John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, the lady on television said, ``Where's the beef?'' The American people are now saying, ``Where's the jobs?'' One of the things that the President promised was jobs for this country. The Speaker said, It's about jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs, but the national unemployment is 9.5 percent, and in the Midwest it's in double digits. Are those the jobs? Yes, the Democrats have given us some jobs. They've given us this cap-and-tax bill which is going to stick a tax collector in everybody's pocket, destroy small businesses, and destroy jobs in the country. They've given us 33 czars at $170,000 a year to reward their cronies who helped them get elected up here by creating new jobs in Washington for them. Last night the Energy and Commerce Committee voted to put a bureaucrat between a doctor and his patient to tell him how he's going to treat that sick person. That's a new job they want to create. They've got this idea that if they throw enough money to ACORN, they're going to create jobs for ACORN--if they can keep the indictments away from them. These are not jobs.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I certainly will.

Mr. CARTER. Yes, ma'am.

Mr. CARTER. Yes. Reclaiming my time, I do not claim to be a physicist, but I have talked with people in the power industry, and because it is not a continuing flow of power but it is an alternating form of power, to make it effective over a 24-hour period, 365 days a year, the power has to be boosted. It's the only way it can be effectively done. I'm not saying it's not going to be a good source of power. Actually, what's kind of interesting is most projections as to what percentage of our overall national power, wind and solar combined--actually, wind, solar, and hydroelectric combined, would be between 6 and 10 percent. At maximum effectiveness--and, by the way, there's a lot of folks that have a lot of Texas envy in this world, and they are always picking on us like we don't know anything but oil and gas. Let me make this very clear: We have the largest wind farm in America in the State of Texas. The city of Austin has the largest municipally-owned wind power farm of any municipality in the United States. And, by the way, they are very disappointed. It was on the front page of the Austin American-Statesman less than 3 or 4 days ago that the wind farm seems to be an unreliable source of power for them. Even though it's a green source and they've been very proud of being the greenest city in America because of that wind, but over liability and this same different flux of power issue, the only way it can be reliable is you put a gas-powered generator right side by side to keep the flow going. So that's not saying I'm not for it, but I'm saying the reality is we're a long way from replacing the massive amount of power that it takes to run this machine called America from wind and solar power.

Mr. CARTER. Yes, ma'am. I yield.

Mr. CARTER. That's a good point to look at this chart that another one of my colleagues prepared. He calls it, ``Oh, my,'' OMI, the Obama Misery Index. Those of us who have been around a while remember that the misery index was first created back during the Jimmy Carter administration and was about the misery that was coming upon people by the economic woes of the country. It's basically a combination of unemployment--that's the loss of jobs--and the accumulation of public debt. Now, as my colleague from North Carolina pointed out, there seems to be an overwhelming trend in this House to blame everything on the Bush administration. So let's just assume for the sake of assumption--because remember, Obama got elected and sworn in as President in the latter part of January, and so we'll just make February the leftover Bush stuff because that's the next month, and I would say it's a carryover. So the misery index was 11.6 percent. The blue indicates the unemployment numbers, and the red indicates the public debt, how much we owe to other people or to ourselves. In March, the next month of the Obama administration, we see that our unemployment has risen to what looks to be about 13 percent and our public debt has increased by, I don't know, another 10 percent, something like that. So 21.7 percent in March, from 11.6 to 21.7. In April it jumps to 28 percent, and look at the public debt, and look at the unemployment that's there. The unemployment is the huge figure here. They wonder why we are saying, ``Where are the jobs?'' Look. Wait a minute. Here is May. It has a 36.2 percent misery index. Look at the unemployment figures. They're getting off the page here. This month, 40.6 percent--oh, my, OMI, Obama Misery Index. And look at the unemployment figures, and look at the national public debt. This is just 5 months of the Obama administration. We have gone from a misery index of 11.6 to 40.6. So somebody says, Why are you asking the question, ``Where are the jobs?'' Well, because unemployment went from 9 percent--it looks like about 9, wouldn't you say--right there to 30 percent, roughly, 31 percent on the index. That's not the percentage of unemployment, but that's the increase. Now, there's a real good reason because we're asking, ``Where are the jobs?'' I did a telephone town hall tonight, and I got to talk to some real fine people. I actually had kind of an unusual thing. Junction, Texas, is out west of San Antonio. It's not in my district. In fact, I believe it's in Congressman Ciro Rodriguez's district or it's in Lamar Smith's district, but it's not in my district. But the lady who was talking to me, her phone was registered in Temple, Texas, but she was calling from Junction. How that happened on my telephone town hall is anybody's guess. I don't know. I didn't try to figure it out. But I called a number in my district, and I got a lady in Junction. You go figure. I don't know how it worked; all right? But the lady had something interesting to say. She said, by some people's analysis, we'd probably be one of those rich small businesses that are going to have to pay taxes under this new health care plan. But although we may handle a lot of livestock and a lot of cash temporarily, the reality is I'd say we're in the category of folks that are just barely scratching through the drought to get by. And what we realize as something we can live on is very meager, along with me and my family and my boys, who are also in our ranching business with us. We get by on a meager amount. She said, sir, I'm worried that somebody thinks we're rich enough that they're going to put a 1 percent surtax on our small business, which is a ranch. Now, not everybody lives in Texas and lives in the Southwest, and they may hear the word ``drought'' and think they understand what drought means. But in Texas, we know what drought means because we've lived through a period of time, back in the late 1940s and early 1950s that they wrote a book about it, ``The Time It Never Rained.'' And, in fact, it didn't rain. And cows ate prickly pear cactus, and ranchers went out with burning torches and burned the thorns off the prickly pear cactus so that the cattle would have something to eat, because there was no grass. And the hard tack folks that settled west Texas and central Texas worked from sunup to sundown and into the night burning what we call burning pear, burning prickly pear so their cattle wouldn't get those thorns in their lips and get infected, and they wouldn't get screw worms and the other things that were the blight of the 1950s until we were able to eradicate that problem. We know what hard times is in Texas because we've been in hard times. And right now, we're going through a drought. Lake Travis, which is just about 40 miles as the crow flies from my house, is a huge lake. Right now it's a pond. We've got islands everywhere on it. It's the lowest it's ever been in memory, they tell me. I haven't been out to see it because I'm afraid I'd get too upset looking at it. But the LCRA tells me they're in terrible shape for water. That lady living out in Junction, Texas, she's in terrible shape for water. And so she says to me, sir, not only am I worried about them taking my health plan away from me, making me go on some government plan I don't want to be on, but they're talking about taxing me as if I'm rich, when I'm not. I've got a family, my family and my two boys, or three boys' families running out of this ranch operation, and we're fighting the drought, and we're short on water. And we're losing livestock. And I said, ma'am, I understand. She said, that's not all. What they're doing with the fuel of this country, what they're doing with their cap-and-tax scheme that they've got there, I think that's going to make the cost of my farm fuel and my ranch fuel go up, and I'm worried. We cannot survive our fertilizer going up and our fuel going up, all of which comes from the petroleum industry. We can't afford it. We just can't survive it. And why do they want to do that to us? What did we do to them? I said, ma'am, I hear you. I'm sorry. You know, all my life I've lived under a system that I believe in. I still believe in it. I think it's important that the rule of law prevail in a constitutional system of government. I think the rule of law is as sacred to democracy and to our Republic as the Constitution is to that Republic, and as the Holy Book is to the church. And it is imperative to every American that we support the rule of law. It should be sacred to us that says--we say this, I think it is the Rotary Club, but it may be another one of the clubs that says, before their club--we are a Nation of laws, not of men. I think that is extremely important for us to remember as Americans. We are a Nation of laws. These laws are created by this body and other bodies at the State level. Those laws are not to be circumvented; and no man, no matter how high a rate, how much of the population votes for him, how many people love him, or think he's the greatest, or her, and think they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, they don't have the right nor the ability, nor should we allow them to circumvent our laws because of their programs. It is our American responsibility to uphold the law. For 20 years I served as a judge of the highest trial court in Texas, at the State level. I did my best to uphold the law. Those laws were written in books, and they were passed by the Texas legislature and they're passed by the United States Congress, and we tried our best to uphold those laws. The Supreme Court and the court of criminal appeals told us, interpreted the laws for us in Texas and in the United States. And we, as a court, tried our best to follow that direction from our court system, because the rule of law has to prevail. I am very concerned, and I express this tonight, that procedures and rules are as important to an institution as anything else that there is, because they are the standard by which a group of free men and women decided to govern themselves by law. Thomas Jefferson, a man held in highest regard, and at least many Democrats call the Founder of their party, even though he called his party the Republican Party at the time. But times change. Thomas Jefferson wrote rules for this House. And one of the rules has been repeated by our President of the United States. We're going to give-- and I would point out, our Speaker of the House, when she came in and took her oath and told us how this Congress was going to operate, she said, We will give this Congress every time at least 72 hours to examine a piece of legislation. Thomas Jefferson said 3 days for any piece of legislation before it's voted on. It should be given to both sides for their examination and preparation for debate. And that 3 days did not include Saturday and Sunday. That's what he--when he wrote the rules for this House, which were followed religiously, I guess you'd say for years and years and years, decades, that's the tradition of this House. And it has been waived for every major piece of legislation since Barack Obama has been elected President. As was pointed out on the last piece of legislation we had by John Boehner right here on the floor of this House, they dropped 350 pages of amendments to the cap-and-tax bill at 2 o'clock in the morning to be voted on the next day. And that meant that we hadn't seen a completed bill, even at that point in time. And we voted on it the next day. I'm not here to cry about procedures. I play under the rules that their Rules Committee writes. But I want you to know, when your historical procedures, as American people, are circumvented by this House consistently, every time, you should be concerned about those who do not follow the established rule of law. This should be a concern of the American people. When the President of the United States and his White House friends go strong-arm the automobile companies into making a deal that circumvents the laws of this land, there's something wrong. And creditors' rights are established laws of this land. And yet the bankruptcy court was perfectly willing to let the parties make an agreement. But the parties were strong-armed by the politicians in the White House, strong-armed and threatened to the point that preferred creditors gave up their rights under the law out of fear, and the preferred creditors became, their rights went to the unpreferred creditors, the labor unions. Now we have the Government Motors--we used to call it General Motors--that is owned by the Federal Government and by the labor unions, and those people who loaned money as secured creditors for years to General Motors had to take pennies on the dollar because they were strong-armed beyond the rule of law. I'm sorry. That's not right. If we don't stand for anything in this House, if we let our people down on every vote, if we don't try our best to stand up for the rule of law, then we ought to be ashamed of ourselves. I don't care what party you're in. I respect my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, and in fact, many of them stand up and speak out for many of the things that I stand up and speak out for. I'm not saying this to point the finger at politics. Let's throw politics out the door right now. Let's talk about what our Founding Fathers intended for us to do if we are going to keep this Republic together. They expect us to set rules and to follow them. They expect us to honor contracts between people. Now, you say to yourself, Well, sure, we honor contracts between people, but I don't know about those big corporations. You know, they're so evil. Maybe we shouldn't have to respect those people. So, if at a time when the price of oil was $6 a barrel, if the Clinton administration had said, We need to get some money into these coffers here, so we're going to sell some offshore leases, and we really will give you a good deal on these offshore leases if you'll buy them, even though we know you're not going to produce them at $6 a barrel, oil companies would have said, Okay. We'll buy them. They'd buy these offshore leases, pay money for them, continue to pay money for them as the leases progress. Then, lo and behold, the price of oil goes to $100 a barrel or to $80 a barrel. Guess what? They start producing oil out there, and we have those people in this House who say that's an excess in profit, although the Federal Government got what it contracted for, and the oil companies got what they contracted for. We believe in the sanctity of contracts whether they be between corporations, governments or people. It's what keeps the glue together in our society. Yet we are willing to say we don't care what the contract says; we want it renegotiated, and we're going to put economic pressure on you to do it. That's not the way we are supposed to act. We are supposed to hold the contract sacred, because, in reality, what created our Nation was a contract, a contract called the Constitution of the United States, where the States got together and said we will surrender our sovereignty in a bargain to protect us in our national defense, to work out our disputes of commerce and to make this country one Nation, gathered together from 13 colonies, from 13 States. That contract is sacred, and every contract that comes therefrom is sacred. Now, if we don't like it, change the law. That's fine. We can do that. But I am concerned when we use the power of political might to strong-arm people out of their rights and out of the laws of our country. If the Republicans do it, I'm going to be just as mad at them as I am at anybody else. It's not a political thing. It's about what is right and what is wrong. If we don't have rules, if we don't have rules we hold sacred, we are bound for destruction. We've got plenty of issues to keep us busy in worrying about our country without trying to change the rules of the game. Maybe people think that guy's half crazy, standing up there, talking about that stuff, but you know, I believe in this stuff. I believe passionately in the American people, in the Constitution and in the history of this country. You can rewrite it all you want to. It is what it is, and what makes us noble, what makes us fine, what makes us exceptional is that we are willing, for the good of the Nation, to hold certain things important, and I would say the rule of law is what separates us. I'll tell you a story. I had the opportunity to go with the Foreign Operations Committee down to a very lovely country, to Nicaragua in Central America. When I grew up, and in my college days, I lived with a bunch of ranching boys out in West Texas, and visited several of their operations out there. Being a native Texan, you know, we're all kind of caught up in the magic of ranch life, so I learned a little bit about what good-looking country looks like and what grass looks like and the cattle elite. I looked for how much water is out there that's available for livestock. I looked at Nicaragua and the part of Nicaragua that I went to, and I thought, man, this is some good-looking cattle country. Boy, a fellow could really raise a lot of nice cattle in this country. There's plenty of water. You could even irrigate because they've got water that's less than 18 feet under the ground. Now, you don't drink that water, but you could irrigate with it. So I started asking the question: Why are these poor folks having such a hard time economically? Do you know why? Because they've never quite established the rule of law. In fact, they don't even have land titles in Nicaragua. One of the things that they're trying to do with our foreign aid is to somehow establish a method of land titles, a method of saying you bought it; here is your title; you own it, and you can sell it to the next guy. Instead, they have to worry which regime is in power in Nicaragua as to whether or not they get to keep their land. So, after a while, after 100 years of a system like that, people start to not really invest too much in their land because you never know whose land it's going to be next year. We have the rule of law. We have land titles. We know when we buy our homes, when we pay for them, when they're free and clear, and when our debts are off of them that we own that piece of ground and whatever's on top of it, and we can pass that on to our children. That can be part of our accumulated wealth, which makes the next generation healthier, richer and more prosperous. They don't have that ability, and yet they've got a beautiful place and the potential. What's missing? The rule of law. It's sad. It's sad to think that a bunch of nice people who need to make that country work are limited by the fact that men and their political strengths are overpowering what they should have, which is the rule of law. I do not mean this as any criticism of the country of Nicaragua, and I hope it's our goal as Americans to try to help them establish the rule of law, especially the rule of land titles. I think it's important. My point is, our forefathers gave us that blessing. When we count our blessings, sometimes we forget that some of it is right there in that constitutional document that we have. You know, I had somebody from Dell Computer tell me that they--what they have to sell is what's in their minds, what they have created from their brains. Guess whose country wrote it into their founding document that your intellectual property belongs to you? The United States of America. It is in our Constitution that what you create with your creativity belongs to you and you have an ownership right in it and you can enforce it in a courtroom. The rest of the world is coming around to that. But what we have been given are so many blessings by forward-thinking people in our past, and I'm here tonight, as we talk about all of these issues of the economy and what's going on, don't let us forget that that is not a country of men. This is a country of laws. And the way we operate on this floor of this House and the way we operate at the courthouse and the way we operate as human beings is governed by the rule of law. And if we ever lose that, we lose our country. We've got lots of issues going on right now. We've got health care. We've got this cap-and-trade or cap-and-tax bill that's supposed to be protecting the environment. We've got runaway spending. We've got mounds of debt that's mounting up in every direction. The debt figure is unbelievable. And all of these things should be dealt with through this body and its democracy and its democratic principles. That's the way it should be dealt with, the rule of law. And if we do that, we will have met our obligations to the people who sent us here. And I challenge both sides to let the rule of law reign here. Let's don't change the rules. Let's don't stop debate. Let's talk. Everybody says we need bipartisanship. How can you have bipartisanship if one side writes a 2,000-page bill and the other side doesn't get to do anything but say, ``Yes, I like it'' or ``No, I don't''? How in the world is that bipartisan? I think our Founding Fathers really thought that you are going to have liberals over here and conservatives over here and you're going to try to address an issue and you're going to sit down at a table and you're going to talk about what you can and can't do, and you're going to come up with a solution. I think that's what they thought we were going to do. We're not doing it right now. And I do honestly believe it would work, and I think there are an awful lot of people that sit in this room every day that feel the same way. Let's have the courage to do that. Let's follow the direction of our Forefathers. Let's remember our history, and let's start talking to each other instead of imposing our will, one group of men and women imposing their will on another group of men and women. I really don't think that's what we intended when this House was created. We like to say this is the greatest deliberative body in the world. It is the cradle of the democracy. It's the cradle of freedom, that liberty was born here and thrives here. Well, if liberty's born here and thrives here, it's up to us to continue to keep her breathing and keep her thriving. And I don't believe we do it by ignoring the rules or changing the rules. I believe we do it by working together to come up with solutions. And probably kind of like the good verdict you get in the courtroom, if you give a verdict in the courtroom and both sides are not completely happy, you've probably got the best verdict you ever could create. But if you've got a verdict that only one side gets everything and the other side gets nothing, it probably wasn't the right thing, nine times out of ten. I was always happy if both sides walked out mad at me. I figured we did a pretty good job because at least both sides had some give-and-take in what happened in the courtroom. That's where we ought to be in here. When it's over with, both sides ought to say, We didn't get all our way but at least we got something done and we didn't impose the will of man over the rule of law. I guess I just felt like preaching this late at night. And that's probably enough of all of that. I do ask that the people back home--I know we're not supposed to address the people back home, but I will say that every man and woman in this House are addressing life-changing issues now and will be in the very near future, that the amount of accumulated job loss and debt is getting critical for all of us whether we are in this House or whether we are at home, and let's all try to work together to come up with something that will work. And with that, Mr. Speaker, I will yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend Virginia Foxx for getting up here and kind of giving us some indication of what we mean by PAYGO. That's a very confusing word. Been hearing it a lot. I haven't seen anything, pay or go, since they've been talking about it. But we seem to be pretty good at spending money around here and don't seem to be very good at paying for it. Just a thought here. We had a stimulus package that was over a trillion dollars, and I believe that was borrowed money. We have a budget that increased our taxes by $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years. So, that's money they're coming after to pay for it. But I don't think that pays for that $1 trillion. Their appropriations request increased all the nondefense spending by 12 percent this year. The number of months that jobs have grown under the Democrats since we got started this year is a whopping zero. So they were talking about why were we asking today on the floor of the House, Where are the jobs? I get really excited about green jobs and green energy and the things that people talk about. I heard our colleagues in the previous conversation, one of them show us a map of the United States and he said this would create 250,000 new green jobs. I think that's fabulous. It's just unfortunate in the last month and a half we've lost 1.2 million jobs in the United States. So they've got to have a comparison. The conversation that was going on the previous hour was about energy independence. And I'm for energy independence. And any American that's got any sense at all is for energy independence. I once asked a man how big an array of solar panels would it take to power Austin, Texas. This man was a physicist at the University of Texas--to power Austin, Texas, for a period of time, and what would that period of time be. He said a proper-sized panel in a non-air conditioned time--and you know in Texas it's hot, so air conditioning is our biggest problem, not heat--in a non-air conditioned time, a properly sized panel could power Austin, Texas, for about an 18-hour period of time before the Sun went down and the power went away. And then you would have to have an alternative power to power it during the night, or storage capacity, which our friends were talking about. So I said, Well, that doesn't sound too big. How big would that panel be? He said, Approximately the size of the Panhandle of Texas, which is about 280, maybe 300 miles long and about 150 miles wide. I'm not saying solar is not a solution. But are you going to replace the coal-produced power in Pennsylvania with a solar panel in today's world--and do it economically? No. But it will help, and we can help on an individual basis and we can power businesses with it. Let's be realistic about energy, and let's go after every form of energy and clean up that energy. That's the solution to our problems. That's a real energy plan. You know, we in Texas have been having an abundance of natural gas for a long time. We're real proud of our natural gas. We think it's good stuff. Burns clean and we like it. A lot of our folks up here on the East Coast, they didn't like our natural gas until they found some. All of a sudden, guess what? They found some gas shale, a lot of gas shale in the State of Pennsylvania, and I'm hearing an awful lot of colleagues that a year and a half ago were bad mouthing natural gas saying, Natural gas sounds good. I'm with Boone Pickens. Let's power our automobiles with natural gas. Let's produce natural gas. And, rightfully so, they should be proud of their resources. I'm not knocking their resources. I'm proud they've got it. And I predict that there's shale gas that spreads from Pennsylvania all the way down to Fort Worth, Texas. And I think the geologists will prove it. There's a lot of natural gas in that shale. And we ought to use it. And that's how we free ourselves of foreign oil. We free ourselves by drilling offshore in a clean drilling procedure, which we have. And we haven't spilled a drop of oil in a drilling procedure in 15 years in the seas. All of our spills you read about are shipping spills, not drilling spills. So let's go out and seek our energy where it is, and let's create our alternative energy, wind and solar, and let's not forget nuclear, the cleanest energy out there.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of H.R. 3183, Energy and Water Development and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010 Requesting Member: John R. Carter Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Account: Army Corps of Engineers--Investigations Requesting entity: Brazos River Authority Address of Requesting Entity: 4600 Cobb Drive, Waco, TX Description: $300,000 in funding from the Investigations account of the Army Corps of Engineers for the Middle Brazos River. This program will investigate increasing the water supply of the Middle Brazos Basin. The COE and the Brazos River Authority (BRA) are evaluating the feasibility of increasing the water supply of the Middle Brazos basin by raising lake levels (reallocating flood pool storage to water supply). This is a long-term project aimed at developing additional water at existing reservoir sites for future needs. The $300,000 will be spent by the COE on an interim feasibility study. Requesting Member: John R. Carter Bill Number: H.R. 3183 Account: Dept. of Energy--EERE Requesting entity: City of Georgetown, TX Address of Requesting Entity: 113 E. 8th Street, Georgetown TX 78626 Description: The City of Georgetown is a municipal electric power provider, dedicated to efficiently lowering the cost of energy to the customers within their service area. $100,000 in funding is for the planning, engineering and development of a solar power project in partnership with GREX and the Life Sciences Center, Georgetown, Texas. This solar project will be used as a template type ``pilot project'' to encourage other commercial customers inside our service territory to consider installing similar renewable distributed power facilities to help the customer reduce the consumption of power generated by fossil fueled power plants and benefit the city power system by controlling voltage and maintaining power quality.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. Project Name: Family Life Center Account: Military Construction--Army Project Recipient and Address: Fort Hood, TX U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm W321, Fort Hood, TX, 75544 Amount Provided: $8,500,000 Project Description: Construct a large standard design Chapel Family Life Center that includes an activity center with kitchen, gymnasium, religious education and military community classrooms, administrative space, gathering areas, information systems, fire protection and alarm systems, Intrusion Detection System (IDS) installation, and Energy Monitoring Control Systems (EMCS) connection, and Sustainable Design and Development (SDD) and Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct05) features. Supporting facilities include site development, utilities and connections, lighting, paving, parking, walks, curbs and gutters, storm drainage, information systems, landscaping and signage. Heating provided by self contained natural gas systems. Measures are in accordance with the Department of Defense (DoD) Minimum Antiterrorism for Buildings standards provided. Building and furnishings related interior design services are required. Access for individuals with disabilities will be provided. Benefit to Taxpayers: This project is required to create a Religious and Family Readiness Campus on Fort Hood. This endeavor needs consolidated facilities to support religious ceremonies, on-site childcare, counseling services, adult and child religious education, family readiness groups, and memorial services. All other chapel facilities on Fort Hood lack proximity to housing and community support areas. Fort Hood's Chapels provides insufficient space for reception, counseling, and storage of materials. Spending Plan:

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Major General Jeffery W. Hammond, Commanding General, 4ID along with the 4th Infantry Division, Fort Hood, Texas for their honorable commitment to Fort Hood, Texas and the United States of America. The 4th Infantry Division will be leaving Fort Hood and relocating to Ft. Carson, CO this month. The citizens of TX-31 have supported the 4th Infantry Division through the Adopt-A-Unit Program as they deployed and completed tours in Iraq over the last year. Through this support relationships have been built with the men and women of the 4th ID and their families. The people of TX-31 will miss the remarkable family they have made. It has been a true honor to have MG Hammond and the men and women of the 4th Infantry Division reside in Texas District 31. I am pleased to recognize Major General Hammond and the 4th Infantry Division for their time spent at Fort Hood, Texas.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize the Cedar Park City Council and staff for their great work within the community and helping to identify economic drivers and the small business in Cedar Park that make our community work. I appreciate the work and dedication of the Cedar Park City Council and look forward to continuing to work with them in the future. It is an honor to recognize the Cedar Park City Council for their great work.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Landy Warren of Round Rock, Texas for his unbelievable service to our country, his leadership through Children of Fallen Soldiers and Freedom Festival 2009. The Children of Fallen Soldiers is a non-profit organization based out of Round Rock, Texas with a goal to provide each child who has lost a parent in the line of duty, with $25,000 to assist with college expenses, or to otherwise help them to start out in the world when they turn 18. The Children of Fallen Soldiers organization was born through the vision of the Rotary DISTRICT 5870, in Round Rock, Texas. Fifteen central Texas children have been identified through the program who have lost a parent in the line of duty. The soldiers who were killed were all from Ft. Hood, Texas. The Freedom Fest 2009, a 4th of July concert and fireworks presentation to benefit The Children of Fallen Soldiers, was held this year with the hard work of Landy, and other local sponsors. It is an honor to recognize Landy, as he continues to be a true leader in Texas District 31, and in our country.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize W*I*N (Women Impacting the Nation) of Round Rock, Texas for their success in making a difference in the community in such a short time frame with Freedom Festival 2009. The W*I*N organization helped organize and host the 2009 Freedom Fest held July 4th at Dell Diamond, a concert and firework presentation benefiting The Children of Fallen Soldiers. Children of Fallen Soldiers is a non-profit organization based out of Round Rock, Texas with a goal to provide each child who has lost a parent in the line of duty, with $25,000 to assist with college expenses, or to otherwise help them to start out in the world when they turn 18. Fifteen central Texas children have been identified through the program to have lost a parent in the line of duty. The soldiers who were killed were all from Ft. Hood, Texas. The Freedom Fest 2009, is just one of the events the W*I*N organization has sponsored and organized in Texas District 31. It is an honor to recognize and thank the local W*I*N group for their dedication to the families in Texas District 31, our community and our country.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, the residents of Hico, Texas deserve to be greatly commended for the service they provided to their own city through the Pothole Patching Project on March 7, 2009. One hundred and fifty dedicated and eager volunteers prepared for weeks for a long day of repairing the city's roads. These hardworking volunteers not only made their roads safer for residents and travelers, but nurtured a strong sense of community while doing it. The fellowship that this act of volunteerism illustrates is nothing short of honorable and I hope other cities can mirror this kind of community enthusiasm and resourcefulness.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of H.R. 2996, the Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2010. Requesting Member: John R. Carter Bill Number: H.R. 2996 Account: STAG Requesting entity: City of Temple, TX Address of Requesting Entity: 2 North Main Street, Suite 306, Temple, TX 76501 Description: $500,000 was secured for a wastewater Interceptor that will enable the construction of approximately 9,000 feet of wastewater main line and 11,500 feet of wastewater interceptor. $50,000 will be spent on a Preliminary Design, $155,000 on the Final Design, $10,000 to Bid & Award construction, $1.7 million for construction, and $85,000 for construction administration. The total price for this project is $2 million. The requesting entity will provide the required funding match. Construction of this piece of utility infrastructure will benefit taxpayers by providing wastewater service to Industrial Park tenants. Wastewater services are critical to the services required for a growing economy.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate The Honorable Judy Schier Hoobs, Justice of the Peace for Williamson County, Precinct 4, who was awarded ``Judge of the Year'' by the Central Texas Justices of the Peace and Constables Association (CTJPCA) on April 15, 2009. When the group held their first meeting in 1986, Judge Hobbs was elected as the first vice president and was later elected as president in 1987. A lifetime member of the CTJPCA, Judge Hobbs was chaplain in 2008 and chair of the Legislative Committee. I am truly proud to have Judge Hobbs serve in Texas District 31.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate the family of Courtney E. Butler from Stephenville, who was presented with the Carnegie Medal for heroism for their daughter's bravery in attempting to save a civilian caught in a flood on a low water crossing. Miss Butler was only sixteen when she made her valiant attempt in May of last year, and was swept up and drowned in the process. It is citizens like this young girl who make me proud to serve the great people of Texas District 31 and continually inspire me, as they should everyone else who learned of her valor.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, congratulations to Temple High School German teacher Nella Spurlin who was recently honored as Regional Teacher of the Year by the Southwest Conference on Language Teaching. The hard work and passion that she was committed to distinguished her from educators of the nine other states in the region. On behalf of Texas District 31, I would like to wish Ms. Spurlin the best of luck when she competes against other regional winners for the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Language National Teacher of the Year award in November.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to congratulate to Dr. Jerry G. Bawcom, President at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, in Belton Texas, as Dr. Bawcom transitions into the office of the Chancellor. As the 21st President of UMHB, he has served as President for 18 years and will become Chancellor on June 1, 2009. I would like to thank Dr. Bawcom for his leadership and service as well as congratulate him and wish him well in his new position as Chancellor.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of H.R. 2892, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2010. Requesting Member: John R. Carter Bill Number: H.R. 2892 Account: Other Requesting entity: Texas Engineering Extension Service Address of Requesting Entity: 301 Tarrow, College Station, TX 77842 Description: $23 million was received for The National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (NERRTC), a member of the National Domestic Preparedness Consortium (NDPC), to provide relevant and effective Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)/terrorism training and education to our nation's emergency responders and their supervisors, managers and senior officials. NERRTC integrates the TEEX world-class training facilities with experienced, professional instructors and trainers to provide the nation's emergency responders with a ``one- stop'' shop for training, technical assistance and exercises. NERRTC works with over 40,000 emergency responders annually and delivers training and services in all 50 states, five U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. This funding is important to taxpayers because of its potential to save lives in emergency situations. Salaries: $15,339,463* Travel: $ 9,025,662* Equipment: 0* Supplies: $ 53,281* Contracts: $ 259,556* Training Materials: $10,322,038* *Based on a $35 million request

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank the Speaker for allowing me to speak tonight. I'm back again to talk about issues that are important, I think, to this House. They are important to the American people, and they are especially important to the concept of leadership in this House of Representatives and just where it is going to go. I want to go back for a moment before we go into current events and talk about some past events, when the Democratic majority took over the House of Representatives. In the lead-up prior to that time, we were having these speeches made by the presumed new Speaker of the House, Ms. Pelosi, about what we could expect from the new Congress. Now, this is not the first time I have mentioned this. But let's remind you again, to all the Members of this House, this is a quote from Nancy Pelosi in 2006: ``The American people voted to restore integrity and honesty in Washington, DC, and the Democrats intend to lead the most honest, the most open, and most ethical Congress in history.'' Now, this was the goal that was set up by the Speaker of the House. And she has now been serving as the Speaker of the House for two terms. And this was her mantra of what this House would stand for. And without getting off into the weeds of the internal politics of Rules Committee and stuff like that, which bores people to tears, I'm just talking about this honest, ethical and open-about-it Congress that we were promised. In another speech, the Speaker of the House, the then presumed Speaker of the House, made the statement that what she was going to do was if the Democrats got to be in charge of this House, they were going to drain the swamp, that there was this culture of corruption that had created a swamp, and that they were going to drain the swamp and expose the corruption, and they were going to expose the misdeeds. Now, I'm not here to tell you that there were not misdeeds that were brought forward. I'm not sure the Democrats had anything to do with exposing them. But they certainly came out through the process at that period of time. People went to prison, and rightfully so. They broke the law. But I will say that the leadership at that time went forward with those efforts, and they reached the unfortunate conclusion that several people went to prison. Several people had to leave the Congress. But that doesn't mean because they found issues in the Republican Party that those were the only issues that were here. And for the last 6 or 8 weeks, I have been trying to say, who is going to look at these other issues? I'm not accusing anybody. I'm saying that accusations are being made by the press. Accusations are being made by other people. And they seem to fall on deaf ears. They seem to fall on the deaf ears of the leadership of the Democratic majority in this Congress. And they seem to fall upon the deaf ears of the so-called Ethics Committee, whose job it is to look into these things. And so we keep raising these issues wondering what is going on. But now I have even more concerns. And these concerns are things that I think everybody is going to be concerned about. Because if you woke up on Sunday morning and you turned on the television, you saw that people are storming the streets of Iran. And people are getting killed because of an election. That is a pressure point now in our world that is as big a pressure point as Afghanistan or Iraq or any other place because it has the potential that nuclear weapons could be involved. We don't know exactly where Iran is on their development of their nuclear weapons, but we certainly know they are working on it. And they make no bones about it. So we have got a possible nuclear power where there is a turmoil going on, and we are sort of sitting over here being quiet about it. And maybe that is the right thing to do. The President seems to be taking a position of kind of hands-off. And there certainly is a school that believes that is the right thing to do. And I'm not criticizing that. But I am saying that that is a thing that every American, and certainly every Member of this body, should be concerned about, because it could be a world-changing event that comes out of Iran. And it could be a world-changing event for the negative. So why do I raise this? Well, that very same day, that very same day we heard more from our longtime adversary, the North Koreans. I'm ashamed to have to say this, but I'm old enough to remember the end of the Korean war. I was just a little kid, but I do remember. And we never made peace with the North Koreans. We made an armistice. We decided that we would time-out, no more war. And they went on their side of the 38th parallel, and the South Koreans went on our side of the 38th parallel. Since that time, one of the great, miraculous transformations of an area has taken place in South Korea. And now when you visit South Korea, it is a prosperous nation. It has a functioning democratic government. And the South Koreans have a lot of bragging rights. They have a lot to be proud of. Meanwhile, the North Koreans stayed in their same Soviet socialist- type republic, a communist regime. And, basically, with the exception of building a gigantic army, they have accomplished nothing since 1954, 1956, except to stir up a lot of trouble in that area and to develop nuclear weapons and a missile system. Now, there are some that think that the North Koreans are just in this business to sell these weapons to other people and to give them something that they can trade, because they basically are practically without trade resources. But others like me fear that the North Koreans are just unstable enough that they can use the weapons in this army to kick open the doors to the second Korean war, or worse, a regional war. They have done some things that in the past would have created havoc in countries. They fired missiles in the direction of Japan two or three times, and shot a couple of them over Japan. Here is a sovereign nation having a missile fired over their territory. They don't know what that missile is carrying or what it could do to their country if it came down. That is as close to an aggressive act as I think you can get without hitting somebody. And now they have announced to us specifically and to the world in general that they are going to test one of their longer-range missiles by firing it at Hawaii, a State in this Union. They could just as well be firing it at Idaho, or Alaska, or Texas, or Georgia or Maine. A sovereign State of this Nation--they have told us that they are going to fire a missile in that direction, basically at that State. Now they are pompous and blowhards, but we don't know what they are really going to do. And we do know that they have tested nuclear weapons very recently, so they have nuclear capability. Why do I bring these things up in relationship to the atmosphere created in this House by the failure of leadership to address issues that are part of draining the swamp? It is because I am going to make the argument that what has gone on in this House in the conversation between our Speaker and the CIA about who is telling the truth and who is not has a direct influence on these two Sunday morning news stories and others. Because yes, we folks sitting around the breakfast table, we get our information about what is going on in the world from the press. But you better hope, and having been a trial judge and told juries this for 20 years, you better hope that somebody is getting better information than what is in the press. And no offense to the press, but let's face it; they get it wrong once in awhile. And what we depend on is an intelligence system that doesn't get it wrong. We depend on an intelligence system that when they come to us and tell us that this is what our intelligence tells us, we feel that is fairly reliable news. We can't disclose it because it is top secret, but we can depend on our intelligence officials to come forward and give us information. Now we have had this issue of enhanced interrogation of prisoners that has been an ongoing issue throughout the election, and now that the Democrats are in charge it continues to be, that we are a torturing Nation. Some people label it as torture and some people label it as enhanced interrogation. Whatever you call it, there was an issue whether or not the members of the Intelligence Committee of this House were informed about this when they started to do it. Now those Members that have had the opportunity to speak have indicated, and that which was not top secret, that there were briefings on this issue. The Speaker of the House has said they are lying, I was never told about these enhanced interrogations. And she has repeated that until she realized, which we pointed out on the floor of the House, that lying to the United States Congress is a crime. Here is the statute: Except as otherwise provided in this section, whoever in any manner within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branches of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully falsifies, conceals, or covers up by any trick, scheme, or device a material fact, makes any material, false, fictitious, fraudulent statement or representation, or makes or uses any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false or fictitious fraudulent statement or entry, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 5 years if the offense involves international or domestic terrorism, as defined in section 2331, imprisoned not more than 8 years, or both. If the matter relates to an offense under chapter 109A, 109B, 110, or 117, of section 1591, then the term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be not more than 8 years. Without going off on what is in these other sections, what this says, under our criminal law of the Federal Government, if you are lying about a material fact, and there can be nothing more material than the functions of our Intelligence Committee and our intelligence community and their relationship and whether or not something happened, and to accuse them of being unreliable and lying is accusing them of a crime. By this accusation, by saying they didn't tell the truth, they never briefed me, she is accusing those people who did that, made that statement that we briefed of committing a crime. It may be a crime that only puts you in prison for 5 years and gives you a fine, or it could carry over to whatever these sections pertain to to carry it up to 8 years, or it could be as little as, what was the lowest, 4 years? I guess 5. Whatever it is, whatever the time, that incarceration for that period of time is serious incarceration. This is a serious accusation. These are serious contentions by the Speaker when she says: They didn't do that, they are lying. They are lying to you, they are lying to the Congress, they are lying to the press. But most importantly, they are lying to Congress. Now that is an issue that we should be concerned about because not just we need it resolved, and that is what I keep raising. I have been a judge in this country for 20 years, and its purpose is to resolve issues. My question is, who is going to resolve this issue? This issue needs to be resolved. Why does it need to be resolved? I gave you two examples: North Korea and Iran. Two hotspots boiling up. We are getting information. We should be, I assume we are getting, information from our intelligence community. If they are liars, can we trust them? Can we put the security of Hawaii on the shoulders of our intelligence community and trust their report as to whether or not there is a nuclear warhead on that missile that they have said they are going to fire at Hawaii? Can we, after the Speaker's accusations, trust this community? That's the question that I think we ought to be asking ourselves. And once again, the 50th time I have probably said this in the last 6 weeks, what I am asking for is a place, someone to resolve these issues. And I have raised this resolution. The Speaker is the leader. She is the leader of this House, and she needs to resolve this issue. This is putting a crimp in our intelligence community. If I am an agent and I am reporting and I get accused of lying, I face criminal prosecution. And intelligence at its best is, like every other human endeavor, it has its flaws. So once again, failure to show the leadership that it takes to resolve issues causes consequences we can't imagine until they look us in the face. And that is what I wanted to talk about here tonight. We have talked about the issues with Mr. Rangel and the Rangel rule. And we have talked about issues of other Members of this Congress: Ms. Waters, Mollohan, Murtha, Visclosky, and all those guys. And I have talked about those issues and I have said, I don't know whether these accusations are true or not, but somebody needs to resolve them. If we are draining the swamp, someone needs to resolve those issues. If there is a lie going on to Congress and we are draining the swamp, somebody needs to drain that part of the swamp that has to do with this lie. That is what this is about. That is all I am trying to do. I am raising the question for you Members of this House and for the American public to think about. What about this culture of corruption that obviously seems to be here? What about this issue of lying? It needs to be resolved. The security of our Nation is at stake. I am not here by myself, and I have been talking way too long without recognizing a really good friend who has come down here to have a friendly visit about some of these issues that are unresolved, Phil Gingrey from Georgia, one of my classmates and a good, close personal friend. And I yield to Mr. Gingrey.

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, I don't want to keep belaboring this issue, but I think somebody ought to be thinking about it before they light the first firecracker on the 4th of July, that we have a country that has basically said as far as they are concerned they're back at war with us, telling us they're going to fire a missile at one of our 50 States and they're going to do it on the 4th of July. Now, let's assume that we are going to get some intelligence on that. Let's start off with them saying it doesn't carry a warhead, let it go forward. And then the man that's going to have to make the decision is going to be the President of the United States. This is not a decision you do by committee. That's why we have an executive branch. He will collect that data, and then the question is do we shoot it down. We're pretty sure it doesn't carry a nuclear missile. But somewhere in the back of his mind he says, wait a minute. Wait a minute. They lied to Nancy Pelosi. How do I know they haven't done their work and they're telling me this to feel good about it? Maybe there is a missile on board. Or he thinks, I don't know what to do because I don't know whether I can trust my intelligence. But he knows that the firing of our missile, which, by the way, according to my friend Trent Franks, we have got missiles that can take this thing down. So let's assume we execute one of those and we bring it down. And the North Koreans say, that's it, act of war, and here they come swarming across the 38th parallel into South Korea and they are marching that 80 miles to Seoul. And we get accused of starting a war. Or worst case scenario say, well, we can't trust the intelligence, don't shoot it down, and it hits the big island of Hawaii and goes boom. And now we're in it, and it's nuclear or maybe less than nuclear. Who knows. The point of this conversation is intelligence matters.

Mr. CARTER. I yield.

Mr. CARTER. And I thank my friend. Let me say first, not being a Biblical scholar, but that's from The Sermon on the Mount. Jesus talks about trying to get the cinder out of your neighbor's eye before you take the plank out of your eye. And that's fine. I know that most everybody thinks this is a very contentious place, and so when people start talking about these things, they think, oh, it's that same old stuff. I want you to know that the announced date of the firing of that rocket by North Korea is Independence Day, July 4. That is the day they say they are going to shoot a rocket at Hawaii. Now, I'm assuming that the White House and the Select Committees on Intelligence of the House and Senate are very, very interested in knowing accurate information about what's going to be on the nose of that rocket when it's fired because, quite frankly, if you want to restart the Korean War, how spectacular could it be that they will have an armed missile fired at one of our States and then invade across the 38th parallel. It could be disastrous. Now, that's not my imagination working. It's happened before. I mean, the invasion took place. That's what started the Korean War. They've got one of the largest armies in the world. They're saying that they have canceled the armistice. Now, under technical rules of war, canceling an armistice reinstates the war. We're not treating it that way because regular rules of war kind of have been changed, not by what's written in the books but by usage. So we never really called it a war. We called it a conflict and so forth, like we've done in so many other things we do. But the reality is they said the armistice is off, which means that we should be technically back fighting. They said they're going to fire a missile on our Independence Day, the 4th of July. Now, why do I bring that up? Because by my watch, this is the 23rd day of June. We've got to be able to trust our Intelligence Committee and our intelligence community in, what? That's the next 10 days. In the next 10 days we have to be able to have that confidence in them. And we've already got the third person in line for the Presidency of the United States telling this body that the intelligence community lied about what they said about a briefing. Now, you know what? I'll even give you the way it could be handled. I mean, this place is full of things that go on that are very confusing. It could be: I made a mistake. I didn't understand the briefing. Yeah, I heard it, but I didn't realize what he was saying. There's lots of things to be said. But to sit here with this--it's trying to just go away. The President isn't talking about it anymore so it will just go away. But it's not going to go away if, on the 4th of July and the missile is on its way, we have the decision to make, do we take it down, shoot down that missile as it heads towards Hawaii, which it probably can't get there, but if it can, do we shoot it down or do we let it fall in the ocean and take our chances? Or do we let it fall on one of the islands in Hawaii and take our chances? Or what are we going to do? Intelligence community, how safe do you think that launch is? They give us the facts. Now, the meeting is behind closed doors and somebody says, Well, yeah, they tell us it's got a nuclear warhead on it. But they lied to Pelosi. Are they lying to us? Do we want that? Is that good governance of this country? And the reason you have to raise this issue is because there's so much politics that's involved around this. It's all about politics as well as what really happened. And at this point, with somebody announcing on the 4th of July they're firing a long-range missile, you've got to put politics aside at that point in time and say, Trust the community. They don't lie, because they're usually going to tell us what is happening with that missile. That's my whole thinking of this deal. And the truth is, what I've been trying to talk about since day one of this conversation I've had when I brought up the Rangel rule and all these other things, is that if we, as Members of this House, have questions that we think need to be resolved, we have only one place to go, and that's to our colleagues in this House and say, These issues need to be resolved. If there is nothing to them, we need to find out there's nothing to them, but they need to be resolved. And if you're draining the swamp, that means you're going to address issues as they come up. If something stinks over in this part of the swamp, you drain that swamp and find out what's stinking. That's what she meant when she said ``draining the swamp.'' Now, we pointed out parts of the swamp which our colleagues on the other side seem to be dwelling in right now, by accusation only, by press accusation. Let's clear those people's names. If there's nothing in that swamp, let's drain it. Let's find out. And that's the responsibility of the leadership of the majority and that's the responsibility of the Ethics Committee, and that's why we keep talking about those ethical issues. Unfortunately, there may be more. We have to be prepared to do what we promised the American people, and the first thing we need to address is this issue of whether or not the community was lying to the American people. I see we are joined by my good friend and loyal stalwart who always shows up when he sees me all by myself with Phil on the floor, my friend Steve King from Iowa. I will yield to you whatever time you would like to have, Mr. King.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I would like to recognize Patti Gilmore with the City of Hutto, Texas for her countless hours of volunteerism to the Team Hutto, Adopt-a-Unit Program. The cities of Hutto and Taylor, Texas jointly adopted the 1-4 ARB Unit out of Fort Hood, Texas last year providing the deployed troops and their families with supplies, encouragement and a sense of family from their neighboring cities in Texas District 31. Patti has been instrumental in obtaining donations, organizing events and providing support to the deployed troops and their families. Her acts are a sign of true patriotism to our great nation and to the men and women who serve our country. It is an honor to recognize Patti, and she continues to be a true inspiration through her acts of support and dedication.