W. Akin

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. And just to reclaim my time. I recall--and even that was a very troublesome kind of truce, because one thing we found was they cheated on every treaty that they signed, and we didn't cheat. And we had made an agreement that we were not going to develop a defense against nuclear missiles, and then that whole idea was challenged. Now, why don't you run through----

Mr. AKIN. Wait, wait, wait. Reclaiming my time. What you just said is pretty important. When Bush left office, the setup was there was--we were going to build a couple of sites. One was a radar site and one was an actual place to launch these ground-based missiles. The radar site, was that in Romania?

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. I think the one thing that I really recall--and I think it's something we historically skip, and that is really the guy--we have an awful big ``thank you'' to say to Ronald Reagan. He had the imagination to take a look at this mutually assured destruction and say, This is nuts. I mean, as you said, all through history of mankind, somebody picks up a rock and somebody picks up a garbage can lid, you know? I mean, there's always offense and defense. He said, If we're saying we're not going to defend ourselves, we're crazy. So we start talking to scientists and came up with this idea that we could use different kinds of technology to stop those missiles so they wouldn't come and hit our children and families. And then he went a much more gracious step and said, What's more, we're going to share our defensive technology with our opponents so that mankind does not have to live under the threatening shadow of the nuclear mushroom cloud. And he sold that idea to the American public. And, of course, the liberals all made fun of him. They said, You can't do it. It won't work and it's too expensive, and all of those kinds of things. But he hung on and kept talking about it, but he actually didn't build it, did he?

Mr. AKIN. You know, the funny thing was--I was elected in 2000, came here in 2001 and started right off in the Armed Services Committee. And we had these debates in the Armed Services Committee in those long hearings, and every year for about 4 years or 5 years when it came to funding missile defense, it was a party line vote. The Democrats never wanted to do anything with funding missile defense. And yet, because we had a majority, we voted for it. And President Bush became very unpopular in Europe and with Russia. He went over and he gave them their 6 months' notice. I think the treaty required, give us 6 months' notice. So he went over and said, Okay, guys. The clock's running. We're going to start developing missile defense in 6 months. And the Russians just had kittens, Putin went nuts, and the Europeans were all upset about this. They thought he was some kind of cowboy from Texas. And yet at the end of that 6 months, we started funding it in the Armed Services Committee, totally party line vote, and we started on the path of actually building the dream that Ronald Reagan had passed down to us.

Mr. AKIN. So the Czech leadership responded to our initiative, said, We'll put the radar site in the Czech Republic. The leadership of Czechoslovakia had a public that was not that enthused about that idea, but they sold it to them. We are going to move ahead. And so you had the Czech Republic was going to have the radar and the actual missiles were going to be loaded--was it in Poland?

Mr. AKIN. This has been, with the new administration, President Obama has traded that away to the Russians, is that correct, or do we know what the deal was? Because he's cut all of the money out of it.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. Now, wait a minute. This isn't supposed to be funny hour. We're here talking about missile defense because Iran just launched a missile. Is that the sort of influence that Russia has over Iran, that it's going to help them launch solid rocket loader multistage missiles that can go 1,200 miles? Is that what we traded away in order to give up missile defense for Europe? Wait a minute. I don't see--the logic of this is incredible.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time. These are some of the missiles. This picture was taken before the launch this morning. And then we have a picture, I believe--I believe this picture was one released of the actual launch this morning. So you can see this appears to be a multistage kind of a missile, but we don't know the details on it yet because we haven't had the brief on it.

Mr. AKIN. We have a few more minutes to talk about that. I think people might be interested in how did this--how does this technology that we have work, because for years, people are saying, You can't do it; it is impossible. I'm an engineer by training, and what we have developed in America-- basically on the dream of Ronald Reagan--is an incredibly elegant solution. And from a physics point of view, this is the kind of thing that should inspire kids in school to be studying up on physics. And I didn't know if other Members want to join us. We have Congressman Bishop here. We'll talk a little bit about the way the thing works, and then we'll jump in. And what we have when you talk about missile defense is you've got-- basically you've got the boost stage where the enemy's rocket here, if this is aimed at our country or one of our allies, this is taking off. It's called a boost stage. Then as the missile starts to go more horizontally, it goes into what's called midcourse. And eventually, when it comes down on the target, and that's where it's reentering--if it's a very long-range missile, reentering the atmosphere. So we kind of break missile defense into these three areas, and we have different technologies to try to shoot the thing down before it hits us. And our thinking is, well, the more shots you can get, the better, because if you miss with the boost phase, you may get it in midcourse. And if you miss in midcourse, you may still stop it in reentry. So we have different kinds of technologies. But the main one that's been developed that's just incredible, from a physics point of view, is a metal-on-metal kill. We don't use any explosive in it. We just send the missile up, and the guidance is so accurate, and the head-on collision that we energize generates so much energy that it just literally vaporizes the missiles. And I would encourage my friend from Arizona to just sort of flesh out how it's done.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, it's interesting that you just explained something that really put a little spring in the step of a lot of Americans and should give an awful lot of our kids that are reading Popular Science and Popular Mechanics, that should fire them up, jazz them up a little bit, and there's not a word about this. All we hear is, oh, it won't work, it won't work, and the amazing thing is I've seen some of those pictures where here comes the enemy missile. These things are taken in fractions of a second, and you see basically the thing is creating through a sighting mechanism a target on the side of the enemy missile, and it is literally picking a spot, as you said. It's not hitting a bullet with a bullet. It's hitting that spot right on the missile where they want to hit it. And to be able to do that--I've always been awfully skeptical as an engineer about when people say you can't do it. You know, when you tell Americans you can't do something, it's like, oh, yeah? Well, the fact of the matter is, we did, and as you said, not only did we hit the first missiles dead-on, we just picked off the biggest piece of scrap metal that was left after. We've got our friend, Congressman Bishop from Utah. If you would like to join us, we would love to have you in our discussion this evening.

Mr. AKIN. No doubt about that. I yield.

Mr. AKIN. I yield to the gentleman from Arizona.

Mr. AKIN. Well, that's quite an indictment. And you sure had a snoutful of bad news for us. I didn't even know about that last one. And it's enough to really make you irritated, isn't it? You know, we hear about transparency, and yet there isn't transparency, and this isn't the way we should be running a country. It seems to me that somebody's trying to hide something. That's what it seems like, somebody is trying to cover something up. Now we're about done with our first half hour so we're going to be finishing up on ballistic missile and strategic missile defense. I am going to let the last word go to my good friend from Arizona, Congressman Franks.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, Congresswoman Lummis, what you're saying is really exciting. You're talking about what the Republicans have been pushing for now and since I've been here, which has been since 2001. It's an all-of-the-above strategy. It's saying let's let freedom work. Just get out of the way, and let's start developing hydrogen. If we've got places we ought to drill for oil, then do that. Fine. If we've got to do coal, let's figure out if you're going to sequester it or not. If we need nuclear and if you're really worried about that percentage of CO2--I mean if you're really serious about that, then why not embrace the number 1 technology that doesn't make any CO2, which is nuclear? We're saying do all of these things. Let the free marketplace work and let freedom basically run. Let American innovation--and let the resources that God gave us on this land--work, and we will have energy. You know, there's an ironic thing that is just absolutely crazy about government. Do you know why the Department of Energy was created years and years ago? This is kind of a quiz question if any of my colleagues happen to know the answer. Why did we create the Department of Energy? Dr. Broun from Georgia, do you know why we created the Department of Energy?

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, I had the privilege of participating in the 57th Annual National Prayer Breakfast with my colleagues, Congressman Heath Shuler of North Carolina and Congressman Vern Ehlers of Michigan, on February 5, 2009. This annual gathering is held here in our Nation's Capital and is hosted by Members of the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives weekly prayer breakfast groups. I would like to request that the summation of the transcript of the 2009 proceedings be printed in the Congressional Record at this time. 57th National Prayer Breakfast--Thursday, February 5, 2009, Hilton Washington Hotel, Washington, DC Co-Chairs: U.S. Representative Vern Ehlers and U.S. Representative Heath Shuler President Barack Obama: Good morning. I want to thank the co-chairs of this breakfast, Representatives Heath Shuler and Vernon Ehlers. I also want to thank my good friend Tony Blair for coming today, as well as our Vice President, Joe Biden, members of the cabinet, members of Congress, clergy, friends, and dignitaries from across the world. Michelle and I are honored to join you in prayer this morning. I know this breakfast has a long history in Washington, and faith has always been a guiding force in our family's life, so we feel very much at home and look forward to keeping this tradition alive during our time here. It is a tradition that I am told actually began many years ago in the city of Seattle. It was at the height of the Great Depression, and most people found themselves out of work. Many fell into poverty and some lost everything. The leaders of the community did all that they could for those who were suffering in their midst. And then they decided to do something more--they prayed. It didn't matter what party or religious affiliation to which they belonged. They simply gathered one morning as brothers and sisters to share a meal and talk with God. These breakfasts soon sprouted up throughout Seattle and quickly spread to cities and towns across America, eventually making their way to Washington, DC. A short time after President Eisenhower asked a group of Senators if he could join their prayer breakfast, it became a national event. And today, as I see presidents, prime ministers and dignitaries here from every corner of the globe, it strikes me that this is one of the rare occasions that still brings much of the world together at a moment of peace and good will. I raise this history because far too often we have seen faith wielded as a tool to divide us from one another--as an excuse for prejudice and intolerance. Wars have been waged, innocents had been slaughtered. For centuries entire religions have been persecuted, all in the name of perceived righteousness. There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we are going next. And some subscribe to no faith at all. But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know. We know too that whatever our differences, there is one law that binds all great religions together. Jesus told us to ``love thy neighbor as thyself.'' The Torah commands, ``That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.'' In Islam there is the hadith that reads, ``None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.'' And the same is true for Buddhists and Hindus, for followers of Confucius, and for humanists. It is, of course, the Golden Rule--the call to love one another, to understand one another, to treat with dignity and respect those with whom we share a brief moment on this Earth. It is an ancient rule, a simple rule, but also perhaps the most challenging. For it asks each of us to take some measure of responsibility for the well-being of people we may not know or worship with or agree with on every issue or on any issue. Sometimes it asks us to reconcile with bitter enemies or resolve ancient hatreds--and that requires a living, breathing act of faith. It requires us not only to believe but to do--to give something of ourselves for the benefit of others and the betterment of our world. In this way, the particular faith that motivates each of us can promote a greater good for all of us. Instead of driving us apart, our varied beliefs can bring us together to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, comfort the afflicted, to make peace where there is strife and rebuild what is broken, to lift up those who have fallen on hard times. This is not only our call as people of faith, but our duty as citizens of America, and our duty as citizens of the world, and it will be the purpose of the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships that I am announcing later today. The goal of this office will not to be to favor one religious group over another--or even religious groups over secular groups, it will simply be to work on behalf of those organizations that want to work on behalf of our communities, and to do so without blurring the line that our founders wisely drew between church and state. This work is important, because whether it is a secular group advising families facing foreclosure or faith-based groups providing job training to those who need work, few are closer to what is happening on our streets and in our neighborhoods than these organizations. People trust them, communities rely on them, and we will help them. We will also reach out to leaders and scholars around the world to foster a more productive and peaceful dialogue on faith. I am not naive. I don't expect divisions to disappear overnight, nor do I believe that the long-held views and conflicts will suddenly vanish. But I do believe that if we can talk to one another openly and honestly, and if perhaps we allow God's grace to enter into that space that lies between us, then the old rifts between us will start to mend, and new partnerships will begin to emerge. In a world that grows smaller by the day, perhaps we can begin to crowd out the destructive forces of excessive zealotry and make room for the healing power of understanding. This is my hope. This is my prayer. I believe this good is possible because my faith teaches me that all is possible, but I also believe because of what I have seen and what I have lived. I was not raised in a particularly religious household. I had a father who was born a Muslim but became an atheist, grandparents who were non-practicing Methodists and Baptists, and a mother who was skeptical of organized religion--even though she was the kindest, most spiritual person I have ever known. She was the one who taught me as a child to love, and to understand, and to do unto others as I would want done. I didn't become a Christian until many years later when I moved to the South Side of Chicago after college. It happened not because of indoctrination or a sudden revelation but because I spent month after month working with church folks who simply wanted to help neighbors who were down on their luck, no matter what they looked like or where they came from or who they prayed to. It was on those streets, in those neighborhoods that I first heard God's spirit beckon me. It was there that I felt called to a higher purpose--His purpose. In different ways and in different forms, it is that spirit and sense of purpose that drew friends and neighbors to that first prayer breakfast in Seattle all those years ago, during another trying time for our nation. It is what led friends and neighbors from so many faiths and nations here today. We come to break bread and to give thanks, but most of all to seek guidance. And to rededicate ourselves to the mission of love and service that lies at the heart of all humanity. St. Augustine once said: ``Pray as though everything depends on God and work as though everything depends on you.'' So let us pray together on this February morning, but let us also work together in all the days and months ahead. For it is only through common struggle and common effort, as brothers and sisters, that we fulfill our highest purpose as beloved children of God. I ask that you join me in that effort and I also ask that you pray for myself, for Michelle, for my family and for the continued perfection of our nation. Thank you so much, God bless you. God bless the United States of America. Congressman Ehlers. Thank you very much, Mr. President and Michelle, for being with us. This is an auspicious occasion. As I had said earlier, this prayer breakfast started with President Eisenhower and every year since then it has been graced by the presence of the President of the United States. It has been a real blessing to have the President and the First Lady here today. Congressman Shuler: Welcome back Casting Crowns. Casting Crowns: [sing] Who am I that the Lord of all the earth would care to know my name, would care to feel my hurt. Who am I that the bright and morning star would choose to light the way from my ever wandering heart but not because of who I am but because of what you've done and not because of what I've done but because of who you are and I am a flower quickly fading here today and gone tomorrow a wave tossed in the ocean, the vapor in the wind, still you hear me when I'm calling but you catch me when I'm falling and you told me who I am, I am yours. Who am I that the eye that's seen the sin would look on me with love and watch me rise again. Who am I that the voice that calmed the sea would call out through the rain and calm the storm in me, not because of who I am but because of what you've done, not because of what I've done but because of who you are. And I am a flower quickly fading, here today and gone tomorrow, a wave tossed in the ocean, a vapor in the wind, still you hear me when I'm calling, Lord you catch me when I'm falling and you told me who I am, I am yours. Whom shall I fear, whom shall I fear, because I am yours. Congressman Ehlers: Thank you again Casting Crowns for your words of faith and encouragement, we appreciate your participation today. I hope that all of you have been uplifted and inspired by what you have seen up here--people of different parties, nations, races, generations and backgrounds coming together. As the Prime Minister and the President both said, faith can be a tremendous force for good in this modern world and we all need it--all the help we can get. It all begins with obeying the simple commands that Jesus talked about. Loving God with everything we have and loving our neighbors as ourselves. This is the first and great commandment. We in the Congress are trying to do that and I hope that you will commit to do that more and more in your daily lives. We ask that you will also join in prayer every single day and pray for us in the Congress and in other agencies of leadership around the world as we all try to serve God above all and to serve people and to keep them safe and secure in their lives. Congressman Shuler: Now to close the event, I am honored to turn to a great American hero--from the age of 23 he was a national leader in the struggle for civil rights and for more than four decades he has been a shining star of justice. To present our closing prayer, the Honorable Congressman John Lewis of Georgia. Congressman John Lewis: My beloved brothers and sisters, let us pray. Lord our God, this morning we stand before you as citizens of the world, as leaders of many great nations, and as humbled public servants, tasked with a powerful responsibility. Lord my God, your people are suffering in teeming cities and in the distant corners of the earth--too many of your children are hungry and naked, homeless and poor, too many are sick, too many forgotten, too many are locked in the struggles of war and suffering alone in silent despair. Lord, we stand before you today as a human family in need of your help. Please Lord, give us the faith to be still and know that you are God. Give us the faith to trust that you are with us at all times. Lord God, give us the power to see that your light shines brightest in times of the greatest need. Lord, give us a will to seek your divine understanding in every decision that we make. Thank you Lord for sending us a man, a leader and a President Barack Obama, we ask for a special blessing on his behalf. Guide his steps and please direct his path. Hold him and his family in the palm of your magnificent and all powerful hand. Let your angels watch over them, protect them and be their preferred and invisible God. Thank you Lord, thank you this morning for sending men and women who prepare to do thy will. Pour out your blessing upon us all. Give us the power to do what is right, what is fair and what is just. Please Lord show us how we can bring peace to a violent world. Let the day come when we can lay down the tools and instruments of war and study war no more. Lord, give us the will and the way to build and not destroy. Give us the capacity to be reconciled and not divide. Give us the strength to love and not to hate, that these gifts be made manifest in all that we do and in every way that we serve your people. We ask all these things in Thy divine name. This is our plea. This is our cry. This is our prayer. Amen. Congressman Ehlers: Go in peace, love God. Serve God and your neighbor.

Mr. AKIN

Mr. AKIN. That is really a vision. You know, what I am hearing, if I am trying to put a little title on that, I think I am hearing let freedom ring. Let Americans use their ingenuity. Let us use the resources that God gave us. Let's see what we can do. Let's be an exporter of energy. Let's take what the Lord has given us and really start to define clearly what the problems are and take a look at what the alternatives are. Let the innovative juices of the American system go to work on this thing. I mean, that's even assuming you have got a big problem with CO2. Even if you assume that, there are a lot of ways to deal with this. But to try to come up with--look at this. This is the cost of World War II here, 3.6 trillion. This cap-and-trade tax, 1.9 trillion. This is more. This is what we are talking about in the next couple of weeks. We are talking about a tax that's going to cost a little bit more than the Vietnam War, the space race, the New Deal and Hurricane Katrina combined.

Mr. AKIN. And that's not even counting all the jobs we are going to be shipping. And we could just basically let Mother Freedom ring the bell. Let's just go ahead and use these resources and figure out ways to solve these problems, because we could do it. That's what we believe in. We believe in freedom. I would like to go back to my good friend from Utah, Congressman Bishop.

Mr. AKIN. The thing that's amusing on this entire situation, every time we seem to tamper with these things, we create these laws which do the opposite of what we're really trying to do. I think that the thing that we need to be having an awful lot more faith in in this Capitol is the idea of freedom and the imagination, the innovation that's available in America through the natural resources we're blessed with. All of these things come together to provide us with solutions where there's choices and options and free enterprise is working. And what is a good solution today is going to be replaced by something better tomorrow. It's even going to be better the day after tomorrow. I am so thankful for our guests here. We have just got a couple more minutes. I will go back to the gentleman from Ohio, if you would like to make a quick closing statement, and then we're going to call it an evening.

Mr. AKIN. Reclaiming my time, I am just so delighted with our guests here on the floor. You know, the common sense in me can't resist showing this little chart. How much does a human activity affect greenhouse gases? Well, if this block represents greenhouse gases right here, then CO2 is those yellow boxes. That's the amount of greenhouse gas that's heating the world by CO2. The rest of this is other things that are heating the world. Then, this is the amount that's caused by people. So this seems to be an awful big tax for such a little tiny box. I want to once again thank my good friends, Congresswoman Bachmann from Minnesota and Congressman Latta from Ohio and Congressman Bishop from Utah for joining us. I hope that this has been as informative and interesting for everybody else as much as it was for me.

Mr. AKIN. I recall some of the presentation. What really concerned me was the first thing was they have got 17.5 percent unemployment. Now that would get the attention of Americans anywhere, 17.5 percent unemployment. Now, how did that come about? Well, here is how it came about. They decided they wanted to go with the green energy plan, so what they did is they closed their nuclear facilities. Now, that says to me, I am skeptical. I think this was more of a political deal than a technical deal, because nuclear makes zero CO2. And yet they closed them and what did they replace them with? Windmills and solar panels. Well, that's nifty when the sun is shining and the wind is blowing. But what happens when it doesn't? Well, they say to industry, Sorry, no electricity today. Now, my family, years and a number generations ago, started a steel mill, and the steel mills nowadays have these electrodes the size of telephone poles, three of them. They lower them into an electric furnace and lightning and thunder comes out of that furnace, and it melts the steel scrap in there. That takes a lot of electricity. People that want to make aluminum take aluminum oxide out of the ground, that's aluminum and oxygen combined quite tightly together, and they have to separate those two molecules to get the aluminum. That takes a lot of electricity. So what happens to steel? What happens to aluminum manufacturing in Spain? It's gone. You can't have a whole bunch of people coming to work today and say, Sorry, the wind is not blowing hard enough, not going to make any aluminum today. And those companies go overseas, and so they lose all their jobs over there.

Mr. AKIN. You know what scared me the most about his presentation, what he basically said is that the government has come up with such a clever, integrated kind of system in the legislation they passed. What happens is they, first of all, through various means--he claimed that even the Mafia, he thought, could be involved in it--they give licenses to people to generate electricity. And so if you happen to get one of these licenses, this is a license to make some money, because you put enough solar panels and windmills up, and the State guarantees you a certain rate per kilowatt hour. So there are all these people in line wanting to get licenses to generate green energy. So that's how they start. And everybody that has one of those licenses, let me tell you, politically, they are bought into this system. They are not going to let this system change for love nor money because they are making a ton of money on these licenses that they got from the government. The only trouble is, the government is paying so much for that energy that the society can't sustain it. It's chasing all the jobs overseas. But then they go through this fast now you see it, now you don't economics, and sort of write it off this way, send it another way, and eventually run it into future debt. So they are increasing their national debt. Their jobs are going down like mad. Their economy is in--but they have created a system politically that so many people are part of it that they can't let go of it. They can't get out of it. That's really frightening. It's not something you can just turn off and say, Oh, we made a mistake. They can't go back because everybody now is part of this deal.

Mr. AKIN. Yes, we do have this. This is an estimate of job losses, if we go with this tax. And is this the kind of thing we should be doing in these economic times? Are we supposed to be losing jobs? I don't think this is a logical thing to do at all. And the thing that's so tragic about this whole thing is we have the resources. We have the technology. We have the innovation. If we want to define the problem precisely, we put those incentives out there in the form of prizes and different things. I tell you, get out of the way. Because when you give Americans a bunch of prizes and free enterprise and freedom, they are going to go for it and we are going to generate a tremendous part of energy. Now, here is part of problem we are dealing with here, and maybe this comes from my engineering background. But there are a whole series of questions that really need to be asked before we go any farther with this massive tax increase that's being proposed. And I think the first thing is there is a question between technical people and scientists, first of all, on the amount of CO2 that we are really generating, that human beings are generating. That's not absolutely agreed to among scientists at all. The fact is that human beings add something to the CO2 in the atmosphere, but how much that is is kind of an unknown thing. We know it is going up, but we don't know how much mankind is adding to that, which then raises the next question, and that is, first of all, what are the effects that if we have the CO2, what is that going to do to the climate? Because, if you recall, it used to be we talked about global warming. The only thing is now you don't hear people, the liberals aren't talking about global warming anymore. They are talking about global change. Why not? Well, because it's not warming. They have these models, these computer models saying the Earth is really going to be warm. Now, if you take a couple of years ago, there was a statement, let's see if I can find it here. They said something to the effect that the waves are going to be breaking at the steps of the Capitol. That's what we were told. I mean, I was here in Congress. This is recently. And they said, Hey, the water, the ice is melting so fast that we are going to have the waves breaking at the steps of the Capitol. Well, now subsequently it seems, I have the exact quote here, just a few years ago scientists predicted that the seas would rise from 20 to 40 feet because of global warming with waves crashing against the steps of the U.S. Capitol, that would launch boats from the bottom of the Capitol steps. That's what people are saying. So the question is, first of all: How much CO2 are we contributing? Second of all, what will be the effect of that CO2. Then, the next question is: What is our ability to do anything about it, even if we wanted to? How effective could a solution be? In my opinion, which is what you see in Spain, is this tax that's being proposed--this massive tax increase for our constituents, is this really about a concern for CO2, or is really the global warming just basically a stalking horse to give politicians another great big tax increase, increase the power of the Federal Government, and take away that precious freedom that our dear friend from Minnesota is just talking about? I'd like to go back to my friend from Utah, please.

Mr. AKIN. Let me reclaim my time. What we have here in the State of Ohio and many other heavy manufacturing States, which is the backbone of a major part of industry in America, you have, first of all, heavy industry or manufacturing, and that has the unique characteristic that it uses a lot of electricity, some more so than others. And you also have the unique characteristic that you're burning a lot of coal, and therefore, you will have to pay a whole lot of taxes on the energy that's generated off of the coal. So you put those two things together, it says, now those businesses are no longer competitive because they're getting taxed more and more and more on the profits that they're making, which has the effect of making those companies have an economic reason to move somewhere else. And that's what you're concerned with, is that correct? I yield.

Mr. AKIN. And the reason of course is why? Let's flesh this out. I think it's fairly obvious, but I will yield.

Mr. AKIN. So just see if I can understand because you are giving us a lot of information. It is very good stuff but at a pretty rapid pace. So what you're saying is that this big tax that's being proposed is going to have an impact. You started by saying that you come from a district in the State of Ohio, and that that was a very big manufacturing district. So this is of particular interest to you. So the connection is that somehow this tax and all is going to really affect those manufacturing jobs. That's your point, is that not so?