John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, in fact if that happened, I would argue that we would have the same kind of mental strain that the people of Israel have been living with since the creation of their country. That any day, any minute of any day could be the day a rocket lands in your house, or when a terrorist blows your house up or shoots you. We'd have the same feeling in this country. You think we have economy problems now, who's out there to pick us up? We picked up countries around the world after wars and put them back on their feet for no other reason than because it made good sense. But there is no country that will pick us up and put us on our feet, so it's a crisis. I don't know if you're aware of this, but there has been a study made, a Texas border security study, a strategic military assessment, and here's an executive summary of the 150 pages. It is much more detailed, but just to read this very quickly: During the past 2 years, the State of Texas has become increasingly threatened by the spread of Mexican cartel organized crime. The threat reflects the change in the strategic intent of the cartels to move their operation into the United States. In effect, the cartels seek to create a sanitary zone inside the Texas border one county deep that will provide sanctuary from Mexican law enforcement, at the same time allow the Mexican cartels to transform the Texas border counties into narcotics transshipment points for continued transport and distribution into the continental United States. To achieve their objective, the cartels are relying increasingly on organized gangs to provide expendable and unaccountable manpower to do their dirty work. These gangs are recruited on the streets of Texas cities and inside Texas prisons by top-tier gangs who work in conjunction with these cartels. So in addition to this threat from Iran, I mean if you have a plan to seize a part of the United States of America by force, I would call that invasion. And I would argue that if that is a true statement, Texas has already put together a task force under the leadership of the Texas Rangers. They are setting up stations along the border with a goal of setting up an intense communication system to be prepared for what may be coming from across the river. But they are just a small body of very effective law enforcement people. This could be a major, major intrusion on the United States. Add that to their partners, Iran, trying to make a deal with these criminals, the Zetas, it's frightening. We learned a long time ago in law enforcement that when you create an environment of lawlessness, it breeds more lawlessness. Quite honestly, that theory is what cleaned up New York City under Rudy Giuliani. Using that theory, they said we're going to go into neighborhoods and we're going to take the street lawlessness out of the neighborhoods so that the big lawlessness will move somewhere else, because if they're in a lawless environment, it just enhances lawlessness. And it worked. And they cleaned up the streets of New York, and it's a much safer place for people to go these days than it was 20 years ago. And it's all because of the concept lawlessness breeds lawlessness. Because we were allowing laws to be violated on our border, from Brownsville all of the way to San Diego, we basically created, by our own efforts by not enforcing immigration laws and the sovereignty of our country, we created a lawlessness area before the cartels got there. So when lawlessness breeds lawlessness, why wouldn't they go there. There are already people not obeying the laws in that area, why not go in and make it official. And they did. It's frightening. I yield to my friend.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I agree with everything that you say, and I want to say this further: it's the duty of the President of the United States and the executive branch to enforce the laws of the United States, to protect the borders of the United States against intrusion. It's their duty to protect our Nation from those who would wreak havoc and harm upon our Nation wherever they may be located, Iran being the primary example on the face of the earth today as a threat to our country. And, quite honestly, jobs are very important in our country, and once we get the government out of the way we'll get some jobs started, but it's time for this administration to do something on the border of this country to protect the citizens on the border. There's no reason why a landowner who lives on the border has to get assassinated like the landowner in Arizona, or has to get run off his land by armed men, as our landowners in Texas are doing, without the protection of the Federal Government. We are the United States of America, and when they attack one State, they attack all of the States of our Union. When they attack our border, they attack every State in this Union. By the way, there are many Americans who realize that today. I had sheriffs from the State of North Carolina and the State of Maryland and maybe one other State, I don't remember where it was, but those two I know were in my office telling me, Hey, this violence is all the way in Maryland, it's all the way in North Carolina. They showed me pictures of an assassinated cartel member shot in the back of the head found right outside of a town in North Carolina. So these guys in their terror tactics come from across that border and are all the way up here on the East Coast dealing terror in smaller doses but just as serious for the future of this country. Meanwhile, we've got Iran contracting with this criminal element, which is a ruthless criminal element, and saying, We want you to do our bidding on our behalf, and here's the money. As Judge Poe says, Have gun, will travel. And you'll travel and kill whoever we want you to kill and blow up whoever we want you to blow up in any form or fashion that we see fit. How about a deal? And they were making a deal. That ought to scare the pants off of everybody, and it ought to wake the Obama administration up that there are serious things being overlooked by their cavalier idea that everything America does is bad and everything other countries do is excusable. That seems to be our policy, to the point where they're willing to let an agency of the United States Government become the biggest gun runner in the history of Mexico in Fast and Furious, which we are investigating right now in the Halls of this Congress. These are things that people ought to wake up and say, My Lord, this is insane. What is wrong with us? Where are those people who stood up for Americans and stood up for freedom and fought for the right ideas? They seem to have disappeared. I yield to my friend.

Mr. CARTER. I appreciate you being here, Trent. You're a good friend, and I value your opinions that you have given here tonight. This is a problem that has risen its head because of this event. We could talk for days about this because it is so serious to the future and welfare of every American citizen. And to think that any enemy of our country is contracting with a criminal element that has a track record thus far of killing 44,000 people, many of whom were just bystanders, just in an ongoing event of driving their illegal operation. If they get involved in international terrorism, heaven help us. I hope that heaven will. And I hope this administration will take a hard look at where they're going to be willing to draw the line and say, We're not taking this any more. And I would argue at least it ought to be at the borders of our country and at those who would develop a nuclear weapon that could devastate mankind. I thank both of my friends for joining me tonight, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Quite honestly, if they have a plan to seize American soil, I think that's as close to an invasion plan as I can think of, and that concerns me greatly. If it's going to happen in Texas, it's going to happen in other States. I've had the pleasure twice now to go to the border of the great State of Arizona. To be very honest, at least we've got a river between us and them. With the exception of some of the fences being built in Arizona--and I've seen the old fence. It was a two-strand, barbed wire fence that a young heifer calf could walk through without any problem at all. Tonight, we're joined by Congressman Franks from Arizona. He wants to tell us a little bit about his view of this serious problem on our border with our cartels from the standpoint of our friends in Arizona. I yield to the gentleman whatever time he may wish to use here tonight.

Mr. CARTER. You paint a pretty severe picture, which I agree with. Think about this. Part of the contract they were trying to make with the Zetas was to bring into this country explosives, supposedly to set a plant, a bomb, in a favorite eating place here in Washington, D.C. and blow up that place in order to kill the ambassador. Now, just let's assume for the sake of argument that something like C-4 that was smuggled in here, if they can smuggle C-4 across the border in from Mexico and transport it across the country to Washington, D.C., once they develop a tactical nuclear weapon in Iran, what's to prevent them from smuggling a tactical nuclear weapon into the United States. I would argue, nothing.

Mr. CARTER. I think that what we will hear is this, as what we have heard before in the past, this is a law enforcement matter being handled by the FBI and law enforcement, and it will be handled accordingly. That's what I think we will hear from the administration. But this is a threat to the national sovereignty of this country, potentially the national sovereignty of our friends from Israel and our friends from Saudi Arabia. This could have been the major incident that set off a chain reaction that could have done who knows what to the future of mankind, and these crazy people would do that using a criminal element that is smuggling horrible drugs and people for illicit purposes into our country every day. And you're talking about the marijuana loads. They pack hundreds of backpacks across the border loaded with marijuana almost daily, and they march right on into Texas and Arizona. In your case, they go off into the Federal lands, into the reservations and up to the highway and off to the east coast and the west coast. In our case, they come across the border, off the ranches, get up to the highway, east coast and west coast. We are the major dispersal route for all this illegal and illicit poison that they're selling, and that's who they would hire to deliver a blow against two of our allies. That's frightening, what could have occurred.

Mr. CARTER. Yes, sir.

Mr. CARTER. I agree. And that's the purpose for us being here tonight. There is no reason to scare people. They can make them draw their own conclusions. But if you're hiring, if you're contracting, this guy who represents Iran is contracting with this creep, who represents the Zetas, that's frightening to think lawlessness being directed by a nation-state to attack innocent people in our country. And when you blow up an area in Washington, D.C., how many Americans are going to get killed besides the Israelis or the Saudi Arabians that are attacked? We don't know. And then we thought of nuclear, nuclear elements. It's frightening.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming the time, thank you, Judge. I also have a bill, and I'm a cosponsor of your bill. I also believe that we need the National Guard on the border. As this report indicates, you fight wars tactically and strategically. Strategically are big, big issue plans. Tactically is how you do the fighting. Well, they seem to have a plan that has been worked out strategically to seize the Texas border, as much of it as they can get; and then tactically, how to go about doing this with all sorts of criminal activity so they control some of these very rural, very large rural counties. But I'm sure they're even going to try for some of those urban and quasi-urban counties that are along the border with a whole intent that it would enhance their ability to move their products. There's an anecdote in this bill, and I think I need to read it. This is what one rancher observed: ``But the Border Patrol, I can tell you that their hands are tied about a lot of stuff. They have to call Washington. Even if they're having a gunfight down at the river, they're on the phone. They have to call Washington. The Border Patrol have boats on the river. They patrol the river, but they are not allowed to pick up anybody that is in the water unless they are dead. ``If the drug guys are loading drugs, all they have to do is wade out into the water, and the Border Patrol can't touch them. They are not allowed to go into the water. They can't do anything about it.'' If that's the policy of the country and if that's what's going on, then they're looking at ways to avoid law enforcement--this is what this plan goes on to say--on both sides of the border. If the Texas authorities are chasing a carload of drugs in Texas, then drive out into the river, and they can't come after you. If the Mexicans are chasing you, then drive out into the river on the Mexican side. It gives them a getaway to get into that international zone. I'm not sure of the legal ramifications of that policy. It has always been my understanding that the State of Texas owns to the middle of the river; but there seems to be some policy that says, once you're in the water, you can't make an arrest of these people unless you get your hands on them without going into the water. I don't know how you do that. If that's the policy, then that's a getaway zone on both sides of the river. They can run right back in. If they get this control of law enforcement and other things--and I'm not in any way besmirching these guys who are working nights, weekends and holidays down there who are trying to stop this invasion; but look what they've done to law enforcement across the border. I mean, I think the life expectancy of a chief of police in Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, is about 6 hours before they either kill you or behead you, set you on fire, burn up your family or do something to you. These are evil people; and the Zetas, they're the worst of the gathering of the evil people over there. They do it for money. They'll do anything for money. Almost anything. Obviously, they didn't do this, but it's only by the grace of God and good intelligence and, quite honestly, good law enforcement work down there that we prevented this. It's almost, arguably, that we got lucky, because there are so many people they could have contacted; and then we wouldn't have known about this. It's kind of frightening. Another comment by another person who lives on the border: ``We see a lot of things, but we keep our mouths shut about it. We just don't want to be on anybody's hit list. I keep to myself. The people who are doing what they're doing; they keep to themselves. If I see something, I ignore it--I look the other way--but there is a problem. It's really bad. Here on the river, you see a lot of stuff, and you don't pay attention to it. You walk away, and you try to stay in an area where they don't see you, so if somebody gets caught they don't say, 'Well, somebody called.' So you try to blend in and not create any waves.'' This is a citizen. I can tell you that one of our citizens owns land on the border, and he has told stories of 50-caliber machine gun-armed, mounted Toyota pickups--I don't mean to besmirch Toyota, but that's what they are-- that drive all loaded up, with the cartel members telling deer hunters to get off the ranch because they're hunting there that day, which means they're bringing a big load of drugs across the river. There is anecdote after anecdote from the citizens of Texas. One of the things, I think, that's very important that we explain to people and to everybody who might be paying attention to this is that there is one big difference between Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California, which is: in Texas, we retained our public lands when we came into the United States under treaty. So the land that they cross the river onto is not Federal land. It's individual human beings' land. People water their cattle in the Rio Grande off of their ranches, and that Rio Grande is one border of their ranches. They own the land right up to the river. It's different in Arizona, and it's different in California. In most instances, they butt up against federally owned land because, in the other States, all land not owned by the individuals is owned by the Federal Government as part of Federal lands. In our State, we have no Federal lands. We have only State-owned lands and lands owned by individuals. So it's actually State-owned land or it's individual land with the exception of Big Bend National Park. That's the only exception that we have.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I've been appearing on the floor of this House now for quite a while talking about regulations, but information has come to my attention from a report that was prepared by a group of people in the Texas government about problems that are way beyond anything that many people are perceiving concerning what's going on on the border between Texas and Mexico in this ongoing immigration crisis that we have in America. And quite honestly, it's so concerning that tonight we're going to talk about--I'm going to talk about it, and I hope we will be joined by some of my colleagues--the actual crisis that is going on with the criminal element that has gathered across the border from Texas with the drug cartels in Mexico. I'm going to have some posters here in a few minutes to talk about some of these things. But I think that everybody is well aware of the fact that we have an issue that is going to have to be addressed by this Congress. And that issue is not only that legal immigration needs to be worked on and fixed so that we can have an immigration policy that actually works in this country, rather than one that seems to be haphazard and in many ways subject to the whims of people's personal opinions rather than the laws that should be established under the rule of immigration law for our country, but this whole issue of illegal immigration is compounded and geometrically compounded by the fact that massive illegal drug cartels have gathered on our border. First, remember--and I think all people that have dealt with criminology anywhere, anytime will tell you that when you create a criminal environment, you have to expect that environment to grow. At some point in time in the recent past, the cartels that deliver drugs to basically the entire Western World decided to move their operation from South America right to the border of the United States, across the border in Mexico. And these cartels have been battling each other in literally warfare to determine what cartels will dominate the illegal importation of drugs and people into this country--and those people brought in, in many instances, for illicit purposes, such as prostitution. The most recent count that I have heard is approximately 44,000 Mexicans across the border have lost their lives in this war that's going on in Mexico. That is a number that, when you look at the 10 years of warfare our country has been involved in in other places around the world, is astronomical. And to think that that's happening. I live in Round Rock, Texas, which is approximately close to 200 miles from the Mexican border. And to think that there's a war going on in an area where most Texans have, when there was peace upon the border, most Texans visited that area many times during their lifetime because those were our friends across that border. Now they're no longer our friends, they're our enemies, and not only the enemies of all law-abiding people, but they're enemies of mankind because they are bringing poison into our Nation in every form and fashion; and they're killing each other for the right to do so. One of the things that has concerned members of our Texas delegation and members of other delegations in this Congress has been, will that lawlessness spill over into the United States of America. The report that was done by Todd Staples and the Texas Department of Public Safety and others in Texas tells us that not only will it spill over into our country, but it has spilled over into our country, and that there is an evil plan by these cartels to actually come in and try to seize control of every border county in Texas that borders on the Rio Grande. Now, that's a big project that they are--and, actually, I would say it is a plan for the invasion of the United States of America. This is something we honestly have to address in a serious manner. We have a lot of legislation pending. One of the bills that I have that connects to this talk today is a bill that will add further assistance to the border sheriffs in their war against the illegal element on the border. Our Border Patrol has grown to an enormous body, and they are involved in this war on the border. Currently, the Texas Rangers have a task force on the border. They are the elite law enforcement officers of Texas, and they have a task force which is working up a, hopefully, a counter-plan to stand up to this plan that's coming out of Mexico to start to infiltrate our counties along the border and ultimately, through intimidation, kidnapping, beheading, murdering and bribing and all other types of illegal activity, they are going to try to both buy and intimidate their way into a position of control of these counties. Some of these counties have large populations, but some of these counties have very small populations and a lot of land mass along the Texas border. And it is a real concern when you're talking about 1,200 miles of border between the United States and Mexico, that someone would have a plan to invade our country and take control of those border counties that are bordering on Mexico. The first question you would say is, with them fighting to establish their base in Mexico, why would they cross the border? The report that was given, and when I get that report I'll talk to you about some of the people that were involved in it, but I don't have it in front of me. It was done with the aid of two former United States military generals who looked at it from the standpoint of strategic and tactical planning that you would have in the case of any other kind of military invasion, to look at what countermeasures we would take in this country and others. One of the countermeasures that would fall upon the people of Texas would be that we would need to be using every law enforcement officer we could to their maximum benefit; and therefore we have done things to enhance border sheriffs in the past. We're going to do things to enhance border sheriffs in the future; but we have a bill that will add to that enhancement, and I would think that's just the tip of the spear of what's going to be needed if these people get serious about trying to come across the border and create criminal counties along the Texas/ Mexican border on the Texas side of the border. It's almost beyond our belief. And here's the man with my materials. Bring them over here. That's almost beyond our conception of what will truly happen. But this is a copy of the plan. You want to hand one up there to Judge Poe and let him, he's read it, but he might want to have it as a reference. It's ``Texas Border Security Strategic Military Assessment,'' prepared in September of 2011. And some of the funds were provided by Todd Staples, the commissioner of the Texas Department of Agriculture, assisted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, and four star Retired General Barry McCaffrey and Retired Army Major General Robert Scales, both of whom looked at this from a unique and strategic assessment as they would do with a military project. General McCaffrey is the former director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President Bill Clinton and a former commander of all U.S. troops in Central and South America. Major General Robert Scales is a former commander, United States Army War College. These two gentlemen have taken the intelligence that has been gathered by the Texas Department of Public Safety, the Border Patrol, special group called the Texas Rangers, and others, to discuss this criminal element on the border. Now, why would we do this today? Well, it's because of what's on this poster right here. We have had an event in our country where these blatant criminals from the cartels have at least attempted to be--they have been solicited by enemies of our country from Iran to commit an assassination bombing here in Washington, D.C. on behalf of Iran. And they tried to hire Mexican cartel members to do this heinous event here to attack the Saudi Arabian--and I believe potentially the Israeli embassies here in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to kill those ambassadors from those countries. Now, I have a particular interest in this, above the interest I would have anyway, having dealt with law enforcement for many, many years now, in that one of these guys that tried to make the deal has a home in my hometown of Round Rock, Texas. This has just come out recently. I haven't seen what neighborhood it's in yet because I haven't seen it on television. But I'm going to call my son as soon as I get through talking here, and he knows everything that goes on in Round Rock because he's the coach, and he'll know where it is. But this is serious business when you start realizing that there are people trying to set up assassination plots that live in your hometown. And we are one of the most law-abiding--I would argue we are the most law-abiding county in the State of Texas and one of the most law- abiding counties in the entire Nation. And to think that someone would be stupid enough to choose Williamson County as a place for operations for terrorist behavior is almost beyond my belief. But it seems to be, from the indications that are being reported in the news, at least one of these people owned a home in Williamson County. It shocks me to come up here on the floor and admit that about my hometown; but I can promise you, if we can find anything we can do to him in Williamson County, we'll take care of the boy. I can give you my assurance of that. But that's another story. But look at these characters and realize we live 200 miles from the Mexican border, and yet operations are being planned by people from a foreign country, Iran, an enemy of our Nation, part of the axis of evil that former President Bush talked about. These guys are trying to make a deal with this criminal element across the border. So that, coupled with this Texas Border Security Act, is a huge eye- opener, that this issue that we have talked about now for the entire almost 10 years I have been here in Congress is a lot more serious issue, from a national security standpoint, than anything we ever imagined; and I think that's something we really need to start thinking about. I am joined by another very law-and-order former judge from the State of Texas, my good friend, Ted Poe. Judge Poe and I both served on the bench. We both did our best to put bad guys where they belong, and I think we did more than our share. I will just yield to Congressman Poe whatever time he may wish to consume to discuss this matter.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank the chairman for yielding. I want to thank the chairman and chairwoman for adopting H.R. 2074 to include H.R. 1154, the Veterans Equal Treatment for Service Dogs--the vet dogs--bill. This ensures that veterans with service dogs have equal access to VA facilities. It amends title 38 of the U.S.C. to ensure that the VA allows medical service dogs in addition to seeing eye and guide dogs in VA facilities. This is sort of a no-brainer. A medical service dog's usage has been expanded to deal with all types of brain injury, hearing loss, seizures, vets who have lost limbs--for assistance mobility--and there are many other important areas in which these service dogs are making our veterans better. Both the ADA and the Rehabilitation Act support this bill. The VA issued a directive recently to allow service dogs into their facilities, a directive good for 5 years. I applaud the VA in that effort, but this bill makes this directive permanent. This is important for these veterans. If you see them with their dogs, you'll know that the friendship and the love and the affection and assistance that these dogs provide is invaluable to our injured veterans. Harry Truman once made the statement, If you want a friend in Washington, D.C., get a dog. I am just trying to make sure by this bill--and we are trying to make sure--that our veterans don't have to leave their friends outside the door.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to the Capps amendment. First let me say that the underlying concept behind the Capps amendment is fine. We are all concerned about the health of people. Everybody's using examples of asthma. I have asthma, okay; that's why I sound like this. All right. So I understand asthma. But I want to point out some things about this that concern me. First and foremost, we have scientific information. And what the chairman of the subcommittee said is that we don't know exactly upon what methodology the EPA bases its analysis of the health care incidents that occurred from this industry. There probably are health care incidents. The question is, what's the analysis? And I would start with scientific evidence that has appeared here today that somewhere between 100 and 85 percent of the mercury pollution that's found from the Pacific Ocean to the Mississippi River comes from foreign sources. My first question would be, in their analysis, did they analyze that relative to the mercury--infant child brain damage relative to the somewhere between 100 and 85 percent of the mercury--that comes from foreign sources, which we have no control over? And we could shut all our concrete plants down, which we may do, and the result would be, I don't know, somewhere between 15 percent better and no better, at least west of the Mississippi. So did they analyze it that way accordingly? And then, therefore, if they said that they did it that way, is the number they're talking about relative to the 15 percent or the 0 percent that these plants are creating? I don't know the answer to that question. But that's the reason I think it would be an irregular thing for this Congress to do to adopt the findings of the EPA or other health organizations without us knowing what actual facts they used in their analysis of doing this. And I would think that would require a pretty hard and tough inquiry, not that I'm saying there's not health care issues with anything that goes in the air. Certainly, there's got to be. Then another question we hear today is, why don't you guys quit talking--you're not talking about creating any jobs. No, we're talking about the same argument that the administration's been using for the entire length of the administration. We're talking about saving American jobs, because there's no evidence to the contrary that if you close down a plant and it employs 15 to 30 workers, you lose 15 to 30 jobs, not 15 to 30 corporations, 15 to 30 American worker jobs. If you close 20 percent of the plants, and there's approximately 100 in the country, then you're going to have 20 times somewhere between 15 and 20 jobs, whatever the number is. And these are $65,000 to $85,000- a-year jobs by labor. But we're going to lose those jobs. And this bill that this amendment is seeking to be attached too, its purpose is to save those people's jobs, those American laborers' jobs. I think it's something we should think about. The American Jobs Act, if it can get the support in the Senate--to my knowledge, it has not yet been dropped in the House, but I'm sure it will be sometime; someone will step up and do it. And then the question becomes, what about the President's public statement that shovel-ready doesn't mean shovel-ready? Well, if you're going to have to bring in a part, a major part of fixing highways and schools, which is concrete, if you're going to have to bring in the element of concrete, because Portland cement, as my colleague has corrected my Texas language, is an integral portion of that, if that has to be brought in from China, don't you think that also is going to slow down again the President's complaint that shovel- ready doesn't always mean shovel-ready? I think it is. And, in fact, do we have any quality assurance that when we build that bridge across the Mississippi River, like we did in Minnesota, that the cement that we put into that bridge is of an adequate quality that we feel safe driving over? I don't know, but that's going to be our option if our cement industry goes overseas. So at some point in time we have to ask ourselves, we're losing jobs when they close plants. If it's so onerous that they have to move, then why not take time to study and come up with something that actually works in the real world, as this EPA rule is supposed to work? I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, there's a pretty heated argument going on here, and there are a couple of things I would like to point out here. First off, the EPA is conducting a reconsideration of certain aspects of the recent cement rules. However, EPA is only reconsidering a certain aspect of these rules. EPA has stayed the effective date on only one of the three rules proposed. They have stayed it only for a short period of time, and environmentalists have sued the EPA for staying the rule. None of the compliance dates for any of the three recent cement sector rules have been changed, and it is not clear that they will be. Only a legislative stay will provide regulatory certainty for these rules. President Obama has publicly stated to us that he learned that ``shovel-ready'' doesn't always mean ``shovel-ready,'' and that we are still waiting for some of the projects from the original stimulus bill to be created because ``shovel-ready'' doesn't mean ``shovel-ready.'' And, in fact, we have a few of these in my district. But let me say this: What we're talking about here is something that we've heard from the administration since the Obama administration has been in charge, and that is it is a success if you have prevented the loss of jobs. So you take credit for saying we didn't lose certain jobs because of this action. Well, we have evidence here that says we are going to lose certain jobs because of this action. In fact, we are told that we could have the close-down of 20 percent of the cement factories currently in existence within the next 2 years. That means shut down and either moved overseas or just shut down and no longer in business as a result of the regulations that are imposed by EPA. And that's actually not only the industry, but even EPA acknowledges that that is a possibility. So what this amendment that is proposed here does is it says--and the argument we heard was we ought to be ashamed of ourselves for the position we're taking and that for 18 years we've done nothing. Well, for 18 years, we've not exactly done nothing. In 1999, regulations were imposed by the EPA which were submitted to the cement industry; and they, by their own statement of EPA, they put those in place, and then the regulations changed in '06 and they were in process; and many, as we heard from our friend from Oregon, have put those regulations in place to reduce emissions. In fact, we have reduced mercury emissions by 56 percent by the regulations that have been put in place and the implementation that the industry has done. So it seems to be maybe another case of legislative negligence here to make the accusation that we have done nothing for the 13 years that have gone forward. Of course, that is just not true. They have done something. But now we've got the example of the plant that is in Oregon which has met the '99 and met the '06 regulations, and now they're looking at these regulations and the standard we have to meet, which is a 1 percent versus a 5 percent standard, .01 versus a .05 percent standard, that the folks in the European Union have set as a clean air standard. They are five times dirtier than what we are proposing, and they've taken a look at it and said, we can't meet this standard within the time frame that EPA has set forth for us. So what we, by the underlying bill in this case, have said is EPA is supposed to be a real-world operation that this is supposed to meet. It is clearly--at least the industry feels in the timeframe set we can't meet that real-world standard. Therefore, how about taking another look for the next 15 months at these standards; and then when you come up with something that can be met in the real world, give us 5 years to implement, which is pretty reasonable if you look at the distance between '99 and '06, between the time the regulations changed the last time. It is right within the same time frame. But all of a sudden, we have accelerated the implementation of these rules, and we've set standards that we pretty well agree, everyone agrees, are not meetable. I oppose this amendment and I support the underlying bill. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. CARTER. Madam Chair, this amendment should really be called the ``Moore veto amendment'' because what it effectively does is veto this bill. I would point out that Paul Valberg, former member of the Harvard School of Public Health, testified before the Energy and Commerce Committee that by every public health measure, from infant mortality to life expectancy, we are healthier today and exposed to fewer hazards than ever before. Our present-day air is much cleaner than it was a year ago, and our air quality is among the best in the world. H.R. 2681 does not change or modify any existing public health protection. It simply sets forth a process for EPA to implement stronger protections as called for in the Clean Air Act that are achievable, and the issue here is achievability. Standards in this act are set in such a manner that it's going to take time to achieve these emissions. As we pointed out, the EU, which is supposedly one of the standards of the world on air and water quality, has set a standard that ours is five times less onerous than the one that is being imposed by the EPA; and, arguably, the industry says meeting that standard is going to take more technology and more time. This bill simply directs the EPA to follow the language of the Clean Air Act statute and write standards that real-world cement plants can meet. It may be the EU standards are the standards they can meet. I am not here to make that determination. But the standards that we are presently asked to meet in the cement industry are not attainable at this time, and it takes time to make it work. Well, in H.R. 2681, the costs are certain. It's going to be astronomical and certain enough that the businesses tell us that it will shut down plants. And when you shut down a plant, you kill jobs and the labor that works in that plant will be unemployed; and that will be part of the unemployment figures we will read within the next year as the plant shuts down. So achievable standards give you the opportunity to work towards the objective that we're all seeking here. But unachievable standards cause panic, cause excess costs, and that unachievable regulation causes the industries, some of which are not tied together, they are separate companies owned by separate people, to say we can't meet this standard, not within the time we have been given. We might as well shut the plant and go someplace else, and so they shut the plant and go someplace else. Americans lose jobs that pay $65,000 to $80,000 a year, and the plant goes over to China and joins in China's belch of mercury--which many people have talked about here today--that sweeps across our country every day because they don't meet the clean air standards that we already meet in this great Nation. At some point in time, reasonableness and common sense have to come into these regulations. Give the industry a chance to achieve something that is achievable, and that's what this bill does. It says, take another look, come up with achievable standards, and then give us the time to achieve them. I don't think that is an unreasonable position to take. I think it's the proper position to take to save this industry, the cement industry, from possible annihilation in this country; and soon we would face, once again, people saying why are all the cement jobs overseas. Madam Chair, I oppose the Moore amendment. I was tempted to call this the ``fox watching the hen house amendment,'' but I'm not going to do that. We need to get this done, and having veto power over this amendment is not the suggestion that is relative to the debate we are having here today. I ask that there be a ``no'' vote on this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to this amendment. I listened to Mr. Waxman's argument, and I looked at his amendment. And this amendment targets a specific health issue: brain development and learning disabilities in infant children. We believe the EPA should consider all public health risks. Mr. Waxman raised the issue of accusing the Republicans of, as he said, ``legislative negligence.'' I'm sure it was not legislative negligence on the part of Mr. Waxman when he failed to include cancer in this bill even though in his argument to this august body he certainly argued that this amendment would help with cancer. The truth is this amendment addresses one public health issue, the disability of children, and it addresses it as it relates to mercury. And we've heard arguments in this Chamber about mercury, but we've also seen the air studies that have been done by the electric industry in which they tell us that, at least west of the Mississippi, somewhere between 80 percent and 100 percent of all the mercury pollution in that area comes from outside the United States. Where outside the United States is fairly obvious, China and India, which have the largest amount of Portland cement manufacturing in the world, also the least amount of protection of the air quality. They are polluting somewhere between 80 and 100 percent of mercury, which is what, according to the argument from the other side, is the issue here. It is not cancer, and this does not address cancer. It is harming the brain development of infant children--mercury. So if almost 100 percent of it is west of the Mississippi, then more than half the country is polluted from outside this country. And yet we would shut down factories and force them to move to places like China and India--where there is no protection for the health of anybody on this globe--so that they can stay in business because we have adopted a 1 percent standard rather than the 5 percent standard from our so- called ``model'' of the future, the European Union. Now, I think that we need to question this amendment. I oppose this amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I just want to correct--maybe you said it wrong; maybe I said it wrong. If I did, I apologize. I'm not saying Chinese industry will move to the United States. I'm saying that if they close down plants in the United States, which the industry has given us a percentage of at least 20 percent of the plants will close--and we know the construction of a new plant in Alabama will stop until the stay--then I'm saying that then we would have to supplement that by overseas shipments from the largest producer of cement in the world, China.

Mr. CARTER. Madam Chair, I rise in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Chairman, I rise today in strong support of H.R. 2681, a bill designed to prevent the collapse of a strategic domestic industry, the United States cement industry. About a year ago, I became active on this issue and made it a priority of mine to help save the American cement industry and the hardworking Americans at work in those industries. Some have questioned my motives, and they are welcome to do that. But for me it's as simple as this: The new regulations on the cement industry is the wrong rule at the wrong time. It asks too much too soon. NESHAP is a rule based on questionable science and promises to export American jobs and, ultimately, result in the import of pollution from other countries. The U.S. cement industry is suffering through the greatest decline since the 1930s, with current employment down to a mere 15,000 jobs and less than $6.5 billion in 2010 annual revenues. This represents a 25 percent reduction in employment and over a 35 percent reduction in revenues from prerecession levels. The cement and concrete product manufacturing sectors combined have shed more than 62,000 jobs between 2005 and 2009. At this critical time when the cement industry can least afford significant investments from new mandates, analysts estimate this single EPA rule would cost $3.4 billion in compliance costs, representing approximately half of the cement industry's annual revenues. This is very onerous. Let us repeat, Mr. Chairman, the NESHAP rule will cost $3.4 billion compliance costs out of a $6.5 billion annual revenue. That's over 50 percent of the industry's revenues. Now, if you own a cement plant, where is the money for compliance costs going to come from? Probably from closing down a plant, stalling plans for the construction of new plants, and laying off American workers in high-paying jobs. The average low job in this industry is around $60,000 a year, and they go up from there. Common sense is the missing ingredient in NESHAP. In fact, at the same time that the EPA finalized the NESHAP emission standards last fall, we just saw a chart that the European Union had just issued their own compliance standards, and the EPA standards are five times more stringent than the famous model of the European Union. So what's wrong with this picture? Speaking of common sense, if you want to remember that map that we just looked at, the map that shows you all the colors, the red part of that map represents between 80 and 100 percent of the estimated mercury deposits, and they're all from foreign sources. So, Mr. Chairman, this is the wrong rule at the wrong time, and what we are doing here fixes this problem and gives us time to study.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Thank you, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that, and I thank my friend from Kentucky for being here. I wanted to let him know that I have enjoyed the day. It's been a wonderful challenge and great working with him. I thank my friend for all the good work we did today. Today from 1 o'clock until close to 7 o'clock, we were debating the Cement Industry Relief Act, and I'm going to just rehash that a little bit. Before I start, Mr. Speaker, I had a constituent who approached me about the fact that as we're here tonight, that you and I are in a relatively empty Chamber except for all these fine folks that are all here working on behalf of the American people and that accused me of trying to fool the American people into thinking this was a full room. So I just wanted to set the record straight because he honestly didn't believe I would do it, that most evenings we are talking to our colleagues back in their offices and so forth who are keeping up with this on C-SPAN. This is often a very small group of folks who are in this Chamber. I'm not trying to fool anybody, and I was offended by the fact that he accused me of doing that. So I wanted to make the record clear as I started tonight that you and I are working here together. So now that I've gotten that little pledge that I made to one of my constituents taken care of--I hope he was watching--I want to say that we've been talking for quite some time about the regulatory burden that's being placed on the American people and what that has to do with our economy, the fact that we may be approaching a double-dip recession, God forbid--but there's all indications that we could be-- and the fact that we're losing jobs. We've got to, instead, stop losing jobs. We've got to save jobs and start creating jobs. The truth is that the job creators of this world are, first and foremost, our small business people. We had a whole group of small business people who came up to hear the President's speech when he talked to us the other day. They sat right up in this section of the gallery, and later they talked to the press and others about what they thought was necessary for their individual small businesses to start to grow, to prosper, and to create jobs. It's a funny thing. I didn't hear from any of them--and there were about 12--that what we need is a government bailout, that what we need is a government stimulus. What they said was, We need the government to quit throwing up roadblocks to us prospering in our businesses. They mentioned the fact that access to capital was difficult in this country because of regulations that had been issued under the Dodd-Frank Act. They mentioned the unknown about what's going to happen as the regulations are being developed for health care, for what we call the ObamaCare bill. As those regulations are being developed, every day it seems like they hear something new that is going to be mandatory in health care. As mandatory regulations are put upon the insurance providers of health care, the prices go up. Then as many of these small business people who are diligently trying to keep their employees hired and their employees insured as the ongoing rulings by these regulators under the health care bill are coming to the forefront so people can know about them, they hear from their providers that the prices went up. Some of them tell me that it's now getting to a point where the costs that are being put upon them--basically the cost of these regulations-- are actually making them have to decide, Not only are we not going to be able to hire anybody, but we're not going to be able to keep everybody we've got because we're doubling and sometimes tripling our costs of providing health care for our employees. Quite honestly, with the number of employees we've got, we're just going to have to double up, and some people are going to have to carry bigger shifts. We have to do that. Where, in reality, the best business practice would be to hire somebody, the regulations keep us from doing that. Then they tell us, With the unknown of the tax structure that we've got and the fact that what we now after 12 years are still calling the Bush tax cuts, which in reality is the tax plan that we're under now, there's a very good possibility that that tax plan might go away. Then the small business man and his accounting folks will have to look clear back to the era of Bill Clinton to see what the taxes were like then so they'll know what the taxes will be like if this body lets those things expire. They see that it's going to cause a tremendous amount of acceleration of their expenditures to pay extra taxes. So they say, With that being unknown, with the final price tag for health care being unknown and then with learning that there are other agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and others that are going to impose additional regulations and additional rules on our small businesses, well, you know what, we can't afford to hire anybody. Even if we could make it better and make a more prosperous business than we have, because of the unknowns, we can't afford to do that. Quite honestly, the President is going around all over the country. So far, he's been, I think, to every member of the leadership's district but mine, and he is telling people to tell the Congress to vote for his jobs bill, he calls it. I think it's the great American jobs bill or something to that effect. He's telling us the facts that he thinks we need to know about it; but that jobs bill has a lot more in it that is unknown, and the American people know that. I mean, this isn't their first rodeo, as we say in Texas. They've been here before; and they know that when they've got a giant bill with giant expenditures and when all they're hearing are talking points on the television and the radio, they need somebody to look at that bill. Those of us who are here who are looking at it are seeing many, many onerous things that exist in that bill that are not being talked about. The other night, Congressman Louie Gohmert was talking about some of the things he discovered as he was reading the bill. You haven't heard anyone talking about the things that he has discovered, but those things are important to the American people. It means their lives change both at home and in their businesses. American businessmen know that these unknowns are out there, and they are concerned about these unknowns. The unknown creates fear. It creates hesitation on behalf of the people who create jobs in this country. The real jobs are the jobs that you get hired for and you make a living out of. It becomes a career job, and you are able to have a career and hopefully work in that industry until you decide it's not in your best interest to work there or until you're ready to retire with a retirement and a Social Security system that you can trust. They say, But we're not sure we can trust that. With a health care plan that you can trust. But we're not sure we can trust that. We've got to put truth in front of the American people. We've got to get honest about what is in the bills that are out here. We have to be honest and stand up to the regulators and say, Wait a minute, what you're doing is going to cause people in my district back home and across this country to not be able to hold onto the jobs they've got. This is the kind of thing that is causing a lot of the problems we have today. Franklin Roosevelt said in the Great Depression: ``The only thing we have to fear is fear, itself.'' I think it's an argument that's still going on as to why private industry is fearful to hire new employees-- because they don't know what the results of that hiring will be as far as the bottom line of their profit margins. So I have been taking on the regulators and talking about various regulations and how colleagues in the House with me have bills and that we are taking up one a week until we get all of them before this Congress and, hopefully, get a vote and get them out of this House and over to the Senate. Then we hope and pray and beg and cajole the Senators, maybe, to take up the bills. We have a stack of bills sitting over on Harry Reid's desk right now that have been passed that will make a difference in creating jobs in this country; but he announces when they get there that they're dead on arrival and that the Senate is not going to act. The Senate gets paid to act, but they seem to think, this year, they get paid not to act. That's an issue between the American people and the Senate, but we have bills that are going over there. We will continue to send bills over to our colleagues in the Senate, and we are hopeful that as we approach the possibility of a double-dip recession that they'll open up a couple of those bills and take a look at them and see if they might help. I think they might. Today, on the floor of this House, I've been involved, by permission of the chairman, in this debate on the cement regulations. We've been talking of and dealing with amendments since 1 o'clock. So I've been here a long time, but I kind of like it. I enjoyed the conversation with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and we had a good debate. All the amendments had been voted on and passed up until 7 o'clock, and the other amendments will be voted on tomorrow, then the final passage of this bill that is described right here, H.R. 2681. What it does--probably is kind of hard to read--it provides employers with extended compliance period. What we've got is another form I want you to look at in this debate. I'll put it down there, and I'll hang it up there in a minute. First, what this bill does, it provides additional time to comply with the Clean Air Act and the rules that they've set relative to the manufacture of Portland cement. It blocks current regulatory overreach by the authority. It gives the EPA at least 15 months to re-propose and finalize new and available rules that do not destroy jobs. It affects the Cement MACT and two related rules. It's expected to affect approximately 100--this current set of rules is expected to affect 100 cement plants in America, has already caused suspension of a new $350 million cement plant proposed in, I believe, the State of Alabama, putting 1,500 construction jobs on hold. That's what this proposed rule has already done. What this does is say time out, EPA, you're killing jobs. So here's what we ask you to do. I want you to look at this rule and look at it in light of the fact that there's a possibility that 20 percent or more of these 100 cement plants will close. They will either close down and stop making Portland cement in the United States, or they will close down until they can open up overseas in an environment that is, quite honestly, not regulated at all. Not that our Americans don't want clean air, they do. But if they've got the clean air rules that are going to destroy them because of the cost, and the fact that they can't meet the standards and there aren't scrubbers to help them meet the standards, then they're going to say, well, if I'm going to stay in business I have got to go someplace where the regulations are not so fierce. Now, why do I say they're fierce? Well, historically when we started off our environmental cleanup--which is a great thing, and every American's proud of it--I can remember that Europeans were held out as an example, just as they're being held out today as an example of green energy. They were held out as an example on water and air quality of how dedicated regimes could come up with solutions to solve the air and the water problem. We have all seen the Sherlock Holmes movies of the smog and the fog in London, and it's gone. We've all heard of the pollution of the Rhine River, and it's not polluted anymore. And the Europeans were held out as having set the standards that the world needed to follow. Well, let's look at the standards that the Europeans sets for the cement industry. The EU has just issued their final standards. The parameter for mercury, the U.S. standard in the EPA rule that we are dealing with in House bill 2681 is .01 percentage of mercury as an emission. The European standard, supposedly the state-of-the-art, is .05. Our standard is five times more restrictive than the European standard. Hydrochloric acid, our standard is 3.83. The European standard is 10. In particulate matter, our standard is 7.72, the particulate matter standard in Europe, in the EU, is 20. So the people that we and the progressives in this House held up as the model for knowing how to clean up the atmosphere and clean up the water was the EU. They have issued rules approximately at the same time we have issued our rules, and you can see how much more stringent the rules we're placing on the industries of America versus the rules that are being placed on the European industries, our competitors. I don't mean in any way to criticize the Europeans. I just find it questionable, if the Europeans say .05 and we've got .01, and we're dealing with mercury, which is one of the pollutants that are discussed in the issue of Portland cement factories, then it's five times more difficult for us to meet the standards. At least from what the industry says, there is equipment available to meet the European standard. Our standard at this time doesn't have equipment available to meet it. So even if they wanted to jump in and do it in the 3-year time period they have to do it, they know they can't. They don't think they can meet that standard. They feel it's either going to be cost-prohibitive because of research and development to come up with solutions, or it's not going to be reachable at all, which could cause major fines. After they spent millions of dollars trying, they said, heck, we just can't do it. At least 20 percent of the plants have already said, hey, we just can't do it. We're small, small businesses, we're not the giant conglomerates that people presume us to be, but most of our folks that own cement plants own anywhere from one to maybe five, some of them have a few more. But most of them are fairly small, a one-family or one-person operation. They're sitting there saying, we can't meet it, we're going to shut down; or we're going to look at the areas in the world where we can meet it, maybe Mexico--which does have some standards but nothing anywhere even near the standards of Europe--or maybe we'll go to China or to India where they basically have no standards, not that we want to have a plant like that. But if we put the plant that has got the filters on it right now that meets a current standard and take it over there, at least we won't be polluting the atmosphere too much more, and we'll at least be able to be in business. What does that mean to us? Well, the President of the United States is going all over the country, and he's making speeches. And one of the things he says is don't the Republicans want to rebuild the infrastructure of this country? Don't they want to construct new schools and repair the old schools? Well, have you ever looked at what kinds of materials we use to build schools in the current modern world? Of course, even in the old antique world you start with a foundation made out of, what, concrete, which is made with Portland cement. So, if the Portland cement is moving overseas, and we have less and less people that can meet the standard-- and it could be more than 20 percent that moved--those are the ones who have told us they'll move. But as a business practice they're going to look at it and see if they can make it work. Now why do I say it is going to be tough to work? Well let's look at it. They're roughly a $6 billion industry. The estimated cost agreed upon--and the EPA doesn't dispute this--the estimated cost of making the changes to these plants, to meet the requirements set by the .01 on mercury, is $3.4 billion. So the whole industry makes $6 billion, and they have got to pay $3.4 billion to fix the problem. Now, that is half, more than half of the income from the whole industry to fix these problems. When you think about that, that's a terrible, terrible hit for people who are in the business of making a profit. I don't think anybody in America thinks that people are supposed to work for no salary and no profit. And, by the way, the jobs that we have in the cement industry are good-paying labor jobs. They make somewhere between something like $45,000 to $65,000 at the lower range and $65,000 to $85,000 or $90,000 in the upper range. That's a good-paying job. Now, why would we want to ship that job out of the country so that America loses a job and somebody in India or China or Mexico gets a job? Why would we want to do that? That's a question we have to ask ourselves. What our bill does, it says to the EPA, take another look at this and take into consideration the economic impact on our economy, take into consideration the impact on employment in our economy and the impact on lost jobs in our economy and the good you will do for the health care issues that are raised and have been raised all day by the Democratic Party in this Chamber. Does anybody want sick people? Of course not. And to make that accusation against those of us who say these are onerous regulations I think is ridiculous. Nobody wants somebody to get sick, but is what we're doing going to keep them well? Let's examine that and see what we think. I've shown this map before, but this is a very, very informative map. It tells you the percentage of mercury deposition that originates outside of the United States. And the red is somewhere between 78 and 100. So in the areas that are tinted red there, the mercury that's in those areas, between 100 percent and 78 percent of it comes from outside this country. It's because the prevailing winds blow the plume of mercury from the areas where there are no restrictions and no clean air, and that would basically be Communist China and India. They choose to live like that. That's their choice, but their pollution blows to our country. The yellow is from 78 to, it looks like, 58. So between 78 percent and 58 percent of the areas marked in yellow are foreign pollution. The green is between 58 percent and 19 percent that's foreign pollution in that area. And the blue, there is very little blue, just a few dots up on the East Coast and a couple of dots in the Midwest, the blue is 19 to zero is foreign pollution. So with that much mercury as the example coming from other sources, putting the kind of burden that this thing does on our industry, which has nothing to do with the pollution source from outside our country, and yet we're going to make our folks meet a standard of 0.01 when our other clean competitor, EU, is 0.05, so you can see why the industry would say, yeah, there's plenty of equipment to meet 0.05, but we don't think we can meet 0.01. So what does this mean? Well, it means in Oregon where they have already cleaned up their plant, one plant has announced if these rules go into effect, after they've cleaned up their plant to meet the best standards available and being told it's not good enough, they're saying, We may have to close this plant. And people in Oregon are going to lose jobs that pay $80,000 to $100,000 a year. What's wrong with this picture? Well, I'll tell you what's wrong with it. The regulators are not thinking about whose job is going to get lost. And meanwhile, if we cleaned up our 100 plants, and this is the pollution that's coming in from foreign sources, then how in the world are we going to say we're protecting our children from disease? Well, if you're going to protect our children from disease, what about all of this pollution? We can't do anything about that. We need to, but we can't. So sometimes when you get a job and you work for an agency, you become so wrapped up in trying to save the world from your standpoint that you don't think about who gets hurt in the process. But I think it's pretty clear who gets hurt is some people who have some pretty darn good jobs. And that 9 percent unemployment figure could rapidly go up just in this industry of good American labor folks who lose great- paying jobs. And who do they lose them to? Foreign operations. And then you ask people: Why do our jobs keep going overseas? At least in the concrete industry, the cement industry, we know. Also, as Mr. Obama travels the country, he loves to talk about we're going to rebuild infrastructure. We talked about that in the original stimulus bill, and how out of all those $600 billion or $700 billion, whatever it was we spent--I know it turned out to be around 50 or $60 billion that actually went to highways even though we were promised we were going to fix all of the highways and bridges, but let's just assume that they are going to fix the highways and bridges right now. If the cement industry is in trouble, then the concrete industry is going to be in trouble. And they have already had a 62 percent reduction in both those industries in the last 4 years because the economy has been bad and they're in the construction business. So how are we going to build a bridge across the Mississippi River when we have to ship the products that we need to make our concrete over from China? Well, we'll do it. We'll figure out a way to transport that across the ocean. It can be done. But remember when the President told us he found out that shovel- ready jobs in America weren't always shovel ready? Well, it's because something stood in between the time the shovel actually got used because there were other things that stood in the way. I would argue many of those other things were regulations. They were environmental regulations. They were endangered species regulations. And now they would be Portland cement regulations if this regulation stays in place. Now, is this bill unreasonable? Well, we can analyze that for ourselves. It doesn't say we don't want to clean up the air. It says take another look at this. Factor in the economic impact and the labor impact, and then try to come up with a number that we have existing new ideas to clean up to, and that seems to be 0.05. And then when you've come up with a final rule that is doable in the industry as it exists-- and that's part of the direction that EPA is given. It needs to be doable out in the actual working environment that it's in, not in some laboratory someplace. If you put rules together that will do that, then we'll all start to do it. And give us 5 years--we may do it quicker, but give us at least 5 years to spread out the cost because we're talking about a lot of cost for an industry that has to struggle. So give them a chance to get this thing done in a reasonable point of time. Meanwhile, we're not making the air any dirtier. We're just maintaining the status quo which was cleaned up in 1999 and cleaned up again in 2006. So this is the third new standard. It's not like we have the dirty plants like our foreign competitors. No, we don't. We cleaned our act up in 1999 and cleaned them up again in 2006, and the only thing that kept anything from getting done was lawsuits filed by environmentalists who said it wasn't enough. Well, the industry tries its best to meet the standards. Obviously, they change almost every 5 years. So what's wrong with a period of time that says give us a chance to have 5 years to change? It's not unreasonable. It's a reasonable request to save jobs and keep an American industry alive in this country. So that's the example. That's what's being discussed today. Next week and the week after that, there will be other bills that are out there. Here is one that's probably the next one to come along, the Boiler MACT rules. What does that mean? Well, it means that we are taking a look at industries and entities that use boilers in their operation either to heat and cool or whatever, but they use a boiler to do it. And this is going to take place I think if not this week, early next week, maybe tomorrow. Here's a statement about it. From hospitals to factories to colleges to industry, thousands of major American employers use boilers that will be impacted by the EPA's new Boiler MACT rules. These stringent rules will impose billions of dollars in capital and compliance costs, increase the costs of many goods and services, and put over 200,000 people's jobs at risk. American forest and paper industry, for example, will see an additional burden of at least 5 to $7 billion. H.R. 2250, a bill that we will have, the EPA Regulatory Relief Act, sponsored by Morgan Griffith of Virginia, will provide a legislative stay of four interrelated rules issued by the EPA in March of this year. The legislation would also provide the EPA with at least 15 months to repropose and finalize new and achievable rules that do not destroy jobs and provide employers with an extended compliance period. Sound familiar? It's basically the same thing. Hold up. What you're doing could cost 200,000 jobs and billions of dollars in extra costs. Take another look at it. Take a look at the jobs in a possibly double-dip recession that's coming up and say, Is that really what we want to do? Do we really want to have a potential of losing 200,000 jobs or more because we're not willing to take another look and see if there's not a better idea to make this thing clean? What's another 15 months when you are being told these kind of economic ramifications are there? And, by the way, give us 4 years to put them in place once you come up with these reasonable rules. This is not unreasonable. This is, again, thinking first about the working person and thinking first about our economy and what it takes to make our place run in a clean, efficient, and manageable manner. And if we don't get that, we lose jobs. In this environment, for the last 3 years, we've had an interesting concept. When we put the stimulus package out there, we were waiting to hear how many jobs we had created. Well, we heard about a few. Some of those jobs cost a lot of money to create them. You get a $40,000-a-year job and you spend $1 million of America's tax money to get that $40,000-a-year job. It's not real economically feasible, but we have some of those jobs. But the other thing we heard from people was, oh, well, it's not just the jobs we create; it's the jobs we saved. Well, that's exactly what we're talking about. We've got evidence that jobs are going down the tubes as a result of the action of a United States Government bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency. They are going to cause potentially the loss of 200,000 jobs. Pass this, and we've just saved, just like the Obama administration, we just saved 200,000 jobs. This is good. This is how we do things now. We've been told for the last 3 years this is how we estimate we're doing good. Now, it didn't turn out exactly that way, but at least you're not going to make those unemployment numbers go up. And one of our goals is to stop those things from going up and start them going down. It's the goal of every American. It's the goal of the President, and it's the goal of every American that works up here on the Hill. We have different concepts of how to go about it. We can look at the concepts that have been used thus far and see what their success is. How about looking at some new ideas and see how successful those will be? If we can cut costs to people who create jobs, we'll get more jobs. If we can keep jobs that pay well for the American worker, he will be able to buy product. He will be in the market. He will help create demand, and we will have more jobs. But if we are going to, by an action of a Federal agency, if we are going to cost 200,000 jobs and cause industry to go out and spend an inordinate amount, in the billions of dollars, to make the corrections, how many jobs do you think--when they get it cranked up and meeting the EPA standards, how many jobs do you think they're going to create after that? Well, first they have to figure out a way to make up that 5 to $7 billion that the printing industry says they're going to lose. And how are they going to make that up? Guess what? They're not going to hire anybody. This is not rocket science. This is pretty simple. If you don't have the money, you can't hire anybody. And if you've had to spend money you didn't expect to spend to the tune of 5 to 7 billion--with a B-- dollars, it's a tremendous hit. And that's just one industry. That's just the forest and paper industry. In that situation, they're not hiring anybody. You don't have to be a genius to figure that out. It's easy for you to figure that out. So by the very nature of the regulation we're talking about on boilers, we could be looking at the loss of 200,000 jobs and an extended period that that industry isn't hiring anybody. Just to give you an example of the regulations that are out there, we've already dealt with a bill by Representative Scott about the National Labor Relations Board telling Boeing that they couldn't build a plant in South Carolina when they wanted to because South Carolina was not a closed shop union State. Mr. Sullivan today is working on the Cement MACT bill. Mr. Griffin is in line, in the queue, to come up with solutions for the Boiler MACT bill. Mr. McKinley has a bill that has to do with coal ash rules. Mrs. Noem has a bill to deal with farm dust rules. And I, with several of my colleagues, have a bill to put a 2- year moratorium on regulations. And we will hopefully come with a bill that will be reasonable, accessible, and acceptable to the people that are concerned about this and put a stop to this question mark that industry is asking: What's around the corner? Because there's tons of rules around the corner. In the month of July, there's almost 300 new major rules that will affect this country with over $100 million or more. There were almost 300 of them. In August, there were almost 400 of them. Now we're just talking about one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, right here, bills to deal with seven instances. But the person who keeps up and looks at these other regulations that are out there says, Holy cow, what's out there? If these things are going to cost, like the example with this EPA Regulatory Relief Act, if the Boiler MACT rules are going to cost one industry $7 billion, what about all those other rules? We don't even know what they do. And what are they going to do to us? And once again we have to convince the people who are standing on the sidelines to get back in the game and hire folks so we'll have jobs in this country. It is unacceptable for us to look at 9 percent unemployment as the low figure for this year. It's unacceptable. It's been much higher. We've come down to 9.3, we seem to have stuck there, but that's unacceptable for an unemployment number in America. But you can't stop it unless you get real jobs created by real people. And the way you do that is take the unknown out of their lives at least until we can get our feet back on the ground. You know, throwing all the money in the world at our problems, we have some pretty good examples of how that doesn't work, the stimulus bill being the perfect example. We threw a half a billion dollars at that solar company out there in California that is under Federal investigation by the Justice Department for what they did with our money. A half a billion dollars was thrown at those people, and what happened? Where is our money? Where did it go? They shut the doors. They declared bankruptcy. We threw it at them in a relatively short period of time, 2 or 3 years. That's a lot of money to blow in 2 or 3 years. We're now learning that some of the stuff they have is like the--not Mercedes Benz, but more the Lamborghini model of furniture and fixtures and so forth, high-dollar stuff. But the reality is we threw money at a problem, and the money didn't solve it. I don't think we should throw money at these problems that we've got right now. I think we should instigate common sense for the problems we've got right now. I mentioned some of those things that are out there. We've got another bill that's very interesting. It has to do with cross-state air pollution--CSAPR they call this--for utility plants. These are plants that produce electricity. And the truth is that there was a concept, it was designed for the eastern part of the United States because the States are a lot smaller in the eastern part of the United States. So if you're living in Vermont, New Hampshire--and I'm not picking on them, they're just side by side, fairly small. If a plant in Vermont has prevailing winds blowing into New Hampshire and they've got some pollutant out there, they want to be able to stop the cross-State-line expansion of pollution into another State. And that's what these rules are set for. They set out specifically which States would be under these rules-- they expanded them some, but it was designed for the Midwest, some southern States, and the Northeast. And it specifically, for instance, said Texas is not under these rules. Then 19 days before they issued the final rule they said, oh well, we decided, even though we didn't test any of the air, didn't test any of the directions of the air, didn't do any monitoring at all in the State of Texas, we're putting them under the rule anyway, and we're just going to presume that the prevailing winds blow the way we think they do. I don't think anybody that wrote that rule had ever set foot in the State of Texas or they would have known better than that. But they presumed that we were blowing all of our air, any pollution we created up to the Midwest and the Northeast. They presumed that our prevailing winds blew from the Southwest to the Northeast. And I think anybody that lives in Texas knows that's far from the prevailing winds in Texas. If anything, if we have a prevailing wind, it blows from the Gulf of Mexico--which is the Southeast--to the Northwest of our country. And the rest of the West, by the way, is not under these rules, with the exception of Oklahoma. So these rules are going to impose such onerous air standard qualities that at least in the State of Texas, with one company, they have 13 power plants, they're saying they're going to close two--even before this starts they're going to close two. They're going to close one coal mine. They're going to stop shipping Western coal to that part of our State--because these are coal-powered plants. So there's two offline right there of the 13 they've got online. And potentially they could shut down more than that, maybe even half. That's one company's power plants. Now, what does that do to you, to us as American citizens? It makes the price of electricity go up. It makes the possibility of a brownout and a blackout more relevant. If it's too cold or it's too hot--and down where we live it's mostly too hot--you might have a power outage. If you take power plants offline because they can't meet EPA standards because the standards are too onerous--and quite honestly a complete surprise in our State because we didn't even know we were supposed to be under this set of rules--we're probably going to have power shortages in our State. But that's not all. The rest of the country has got these rules too, and they're just as surprising and onerous as they are to us. The only difference between them and us is they knew they were going to be under it--this is the eastern part of the country. We didn't know we were going to be under it, so we've got a particularly loud gripe. But other States are saying the same thing: Holy cow, what are we going to do? The Midwest, almost all their power comes from coal--not in our State; we still have oil and gas. But in the Midwest, all their power comes from coal. What are they going to do when they start shutting down plants? How cold is it going to be in Chicago this next year-- which my dad claims when the wind blows off the lake is the coldest place on Earth--how cold is it going to be when they shut down the power plants in the central part of the United States in the Midwest? It's a frightening thought. The impact on humanity ought to be one of the analyses that's made when you start making an analysis under these EPA regulations. Nobody wants to dirty up the air, but you can do it with reasonable assumptions as to how much harm you're going to do when you start doing it. And the harm we're looking at here is a lot of harm. It's downright scary what can happen in a cold winter or a hot summer. We're in the middle of a drought right now in Texas. And where I live, it hasn't rained in--gosh, I don't know, a long time, at least 4 or 5 months. We had barely a sprinkle on top of my patio in the back yard--didn't even get my street wet, but they called it rain. I don't count that. I'm talking about when it rains. Now, could we get one? Yeah. We're a land of wild weather. We could get one tomorrow that would wash us off the face of the Earth. But that's fine--we could use it. But the point is, that sure tells you how hot it has been. From starting in May until late in the month of September, almost the entire State of Texas had over 100-degree weather every single day. Normally our hot weather starts in late July through August, mid-September we're over 100. We had 105 and 106 the whole summer long. Now you can just imagine how much electricity got cranked out. If we implement the rules that are imposed by the EPA, we will double the cost of electricity. I'll use my electricity bill as an example. The entire summer my electricity bill was approximately $600 plus a month. What that's telling me is look for $1,200 bucks a month. The guy that's got $200 bucks a month--which is the average smaller home in our area--he's looking at $400 a month. It's a shocker to have something like that happen to you and to realize it had to because people didn't think out regulations they imposed. We can still meet the standards and not put our people at risk. These are the kinds of things that we're talking about that so concern us. And the first thing, when this all happens--and the reason I've been talking about this now for almost a year is because I'm convinced that a lot of Americans believe that when this happens to them in their life, they believe this is done because the Congress of the United States passed some law that caused that to happen. They don't know that it's an unelected group of bureaucrats in an agency somewhere that made this decision, not Members of this Congress, not the people they elect to speak for them in Washington, D.C. No, people who have jobs that they can't be fired from and who are entrenched in these agencies around this town write rules that affect the lives of ordinary Americans, and they never know where they came from unless they're in the industry that gets affected. Industry knows what bureaucrats do, but the average American citizen, he doesn't know. That's why everywhere I go, I talk about this because I want everybody to know, but particularly I want my folks back home that I represent to know just what these agencies do on their causes that causes the cost of living to go up. Well, I'm about through, so I'll do this the easy way. I want to thank the Speaker for his patience. I've got plenty more to talk about. We'll talk about it on another day. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall Nos. 742, 743, and 744, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''