Dan Burton

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of H. Res. 353 and I urge my colleagues to support the resolution. I want to thank Chairman Dingell and Ranking Member Barton for bringing this resolution to the Floor today. I am proud to be a sponsor of this resolution and I was honored to work with my friend and colleague from Maryland, Representative Elijah Cummings--the Democrat sponsor of the resolution--to bring some critically needed awareness to this issue. Representative Cummings has been a true leader on this issue, and today is the culmination of a two-year effort to shine a public spotlight on this national tragedy. This resolution sends a strong signal to the National Institutes of Health and the private sector that Congress is prepared to help them move prostate cancer detection and treatment into the 21st Century. Prostate cancer is the most common form of cancer, other than some kinds of skin cancer, among men in the United States, affecting at least one in six American men, a rate comparable to breast cancer which strikes one in seven American women. In fact, prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths among men in the United States, after lung cancer, and the seventh leading cause of death overall for men in this country. The National Cancer Institute estimates that in 2007 alone approximately 218,000 new cases of prostate cancer were diagnosed and roughly 27,000 American men died as a result of this disease. Medical experts do not know what causes prostate cancer. Medical experts do not know how to prevent prostate cancer, but they do know that not smoking, maintaining a healthy diet, staying physically active, and seeing your doctor regularly contribute to overall good health. While all men are at risk for prostate cancer, some factors increase risk: Family history. Men with a father or brother who has had prostate cancer are at greater risk for developing it themselves. Race. Prostate cancer is more common in some racial and ethnic groups than in others, but medical experts do not know why. Prostate cancer is more common in African-American men than in white men. It is less common in Hispanic, Asian, Pacific Islander, and Native American men than in white men. It is important for men to take advantage of prostate cancer screening exams in order to detect the disease at the earliest opportunity, when it is still curable. Unfortunately, a recent study funded by the National Cancer Institute demonstrated that the most common available methods of detecting prostate cancer, the PSA blood test and Digital Rectal Exam, DRE, the only preinvasive indicators available for the detection of prostate cancer, are not particularly adept at detecting prostate cancer. The study showed that many PSA blood tests that screen for prostate cancer result in false-negative reassurances and numerous false-positive alarms (15 percent of men with normal PSA levels still have prostate cancer). Even when PSA levels are abnormal, 88 percent of men end up not having prostate cancer that would require surgery but undergo unnecessary biopsies. As a result more than 1,000,000 U.S. men have prostate biopsies annually--costing our health care system approximately $1.44 billion--many of which could be eliminated if we had advanced diagnostic imaging tools. Today, neither the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services nor the Department of Defense devotes substantial resources to prostate cancer imaging research. I have been told that the National Institutes of Health spent only $10 million on prostate cancer detection research last year out of a total prostate cancer research budget of $350 million. In short, there is no concerted Federal effort to bring the equivalent of mammography to prostate cancer detection. Breakthroughs in the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer resulted from the development of advanced imaging technologies led by the Federal Government and I am convinced that Federal leadership could lead to similar breakthroughs for prostate cancer. That is why we introduced, along with my colleague Elijah Cummings of Maryland, H. Res. 353--Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that there should be an increased Federal commitment supporting the development of innovative advanced imaging technologies for prostate cancer detection and treatment. We owe it to ourselves, our fathers, grandfathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and friends to make this effort. I urge my colleagues to support H. Res 353.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, Mr. Speaker, another week has gone by, and the American people are paying over $4 a gallon for gasoline, and it's going up because we're getting into vacation time. And we're going home. We're leaving this body. This Congress, our majority party, hasn't done one thing or hasn't even made an attempt to lower the gas prices in this country. We have the oil here in America. We have it off the Outer Continental Shelf and in Alaska at the ANWR. We have coal shale. We can develop it. We can get oil to the market within 2 or 3 years if we could lower the price of oil immediately once we address the issue because competition around the world will see we're going to drill for oil, and they will start lowering the price, and gas prices will come down, but we have to act. Here we go with one more week. We're going home with nothing having been done, and the people of this country continue to pay these exorbitant prices for gasoline at the pump. So, if I were talking to the American people, I would just say to them today: Contact your Congressman, contact your Senator, and tell them you want something done quickly because this is not only an energy crisis; it's an economic crisis.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, I have great respect for Ms. Kaptur, who just spoke. She and I have been friends for a long, long time, and I agree with much of what she just said. We really need to move toward energy independence, and we need to use alternative methods of getting our independence. The problem is it's going to take time. If we use solar, if we use wind power, if we use all of these alternative sources, it's going to take time. It isn't going to happen in 1 year, 2, 3, or 4 years where we can not rely on oil or gas any longer. It's going to take time. In the meantime, Americans are paying $4-plus per gallon of gasoline because we don't have the oil necessary to keep the cost of gasoline down. She is absolutely correct. We depend too much on foreign sources of oil. We depend on Saudi Arabia. We depend on Venezuela, which is not a friend of ours. We depend on Canada, on Mexico and on other countries throughout the world. We ought to be drilling right here in America. We have enough energy in this country to become energy independent. Now, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, well, that's going to take time. It may take 10 years, if we get oil out of the ground today, to get it to market. Well, if that is the case, we still should do it, but experts whom I've talked to who have geological backgrounds say that we can start getting that oil to market within 1 or 2 years, and we could force the price of oil down very quickly if we decide we're going to drill here because it's going to put pressure on those who are producing oil that we're using around the world. It's going to force them to reevaluate the cost that they're charging us for the oil we're getting from them. Some of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle say, oh, these oil companies have all of these permits, and they ought to be drilling where they have those permits now. Those permits run 5 to 10 years. If they don't drill in those areas, then those permits expire, and they're bid on by somebody else. So why would an oil company not want to drill if they have a permit? It's because, when they get that permit, they don't know how much oil is down there, and they're certainly not going to invest millions or billions of dollars to drill for oil when they know it's not there. Once they get the permit, they do a geological study, and they do seismic studies to find out if there's oil down there. If there is no oil there, they don't drill, and so they don't utilize their permits. That's why we need to get more land available for drilling. Right now, on the Continental Shelf, we're using 3 percent of the available area. Ninety-seven percent is not being explored. We can do that in an environmentally safe way, and we ought to allow these oil companies to drill in those other areas and get permits to do it. If there's oil there, they're going to drill there. Why don't they drill in some of these other areas where there might be some oil? Well, it costs $2 billion to explore and to build an oil derrick, a platform, out in the Gulf of Mexico or out on the Continental Shelf. If they can't make $2 billion back, they ain't going to drill there. That's why these permits, many times, are not useful, and that's why we need to explore in other areas. Now I'd like to also talk really briefly about the ANWR. They have done geological studies up there, and they know that there are billions of barrels of oil up there. If we drill there, we can get 1 million barrels of oil a day to help lower the price of gasoline in this country. So, Mr. Speaker, if I were talking to Americans tonight instead of to my colleagues--and I can't do that because we can't address Americans-- I would say this: You ought to contact your Congressman and Senators and say, ``I want my gas prices reduced, and I want you to drill in America. I want you to move this country toward energy independence.'' We talked about it 30 years ago under the Carter administration, and we never did it. If I were talking to them, Mr. Speaker, I would say that you ought to tell your Congressman to get with the program, to drill in America, to make us energy independent, and to bring down the price of energy, especially that of our gasoline.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. The very small part of the yellow at the top is where ANWR is.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Well, let me take just 1 minute and say that this is a critical issue. The American people know it's a critical issue, but I don't think they know how critical it is or how critical it's going to be, the natural gas, the gasoline, the lack of energy, the lack of electricity, possibly, if we don't get this. And so, you know, it is a critical time for us. And the American people really need to contact their Congressman and their Senators and let them know that they want to move towards energy independence by drilling here in the United States. We have the ability to move toward energy independence. We have the ability to lower the price of gasoline. We have the ability to lower the price of energy that's going to be needed to heat our houses and our businesses this winter, but we're not doing it. And if we don't get with it, as both my colleagues have just said, we're going to reap the whirlwind. The economy is going to really suffer. It's not going to just be individuals, it's going to be the entire country. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. They have twice the amount of oil there that they have in Texas, and I just cannot understand why we're not drilling there.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just add one thing. Each one of those drilling sites, if they drill and they find oil, it costs up to $2 billion to drill there. And if they're not going to make any money, they're sure not going to do that.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I guess the point I was trying to make is I know it would take a long time because we are behind the curve, but if the United States got with the program like we should have back in the seventies, we could be almost energy independent right now.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And oil was how much?

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. And now it's 14 times that.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Unbelievable.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I wish you would really stress that point and the gentleman from Georgia would stress that point that natural gas 10 years ago was $2.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Yes. Along those lines, they say, well, it's going to take 10 years if we start drilling. It's going to take 10 years if we start refining it. I don't think that's the case. Most people think in 2 or 3 years we could really be pumping a lot of new oil out of the ground if we were allowed to drill for it, and we could refine it and get it in the gas tanks of the people across this country. But even if it did take 10 years, when do we start? We were talking about this back during the Carter years in the late seventies. That's 30 years ago. And we haven't done a darn thing about it. If we're going to keep the cost of energy down, with the demand for energy growing at a very rapid rate around the world, China wants more, everybody wants more oil to expand their economies, building new roads and everything else. There's a war going on right now for the oil that's available, the energy that's available in this world. If we're going to be able to keep pace, which will help us economically, and, in fact, maybe save us economically, we're going to have to drill in America for oil and gas. We're going to have to get on with the program. I can't talk to the American people, but if I were talking to the American people, like my colleague from Georgia would like to do, I'd tell them get on with it. Call your Congressman. Write them. Sign all these petitions and tell them we want to be energy independent; we want to drill here in America.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. If the gentleman would yield, first of all, I would really appreciate if I could get the information on natural gas that you just gave us tonight because I was aware that it was a major problem, but I didn't know it was as big a problem as it is and is going to be. And I'd just like to say something about the polls that show that people are becoming more and more concerned about energy and natural gas and gasoline. The people are ahead of Congress. The majority, not too long ago, were saying environmental concerns were by far the biggest problem that we face. Now, seventy-some percent are saying, hey, we want to clean up the environment but at the same time we want to keep the economy moving and we want gasoline at a price we can afford and natural gas at a price we can afford. And so seventy-some percent now say drill in America. They know. They see it. And if our Congress doesn't do something about it, as you said, we're probably going to suffer the consequences. I will make a prediction. At that point, there will be a knee-jerk reaction and they will throw everything to the wind, say drill everywhere, do whatever it takes, but at that point, it is going to take a long time to catch up, and our economy could suffer tremendously. I'd just like to make one more comment about the Persian Gulf. The Persian Gulf is a tinderbox right now. We don't know what Iran's going to do. If Iran develops a nuclear capability, there may be a major war over there because Israel is not going to want to be threatened like they are threatened, and we could end up seeing a couple of ships sunk in the Persian Gulf and see a large percentage of our energy stopped flat, stopped. And if that happens, we're not going to have the energy to keep this economy moving immediately, immediately, not to mention the problems that you were talking about a minute ago. I'd like for you to explain to me, if it's okay with the gentleman who has the time, I'd like you to explain to me why the United States can't be completely energy independent. Because when I look at these statistics on the trillions of cubic feet of gas that's there and the billions of barrels of oil that's there, it seems to me that if we just dealt with our own resources, we could become almost energy independent.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. America is a can-do Nation and we need a can- do Congress. And right now, the Congress, and both the House and the Senate, which is controlled by the other party, they have a we-can't- do, we can't do this, we can't do that. As a result, we're going to be short of energy, and the cost is going to go through the roof, and the cost of gasoline per gallon is going to go up, I believe, even further. What the American people I think need to do is call their Congressman and Senators and say, hey, we want a can-do attitude, start drilling, let's get energy independent.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say that some Members of Congress do more work than others, and I want to congratulate you on taking the time and making the effort to get Members on record as to how they feel about drilling for oil and natural gas to get our energy prices down and get the price of gasoline at the pump down. You are to be congratulated. I watched you on television the other night, and I just wish you had more time to get into more of the details because what you say on the floor ought to be heard by people all across this country. I took a 5-minute special order before this one, and I didn't get a chance to go into some of the issues in depth that the American people ought to know about because they hear so much on both sides of the aisle. On that side of the aisle they say, oh, my gosh, the oil companies have so many leases, they ought to drill on those leases, both on American soil and also on the Outer Continental Shelf. The fact of the matter is there are an awful lot of leases already out there, given to the oil companies, but they are not going to drill in those areas unless they know there is oil there. And that's why there are seismic tests that take place. And those tests don't take place until they get the lease. And that lease is for 5 to 10 years. If they don't move on that lease within 5 to 10 years, then they have to give the lease up and it is re-bid, and somebody else might go for that lease. But chances are they will do everything they can to find oil in that 5 or 10-year period because they don't want to lose a lease that has a lot of oil within it. So they do seismic tests to find out if there is oil there. If they drill on a lease that is next to another lease, sometimes they do test drills, if it looks like it is a promising lease or leases around that area, they are going to drill on all of them. When they drill for oil off the Outer Continental Shelf or on the Continental Shelf, it costs $2 billion, up to $2 billion to erect a platform and a derrick and the drilling process, to drill down and get that oil out of the ocean. An oil company is not going to do that unless they think that there is oil down there. Why would you spend $2 billion unless you know there is oil there. That's why they get the leases and do the seismic testing. Once they do the seismic testing, if it looks like there is oil there, then they drill. They have to go through a very strenuous program of getting more and different kinds of leases so they can drill. But once they find there is oil on those leases that are already available, they will drill there because they want to get the oil, they want to make the money. The problem we have is we are only using 3 percent of the Outer Continental Shelf. The other 97 percent we are not drilling on. That really is troubling because there may not be an awful lot of oil in that 3 percent where they have the permits right now. But the other 97 percent, we know there is oil out there. I would like to give a couple of facts that I think my colleagues and the people of this country ought to know. We use 21.5 million barrels of oil a day. ANWR, and I think my colleagues talked about this, is the size of Dulles Airport. You're not going to kill the environment of Alaska if you drill in the ANWR. Alaska's almost three times the size of Texas, and the size of the Dulles Airport is not much bigger than Capitol Hill here, and we could drill there in an environmentally safe way and get up to 1 to 2 million barrels of oil a day. ANWR has 10.4 billion barrels of oil, more than double the proven reserves in Texas. And in April, the U.S. Geological Survey announced there was estimated, now get this, 3.65 billion barrels of oil and 1.85 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in Montana and North Dakota. On our coast lines there's 8.5 billion barrels of oil and 29.3 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. And you can go on and on and on and on. We have the gas. We have the oil necessary to become energy independent. We can get it in an environmentally safe way. And as my colleague from Georgia has said time and time again, we need to go after it. We shouldn't be giving our money to the Saudis. They're not our best buddies. They're supporting these madrassas that teach Wahabiism, which is a radical form of Islam, all over the world. And they're using our money that they get from us buying the oil over there, and we can get this energy right here in America. And we can also, as my colleague has said, bring the price of gasoline down. And that's what I think Americans want all over this country. The problem is, they may be confused because this young lady that was just down here, a new Member, she came down and started quoting all these statistics like there's this many leases and that many leases and why aren't they drilling there because they can drill. You're not going to drill unless a seismic test shows there's oil and you do a test well in the ocean. You're not going to drill on land unless there's a study that shows that there's oil down there. We know that there's oil in the ANWR and so we ought to drill there. All I can say to my colleague and to anybody that's paying attention across this country is that we need to get all of the Congressmen on board. My colleague's working his tail off to get it done. We need to get everybody on board so we can drill for oil and natural gas in this country, get the price of energy down, get the price of gas at the pump down to way below where it is now. And we can do it, but what we have to do is get every Congressman in this body on board and in supporting drilling in America. We can do it. And the American people have done it in the past. They've written letters in when we tried to hold, when we tried to tax the interest on their savings in the banks, they sent us cards that looked like snow coming down in this place. And we ended up reversing ourselves and saying we weren't going to tax or collect taxes at the bank when they got interest on their savings. They didn't like that. So if the American people, and I say this to my colleague from Georgia, if the American people want us to drill in America they need to contact their Congressman and say get on with it. Quit messing around. Drill for oil here. We want to be energy independent. We've been talking about it for over 30 years. It's time to act. With that, I appreciate the gentleman yielding.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Let me just say to the gentleman from Georgia, he mentioned that we haven't built any new oil refineries since the late 1970s, and he's correct. But there's one other thing that he didn't mention. I know he knows this. In 1981 we had 324 oil refineries. Today we have 148, less than half. There's no way that we can handle the oil that we could get out of the ground to lower the price of gasoline unless we build new refineries. And we've come up with an idea to put it on some of these closed military bases around the country, and our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have not seen fit to agree to that.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I wish you'd hold that chart up again that shows how big the ANWR is. I think the American people are under the impression that the ANWR is a huge place. It's the size of--you said Reagan airport, I said Dulles, but airports are airports.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, let me just say to the young lady who just spoke in the well, the new Representative, that if you are going to drill you have to have a geological study done that shows that there is oil there. Those leases are 5 to 10 years, and if there is no oil there, they are not going to put up a derrick. On the Continental Shelf, they have to do seismic studies to make sure there is oil down there. If they think there is oil down there, they drill a test well. If there is not enough oil down there, they are not going to build a $2 billion derrick. Those platforms cost as much as $2 billion. Unless it's profitable, they are not going to drill there. They have to drill where they know there is oil. That's why we need to expand beyond the 3 percent of the Continental Shelf we are talking about and get the other 97 percent involved. If we did that and they got those leases, we could become energy independent. Drilling in the ANWR, which is the size of Dulles Airport, is not ecologically dangerous. We should go ahead and drill there and get the oil. We could get 1 to 2 million barrels of oil a day.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Mr. Speaker, one of the things that happens when you come to the well and you debate somebody, a lot of facts get distorted and they're really not very accurate. So tonight I would like to quote some accurate figures for my colleagues in their offices. And if I were talking to the people of America--I know I can't, but if I were talking to the people of America, I would ask them to listen to these figures as well. We import 4.3 million barrels of oil a day, that's for gasoline, we import that much per day. We actually use 21.5 million barrels, but we have to import 4.3 million barrels of oil because we only produce about 17.2 million barrels of oil. So we're short 4.3 million barrels of oil a day. We have an emergency stockpile, but that would only last a short period of time. In April of 2008, the U.S. Geological Survey announced that an estimated 3.65 billion barrels of oil and 1.85 trillion cubic feet of untapped natural gas exists in Montana and North Dakota. If we could go after those reserves, we could start reducing the price of gas at the pump and energy for people all across this country. In the ANWR, it holds the single largest deposit of oil in the entire United States. It's 10.4 billion barrels of oil, and it's more than double the proven reserves in the entire State of Texas. And according to the Department of Interior, there is an estimated 8.5 billion barrels of known oil reserves and 29.3 trillion cubic feet of known natural gas reserves along our coastlines, with 82 percent of the oil and 95 percent of the gas located in the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a lot of my colleagues have said, well, my gosh, the oil companies can go ahead and drill off the coast on the Continental Shelf. Well, let me just talk about that for a minute. Only 3 percent of the Continental Shelf has been given to the oil companies in the way of permits, and those permits run 5 to 10 years. Now, during that period of time they have to decide, with seismic tests, whether or not there's oil down there. If they think there's some oil down there, they drill a test well. And if they drill the test well and it doesn't show enough oil to make a profit, then they don't go ahead with it. So most of these things that they have there right now are not being explored because there is not enough oil to make a profit. Those permits are not allowing them to make a profit, so they're not building those derricks. Those oil derricks cost as much as $2 billion. Now, if you're going to invest $2 billion in an oil derrick, you want to make darn sure that there's oil down there. And only 3 percent of our Continental Shelf is being used, 97 percent is not being used. And we could explore for oil all along that coastline, but we aren't able to because of the rigorous position that this Congress has put the oil companies in. And I'm not saying that the oil companies are totally free of any blame. You know, they have made an awful lot of profit. And my colleagues want to tax them on the windfall profits that they have been getting. If that's what they want to do, that's fine, but that's not going to give us one more drop of oil. The only way we can get one more drop of oil is to drill for it. The Department of Interior estimates that there are untapped resources of about 86 billion barrels in the Gulf of Mexico and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in the Gulf of Mexico. As I said, on the Outer Continental Shelf they have 1.76 billion acres of untapped resources and not leased on the Continental Shelf. And since the 1980s, the United States has prohibited oil and gas drilling on most of the Outer Continental Shelf, except for a limited area in the western Gulf of Mexico. We could be energy independent if we just looked at our own resources. Approximately 121 companies own the rights of the Continental Shelf, but they lease only 3 percent of the Continental Shelf. And about 15 percent of the U.S. natural gas production and 27 percent of our oil production comes from that area. They invest billions of dollars to acquire and maintain their leases, and unless there is oil down there that they find from seismic tests or a test well, they're certainly not going to build a $2 billion oil derrick unless they can make a profit. I would just like to say to my colleagues, the problem is that we're buying oil from the rest of the world; we're importing oil from the rest of the world. We're dependent on them. And the appetite for energy is growing very, very rapidly: China wants more oil; Taiwan wants more oil; countries all across the world that are expanding want more oil. So we're in competition with them for oil. We could be energy independent and not have to lean on countries like Saudi Arabia or Venezuela, but we aren't doing it, we continue to import. One of my colleagues tonight said, you know, we want to clean up the environment. Well, if we import gas and oil, you think that's not going into the atmosphere? Why should we import Saudi oil when we can get our own? If we want to clean up the environment, we can do that the same way. Whether or not we import the oil or use our own oil, it makes no sense not to drill. We could bring down the price of gasoline and energy in this country very rapidly if we announced tomorrow that we were going to start drilling in the United States of America. Let me talk about one other thing that is very important. In 1981, we had 324 oil refineries in this country; today we have 148. We haven't built a new refinery in 30 years. And that's one of the problems, you've got to get the oil to market. You've got to produce gasoline and other energy products from the oil, and you have to have refineries to do that. And we haven't built a new refinery in over 30 years. And we had the refineries that we did have cut by more than 50 percent. This country ought to move toward clean energy, but in the process we should make sure that we use our reserves to create gasoline here in America and not have to import all that oil. We ought to be drilling. We could be energy independent if we really wanted to.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, you know, one of the things that I think everybody in business understands is if you raise the taxes on a business, they pass that tax along to the consumer in the form of a price increase, cars, no matter what the product is. And in this particular case, what we're talking about tonight is oil. Senator Obama, who is running for President, says we ought to tax the windfall profits of the oil companies. Well, that may be a good idea as far as he is concerned, but when you tax the oil companies, they're going to pass that on to the consumer in the form of price increases. Gas prices are already high enough as it is. What we should be doing instead of increasing taxes like that is to drill in the United States of America. As my colleagues have just said, we have a lot of oil in the ANWR, and the geologists have told us there is oil there, as much as 1 million or 2 million barrels of oil a day, which could drive the price of gasoline down. And yet, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle and Senator Obama continue to say, no, no, that's not the answer; raise taxes on the oil companies. That isn't going to get us one drop of oil. We need to drill here in America.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the 2008 recipients of the coveted Ellis Island Medal of Honor. Presented annually by the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations (NECO)--a group representing more than 250 organizations that span the spectrum of ethnic heritages, cultures and religions--the Ellis Island Medal of Honor pays tribute to our Nation's immigrant heritage, as well as individual achievement. The medals are awarded to U.S. citizens from various ethnic backgrounds who exemplify outstanding qualities in both their personal and professional lives, while continuing to preserve the richness of their particular heritage. Since NECO's founding in 1986, more than 1,700 American citizens have received Ellis Island Medals of Honor, including 6 American Presidents, several United States Senators, Congressmen, Nobel Laureates, outstanding athletes, artists, clergy, and military leaders. As we all know, citizens of the United States can trace their ancestry to many nations. The richness and diversity of American life makes us unique among the Nations of the world and is in many ways the key to why America is the most innovative country in the world. The Ellis Island Medals of Honor not only celebrate select individuals but also the pluralism and democracy that enabled our ancestors to celebrate their cultural identities while still embracing the American way of life. This medal is not about money, but about people who really seized the opportunities this great country has to offer and who used those opportunities to not only better their own lives but make a difference in the lives of those around them. By honoring these outstanding individuals, we honor all who share their origins and we acknowledge the contributions they and other groups have made to America. I commend NECO and its Board of Directors headed by my good friend, Nasser J. Kazeminy, for honoring these truly outstanding individuals for their tireless efforts to foster dialogue and build bridges between different ethnic groups, as well as promote unity and a sense of common purpose in our Nation. Madam Speaker, I ask all of my colleagues to join me in recognizing the good works of NECO, and congratulating all of the 2008 recipients of the Ellis Island Medals of Honor. I also ask unanimous consent that the names of this year's recipients be placed into the Congressional Record following my statement. LTC Madelfia A. Abb; Noubar B. Afeyan, PhD; Charles R. Ajalat, Esq.; Robert A. Altenkirch; Hon. Goli Ameri; Roger E. Ashley; Ahoud Avshalomov; Anthony P. Basile; Vasile Beluska; Daniel O. Bernstine; William Boesch; John William Butler, Jr.; LT Jack J. Cambria; Hon. Ben Nighthorse Campbell; Dr. Brian Carty, FSC; Dr. Samir Narayan Chaudhuri; Col. Dik Cheung, MD; Dr. Karlene ChinQuee; Annette Choolfaian; Abla A. Creasey, PhD; Hon. Joseph Crowley; Edward Deeb; Arthur A. Dugoni, DDS, MSD; Christopher Erikson; Richard Farkas; Peter B. Fodor, MD, FACS; Valentin Fuster, MD, PhD; Robert L. Ganley; Hon. George A. Grasso; Hon. Joseph R. Guccione; Noosheen A. Hashemi; Stephan S. Huh; Hon. Dora L. Irizarry; E. Neville Isdell; Chief Anthony J. Izzo; Dr. Stuart W. Jamieson; Trevor O. Jones; Patrick J. Kelly, MD, FACS; James W. Keyes; Laya Khadjavi; Darioush Khaledi; Parisa Khosravi; Daewon Khym; Peter J. Kight; Wilson Ko, MD; MG Anthony R. Kropp; Pamela H. Kwatra; William Landberg; Fred Horst Langhammer; Anthony J. Lariccia; Young Bin Lee, MD; BGen. Paul E. Lefebvre; Robert H. Lessin; Demetrios G. Logothetis; Col. Eugene V. Lombardo; F. Joseph Loughrey; Xindi Lu; Terry J. Lundgren; Franklin R. Manios; Matthew J. McCoy; General Duncan J. McNabb; Maria Mehranian; Leo Melamed; Lewis C. Merletti; Bernd (Ben) Messing; Benjamin Mevorach; Avid Modjtabai; Jacqueline Murekatete; Mary Najarian; Vartkes Najarian, MD, FACS; Jacques Nasser; Long V. Nguyen, PhD; Franco Nuschese; CAPT. Robert R. O'Brien, Jr.; Ronald J. Onesti; Maria Otero; Randy Y. Owen; Mehmet C. Oz, MD, FACS; Laurice Y. Parkins; Richard P. Parrillo; Mukesh (Mike) Patel; Bhupendra R. Patel, MD; Gloria Perez; Hon. August B. Pust, PhD; Robin D. Rapaport; Lt. Cdr. Tamsen A. Reese; Michael P. Ricatto; Daniel M. Rooney; Thomas P. Rosandich, PhD; Harut M. Sassounian; Dhiraj H. Shah, MD; Jerome Shaw; Hon. Paull H. Shin; Sampat S. Shivangi, MD; Gary A. Sinise; Theodore M. Solso; Dr. Theodore J. Strange; Hon. Evelyn Lundberg Stratton; Haldun Tashman; Gerald N. Tirozzi, PhD; Stephen J. Trachtenberg; Nadadur Vardhan; Victor S. Wahby, MD; Aldona Z. Wos, MD; Chun To (Tony) Yeung; Louis S. Zamperini.

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. Will the gentleman yield just for one second?

Mr. BURTON of Indiana

Mr. BURTON of Indiana. I know, but I would like to talk to you before you leave.