John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. In reclaiming my time, let me say right off that I am very, very proud to be part of a Congress that instantly reacts to a crisis situation. Mr. Oberstar should be commended for that reaction. That is what we are asking for the entire government to do. Let's react positively. Let's work as a team. Let's quit blaming previous administrations. Let's do the job to clean this mess up. I thank you very much. My good friend from Texas lives in the heart of All Country USA. Houston, Texas, is, to my way of thinking, the center of the universe for the oil industry, and my good friend Pete Olson is one of the members of our Houston delegation who is very knowledgeable in this area. He has some legislation, and there may be other things that he wishes to talk about, so I yield to my friend Pete Olson, the Member from Sugar Land and all points south, to talk to us about how he feels about what is going on today.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time for a moment, I asked Trent Frank, who is an experienced offshore driller, as we all know. I said, Trent, what kind of salaries do these guys make? He said, The ordinary laborer-- which in my day, at least, we used to call those guys roughnecks or roustabouts--$60 an hour. And the high-tech guys, the guys that can drive a drill bit down 5,000 feet under the water and another multithousands of feet and hit a 12-inch hole where this oil is coming out of, with that kind of skill, they're paid a lot more. Now the question I would have for the administration, if you take the drilling away and all those people are looking for a job to replace that income, where is the guy who developed his skills through experience at the low-paying job on a well? So maybe he's got a high school education, and he learned his job on the job. Where is he going to find $60 an hour to support his family on? It doesn't exist.

Mr. CARTER. I yield.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, in wrapping this up, there's a lot of things that the Republicans--we get accused of an awful lot of things around here. We're going to ignore those accusations. Mr. Blunt has a bill. The Oil Spill Response and Assistance Act, by Mr. Roy Blunt from Missouri, H.R. 5336, requires the Secretary of Energy to develop and deploy technology for the use in the event of breach or explosion at or at a significant discharge of oil from a deepwater port, offshore facility, or tank vessel, including caps, fireproof booms, remote-operated submersibles, 24-hour response time, double liability limits for oil companies. Mr. Blunt is addressing the issue. Mr. Schock has an Offshore Safety and Response. We have legislation. Let's do our job. And let's continue. Let's end that moratorium and continue to drill. And be safe.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for what he has had to say. I want to tell you that my wife is Dutch, so I took a little offense at the fact that we had an offer of help of a fleet of skimmers from the Dutch. It is my understanding we gave no response. Maybe that's different. I don't know. All I know is that I'm like Will Rogers. All I know is what I read in the newspapers. Now I'm even more upset since I've found out we have American-flagged ships waiting in the harbor ready to help, and nobody has asked for their help. The leadership that runs this country, the executive branch of the government, ought to be ashamed of themselves.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank you for this hour. It's going to be an interesting couple of weeks on this issue of this oil spill, because we are going to get two conflicting points of view. I actually heard, I believe, that somehow this oil spill is now George W. Bush's fault. It reminds me of the game, the Kevin Bacon game that your job is no matter what actor or movie you lay out before the public, you have got to bring it back in seven cycles to Kevin Bacon. And it seems that everything that goes on in the United States, that the majority party seems to somehow think whatever goes on in the United States they can somehow track it back to George W. Bush. And what I heard was that Mr. Bush had used a drilling rig at some point in his life, and therefore it's Bush's fault that there was a failure, or something to that extent, a failure on this BP drilling rig. It's time to really stop. It's getting a little old for the American public, for them to hear constantly that no matter what goes wrong in the Obama administration it's George W. Bush's fault. I think this is getting a little old and getting a little bit, it seems to be sort of a fantasy that seems to be prevailing. We have got a great disaster in the gulf, and nobody's denying we have a great disaster in the gulf. Today I heard a man who actually knows something about drilling in the gulf. I haven't heard anyone stand up that has talked on the majority side tonight and said, By the way, I have drilled these, and let me tell you what has happened in the gulf. But Trent Franks came before us today and showed us what has happened in the gulf--it is very interesting--and why the cap failed that they first started, and why the wells that are being drilled to intersect this well, the relief wells should be successful. And, you know, if you want to know how you do something, you ought to talk to somebody that's actually done it. And Trent, a Member of this body, has actually done it. So we will find out, whenever we get this spill stopped, we will find out what happened in the gulf to cause this thing to blow out. And it may be human error. It may be the company's error. It may be shortcuts they took. It may be the inspector's error. It could be just about anybody's error. We don't know. Now, the truth is we don't have to know yet because the presumption is overwhelming that it's BP's responsibility, and they admit it. It's their responsibility. But blame-gaming is not going to stop the oil from flowing into the gulf. Putting our resources together at every level from every source is part of what you do when you have a national emergency. I don't care whether that national emergency has the name Katrina or Rita or Ike or any of the other names, or Carla or any of the other names of hurricanes that have swept across our gulf and attacked all Gulf States at some point in time, or it has the name-- what's the name of this well? I can't even remember anymore. Anyway, just call it the BP well in the Gulf of Mexico that blew out. Blame game's not solving the problem. What's the problem? When it's the hurricane, the wind's blowing and things are getting torn down, and we need to put our resources together to help the people and the industries that are attacked by that hurricane. Today we have animals, we have sea life, we have wildlife, sea life, human life that is threatened by this BP oil spill. And our first job, and the job not only of British Petroleum but of those of us who have the responsibility of protecting this country, which would be the President of the United States, the executive department, this Congress, and everybody involved, should have immediately poured massive, massive support into doing something about this oil well and stopping this spill. And we should have done it through the people who have the intelligence and the technology to tell us just exactly what we are dealing with. I wouldn't recommend you call a great white hunter in Africa to tell him how to put down this oil spill. I wouldn't recommend that you call a surgeon in Brooklyn, New York, and ask him to put down this oil spill. And I wouldn't recommend you talk to a community organizer and ask him how to put down this oil spill. I would recommend that you immediately, when this happened, approach those people who have the expertise to deal with this oil spill and do it. And quite honestly, I think we have to say that the President of the United States told us the buck stops with him, so he's the person who should have started this ball rolling when this whole thing started coming down on us. I have got a little chart up here, the gulf spill timeline. And we are going to look at that for just a minute to see how well we did in deciding that we were, as a government, going to join the oil and gas industry in coming up with a solution to British Petroleum's disaster that they had created in our blessed Gulf of Mexico. In fact, I think I have the State with the largest amount of Gulf of Mexico coastline of any State in this Union. And it would be close, Florida would be a close second. And they may have more. I don't know. But certainly the State of Texas has a lot. So let's look at this thing for just a second. April 20, 2010, and today is June 16. So looking back to April 20, the explosion occurred. Eleven people were killed. Right there we knew we had a problem. The first oil leak was officially recognized and revealed by the administration in Washington on April 24. So 4 days later, the administration acknowledged and revealed to us that there was an oil leak. On April 28, the Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Salazar, traveled down to the BP command center in Houston. April 29, the Homeland Security Secretary Napolitano announced a spill of national significance, and President Obama made his first public remarks about the disaster. That's 9 days after it occurred. April 30, the President deployed his senior administration officials to the gulf region and makes a request for remarks about what's going on, and the Louisiana National Guard was activated to assist. That's a start. That's a first start. The President visits the gulf on May 2. It looks like 13 days after the event. Cabinet officers briefed the Members of Congress on May 4 about the seriousness of this event. May 11, Louisiana requests emergency permission from the Federal Government to dredge barriers to construct berms. Now, when I was about 18 years old, I worked in south Louisiana, and the whole ecology and economy of Louisiana is directly affected by what they call the marshlands. There are literally thousands of people who make their living because the marshlands in Louisiana thrive to be breeding grounds and producing grounds for numerous amounts of seafood products. And in fact, I would venture to say that there's not anybody who eats seafood in the United States, and have done so for any length of time at all in their life, has eaten seafood that was produced as a result of the overall environment of the Louisiana coastal region, which is 99 percent marsh. Now, marsh is different from the beach. The beach is bad. If you've got a beautiful beach like they had at Pensacola, that gorgeous white sand, or anywhere in Alabama or Mississippi or anywhere in Florida, tar balls on the beach and this nasty sludge coming into the beach is going to be icky and yucky and nasty. And if you get it all over your feet, you have to clean it off with alcohol, and it can burn you and tear you up. But if that stuff comes into the marsh, it can kill and will kill plant life, animal life, and ocean life. So when the Governor of Louisiana, who was so unfairly criticized here tonight by the opposition, when the Governor said, look, guys, at least authorize some dredging to put some sand barriers between us, between our marsh and that terrible spill that's headed our direction, and yet it wasn't until the 27th of May that the Federal Government granted Louisiana a partial permission to dredge sand up to build sort of an island-like barrier so maybe that oil will hit the sand and not come in where all the plants and the wildlife and the sea life lives and thrives and functions. But that was only 27 days too late, and the 28th of May, the President went down on a second visit to the Gulf States, and this is what he told us: The buck stops with me. I agree with him. The buck stops with the President of the United States, and now we are hearing people scream about a national disaster, which it is, and the President of the United States' job was to lead, and lead means go out and if you have to, roll up your sleeves and suck oil out of the water. You certainly need to get people out there that are taking it seriously enough to follow the instructions of the man on the ground, Governor Jindal, who said it's not a solution, but it sure would help if there's a barrier between us and that oil. And he shouldn't have had to wait for the Federal Government to hem and haw and say, well, we don't know what that sand island you're going to build is going to do to the overall environment of south Louisiana. What does it matter? The oil is going to come in there and wreck it. So let's just dig up the sand. No, we had to wait. On the 29th of May, British Petroleum did its top-kill plan to try to stop the oil, and it failed. The 2nd of June, the Obama administration finally approved Louisiana's plan to dredge and tells BP to pay $360 million for five new berms. The Justice Department announced a criminal investigation into the explosion and the spill. Let's see, that's all of May and 11 days in April when nothing of significance took place. June 14, the Senate Democrats write BP calling on the company to set up a $20 billion independent administrative escrow fund to compensate victims of the spill. June 15, that was yesterday, President Obama makes the Oval Office speech on the oil spill and uses the crisis to push climate change legislation. And if you heard what our colleagues were talking about in the previous 1 hour before this Congress, they were talking about that we need to have these alternative fuels to replace oil and replace petroleum products, in fact, all carbon products, coal, oil, natural gas. They talked to you about subsidies and other things, but they show you on their chart, and you see this one right here, it is algae, and next year we're going to replace all the energy produced by oil with algae if you will put the resources in algae. No, because it won't. If you say, look at these wind farms, this is going to replace all the energy we needed to charge our electric cars so we don't even have to run on any kind of petroleum product. And that's all we need is to subsidize that and pour money into it, and it will replace it in the next 2 years. So why am I using the term the next 2 years? Because the President of the United States has put a moratorium on drilling in the gulf, and 17 percent of our consumption on oil and oil products, which includes plastic and other byproducts of oil and natural gas, 17 percent of that a year comes from deepwater drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. So, in 2 years, that's 34 percent of our fuel consumption nationwide that's going to have to be accounted for by somebody in some alternative form if we're going to give up on oil and gas. Are any of the alternatives that are even close to replacing 34 percent of our energy consumption in this country? No. Will there be? Maybe. But the reality is, we get up in the morning, and we start our cars, and we drive to work. And generally we're burning gasoline or diesel, all of which are products of the petroleum industry. And if you're not going to use gas or diesel, then you better hook a sail up to your car and hope the wind is blowing towards work or you're not going to work. So the reality is, to just cave in on an industry because of a terrible disaster is like saying, oh, my God, a 747 went down with 600 passengers, shut down the air industry for the next 6 months. But here's the reality: The reality is this 6-month shutdown of the Gulf is actually going to be a 5-year shutdown of the Gulf because once they pull those rigs out of the Gulf, we're not going to get them back it's estimated for 3 to 5 years. So the 6-month moratorium in effect shuts down 17 percent of our energy production in this country for 5 years, potentially for 5 years. It is time to be realistic and say, what's the big problem right now? And it's the oil spill. Why is it a problem? Because oil is floating around on our pristine Gulf of Mexico. It is moving from State to State. It is eventually going to come ashore in someplace, and why aren't we doing everything we can to bring people over here from anywhere that will help and say we'll help? I'm going to add one more thing. On June 16, President Obama met with BP executives in the White House--that's today--and he got his $20 billion to go into escrow. But the reality is where have we been, where has our leadership been of this country, the President of the United States and the administration, when this oil was spilling out of that well? Why didn't we answer the phone when the Dutch said 3 days after the spill started, we've got a fleet of skimmers that will come over to help you skim oil? Why didn't we respond? In fact, why didn't we say, world, we help you every chance you ask us to help you, give us a hand; anybody who's got resources that can soak up oil, please bring them to the United States and help us out? That kind of leadership had to come from the President of the United States, and the waiving of the antique act called the Jones Act had to be done by the President of the United States. So as we talk about this disaster, let's start by saying what's our real problem? And our real problem is this leaking oil, and we've got to clean it up. Before anything else, we've got to clean it up, but instead, we act to attack the drilling industry and shut down 17 percent of our energy resources a year at a minimum because it's very, very good and popular to attack the oil industry. But in reality, tomorrow morning, when you crank up your engine, say to yourself, what kind of fuel is driving me to work today and where does it come from? I am very pleased to see that I'm joined by two of my colleagues, and I'm going to call on Mr. Mica from Florida to talk about this very, very disastrous situation and a bill that he has that offers some solutions.

Mr. CARTER. Before you yield back, would you tell us a little bit about your Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund Improvement Act that you have proposed.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. That comment about the no vehicles also prevents those who are in charge of enforcing our border from following the drug dealers as they take their caravans of bad product across the border and into our wilderness area, and that is a serious situation.

Mr. CARTER. John Mica from Florida was with us earlier tonight, and he gave us an interesting revelation. There is an American flagship firm with cleanup capabilities that has informed our government they stand ready and willing, if they are asked, to start helping clean up. The Jones Act has nothing to do with this. These are American-flagged ships, and they are still waiting for a response from the White House, and you don't have to waive any Jones Act. All you've got to do is say, come on, boys, get in there and start cleaning up. My Lord, if they know how and they've got the equipment, why don't we have anybody on the face of this globe that's willing to do it out there in the Gulf cleaning that water up? So it really is almost comical. With all the criticism of the Bush administration over Katrina and Rita and some of the hurricanes, natural disasters that occurred, this man-made disaster has had this administration's hands hog-tied for 2 months, and it's a hog tying of their own doing.

Mr. CARTER. And the first thing I should say is, Amen to everything you've had to say, and I want to thank you for saying it. You know, it's become a strange world when our closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, sends its Prime Minister over here and he's taken in through the back door, the service entrance, to the White House. He's told no photo ops, and he is basically slighted by the person we have elected to be the leader of the free world. And then fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago, when the leader of the Palestinian movement comes in here, and we see photo ops, living room meetings, and a big chunk of money headed to the Palestinians promised by the President of the United States. It's embarrassing how much of a change of policy we have towards our only--or at least our longest surviving ally in the Middle East. I was in New York the day before yesterday, and one of the people I met with said, Have you ever thought about the fact that if Israel didn't exist, how many Americans would have to be stationed somewhere in the Middle East to try to keep that cauldron from exploding all over the entire world? Remember what the Prime Minister of England told us right here before this House, the reason you have to respond is because it's your turn, you're the only real superpower left in the world. That responsibility we're taking and we know about it, but when we have those who have stood by our side and worked with us to try to make things go--like Israel, like great Britain--why would a change of administration be so insulting to an ally like Israel? I was struck dumb by the whole thing; I think you were too. And I think you've done an excellent job of describing the possible consequences of the position we seem to be taking in this administration against Israel. I think all Americans of whatever heritage should be seriously concerned about what's going on. I thank you for allowing me to participate in this evening, and I yield back my time to you, Mr. Gohmert.

Mr. CARTER. I want to congratulate my colleague for doing some mighty interesting research. It is good that we laid this kind of research out before this House and before the American public. One of the things that people get concerned about up here is who is shooting straight. As far as Ms. Baca is concerned, it looks right now like this administration decided to put their money on the wrong horse. When we start talking about Minerals Management, that is starting to ring a bell with the American people because our interesting father and son inspection team that you have talked about on the floor of the House, isn't that part of Minerals Management?

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Texas for yielding. And let me say, that was a real eye-opener. I knew from having read some of the things previously that BP certainly was claiming big green activities both in their ads on television and in other places, and I do remember reading, I believe in the National Journal, some articles about their activities on behalf of climate change. But it didn't really sink in until this very minute when you read this to me. And I am going to bring something up that's a little tongue-in-cheek humor. But I have a question I wanted to ask because now you have talked about the difference between what we talked about, which was global warming and climate change. When I went to school in Lubbock, Texas, back in the sixties, I remember specifically a day when a bunch of buddies and I went out to play a round of golf. It was 89 or 90 degrees. We were in a pair of golf shirts and Bermuda shorts, and we started out playing a round of golf. Before we got through with nine holes, a dust storm came up, and we could hardly see the ball, and we could hardly hit it. Then it began to rain, and it rained mud for about an hour through the dust storm. Then as the dust seemed to calm and go away, the temperature began to drop, and by the time we got to the club house, the temperature was 20 degrees. So we had had a climate change from 90 to 20 in a 10-hour period, including a dust storm and rain. And we know that climate change is George W. Bush's fault. Now did he do that? Because that certainly was the most spectacular climate change I have ever seen in my entire life. But, unfortunately, we all know in Texas, we have those climate changes all year long. Is that the Republicans' fault and the Bush administration's fault? Good Lord, where were they in 1964? I think he was probably in junior high school or something. I don't know. What do you think, Mr. Gohmert?

Mr. CARTER. If the gentleman will yield for a moment, I would argue that we enhance our cynicism quite a bit by the article that you just read concerning the relationship between the Obama administration, the Democratic Party, and British Petroleum prior to the leak, the massive disaster in the gulf. So you have to be a cynic when you see the kind of ``whose blank am I going to kick'' attitude out there. And of course everybody knew who we were talking about's blank that was going to get kicked, and that was going to be British Petroleum, as if they were the evil empire, you know, the black knights or whatever you want to call them. When you realize that they were partners on the same piece of legislation that he talked about for at least one-third to almost one- half of the speech that the President made last night to the American people because the solution to the oil flowing into the gulf is not bringing in the Dutch ships and other ships that have volunteered to come help by awaiting the Jones Act. It's not even releasing American flagships to go out there, which is no violation of the Jones Act. No. The solution to the oil spill is cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax. Let's see if we can't come up with a whole new tax scheme for the American people. Let's see if we can't drive up the cost of the energy for their homes and for their businesses. Let's see if we can't put the American farmer out of business. Because you talk to a farmer about cap-and-tax, and he will tell you, his food and fertilizer--or the food and fiber he produces and the energy it takes to run his farm equipment is all going to be destroyed by this scheme to make money another way with cap-and-tax programs. Well, I mean, look at how much money the former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore, has made in participating in cap-and-tax issues in foreign areas, like the European Union. So get back to the oil spill, Mr. President. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Hawaii for yielding, and I thank him for the opportunity to speak on behalf of this important honor we are bestowing upon the Army by congratulating them on their 235th birthday. The first time that I ever realized I was going to be given the honor to represent the United States Army was when they had a redistricting in Texas and I realized that my new district was going to have Fort Hood in it. To be quite honest, it was an overpowering challenge to be called upon to represent over 50,000 American soldiers and all those who work with those soldiers. I was a little bit taken aback, quite frankly. Mr. Edwards, as he pointed out, who has been so helpful to me in the transition of Fort Hood, Mr. Edwards had represented them for many years and had done an outstanding job, and I was going to be the new kid on the block going to Fort Hood. And so I went to my office and I said, the districts are changing, we've got to go visit soldiers, we've got to be with soldiers. I got the opportunity through the Speaker's Office before I had hardly spent any time at all in Fort Hood to go to Korea to visit soldiers who were stationed in Korea, many of whom were part of the soldiers contingency that would return to Fort Hood. I grew up as a small child with what was earlier today commemorated as the Korean War. To me it was just a map of the peninsula of Korea that I watched lines move up and down, but I know from people who came back what a terrible fight that was. And I know that that is still, to this day, to this very moment we stand in history, a dangerous place on the Earth. When we got there, we were given the opportunity, my wife and I, to go up on the demilitarized zone, the DMZ, where ultimately, as a result of the cease fire that took place in Korea, they have set up--both sides, you're kind of across a line looking at each other. In fact, as recently as 4 or 5 years ago, there have been fatalities on that line. There is the opportunity for another war to break out, theoretically, any minute of any day, 24 hours a day and has been since the end of the Korean War back in the fifties. So it was kind of a challenge just to go up there. Then when I got there, there were all these young-faced American soldiers. My oldest son is a football coach and a baseball coach, and as I looked at these young men and women that I was being introduced to; they looked just like the kids that were at the graduation ceremony just a few months earlier that my son coached and taught. When it came time for lunch, they gave me an opportunity to sit down at this table with this bunch of young men and women. I tell you this because it was kind of unusual, my first time to ever sit down with just ordinary soldiers and talk to them. And you don't really know what they're going to say; you're kind of curious. Well, the first thing I found out was there was one kid there from Killeen Ellison; he played football for my son when my son coached at Killeen Ellison. There was another kid there that played baseball for my son when he coached at Round Rock High School. So I realized that these were just like those kids that had just graduated. I went around the table, and this was all a bunch of 18- and 19-year- old soldiers. They came from small-town and big-town America. They could have been your friend, your neighbor, your cousin, could have been your brother or your sister. And there they were, standing up there, potentially in harm's way on our behalf, where it's cold and windy and kind of scary. So that was my first contact. And I asked the question, kind of naively, Okay, so when are you guys going to be through over here in Korea? Most of them were going to be out within the next 8 months. And I said, Where do you want to go when you get out, expecting all kinds of exotic places. No, sir, we want to go to either Afghanistan or Iraq. My wife and I both were a little taken aback by that. And so my wife asked the question, Why would you want to go there? And they gave an answer that is one of the definitions I think of the United States Army, they said, Sir, we're warfighters; that's where the war is. That's what we do for a living. We are the Army. Now, you hear that from a 19-year-old kid that probably a year and a half ago had been playing on some practice field someplace in central Texas and you say to yourself, what magic is it that we get people like this to come out and do this job and do it willingly and with such patriotism and such fervor for doing the job they're trained for? Just recently, less than a few weeks ago--and I shared this at the birthday party for the Army last night--my wife and I got a very nice honor of being part of a small delegation of Members of Congress who were invited to go to the Memorial Day ceremony at Normandy Beach where our soldiers came ashore and accomplished the impossible. In fact, we stood on Pointe du Hoc, as Mr. Edwards was describing to you, and we looked at those cliffs and we looked at the repair being done to preserve that national treasure of our heroic effort. We got to see that beach both at high and low tide, and we got to see the distance those soldiers had to run under heavy, heavy, heavy automatic weapon fire and artillery fire just to get to that bluff that they had to climb to get to the fight. You looked at it and you said, I don't think I could have done it. That is what I thought: I don't think I could have done it. And then you realize that that's the same kids, like the same kids I talked to in Korea. They were young people who were members of the United States Army; they had a job to do and they did it. They told us a story about a soldier who landed there, fought his way across the beach to the bluff, fought his way up the bluff to get off of that deadly beach only to be wounded in the face--took off the right side of his face with a machine gun bullet. They wrapped him up on the top of the bluff and said you need to go back down on the beach for an aid station. And his comment was, I just fought my way off of that beach. And they said, no, you've got to be evacuated. Going back down to be evacuated he was shot four more times, the last of which took off the left side of his face. And his comment that he made when he came back to Normandy as a 90-year-old man--and they said he looked fine, he said they did a fine job on me and I looked good. I have children, I have grandchildren and I have great grandchildren, and I did what I did for them. And I can say that I always wondered if I really ought to come to this beach because I was only here for 9 hours. True, I did get five Purple Hearts while I was here, but I wondered if I was worthy to come back and say I landed here, because I had to be evacuated. That special something that makes up the United States Army can't be described to us in detail. But when you walk among those 10,000 crosses and stars of David in that cemetery and you realize that those heroes laying beneath that ground are exactly like those heroes who stand on the wall in the defense of liberty in Iraq and Afghanistan today, our soldiers today are exactly like those of the Greatest Generation: they sacrifice everything. I'm proud to represent the 31st Congressional District, which is the home of Fort Hood. Every soldier at Fort Hood has been deployed multiple times, and they never complain; they just do the job. We Americans, wherever we are, in this House that we are so blessed to be able to serve or around the world, should stop every day, when we have the opportunity, and say thank you to the United States Army for the quality of human beings they have produced to defend our Nation and for the patriotic spirit that is part of what makes up the psyche of America. Nothing is more precious to us than the United States Army. Nothing is more honorable to me than being given the opportunity to represent over 50,000 American soldiers. And so this day I am very happy to say to our United States Army, happy birthday, U.S. Army. We are proud of you. God bless you and keep you safe.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, a recent Gallup Poll tells us that the American people rank the growing debt in this country as the single most threatening issue to the future of our country's well-being. When the American public in their homes face a debt crisis, the first thing they do is prepare a budget so they can live within their means and start to reduce their debt burden. But this House, under the Democratic leadership, has chosen to prepare no budget. In fact, for the first time in modern budgetary history, they are telling us there will be no budget here in this House this year. Mr. Speaker, the American people are crying out for us to get control of our spending. How can we control our spending without a budget? It's a crying shame there is no budget. No wonder we've got issues with jobs. And by the way, when you're trying to create jobs, why do you shut down a major industry in the gulf and kill tens of thousands of jobs up and down the gulf coast, stopping drilling in the Gulf of Mexico?

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, the stock market, this very minute, is dropping like a rock over the financial collapse of Greece and the pending failure of other Euro nations. They are bankrupt from unsustainable government spending under the same programs the Democrats in this body are now forcing on America. With an overwhelming majority in the House and Senate and a Democrat in the White House, they can't even pass a budget. Heck, they're not even proposing one. Mr. Speaker, the House majority has proven it can't govern; and if we don't make a change, America will join Greece in national bankruptcy.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. CARTER. Above what they're spending now on their health insurance. Now, I don't care how big you are. That's a big chunk of money, and it would shock anybody from the biggest corporation in the world down to the little mom-and-pop to have that kind of percentage of your revenues all of a sudden by government action going out the front door. That's the kind of thing when you don't think things through and figure out what it's going to cost that those things jump up and bite you. But in this instance when we don't figure out what it's going to cost, it's the American people that get jumped up and bitten, and that's what I think we're seeing happen right now. And I think that's unfortunate. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. One of the reasons you have a budget is so you can make legitimate estimates on how much you're going to spend. If you don't make a budget, you're not tied to a legitimate estimate and what your revenues are going to be coming in to pay for it. That's what you do to make a budget. Everybody back home knows that. I'm not going to mention the company, but it was a good-size company. I met with one of their folks the other day, and they just finished charting out at their board of directors at just what increasing the health care costs for covering the 26 year olds, in other words, carrying the children of their employees to 26 years old, what it was going to cost their company. Now, they're a good-size company--$28 million. Now that's missing it just a little bit, isn't it, for one company is looking at $28 million just to carry children to 26 years old?

Mr. CARTER. It seems to me you ought to at least try. I mean, it's almost like, you know, my wife, one time my son wanted to know--he had to drop out of baseball to play football, and he wanted to go back and play baseball. And he was all hanging around the house all moping around. And his mother said, Well, you know what? If you don't try, the answer is ``no.'' So why don't you go ask the coach if he will let you back on the baseball team. Well, I'd say to the Budget Committee of the majority party, if you're not even going to give it a try, of course we're not going to have a budget. Let's at least give it a try. Let's at least see if we can't come up with an idea. And I kind of like Mr. Scalise's idea of this time let's try to put a balanced budget before the American people and see what happens there. You know, it was the Republicans back during the Clinton administration that battled and battled and battled Bill Clinton who vetoed and vetoed until they finally got their consent of a balanced budget amendment done. They had a route for a balanced budget, and they fought the administration until they got it there. And it had a lot to do with some of the prosperity that took place in that decade. That seems to be lost in history. Revisionist history is actually current event in this place. It's constantly changing what really happened, when things really happened. The welfare reform was really done by the Congress, but somehow that got forgotten. There's a lot that gets forgotten. And right now they're forgetting to do a budget, and it's time for the Democratic Party and their leadership and this House to do a budget and it would go forward and let us see just what you're going to spend and where the revenue is coming from. I think it's only logical that they go forward on that. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding. These are serious times, and we have serious issues to deal with. Recently, I was privileged to be in a meeting with some conservative economists, and I say that because I want to make sure that we are pretty clear they are conservative. They gave us a whole bunch of projections of spending and projections of debt-to-income, both government debt and private debt to GDP and bank deposits. And they said, but cutting through the chase is, if we continue the policies of the Obama administration into a second term, if he wins a second term, in the third year of his second term we will be Greece. That is pretty serious. And, you know, you talked about the middle class. I bet if you questioned everybody that lost their job and is out of work and what class they were in, they would all tell you they were in the middle class, because we all consider ourselves to be middle class in this country. We are sort of proud to be middle class. So these concepts require work, and that means a budget. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. And we got to see last night all those Bush blue lines. And we did get to see the first little Obama line right there. But that's not an Obama line yet, that's just a Democratic Congress line.

Mr. CARTER. That's the way it ought to be. Turn it upside down.

Mr. CARTER. Because their chart would have been upside down because it was below the line.