new appointment.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to commemorate 150 years of operation by the Missouri Botanical Garden and to congratulate the work of its current president, Dr. Peter H. Raven.

The garden was the conception of a successful businessman, Henry Shaw, who moved to Saint Louis in the early nineteenth century to begin his career in the hardware business. His business grew along with the city as he outfitted pioneers, who were heading west into the newly purchased territories. As his wealth grew, Shaw turned his attention to his true passion, horticulture. He established and maintained a personal garden on his estate and on June 15th, 1859, he opened it to the public. Upon his death, Shaw's will established the Missouri Botanical Garden as a charitable trust on the grounds of his estate in south Saint Louis, where it remains to this day.

In continuing the vision and passion of its founder, the Missouri Botanical Garden has grown into one of the premier research institutions in the world. Throughout its history, the garden and its staff have contributed significantly to the scientific community, helping to establish a sound base of knowledge in the field of botany.

As the oldest continually operating botanical garden in the United States, Missouri Botanical Garden has provided Saint Louisans and visitors from across the globe with the best in horticultural displays. Recently, this homegrown institution received its re-accreditation from the American Association of Museums, the field's primary vehicle for quality assurance. The Missouri Botanical Garden was recognized for its commitment to excellence in all that it does: governance, collections stewardship, public programs, financial stability, high professional standards, and providing the best possible services to the public.

Today, 150 years after opening, the Missouri Botanical Garden is a National Historic Landmark and a center for science, conservation, education and horticultural display.

I ask that my colleagues join me today in congratulating the Missouri Botanical Garden for its achievements and thanking Dr. Raven for his stewardship of this national treasure.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the winner of the 2009 Keystone Center Leadership Award for Leadership in Industry, Mr. Hugh Grant, chairman, president, and CEO of Monsanto Corporation.

Keystone Awardees have contributed to society in ways that reflect the spirit and mission of the Keystone Center and have demonstrated a history of achievement with a strong sense of vision, a proven ability to motivate others, dedication to team work and consensus, and the drive and ability to initiate fundamental and long-term positive change.

I commend Mr. Grant's exemplary leadership and the 20,000-strong Monsanto team for their extraordinary efforts and positive influence on American agriculture, technological innovation, and generous contributions to

international health, development, and their continued commitment to combating hunger.

Monsanto, under Grant's leadership, proves that free enterprise is the most effective way to solve seemingly intractable problems like hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. Not only has Monsanto provided a sustainable food source for hundreds of millions of people, but they have given hope to people who have been denied a future for far too long.

I ask my colleagues to join me in congratulating Hugh Grant and saying thank you to the entire Monsanto team. You put the power of innovation and enterprise to work for the world's poorest peoples and demonstrate true American compassion.

Offered By: Mr. Akin

Amendment No. 66: At the end of the bill (before the short

title), insert the following:

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the supplemental. It's actually something that I voted on not so long ago, but things have changed. Things have changed radically. In fact, it seems that the Obama administration has included in this supplemental a request for $108 billion, taking money away from defense and putting it into the International Monetary Fund. Now, they call that the IMF. A lot of people don't know what the IMF is, but here we are taking money away from our defense spending, away from our soldiers and away from our taxpayers, and we're going to put it into this International Monetary Fund.

Exactly what does that do?

Well, that allows some of our good friends, like Iran and Venezuela, to access this money to build their country and their programs and to use it according to the dictates of the way they run their countries. These are not only our competitors, but they are the countries that do the most they can to cause us trouble. So why in the world do we want to levy more taxes on our taxpayers, take the money that was for defense and give it away to our enemies? It doesn't make any sense.

This should not be included in the defense supplemental. This should be about taking care of our men and women in uniform. It should be about taking care of their equipment, their needs, their education, and the training that they need, not about giving money away to the international community to be used in who knows what way by who knows what country.

So as strong as I am on defense--and I've always been a strong defender. I've been on the Armed Services Committee for 9 years. I have three sons who've graduated from the Naval Academy. This will not stand. I will not vote for a supplemental that is giving money to some foreign country, money that should go to our soldiers.

General Leave

Madam Speaker, there was a cynical comment that was made by people who take a look at history. They say that one of the things we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I don't know that that is universally true, but certainly for our subject for this evening, that will certainly be the theme, that we are not learning very much from history.

We are going to be taking a look at the fruit of fiscal mismanagement, and particularly what is going on in our country in terms of a very, very important number, and that is unemployment. The unemployment numbers have continued to rise, in spite all kinds of assurances that by spending tons and tons of money, that we can turn those numbers around.

The historic connector here that is I think quite interesting is a fellow by the name of Henry Morgenthau. Probably you have not heard of Henry Morgenthau, but he was an important figure in his own day. And here in this Chamber, in this House, Henry Morgenthau met with the Ways and Means Committee in 1939.

Henry Morgenthau was FDR's Secretary of the Treasury and he had 8 years working on a theory that is known as Keynesian economics. He was one of the main architects of Keynesian economics, whose idea was that what the government needs to do is to stimulate the economy. You have heard that phrase over and over, stimulate the economy, and the purpose of stimulating the economy is, of course, to create more jobs.

That is a little bit like grabbing the straps on your boots and lifting up and trying to fly around the room. It doesn't work. And after 8 years of failed experience, these were the words, the very quote of Henry Morgenthau here in this building before the Ways and Means Committee.

He said, ``We have tried spending money. We are spending more than we have ever spent before, and it does not work.'' His words are echoing down through history. ``It does not work, I say. After 8 years of the administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started, and an enormous debt to boot.''

These are the words coming to us, floating down through history by Henry Morgenthau, the main architect of Keynesian economics. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the master of the policy of stimulating the economy with big spending.

Maybe we haven't been doing a good enough job on stimulating the economy with big spending, so let's just take a look and see what we have come up here in just the last year or so.

I am joined by a number of my good friends and colleagues who are going to help us in unpacking some of what is in this spending that we have and also going to help talk about this incredible statement that was made by the President last week that, somehow or another, that his administration had created 100,000 to 150,000 new jobs. It is kind of amazing, because all of the actual numbers from the government show that that is not true at all.

So we have quite an interesting evening together. And I'm joined by a good friend of mine from Iowa, Congressman King, who is here to join us in our conversation tonight. I hope that everybody else will feel comfortable to just tune right in and join us. We're going to have a little bit of fun and take a look at some of the economics. It's a serious picture, but it's an example to us that we must learn from history. It's also an example of the fact that America is on the wrong track.

As we take a look at what's going on with job losses, I think many Americans, Congressman King, understand the fact that all is not right and that unemployment number jumping up as high as 9-something percent is not acceptable.

I would yield time to my good friend from Iowa, Congressman King.

I just have to kind of wonder what he was drinking when he came up with a theory like that. That's an interesting tidbit of history.

He didn't have EPA to put the garbage in the mine. I'm sure he would have gotten in trouble with that.

It's just a treat to have, also, my good friend Congressman Lamborn who's joining us tonight as well. And we're just getting started now, talking a little bit about this idea that somehow all of this spending that we've been seeing in this last year that we've been here together, this incredible level of spending, is supposed to help with this unemployment problem. And yet, just as Morgenthau would have predicted, we're seeing unemployment going up and the spending just totally out of control.

I yield time to my good friend, Congressman Lamborn.

Just affirming that, reclaiming my time and affirming that number, yes, it is now 9.4 percent. You recall that there was a promise when we got to this great big--they call it a stimulus bill. We call it the porkulus bill. When we got to this porkulus bill, they said, If you don't pass this bill, if you don't do that, why we may have unemployment at 8 percent. And here we are at 9.7 percent, and we did pass the bill. And so the excuse is, well, this thing is really helping us a lot. Well, I sure hope it doesn't help us in that direction too much longer because that was what was supposed to be. But I think you're right. Your number is 9.7.

I yield.

Just reclaiming my time a minute. What would the press have said if, under the Bush administration, they claimed that they created 100,000 to 150,000 jobs and they didn't have any documentation for that? Say, Where in the world did you get that number, because the numbers that have just come out show that we've lost jobs. It's gone the other direction.

If you had a track record like that--this is just the year, this year. This is starting in February, March, April, this is another March, 14, 28, April, April, May and May, this is just a few months here. And this is what's going on with unemployment. And you're out here and you claim, Hey, we just created a whole lot of jobs. People would kind of wonder, I would think the press corps would say, Wait a minute. Where'd you come up with this 100,000 to 150,000 jobs that he claimed last week that they created? I supposed he'd say, Well, if we hadn't passed this great big porkulus bill, why, by golly, it would be worse. Of course he hasn't learned from Henry Morgenthau.

I yield back.

Well, reclaiming my time, I think you're right. And I'd like to just take a moment and get into--these numbers are easy for us to rattle off, just off the tip of our tongue, but let's take a look.

First of all, you've got $700 billion in this Wall Street bailout. Now, some of this came under President Bush, and I think the people in this room voted against this thing because it didn't make a lot of sense. Half of it, though, is the beginning of this year, and we keep dumping all this money out, and it's not quite clear what we got for it.

And then we get to this thing here, this economic stimulus which is supposed to be fixing this unemployment problem. And what's going on in this bill?

I've got a few, just choice examples I'll share, but I know others of you here have some examples. We're joined by a number of fantastic Congresspeople, and here's one. This is one here, this is you can't afford a bicycle after purchasing a $1 million home. Okay. This is money for Washington, D.C., part of the stimulus money that's supposed to be helping us with jobs.

Washington, D.C., Department of Transportation will spend $3 million in stimulus money to expand its Smart Bike program. The money will increase the program by five times, from 10 bike racks to 50 bike racks, and from 100 bikes to 500 bikes. Neighborhoods expected to get the new bike racks include Adams Morgan, Columbia Heights, Capitol Hill, Anacostia and Georgetown, where the average single-family home runs at $1.2 million. Boy, now there is an interesting use of money. May be a wonderful thing to do, but I'm not sure what we should be taxing everybody to try to create jobs.

And we've got a lot of other fun examples. I'm joined by my good friend Congresswoman Bachmann, and Congresswoman Bachmann is articulate and a good friend to people who care about jobs and care about fiscal sanity.

I yield time.

Reclaiming my time just a minute, what you just said is so important for people to understand, and that's because we don't have quite the sense of history. We've just heard from one of our other guests just a minute ago that this is a 25-year high in unemployment.

But what you've just talked about is, when the President goes in and fires the president of General Motors and appoints the people a board and decides to rewrite the bankruptcy laws, this is unprecedented. And I think, my good friend, you have a specific example from your district about what this could mean to Main Street America. I wish you'd saw share that with us tonight.

Reclaiming my time, I'm just trying put myself in the shoes of the family who owned that dealership that you're talking about.

Just reclaiming my time, so you have a dealer who's been in business in your town for what, 90 years or something I think you were saying?

Ninety years, and their dealership was assessed at, what was the value of it?

Reclaiming my time, so $15 million, and then you wake up one morning and you get this thing in the mail and it says your $15 million just basically vaporized, didn't it?

So once again we have another projection of this example of Washington thinking they know how to do everything, deciding who's going to be the president of General Motors. All of this money that belongs to our constituents, we're going to dump this money into various companies, and then we're going to try and manage. We can't manage D.C. What makes us think we can manage car companies?

What an example of--and I think there are some other examples of what's going on with some of this spending.

And I see that we're also joined by Congresswoman Lummis from Wyoming, I believe. So we've got the West pretty much covered. We've got Iowa covered. We're going to have Georgia in just a minute.

Please join us.

Reclaiming my time, so you're talking about the tax that they're proposing to pay for some of the spending that is that cap-and- tax situation which is going to devastate small business, and small business, of course, is where these jobs are created; is that correct?

Reclaiming my time, what you're doing is making a tremendously important connection. And I think a lot of people do get that impression that all of the jobs in America are General Motors or General Electric or Mobile Oil or whatever it happens to be. But in reality, as one of the most ranking members in small business, what you find is you define small business as about 500 employees or less. Small businesses create almost 80 percent of the new jobs in America.

So what you're saying is exactly spot on to what all of our data shows, and if you're looking at 80 percent of the new

jobs and you're looking here at an increasing level of unemployment, what you should be paying attention to is what are you doing for small business. And what you're talking about is we're doing something that we haven't learned from history. You're going to slap a great big tax on them to cover up all of this spending. And what's going to happen is you're going to dry up the potential of those new jobs that could come from small business.

I appreciate you making that connection.

And I'm going to just jump over to my good friend from Georgia, a medical doctor, but also somebody who has quite a fair amount of passion about freedom and about some of these economic issues as well, my good friend Dr. Broun from--is it the Atlanta area?

Reclaiming my time, what I'm hearing you say is--you're a medical doctor. You're not claiming to be some economic expert. You're saying common sense says that this 9.7 percent unemployment that we got right now is not the end of this problem and that the idea of the tremendous level of spending that we're seeing is not going to help. You're agreeing with Henry Morgenthau from 1939 that all of this spending is not going to make this any better. And what's more, a lot of that spending is going to result in more unemployment rather than less.

Is that the bottom line of what you're getting at?

That's the bottom line. I think that's what's gotten us staying here this evening talking about this subject. This is critical. This is a very significant problem.

I would like to jump back to my friend from Iowa, Congressman King, a gentleman who has run his own private business for many years before he came to Congress, knows a little bit about small business, knows a little bit about taxation and red tape. And he also understands what some of these massive government spending programs in the last year, what these are liable to do in terms of effects on our economy.

That's really quite a summary of where we are. What we're getting at is this disease that struck the Washington area just one year or two ago. It's bailout fever, you know. And we got into this idea that we're going to bail everybody out--at least if you're big and important. If you're a small business, you're going to go bankrupt. If you're a car dealership, you go bankrupt and you lose $15 million in one day. But we're going to bail out all of these, and in the process, what's going on in unemployment? Is this nationalizing of businesses such a good idea? I think there are a lot of people having some very extreme second thoughts.

This was not going to happen if we voted for that great big porkulus bill. I'm on the Armed Service Committee. When you say $787 billion, that's more than my paycheck. I tried to figure out how much money is that. And the biggest thing we deal with in any committee is aircraft carriers. These are big things. If you ever get on an aircraft carrier, you could play a game of football on the deck of one. They're really big, and they cost a ton of money. We have 11 in our total fleet. They cost about $3 billion a piece.

So if you take a look at what happened to us in the first 5 weeks after we've been told that President Bush is spending way too much money, we put this bill in place--this was the trimmed-down version--on this floor we voted for $870-something billion. That would be over 250 aircraft carriers anchored end-to-end. I couldn't even imagine. You could make a highway across them. That's how much money that's in this package alone.

That's not the Wall Street bailout, and that's not this appropriations bill that's full of goods. That's not this international monetary bailout that they're talking about doing where we're going to take defense money and give it to foreign countries, put it in a fund so that Chavez and the Iranians and other people can take defense money out of the United States away from our taxpayers so that they can fund their governments, and we're talking about doing that. We're wondering why in the world do we have this unemployment. I think we're making some big mistakes economically.

I would like to jump back over to my very good friend Congresswoman Bachmann who, by the way, is a great articulator of free enterprise principles and does a wonderful credit to Minnesota.

We're delighted that you're here, and please chip in and join in.

Well, I just appreciate the lady's passion and strong support for the concept of freedom.

You know, what we're really talking about here is, what is the job of the government? And we have come to a point where we have actually elected people who have forgotten this basic concept, and that is, the government that can give you anything you want can also take away everything from you, including your freedom.

And that is the great danger of this insidious creeping bureaucracy where the Government inserts itself into all kinds of different businesses. The Founders would have been outraged at what you've just described. And even people from not so many generations before us would say, that is impossible, that could never happen in America.

You are absolutely right. And we have seen other examples of it; the decision in Connecticut where some local municipality decided to trample the Fifth Amendment, just walk right in and take somebody's private home in order to make a strip mall so they could tax the strip mall. And the Supreme Court jumped to the defense of the local government saying, that's just fine. And they just ignored the Fifth Amendment.

And so we see this continuously growing government. And if you take a look at where we are spending money, it is just absolutely amazing. And here is an example. This is a town that is supposedly almost bankrupt-- I think it's Pawtucket, Rhode Island, if I remember right. The city on the verge of

bankruptcy spends $550,000 in stimulus money for a skateboard park. Now, what in the world is the Federal Government doing with bicycle racks in D.C. in million-dollar neighborhoods, skateboard parks somewhere else. We're putting it all in here and claiming somehow it's going to make unemployment better, and yet the numbers are going nuts. The President, it seems--what's going on with the White House Press Corps? He claims they've just created 150,000 jobs, and yet you see the data going, we're already at 9.7 percent.

And it's my understanding, when you jump to the next big tax we're talking about, they want to be like Spain. And Spain has the enviable 17.5 percent unemployment. Is that where we're going? How long is this going to go before the American public says enough already; it's time to change this big spending?

If you want to see this thing graphically, this is a little bit chilling. This is historic budget imbalance. These are the different years of the Presidents. These years over here are President Bush. And those of us here that are Republicans, we didn't like the fact that President Bush was spending too much money. This is deficit spending. This is a budget imbalance. But take a look. When we were kids, didn't you have to go--what was it, first grade, what thing doesn't fit the pattern? Take a look at this year. Take a look at this budget imbalance that we're talking about. You think that's not going to affect jobs? You don't think that means the government is going to get its nose into all kinds of people's business? That's what we're concerned about.

I would like to go to my good friend, Congresswoman Lummis from Wyoming. You know, the thing I like about Wyoming and the Western States? You have a sense of freedom and a little bit of a sense of property ownership and you have a sense of small business. And I appreciate that perspective. Please join our conversation.

Well, wait just a minute. You're talking about we're creating jobs and wealth and all this, and the government is not doing it? Oh, my goodness. That's a novel idea; the government is not coming in and telling you how to run everything.

Let me just stop you there because what you said is very, very important. You are finding sources of natural gas--one of the cleanest burning fuels that we know, in terms of hydrocarbon-type fuels anyway--and you are finding that, which is making it so that you have plenty of jobs in Wyoming, you are not doing it with a lot of government help, and yet the government is going to try to create policies to make us more dependent on foreign energy. What would that be? I would suppose that one way to do that would be to tax your natural gas, because if that's taxed, then the foreigners have a better chance of getting business here. Is that where you're going?

Isn't that something? Well, you are an energetic Congresswoman from an energetic State. And it's encouraging to hear that we do have those supplies of energy here.

It is ironic, I think, that when you take a look back at the history of the Department of Energy, it was created so that America could be energy independent. And they have added many, many jobs to the Department of Energy, and yet we have become more and more dependent on foreign energy. And if we had more people like you in this Congress, I think that would change, and we would see that we would be getting back to good old American energy of a lot of different types. And we would let the marketplace, and not the government, make the choices as to which type you are going to use in each State.

My good friend from Georgia, Congressman Broun.

I think they call them subprime jobs now, but go ahead, Congressman.

Reclaiming my time, that was exactly what he said. And actually, that made common sense to me because when you go back to this Keynesian economic scheme, what they would argue would be, Hey, we just took all this tax money and we hired these people; so when we hired somebody, we created a job; so, therefore, we had a net. We just hired someone to increase the job by one.

And what the economist found was, when you take that tax money out of things, what happens is, when you took the tax money away to hire the one person, you lost 2.2 jobs over in the private side. So that ratio seems to kind of follow the economic principle that when the Federal Government--yes, you can have the Federal Government take a whole lot of money and hire a lot of people to dig holes in the ground, or whatever, but when you do it by taking that money away from the private sector, you are killing those small businesses, which is a source of where you're generating a lot of these jobs. So I think that is where he was going.

You're talking about millions of job loss as a result of this new tax that's being concocted here.

I would like to recognize another doctor who has joined us. We have got some doctors out tonight, and my good friend Dr. Burgess, I want to recognize him. What we have been talking about is this incredible trend in unemployment and also the trend of excessive spending.

I would be happy to have your perspective, Doctor.

Reclaiming my time for a moment, in a way that's a little bit unusual, isn't it? There are usually a few Democrats who will vote differently than their party or a few Republicans who will vote differently. In this case, though, on this great big porkulus bill, every single Republican voted ``no.''

Reclaiming my time, I want to get what you're saying because I think this is important. You're saying there is a relationship between this tremendous level of debt that we are building and the unemployment numbers. In other words, when you have a whole lot more debt, particularly debt with spending, and, of course, spending is causing the debt, you're going to have bad trouble with unemployment. Is that what this economist is saying, gentleman?

I appreciate the doctor from Texas bringing some wisdom here and some economic common sense. And certainly I think most people know intuitively these things are connected. If you spend a whole lot, eventually you're going to go into debt and then the debt is going to influence things. And in this case, I am an engineer by training, not a medical doctor, but it's almost like drawing a vacuum economically in the economy. So those small businesses that we are just hearing about like out in Wyoming, those small businesses don't have the money they need to invest to drill a well or whatever it is; so the main engine of job creation just dries up. So what you are doing is almost like either starving or dehydrating your economy because the government is just becoming so oppressive and expansive in everything that it is trying to do. And as we heard eloquently expressed from the gentlewoman from Minnesota, the story about what happens when the Federal Government starts to get into the business of running car things. I am picturing there is going to be somebody possibly listening into our discussion that's going to be a cartoonist, and they are going to think about the automobile that is going to be designed by the U.S. Congress, and they are going to have an interesting caricature of what the engine and the wheels look like and how big it is and all kinds of things. There is probably already a YouTube being created or something along those lines. But it's not a pretty picture of having the Federal Government running our business in our private sector. And the genius of our

country is to make that distinction, and we are blurring it badly and it's going to cause a lot of trouble.

I am going to yield to my good friend Congressman King from Iowa. Please join us.

I appreciate that vivid example of more wasted time. I am going to yield again to my good friend Congresswoman Bachmann from Minnesota.

I very much thank Congresswoman Bachmann and the other great guests that we have had tonight. I thank you for this little symposium on freedom and the need to have the Federal Government restrained to its proper limits.

Good evening, Mr. Speaker. It's a pleasure to join you and to take a look at a very interesting topic today. The whole idea of, it's kind of a combination of thoughts, first of all, the idea of global warming, and then how that relates to this cap-and-tax bill that we've been hearing more about, and exactly what's behind all of this discussion, because what we have here is something that is, if you want to talk about change, there's a whole lot of change here.

This is a very, very significant proposal that's being made in terms of the size of the tax that's involved, and the proposal that we're actually going to change the climate of the world by some of these different things that are going to be done by the government, a very interesting thought.

And so I thought, when we talk about global warming, there's a little bit of the story that I think has been forgotten. Some of it, not surprisingly, is the history of what's going on. I'd like to go back just a little bit in what's been going on.

Let's go back to the year 1920, when newspapers in the 1920s were filled with scientists' warnings of a fast approaching glacial age. The Earth was going to get cold. And so you had to really be stocking up on extra coal and overcoats and things in the 1920s.

In the 1930s it seems that the scientists changed their opinion, and they reversed themselves, that there was going to be serious global warming in the 1930s.

By 1972, Time magazine was citing numerous scientific reports of imminent runaway glaciation. So it's going to get cold again.

In 1975, Newsweek reported that the scientific evidence of an ``Ice Age'' called to stockpile food. And we also were even engaged in discussions about melting some of the Arctic ice cap or something because of this Ice Age that was readily, eminently approaching.

By 1976 the U.S. government said the Earth is heading into some sort of mini ice age. And now we have back again, global warming. In fact, global warming is even getting a little bit out of fashion now, and people want to talk about climate change. It's a little safer to talk about climate change because you're not predicting whether it's going to get colder or warmer. But anyway, we've had some considerable amounts of disagreement, depending on what year you're on. So we go back and forth. It's either going to be the sky is going to fall because it's going to freeze, or the sky is falling because it's going to get warmer.

So we have today this whole subject of global warming. That's what the most common term that you hear nowadays is global warming. And I think the facts of the matter are that there has been a considerable amount of disagreement, depending on which decade you're living in.

I'm joined this evening by some very good friends, some respected colleagues, a medical doctor, as a matter of fact, and another gentleman from Pennsylvania, a very big coal and energy producing state. We're going to be chatting with them in just a minute.

But I thought it would be appropriate just to kind of lay down, first of all, historically some of the differences of opinion, depending on which decade you live in.

The general theory today, the way it works is the idea that mankind is creating CO2. We do that when we breathe,

so there's not much scientific argument about that. There are other ways that CO2 is produced as well. Whenever we make a campfire we produce a certain amount of CO2 as we burn some combustible with the oxygen in the air.

And the theory is that this CO2, because we're burning so much in the way of hydrocarbons, now is actually affecting the environment. And so we're going to take a look at that.

And the question is whether or not, really, this CO2 is affecting the environment. I think most scientists agree that when we create or when we produce CO2 it has some impact on the environment. The question is how much. And then it's also a big question as to whether or not there's anything we could really do about that in a practical sense, or are there any sort of cost-effective solutions. And of course there is a solution that's on the table that's being proposed. It's a cap-and-tax bill that's being proposed by the Democrats. And it follows the pattern of most Democrat bills, and that is, I've got a great big whopping tax increase, and it has a whole lot of government regulations.

If we go back in history a little bit, history is an amusing thing to take a look at. One of the things that history tells us is how effective the U.S. government is in solving these kinds of problems.

We created a thing called the U.S. Department of Energy. Maybe a lot of people know we have a U.S. Department of Energy, but they may not recall why it was that the Department of Energy was created. Well, the fact of the matter is the Department of Energy was created so that we would not be dependent on foreign energy. And so, for years we've added more and more employees to the U.S. Department of Energy so that we won't be dependent on foreign energy, and each year we become more dependent on foreign energy. So it's amusing to postulate that we're going to solve this problem using a lot of taxation and a government solution.

I think the Republicans--I'm a Republican, my colleagues that are joining me tonight are Republicans--I think that we prefer a more free enterprise kind of solution, and we want to take a look at the premises behind what we're talking about.

I'm joined by my good friend, G.T. Thompson. He's from Pennsylvania. I'd like to recognize Congressman Thompson, who is already making himself a name here as being a very feet-on-the-ground, commonsense kind of guy, has an intuitive sense for free enterprise, and also potential dangers that come from this idea of we can solve all the problems with a great big whopping tax increase and government regulations.

Please, I yield time.

Could I interrupt you just a minute because I thought you were on a rather important topic, because the whole crux of the idea for this huge tax proposal and all kinds of sweeping changes and government power and influence and regulation is based on the fact that CO2 is such a bad thing, and it's based on the assumption that the CO2 that we're releasing by burning fossil fuels is creating some kind of a problem. I mean, that's the whole linchpin that this debate is going around.

And yet you have, here's kind of an interesting quote here. And I think I'd like to get into this just a little bit. Here's a former U.S. Senator and he says, we've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we'll be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.

So, in other words, there's a solution that they have in mind, whether global warming is going on or not. And the thing that's been embarrassing, you've noticed we don't hear as much global warming. We hear climate change, and the reason is because the planet has not really been warming the last number of years as all of these economic models were saying that it was going to. And that doesn't necessarily mean the CO2 that we've generated hasn't created some warming. It just seems that the world climate is more connected to sunspot activity than these other things.

But here you're just talking about the effect of CO2, and I thought this was interesting. This is how much does the human activity affect greenhouse gases? The block in light blue here represents all the greenhouse gases, which comprise only 2 percent of the total atmosphere. So this is all the greenhouse gases.

And that yellow block over there on the end is the CO2. And the little tiny red block inside the yellow block is the part that our human activity is creating. And so the question is, in terms of leverage, does this little red dot over here have that much impact on the climate?

And this is, I don't think anybody disputes the percentages of these gases and the mixture. So the question then is, is this stuff that we're doing really that important?

And you just said the forest fires, which were created by poor environmental policy by the way, a lot of them, because we're not allowed to clean that brush out, the underbrush, and then it burns everything and burns Bambi and snowy owls and everything else because we didn't want to clear the brush out, and that's generating, what is that, 2\1/2\ times more than all of the coal and oil and things we burn.

I didn't mean to interrupt you, but I think it's important for us to stick on what science, what really does science say. And this is not an easy thing for any scientist to figure out, is it, because what's happening is there's all sorts of things that play together, and so, the CO2 we generate could be warming the planet some, but it could be also that we're in a time where the planet is growing colder. So all of that, we don't really understand that totally, do we?

Some of the models said that we're going to have surf at the front steps of the Capitol pretty soon. I was really looking forward to that.

Go ahead. I yield.

I appreciate your bringing that up, and I'd like to get into that just a little bit more as we move on this evening into that area, about the Democrat proposal, what it does to people's costs, average costs.

But we're also joined by a good friend of mine, Dr. Fleming. And people that

have a technical or scientific background are a little rare in the Chambers here. So to have actually a guy who's passed high school science is tremendously helpful. And Dr. Fleming is from Louisiana.

I'm a misfit in politics. I'm an engineer by training. I don't know how they ever--there's few of us in here that are engineers.

But Dr. Fleming, I would be encouraged if you'd join us too in our discussion.

Just reclaiming my time, somehow or another, this whole thing strikes me, if it weren't so serious, as being a comedy. You know, we just went from winter to spring in Missouri. When we go from winter to spring, that's a good climate change. I don't want to stop that climate change, you know. Who in the world would want to put politicians in charge of the weather anyway? What a dumb idea. Anyhow, we need to be a little bit serious because this is a tremendous tax that we're talking about, a tremendous removal of freedom away from Americans, and it is a tremendous investment in more and more big government solutions. That is extremely scary in spite of the fact that the science seems to be a little bit amazing. We'll get into that, too.

I was just recalling that my friend from Pennsylvania was here with the guy from Spain, I think it was, 2 weeks ago. They were talking about how Spain has driven this cap-and-tax, and they were talking about what has happened, and we're going to get into it. So it isn't something we're going to speculate about. It has been tried. We can say: here is what happened in Spain. Do we really want to reproduce this or not?

I didn't mean to interrupt you, Doctor. Please continue.

You have to translate. ``Investment'' means we're going to tax you.

Thank you, Doctor.

Reclaiming my time, as for the green jobs that are being talked about, we're going to create all of these green jobs in Spain. They call them ``subprime jobs,'' you see. This is the same old warmed over Keynesian economics that we've been hearing since the days of FDR. That is, if the government taxes everybody a whole lot and takes the money and pays people to do stuff, then we've somehow created jobs.

The trouble is, when you tax them, you have prevented other jobs from being created. So, in effect, what you've done is, yes, you've created jobs, but you've lost 2.2 jobs. So what sort of math is that? That's not a very good mathematical formula. So there's this talk about green jobs. In Spain, they call them ``subprime jobs,'' and they've now got, I think, 17.5 percent unemployment as a result of this nifty project that they're doing to get rid of CO2. The trouble is, even measured on the face of it, they're making more CO2 than they did before, so it isn't working.

Anyway, proceed, Doctor.

If I could just interrupt and go over to my good friend from Pennsylvania, to Congressman Thompson, let's flesh out this idea.

If you do this solution that the Democrats are proposing, which is a cap-and-tax or a cap-and-trade or whatever you want to call it, how does that end up with our losing jobs? Let's go through that very specifically so that people can understand it, because that's what we're talking about. That's what happened in Spain. Let's go through that model and identify where those jobs went.

The brag that the Democrats were saying an hour ago was that they're going to create jobs and that everything is going to be better. Yet the very thing they're proposing in Spain has gotten them to 17.5 percent unemployment. Let's go through how that happens.

Can you please help us with that, Congressman Thompson?

So they've driven it up 10 percent.

Reclaiming my time, let's go through this. So in other words, let's say we did what the Democrats want to do: let's do this great big tax increase. This is a very big tax increase. So what we're going to do is essentially tax energy. Now, as to energy issues within companies, some companies are using more than others, particularly aluminum manufacturing, steel manufacturing, your basic, hard manufacturing jobs. These then support lots of other burger flipping types of jobs that are very heavily energy intensive, but also food is very energy intensive. So now what's going to happen?

You're going to tax energy. When you tax it, it means the prices go up. The energy-producing company doesn't just pay the tax. It pays the tax, and it passes it on to the consumer. So the person who flips the light switch on or the person who lights up his pilot light to run his stove or his heater for natural gas or the people who fire up their diesel engines or their gasoline engines are paying more money. Therefore, those businesses are less competitive. In being less competitive, there are more foreign people who can compete and who can send products into this country. We can't compete against them because our prices go up. So, effectively, we send jobs overseas that way. We're less competitive. So the jobs go away.

The government taxes everybody in the private sector. The money comes out of the private sector. They use it to hire somebody. This then displaces a couple of jobs, and here we go around in this circle. This is basically what Morgenthau tried, the Secretary of the Treasury under FDR. He said that we're going to raise the taxes a whole lot, that we're going to spend a whole lot of money to ``stimulate the economy'' and that it will drive unemployment down.

Then he came here to this Chamber 9 years later, before the Ways and Means Committee, and his quote was: ``We've tried it and it doesn't work.'' Those were exactly his words: ``It doesn't work.'' So he said that now we've got high unemployment and a whole lot of taxes and a big debt to boot.

So this is the same old tried-and-true Democrat scheme of raising taxes and of creating and trusting the government, of trusting that the government is going to run it better than would free enterprise. Yet we've got this Department of Energy out there that was founded to get us off our dependence on foreign energy; and ever since it has been founded, it has gotten worse.

I yield to my good friend from Pennsylvania.

Just reclaiming my time, you know, I've got a chart I'd like to talk to you about because we figured out what the size of this tax is. You take the average per family, and we're going to go in a minute and take a look at what it is going to cost the average family every year for the next 8 years for this $1.2 trillion tax increase.

We've been joined by another doctor, a medical doctor but also a guy who graduated from high school science as well, from Georgia, my good friend, Congressman Gingrey.

It's just great to have you in our discussion this evening. Please jump in. I yield.

I can't help but jump in here.

It's a treat to have you. I think you brought up a couple of very, very significant things.

First of all, we stood in this Chamber just a couple of months ago and heard the President say that anybody making less than $250,000 doesn't need to worry about any tax increases. Yet, this tax increase that is being proposed happens to anybody who flips a light switch. That means you could make a lot less than $250,000 a year and get hit with a tax.

This cap-and-tax--these circles here--represent different, expensive things that America has bought.

This is the war in Iraq and this is the Korean war, and you have got the gulf war over here. Over in the far right you've got Hurricane Katrina, different things like this. This is World War II,

this big blue one. This is this tax: $1.9 trillion worth of tax. That's what's being proposed here. And we're just told if you're making $250,000 or less, you won't get any tax, and yet this taxes you when you turn the lights on, when you turn the thermostat up, when you start your car. That's what this tax is about right here. And when you eat food, that's what this tax is about.

We've also been joined by my very good friend, Congressman Bishop, who talked before on this subject, very knowledgeable.

And I would yield time to Congressman Bishop. Please jump in.

Reclaiming my time.

They're talking about using that for socialized medicine or something, right? It has nothing to do with CO2 at all.

Reclaiming my time.

Those numbers are incredible.

What you're saying is we want to maintain--maybe we don't want to maintain our current standard of living but we want to go back to a pre-Pilgrim America in terms of CO2 output?

Now, just reclaiming my time.

Now, my understanding was what we heard from the guy from Spain, he said that they had been able to get a lot of windmills and solar panels out there and that it was a significant part of what they generated. But he said here was the problem: When the weather didn't cooperate, they had to tell the big industries, You can't make any aluminum today because we don't have any electricity because the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining. And they told the steel manufacturers, You can't make any steel. And so these companies are moving guess where? To America. They're moving out of Spain because of the fact that the energy is no longer reliable.

To make things worse--what they described to me was really chilling, and I need to jump over to my good friend from Louisiana who is also here on this, but this is what really stuck in my mind. He said what they did was they took a whole bunch of bureaucrats and they guaranteed them that they could sell energy to the government at a certain high price so those people would invest in solar panels and windmills. They guaranteed the price, and now they've got this thing created and it's a political monster because you have all of these people with windmills and solar panels and they don't want to politically change it because that's where their revenue is coming from. So they've created this thing that's driving over 17 percent unemployment and all kinds of people are in on the government take and they don't want to change it.

My good friend from Louisiana, Congressman Scalise, please jump into the conversation.

What you're saying is, in simple terms, this cap-and-tax not only won't work; it's going to make a bad situation worse. It's not only going to create unemployment, but it's going to create more

Now you're getting me excited. You're talking about freedom instead of a whole bunch of government taxes and bureaucracy. What you're talking about allows Americans, empowering Americans to use the resources that we have, the technology, the innovation, and to develop energy from all different kinds of ways within our country and let that energy compete in a free market sense and let people buy the energy they want to buy.

I really appreciate your emphasis on free enterprise, free solutions, and not government bureaucracies. But it still just dazzles me that the Spanish were able to sell this thing politically that they're worried about CO2 and they shut down the nuclear, where we say here we just double our amount of nuclear and we get rid of all emissions of almost every passenger car on our highways. That's incredible.

Congressman Bishop.

I appreciate that great plug for freedom. I think there is something--there are a few statistics that all of our guests here tonight know these things.

But an awful lot of people don't know about it, and here's something that I thought was just amazing. If I were to say to you that this place where we work here, the U.S. Congress, is polarized between Republicans and Democrats on the abortion issue, you'd go, yawn, well of course they're polarized.

But what I don't think a lot of people know is that this Chamber is more polarized on the energy issue than we are on the abortion issue. We went back and took a look at about 8 years of voting between the two parties on developing American energy. And you know what we found? It's no surprise to you gentlemen. Ninety percent of the time where there is some proposal to help the development of American energy, Republicans voted for it, and even in the most mundane or the most easy to get along with politically, 86 to 88 percent of the Democrats voted ``no.'' There is a huge party-line difference on the development of American energy.

And I just think a lot of people aren't aware of that, but people say there's no difference between the parties. Boy, there sure is on this issue, isn't there?

And my good friend Dr. Fleming, I would appreciate you again joining us in the discussion here.

Just reclaiming for a moment here, just to support what you're saying, this is kind of interesting. This is a Gallup poll about how do different people that are concerned with the environment, how do they rank global warming as compared to other kinds of environmental issues.

And this is March 2008 and March 2009. You can see both of these charts. It hasn't changed that much over a year, but the thing that was the most important to people in terms of environmental was the pollution of drinking water. That was their number one thing, and then they wanted water pollution, was also eighty-something percent, very important to people in terms of environmental concerns. All the way down, all the way over here to the smaller side, global warming is the last one, and yet that's all we've been doing for a month is global warming, and it suggests that maybe global warming isn't the real issue. Maybe that's just the horse that's supposed to pull a big fat tax increase. That's what we're starting to see here, and I yield to my friend from Georgia.

Since Jimmy Carter.

I would just like to discuss this a little bit with my good friend from Pennsylvania, Congressman Thompson. You know, I'm from Missouri, and I've been a legislator now a number of years. One of the things that is amusing is that the legislature passes some bill to do something, and the exact opposite thing happens of what they meant to have happen.

I'm just picturing some of my friends here tonight from Georgia and from Pennsylvania and Louisiana. I'm thinking about Missouri. And you put a big old tax on natural gas and electricity, and you know what the good old boy is going to do? They're going to break out that steel chainsaw. They're going to go to the wood lot. They're going to be cutting firewood, and they're going to be heating with wood and generating twice the CO2 that would have happened if this silly bill hadn't been passed.

And the funny thing is it must be happening that way in Spain because their CO2 has gone up in spite of the fact they got all this unemployment and taxes and this huge government bureaucracy they've created.

I just wanted to allow my friend from Pennsylvania, if you wanted to jump in on that subject.

Just stop for a minute. That just absolutely dumbfounds me. The whole point of this deal is not to make any CO2 supposedly, so we are going to tax the nuclear power plant that doesn't make any CO2. What's the logic of that?

Well, now you're really hurting me when you start to get into that, but you know, that idea is that what you're doing is you're doing something that makes the economy sicker. That doesn't seem to be the thing that we want to do.

You know, the thing that strikes me, too, who is going to be paying this big tax? It's going to be the guy that is using electricity, the guy that's using natural gas, the guy that's buying food. Who is that? Is that rich people? No. That's, as you say, those are average Americans just trying to get along, barely got their lips above water, economy's in trouble, they're wondering whether they're going to have a job, they may have a kid home because the kid lost a job.

What are we talking about? We're talking about with this cap-and-tax, this proposal that's been proposed by the Democrats, what we're talking about here is every year you're going to have to come up with the amount of money you spend on for the average family on meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy, produce, juices and vegetables, that is how much extra it's going to cost you. Or you want to put it in something else, consider furniture, appliances, carpet, and other furnishings. That's how much. All of these different categories here are smaller than what this tax is going to cost the average family.

This isn't something that the President says, hey, $250,000, don't worry, we're not going to tax you. This is taxing all of these families, and that's why

we get excited about it, and it doesn't need to be done. The fact of the matter is that we can have that energy independence just by using basic freedom.

I'm going to go to my friend from Louisiana. Congressman Scalise, if you could join us.

Just reclaiming my time, I think you're being reasonable. You're talking about there's a contrast, two different approaches to solving where we're going with energy. And one of them is we're going to use the instrument of a great big tax increase and a lot of government regulations, and the other one is free enterprise.

What you're talking about is the fact that you're exploring. You're talking about finding more natural gas. I don't know if people are aware of it, but by things that have been passed on this congressional floor, eighty-some percent of our continental shelves are off limits for any exploration. What's the logic of that? I remember thinking the reason that the liberals didn't like nuclear was because of the waste, and yet we had a 100 percent vote in the Science Committee not to recycle nuclear waste.

I appreciate your joining us tonight. I think these are things that are of importance to Americans.

Thank you all. And thank you, Mr. Speaker.