John Carter

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Reclaiming my time, we operate under a variation of Jefferson's original manual for the operations of this House. So he is the one who wrote the original rules for the operation of this House. Although there are variations and amendments that have been done to it, they give you a copy of Jefferson's Manual because it is the Bible, if you will, of the United States House of Representatives. So that is a good quote and one we should repeat to ourselves both in the minority and ultimately when we get back into the majority. I think that is where we should be, and I think that is where all of the minority and majority should be. We are about to run out of time. I want to thank my colleagues for coming here. I hope you will join me as we put sunshine on other issues that need to have sunshine shining upon them. We would encourage the new media that is out there to start interacting and discussing this because I think this is something that the public needs to talk about. I am not sure whether it is going to be talked about with the big boys, but the bloggers can talk about this and other folks can get a common discussion about are we putting sunshine on issues that are important and is fairness under the law important to all Americans.

Mr. CARTER. It is true we got off the subject matter, and the subject matter here is equal treatment under the law. But, quite frankly, I think a good title, we may have just created a good title for people who want to lay things out in the sunshine for the American people to look at, without calling names, which is not what we have experienced in this body in previous Congresses, but just lay it out there. We are not going to say culture of anything. We are just going to say let's let some sunshine on the process, and let's let the common sense of the American people make that decision. I trust the common sense of the American people. I think that there is no better common sense than the folks back home. I did a telephone town hall last night and I heard the best assessment of the bill we passed today, spending $825 billion from the folks back home, because they looked at it with common sense and said this is ridiculous. I am proud of those people back home that take the commonsense view. We are going to be, and I'm not going to say sunshine boys because we have some ladies that are going to join us, too, but maybe the sunshine group. We will shine light on what is going on in the Congress, and I think that is a good thing to do. I think we ought to expose warts and all. But having served 20 years in the judiciary and in the law for almost 40 years, I think the oath, the original oath I took when I became a lawyer and then the oath that I continually took for five terms as a judge and the oath I take in this Congress requires me to stand up for equal protection under the law as part of our Constitution of the United States. I think we are all required to seek for every American equal protection under the law. And that is why we have raised this issue. It may be a small issue to some people. It may be something that they say I don't care anything about that. They will care when the IRS sends them their penalties and interest. I can guarantee you they will care because they will look at that check and say holy cow, where did that come from. When you are talking about 10 years of failure to pay taxes, you are talking about what could potentially be a large number of especially penalties. So, you know, all we are asking is let everybody take a look at it and see if we can't all agree to give equal protection under the law; and, therefore, step up and tell the IRS if they are wanting penalties and interest that you are going to claim the Rangel rule and you hopefully will get the same equal treatment that is available in Washington, D.C. I yield to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. I think those are some very interesting ideas that you have put forward. I have always wondered how some poor person sitting in the Gallery can figure out what in the heck is going on without sitting here for a couple of hours until finally it kind of soaks in that maybe they are talking about taxes or maybe they are talking about soldiers. But it can take a while to figure that out. Those are some interesting concepts. I very quickly yield to my friend from Georgia for some additional comments.

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for your comments, and I think it is very important that we talk about these things. I think it is important that we do what--I want to praise my colleagues for doing this. We do this, we make these critical statements and we talk about these issues, and we are not being venomous and we are not trying to be mean. We are trying to lay out the facts and the issues that concern ethical conduct that we are concerned about. We are concerned about it because, quite frankly, we all get painted with the same brush, and we should think about that. We work daily with our colleagues that are on the floor of this House. We should, and do, respect each one of our colleagues for their service to the United States; and by our ethical behavior, we can paint our colleagues with a brush that shouldn't be there. And so we raise these issues in the good spirit of saying these are issues this body needs to address so that we don't taint others. In the past, there have been people who have created slogans that taint the whole body. That is not our purpose here today. Our purpose here today is to point out fairness and equality in our system, so that Members of Congress are not treated any differently than any other taxpaying American citizens. And that is what this legislation that I have introduced is all about. I have written a letter to the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee asking him to support it, and I did it in good spirit. So I am anxious to go forward with this concept. And I like what you say about people that are facing this issue. They ought to at least talk to somebody about being treated at least as well as a Congressman gets treated in Washington, D.C. Mr. King, I will yield you some more time if you need some.

Mr. CARTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding back. My friend from Georgia had some comments, I think.

Mr. CARTER. I thank you for your comments. Your ``ruh rohs,'' this was very interesting. One of the things I was thinking about too, we had a very unusual procedure take place. When the gentleman I was describing was speaking on the floor, he announced that he was going to turn himself in to the Ethics Committee. Well, so that we understand exactly what the Ethics Committee is, they are very noble people who serve a very tough job in this House because they have to look into issues concerning their colleagues. I have a high respect for people who are willing to serve on the Ethics Committee. But the reality of the Ethics Committee in this House is that it has an equal number of Republicans and Democrats on that committee. So if everybody just sticks with their party, then things seem to have a deadlock time quite often in the ethics committee. In fact, for most of the time since I have been in Congress, the Ethics Committee has been deadlocked. I am going into my fourth term in Congress. So I would say that turning yourself in to the Ethics Committee would be sort of like someone turning themselves in to the grand jury when the grand jury is not going to function. And so that shouldn't be a defense. We shouldn't have that kind of defense for actions that take place in this House, that, Oh, I will step up in front of everybody and say this is what happened. I am turning I myself in to the Ethics Committee. And then it's going to be business as usual for their act. The American people don't have that kind of dark hole to dump things in. That shouldn't be an issue. This should be an issue of ethics and morals that touch the hearts of these people who serve in this Congress. The judiciary in Texas has a rule that not even the appearance of impropriety against the person who serves on the bench. It's very tough, strict, because you have to think, What does this look like when I do this? And if you think somebody thinks that there's something improprietous about what you just did or said, you better not do it, because you can be severely sanctioned by those who police up our judiciary in Texas for giving the appearance of impropriety. That is not the standard of this House. I would argue it maybe should be because it makes you police your conscience, to some extent. But it's not. So I do not want anybody to get the misconception that I'm saying that is the standard that we meet here. But we certainly should realize and be humbled by issues that go before the Ethics Committee. I am not saying that the Ethics Committee is the ``do-all, see-all,'' or that they do anything wrong. I think they actually are courageous people who have a tough job. We need a functioning Ethics Committee, and I think we will get one because Nancy Pelosi has told us we will get one. And so I take my Speaker at her word that we will get one. And I'm hoping that we can do that. I would ask Mr. King if he would like to make a comment.

Mr. CARTER. I would like now to hear from my friend from Georgia (Mr. Westmoreland) who has been patiently here waiting to speak. I yield such time as you might consume.

Mr. CARTER. Actually, I point that out in the spirit of bipartisanship and working together, yes, very much, although I understand that the now-Secretary of the Treasury, designee of the new administration, has, in fact, paid the interest on this amount, but no penalties have been assessed. Yes, he could claim this very rule to have the penalties waived should this be enacted into law. Of course, I would urge the committees of jurisdiction to move forward on this very quickly, so we can treat every American citizen fairly under the rule. In fact, even Mrs. Kennedy's issues on her nanny, that seemed to prevent her to being a possible candidate for the United States Senate, that also might fall under the Rangel rule and those issues could also be addressed. So, yes, certainly we, some of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle could benefit from this.

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate being recognized. I sure enjoyed hearing from my colleagues talking about the work of the day in, I think, a very accurate way. I'm here tonight to talk about, I think, correcting some potential inequities. I'm very blessed in my life. I spent 10 years practicing law in the town of Round Rock, Texas, in Williamson County, at that time a small town where a lawyer in that town pretty well did anything that walked in the door, from criminal cases all the way down to property tax cases. And I had a lot of clients back in those days that were in small businesses or who might be individuals who sometimes, I would say, unintentionally failed to pay some of the taxes they owed to the IRS. And inevitably when those things would happen, they would receive from the IRS a notice that they had failed to pay their taxes or failed to file their income tax or failed to pay payroll taxes that they should have paid. And these clients would come running to a lawyer. At that time I was only one of two lawyers in town and never claimed to be a tax expert. But I could read the form that told us what they needed to do, and we could get them with a CPA, and they would get their taxes filed. And they would receive a notice from the IRS which would tell them that they would have to pay penalties and interest on this particular sum of money, whatever it may be. It might have been relatively small. But if the time period had been long, the penalties would be very horrendous. They would be very fierce. Sometimes over a period of time of, say, 8 or 10 years of failure to pay, you might see the penalties and interest be two, three, four times what the actual taxes were that were owed by the individual. If it happened to be payroll taxes, I will tell you that, by my experience in those days, they would threaten to padlock businesses and put people in prison for that, for failing to pay payroll taxes, because, actually, that was other people's money that they withhold held and didn't pay and didn't pay their matching share. So the IRS would get very mad about failing to pay payroll taxes. But they would also be a little bit upset about failing to pay income taxes and threaten similar actions, mostly padlocking businesses and seizing assets. It was possible to go talk with the IRS, and you could sometimes negotiate those penalties and interest. But I never saw them not assess them in my period of time that I did that. After the 10 years of practicing law, I spent 20 years as a general jurisdiction district judge in Texas, which is the highest trial court in Texas, and I tried a wide variety of cases, some of which was family law. I tried a tremendous amount of family law cases, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20,000 over that 20-year period of time. I also tried criminal cases and so forth. In many family law cases, one of the issues when you are trying to guide assets, you would also be dividing liabilities, and one of the liabilities you would inevitably see would be failure to pay taxes or being late on taxes or failing to file taxes. So we dealt with this same issue, and I can report to this body that by my experience, the failure to pay those taxes always seemed to result in a letter from the IRS assessing penalties and interest for failure to pay. Now, I raise this issue because I think it's important that we have fairness that everyone be treated fairly in this country. And so many will recall that it was reported by a Member of Congress on this House floor about 4 or 5 months ago, one of our Members, a very well respected, highly respected Member of this body, told us that he had failed to pay his taxes for a period of 10 years on a rental property in the Dominican Republic. And he reported that he was going through his people, he was going to discuss with the IRS the payment of these taxes, and he was going to pay his taxes. He has since reported that he has paid his taxes to the tune of somewhere near the sum of $10,000. He also has reported that he has not paid any penalties and interest because no penalties and interest have been assessed. Now, this struck me as very strange. By my experience and having dealt with it, I am not saying I did this full time every day, but you know, I think most Americans know, if they have been through anything, they have dealt with the IRS, the IRS is pretty proud of assessing penalties and interest. They like that a whole lot. And so, to me, it was at first curious that this person, who is very directly related to the taxing system of the United States, has, in fact, not been even assessed any penalties and interest. I thought, you know, we serve in this body here because a bunch of people back home actually said we would like you to represent us in Washington, and we think you think like we do, and so they vote for you, and they give you this job. But at least in my personal opinion, that makes us no different from them, other than we are kind of hired to speak for them up here as the best we can, and I think that's what we are here for. But we certainly, by the nature of our employment in the House of Representatives, should not receive any special treatment above and beyond the same special treatment that would be available to every American citizen, every American taxpayer. So I have introduced a bill today which would basically say that because no penalties and interest were assessed against a Member of this House, that, in fact, we have equal treatment under the law, which is one of our constitutional rights. We would allow people to claim that same right not to pay penalties and interest if they hadn't paid their taxes. This bill has got a name, and we call it the Rangel rule. I would hope that people would take it in the light that it is set. It is not criticism in any way of any Member of this House. In fact, if it's criticism of anything, it's criticism of the IRS of the United States for failure to treat people equally under the law. And so I raise this issue because, in fact, that's what I seek here by this legislation, equal treatment under the law. That club owner that I was well aware of back in the 1970s who constantly was having trouble with the IRS--and he is dead now, so I am not going to use his name; but I represented him before the IRS a half a dozen times, and we battled tooth and nail and borrowed money to pay that principal, interest and penalty that he had to pay. He, if there is someone that's given special consideration, then that man should have been given special consideration. And that's why I have introduced this bill which basically says that if you have failed to pay your taxes and you are willing to pay the taxes, and you don't want penalties and interest assessed against you, then you can claim the Rangel rule, and you won't have penalties and interest assessed against you, according to the law. That's what we are doing here today. We are not doing it out of any malice, we are only doing it because we think it's fair for the American people. I am joined by some of my colleagues here. I will first yield, I think, to my friend from Iowa (Mr. King) since he is down on the floor and let him give us some comments.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Concurrent Resolution 26, 111th Congress, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information for publication in the Congressional Record regarding earmarks I received as part of the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2638, the Department of Homeland Security Appropriations Act, 2008 Requesting Member: Congressman John Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 2638. Account: Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Texas State University-San Marcos. Address of Requesting Entity: 601 University Drive, San Marcos, TX USA. Description of Request: I requested $1.52 million in the FY2009 Defense Appropriations Bill for the Center for Geospatial Intelligence and Investigation. The project provides a semi-automated means to predict insurgents' behavior and actions. Further, it provides an increased level of analysis through a mathematical calculation that predicts insurgent activity areas and bases of operation. The Department of Criminal Justice at Texas State University has established an upper division Criminal Justice program at the Round Rock Higher Education Center (RRHEC). The Criminal Justice Program is preparing for the establishment of a new PhD program that will incorporate information obtained from this project to strengthen the overall program including the RRHEC campus. Specifically, this funding will provide $603,520 for personnel costs, $414,300 for Equipment, $60,000 for travel, $40,000 for consultants, $6715 for other direct costs, and $395,465 for the facilities and administration costs at the rate approved by the Department of Health and Human Services. Requesting Member: Congressman John Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 2638. Account: Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Alcoa, Inc. Address of Requesting Entity: 100 Technical Center, Alcoa Center, PA 15069. Description of Request: I requested $2 million for the Ship Affordability Through Advanced Aluminum Structures project in the FY2009 Defense Appropriations Bill. Requested funding will be used to address the cost of fabrication, assembly and joining of aluminum marine structures through performance of trade studies and the implementation of advanced aluminum designs that will offer enhanced performance at lower cost. Funding will lay the groundwork and create the research and development foundation that will ultimately generate work at Alcoa's Rockdale facility. They FY09 and future year funding will enable level-of-effort activities to address the cost of fabrication, assembly, and joining of aluminum marine structures. An approximate budget breakdown includes: $250,000 for allow development; one-third of the total appropriation will be utilized for aluminum technology development; and the balance will be utilized for design optimization. Requesting Member: Congressman John Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 2638. Account: Operation and Maintenance, Army. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Texas AgriLife Research. Address of Requesting Entity: 1500 Research Parkway, Suite 255, 2259 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843-2259. Description of Request: I requested $2.8 million for the Fort Hood Training Lands Restoration and Maintenance project in the FY2009 Defense Appropriations Bill. Requested funds will provide dedicated resources to rehabilitate selected Fort Hood lands degraded by over 60 years of training with military vehicles. Substantial rehabilitation can be achieved over five years with an integrated program that reduces soil erosion and compaction, increases desirable vegetation and woody vegetation management, fills gullies, constructs sediment traps, and provides appropriate tank trails, stream-crossings and hilltop access points for tactical vehicles. An approximate spending plan includes: $800,000 for the installation of gully plugs; $250,000 for a woody species control program (juniper/mesquite control on the West Range); $250,000 for vegetation management (implement revegetation programs across the West Range); $1 million for tank trail repairs, which includes improving hill top access points, hardening stream crossings and improving tank trails that are currently unserviceable for training maneuvers and $500,000 for practice assessment and verification (Texas AgriLife Research). Requesting Member: Congressman John Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 2638. Account: Research, Development, Test and Evaluation, Navy. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: TECO Westinghouse Motor Company. Address of Requesting Entity: 5100 North IH-35, Round Rock, TX 78681. Description of Request: I requested $2 million for the purpose of conducting research to accommodate the introduction of the High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) Trap Field Magnet (TFM) Motors in Navy applications. HTS TFM motors will produce twice the power, have four times higher output torque, and the material cost will be one third that of the permanent magnet material cost. HTS TFM will help future Navy ships meet power generation requirements for the increasing array of electronic sensors, higher powered radar, and weapon systems, which is estimated to be six times greater than the needs of existing DDG-51 class destroyers. An approximate spending plan for the requested funding includes: $100,000 for administration; $87,500 for travel, $42,000 for project management, $875,000 for engineering, $62,500 for drafting, $72,500 for manufacturing, $120,000 for materials, $38,000 for management, $300,000 for testing, $212,500 for machine tooling, and $90,000 for other expenses.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information for publication in the Congressional Record regarding earmarks I received as part of the House Amendment to the Senate Amendment to H.R. 2638, the Department of Homeland Security, 2008. Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 2638. Account: FEMA State and Local Programs. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Texas Engineering Extension Service. Address of Requesting Entity: 301 Tarrow, College Station, TX 77840. Description of Request: I requested $23 million for the National Emergency Response and Rescue Training Center (NERRTC) in the FY09 Homeland Security Appropriations bill. The entity to receive funding for this is the Texas Engineering Extension Service. It is my understanding that $23 million will be used to provide training courses and programs to train our Nation's emergency responders. Courses are delivered on a rolling basis as directed by DHS. These efforts take place year-round until all the appropriated funding is expended.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, we have got an investment crisis that seems to be rising and the talking heads were on television last night talking about it. Most everyone agreed that we needed a long-term plan that our investing community could look to as we grow our economy. It needs to be long-term and it needs to have solutions. Part of that was an energy plan, a plan you could rely upon. I heard an environmentalist this morning say we need to go to alternative fuels, but we need a transition with carbon-based fuels. Yet we passed an energy plan which purports to have drilling for these necessary oil and gas resources, but there is still in place the availability of radical environmentalists to stop all drilling by filing lawsuits. They have declared 80 percent-plus of the areas off- limits to drilling, and they have set up kind of ``gotchas'' that will prevent the rest of that drilling. We need a good energy plan.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, it is a good thing we don't have Pinocchios working in this House or we would have some noses growing. To stand up and say this is a bipartisan bill when the first Republican saw it, I was present when it happened at 9:45 last night while we were speaking on the floor of the House, ought to make somebody's nose grow. To call this a bipartisan bill is a sham, and we ought to call it what it is. This is a bill shoved down the throats of the American people, without the voice of the majority of the Members of this House having anything to do with this energy plan. Look right here and see what it doesn't do: No real offshore exploration; no renewables without high taxes; no real oil shale drilling; off limits permanently, Arctic coastal plain; emissions-free nuclear, no; clean coal, coal-to-liquid, no; new refinery capacity, no. We got five of them out in Texas right now. No energy tax hike, no; no electricity spikes, no; lawsuit reform, no; playing politics with energy, yes. That is what we have been given today. That is what we have. Meanwhile, on the coast, people suffer. Let's really address energy.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank you very much for recognizing me on this issue. You know, tonight, as we gather here, a bunch of Texans have just weathered a pretty rough storm down there in our part of the world. And it brought to the forefront something that Americans have already experienced in Indiana, and that is, when one-fifth of the refining capacity of the United States is hit by a hurricane because it is concentrated on the gulf coast, then we're going to see gas prices and diesel prices go up. And even though tonight there are double shifts working in every refinery--and we were blessed that those refineries were not damaged more than just slightly--to bring that production back up is just like any other factory you shut down, you have to bring it back up to get to full production. And it will take days, and maybe even weeks, to where we're back. And the market knows that, and the market fears that. Just look at what happened when one refinery burned outside of Chicago partially, that's the first jump in gas prices, if Americans will think back to when the first jump in gas prices occurred. Now, the reason why I bring this up, not only do I think about my neighbors back home and all the pain and suffering that they're going through, and then I think about the neighbors around the country that are going to suffer as a result of this natural disaster down there with the prices, and then I think about the fact that Republicans on this House floor have been trying to get something done about refining capacity for 30 years. And for 30 years, it has been the policy of the Democrats to say ``no more refineries.'' And as the gentleman mentioned, we finally got at least an incentive package to try to get refineries to start building new refineries. And quite frankly, if you're putting together an energy plan and you're talking about just refineries, shouldn't you maybe think about putting them someplace else besides the Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi gulf coast, seeing as we know what happens there all the time when it comes to hurricanes? We should be having a plan for just the simple matter of having some gasoline and diesel produced in this country. Now, Americans have common sense. Things don't have to be complicated for them. They look at an issue and say, are you telling me that this bill was written by the Speaker of the House and her folks with really no input from anybody? What makes them experts? And do I want them planning my life and my energy needs for the next 20 years in the back room of the Speaker's office? Now I think the American people say no. And I think the American people would say that this is an issue that should have some concentrated effort. Maybe they should have been here for the 5 weeks that the Republicans were here. I think the people back home were saying maybe we should have been meeting, which they seem to talk a lot about, in a bipartisan method to come up with a real all-of- the-above energy solution the Republicans started talking about 6, almost 7 weeks ago on a Friday afternoon when they shut off the lights, shut off the mics and ran off the press in this very House. But we Republicans stayed. And we talked. And we said this is a crisis. And then we've had another natural disaster which has enhanced that crisis. It's time that we wake up and realize, quit playing politics with that long distance trucker who is going to have to pay maybe $6 or $7 for diesel and not make a dime on his load. Or I had a rancher tell me that today, if you sell a calf at the auction in central Texas and you get $90 for him, $45 of that is in energy costs. It's time for us here in this Congress to wake up and instead of cramming eleventh hour pieces of legislation that look like the Fort Worth phonebook down our throats, maybe we should have that bipartisan discussion. It's a shame that this type of legislation, and I can see it in your hand there, has come here in the last, it's 10 o'clock, in the last 20 minutes. It's time we get to work as Americans and pass a comprehensive energy plan that we all participate in.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend Mr. Latta for yielding to me. Let me say that when the uprising started, I was one of the 10 that began the uprising. I was the fourth person to speak that day. In fact, I got to speak just after the microphones were turned off, just before the lights were turned down. And I'm very proud of the fact that the Republicans stayed in Washington and demanded that the voice be heard of the American people on the issue of energy. And what we were really saying, we were calling for the Speaker to, Come back, come back, call the House back, let's work together, because we are in an energy crisis. Let's reason this out and come up with solutions that we can all live with that will allow us to prosper in this country. I think that is what this is all about. So I got to thinking today if you look at the pie chart--and Mr. King from Iowa had a pie chart in here one day that showed what all our sources of energy are. I can't get the numbers exactly right. I can remember that the alternative energy today, that is wind, solar, and biofuels, is about 2\1/4\ percent of our energy use in America. Right now. That is things we are looking at in the future and that is part of what the American energy act promotes, is research, development and working on those issues. But today it's about 2 percent. And then the other sources of energy are gasoline and diesel to power our vehicles; natural gas, which we burn in industry and our homes; coal, which we burn in industry and our homes; oil, which we burn in industry and our homes, and a small portion we still use of hydroelectric power, which was one of the original sources of energy in colonial America. And so what the proposal seems to be and the debate seems to be between our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, the Democrats who are in charge of this Congress and have the power to make things happen in this Congress, I think that it's that debate we are talking about. It's those fuel sources that we are talking about. And nuclear energy, which make up right now I think it's around 18 percent of our power, but don't hold me to the numbers. But that whole chart makes 100 percent. But I do remember alternatives that today are a little over 2 percent. The proposal we seem to be hearing is there's some things that now are bad. These are bad resources, even though the rest of the world, when they find natural gas off the coast of Brazil, they celebrate. When they drill a well off of--my wife is from Holland, and back in the sixties when they drilled a well in northern Holland and found this huge source of natural gas, they celebrated. When people in Venezuela drill wells and find oil and natural gas, they celebrate, and yet we are ashamed of those resources. Those resources are evil now, so we are basically starting to have a policy being proposed that says that there are some things that are just off limits for power right now because they are bad, and even though we don't have sense enough to know they are bad, we are going to get taught by the government that these are bad. And those things, by the way, most of them have to do with hydrocarbons, but we will start off with the one that doesn't, nuclear energy. Now, we have heard arguments here tonight and examples were given here tonight of what other nations are doing in the way of nuclear energy. An example was given that the Chinese have on their drawing boards I believe it was 42 nuclear plants they are planning on building. And we are not planning to build, I don't think, any. Maybe there are a couple that are on the drawing board someplace, but we haven't built one in decades. Nuclear energy, our colleagues don't seem to want to open up nuclear energy, so it is sort of off limits. Now we get off into the really evil stuff. Coal, terrible. You can't use coal. Oil, horrible. Horrible. As Speaker Pelosi said, we have got to wean ourselves off of hydrocarbons. And she said the solution is natural gas. I am sorry, but that is a hydrocarbon too. But still, let's throw natural gas in there. Now, between coal, oil and natural gas, they probably make up about 75 or 80 percent of the fuel sources for industry and for transportation in America today. If those are off the table, let's just call it a small number, 60 percent, if 60 percent of what we are today using for power is off the table, then we have to replace it with something. The proposals are solar, wind, biofuels, and new ideas we are going to come up with, like batteries and a lot of stuff, all of which is good and is in the American Energy Act. But today and tomorrow, and in fact for probably about 10 years, these things are not anywhere near the size and capacity to come even close to covering 60 percent of the power in this country. So we are going to replace these oil, natural gas and coal resources with those power sources overnight, and we don't expect to stop right now on those things and not see prices go through the roof because of a supply shortage? So what are we going to do for that supply shortage? Well, what we have been doing. We are going to buy from foreign countries, who are happy to have those products and happy to sell those products. But wait a minute. We just saw a comparison of the streets of Dubai. We don't have anything against Dubai. They are good friends of ours. But the change in that country between 1976 and today is like watching a miracle in the development of that country because of their intelligent use of the money that we are buying oil from them with and the rest of the world is. So as we look down the pike, the corridors of time, if we make all these things off limits, then where are we going to go, except to foreign countries? And what we are talking about as part of our energy crisis is our dependence on foreign countries, whether they are friends or whether they be enemies. So I think the average American back home in my district, when I talk to them, they all get it. They know that tomorrow, all this year for sure, and probably for at least the next 8 or 10 years, when they get up in the morning to go to work they are going to start a vehicle that is probably going to run on oil, an oil product or a natural gas product, gasoline or diesel. To say that we are going to keep this dependence going is insane in their opinion, and they want to know why we can't go after our own resources. So why don't we put some things back on the table? Let's put American oil and gas back on the table by going to find it where we know that it is. Let's don't drill where it is not. If you want to lease property that has no oil and gas on it to drill on, you are welcome to lease my place. It is 2 acres right outside of Round Rock, and I guarantee you, you can put a drilling rig on it and it won't produce one drop of oil. But if you like drilling on places where there is no oil, I volunteer mine, and I will take the lease money. But that is ridiculous. So when we hear proposals, why don't you drill where you have already got leases or where we have already offered leases, and our research tells us there are little or no resources there, why would we place millions and billions of dollars worth of drilling rigs on those sites to lose money? Why would anybody do that? So that doesn't make sense. So let's go back. Let's start with the hard one, coal. But, you know what? We are learning very quickly how to clean up coal. We are learning how to liquefy coal and find new uses for coal. We are abundantly wealthy with coal. We shouldn't just put that off the table. And I am not from a big coal State, although question have got some coal. But the facts are we can't shove that resource off the table completely. Oil, we know, as has been explained by Chairman Barton and others, there are at least 10 billion barrels of oil in the Arctic, up in ANWR, in an area which we intentionally set aside. There is abundant oil and gas resources off all the coasts of America. Chairman Barton pointed out the reason they started looking at Alaska is because some whalers saw some oil seepage. Do you know that a place where there is oil seepage to this day is off the coast of California. In fact, those tar pits, that is just really, really thick crude at the top of the ground. But that is off limits. Let's start being reasonable, taking care of the environment and drilling for these resources, producing them and putting them on the table. I for one am 100 percent in favor of Boone Pickens' proposal that we put natural gas in certain vehicles. It works. But he tells you 20 percent is the solution. I think wind is a great idea, and it works. But it has got to be boosted to transport, and so we have to work on that. And still, with all the windmills we have got in production right now, we couldn't power Austin, Texas, for 2 days. So, in order to meet our power needs, we have to be intelligent about what we are doing. As we reason with our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, let's look at this picture and say reality says today, tomorrow and at least the next 10 to 20 years, we have to deal with what we have got. We can't hope that miraculously 2 percent of the power generated in America will instantly become 60 percent, just because we wish it to be. I once asked a physicist from Austin, Texas, how big the solar panel would have to be to power Austin, Texas, for a day on the best day, that being a day in the spring when we don't need air conditioning and we don't need heat, and he said the size of the Texas panhandle. The size of the Texas panhandle is bigger than quite a few of the States in this country. So solar has its means, we will find a way for it, but today it is not going to even power Austin, Texas. So as we look at this comprehensive energy that we have got to look at, if we are trying to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, let's wisely use the resources we have. Let's protect our environment as we do this. Let's make these burns and new scientific methods. For instance, you can burn things in pure oxygen and have no air emissions. You can capture carbon dioxide and use it to replenish oil fields, to bring more oil to the surface. We can do a lot with science and technology available and all those things on the table to be learned. The bill that the Republicans are putting forward calls for us to wisely use all available resources, researching and developing the new ideas, offering incentives for more new ideas, offering incentives for conserving energy and all the things we need and want to do to make this country competitive, so that Indianapolis, Indiana, will look like Dubai some day, and not like Dubai in 1976, as was described earlier in a presentation here. Our infrastructure needs resources. We need to start taking care of America. By the way, these lost jobs that people move overseas, did you ever think the high cost of energy might have something to do with that too? So let's start thinking about ourselves and let's reason this out together. We have 3 weeks to do it. Time is running out. Our friends are back from their vacations, our Democratic friends are back from their vacations. Let's put our heads together. Let's don't give us an energy policy that comes from one person from San Francisco. Give us a policy that we work out in a bipartisan fashion, and I believe we can do it in the next 3 weeks. Thank you for allowing me to speak.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, when you sit here and listen to what's been talked about, you wonder who's in charge of this House of Representatives. Well, the Democratic Party is in charge of this House of Representatives. They have the majority. We have heard today that the Republicans blocked the Democrats' plan. How did that happen? Democrats have the majority. It must have been some of the folks on their side of the aisle thought their plan wasn't very good or else they would have passed their plan. They can pass anything they want to. The majority rules in this House. But the reality is those things that were brought forward were brought forward without any input from the Republican side at all. Now we hear we are going to get an energy plan today. I would be willing to bet my whole life that there is not one person who has checked with our committee chairman or anybody else. This plan is Nancy Pelosi's plan written while she was on vacation selling her book, and she has come back to deliver it to us, take it or leave it. No wonder the Republicans wonder what in the heck is going on on energy. We ask for an up-or-down vote on the all-of-the-above energy plan that has been discussed for the last 5 weeks.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Mr. Speaker, today in Texas the temperature is going to be about 103 to 105 degrees. It's going to be hot, and it's been hot for the last 2 weeks. Last night I had the pleasure of visiting with some of my constituents back home, several hundred of them. And at this time of the year, Texans generally try to get their old folks and their kids out of the heat wherever they can. So historically Texans have loaded up in their pickups with their campers or their tents, and they have gone to visit our neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado to get a little bit up in the mountains and get a little bit cooler so we can stay alive when this heat hits us. But it's not happening in Texas today because, quite frankly, ordinary folks can't afford to load up their pickup, put gasoline in it, and drive the distance it takes to get to the mountains. And they're concerned about it, and they're worried about it. And they want to know if they are having to take the heat, why can't this House stand the heat and stay here until we have resolved this issue of offshore drilling and drilling in other parts of the country.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, I rise today to submit documentation consistent with the new Republican earmark standards. Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 6599--The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Account: Military Construction, Army. Legal Name of Receiving Entity: Fort Hood, TX. Address of Receiving Entity: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm. W321, Fort Hood, TX 75544. Description of Request: I have secured $32,000,000 in funding in H.R. 6599 in the Military Construction, Army account for Unit Maintenance Facilities at Fort Hood, TX. This funding will construct standard design unit maintenance facilities. Primary facilities to include vehicle maintenance shops, company operations facilities with covered hardstand, oil storage buildings, organizational unit storage buildings, Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Maintenance Hangar, UAS taxiways and bridge, and organizational vehicle parking. Install intrusion detection systems (IDS) for arms rooms. Connect Energy Management Control System (EMCS) to base-wide network. Special foundations are required due to expansive soils. Sustainable Design and Development (SDD) and Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct05) features will be provided. Supporting facilities include electrical, water, sanitary sewer, and natural gas utilities; fire protection and alarm systems; security lighting; fencing, paving, walks, curbs and gutters; storm drainage; access roads; information systems; landscaping; and site improvements. Access for persons with disabilities will be provided in public areas. Heating and air- conditioning will be provided by self-contained units. Anti-Terrorism/ Force Protection (AT/FP) measures will be provided by structural reinforcement, mass notification system, special windows and doors, high curbing, and other site improvements to secure perimeter and maintain stand-off distances. Comprehensive building and furnishings related interior design services are required. Air-conditioning (estimated 300 tons). Fort Hood, Texas, is a strategic installation for the Army. This project was programmed to receive funding in Fiscal Year 2009. This project is necessary to support the troop increase requested by the Secretary of Defense as part of the ``Grow the Force'' initiative for the Army. Military Construction projects are always 100 percent funded by the U.S. Federal Government so there is no opportunity for matching funds. Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 6599--The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Account: Military Construction, Air Force. Legal Name of Receiving Entity: Fort Hood, TX. Address of Receiving Entity: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm. W321, Fort Hood, TX 75544. Description of Request: I have secured $10,800,000 in authorization funding in H.R. 6599 in the Military Construction, Air Force account for a TACP Joint Air Ground Center at Fort Hood, TX. This project will construct a Joint Air Ground Center to support the administrative, training, vehicle and equipment maintenance and storage requirements for the 3rd Air Support Operations Group and the 9th Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Hood, TX. The construction will include reinforced concrete foundation and floor slabs, metal frame work, masonry walls, roof system, fire detection/protection system, utilities, pavements, site improvements, special foundations, communication support, and demolition and asbestos abatement of five facilities (3,611 SM). This project will comply with DoD antiterrorism/ force protection requirements per Unified Facilities Criteria. Fort Hood, Texas is a strategic installation for the Army. This project was programmed to receive funding in Fiscal Year 2009. The project is necessary to support the mission of the 3rd Air Support Operations Group and the 9th Air Support Operations Squadron at Fort Hood, Texas. Military Construction projects are always 100 percent funded by the U.S. Federal Government so there is no opportunity for matching funds. Requesting Member: Congressman John R. Carter. Bill Number: H.R. 6599--The Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Account: Military Construction, Army. Legal Name of Receiving Entity: Fort Hood, TX. Address of Receiving Entity: U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Hood, Bldg. 1001, Rm. W321, Fort Hood, TX 75544. Description of Request: I have secured $17,500,000 in funding in H.R. 6599 in the Military Construction, Army account for a Chapel with Religious Education Center project at Fort Hood, TX. This project will construct a standard design chapel complex and religious education center. Primary facilities include a chapel complex, religious education center, administrative area, conference rooms, library, multipurpose activity area, kitchen and storage areas, fire alarm and fire suppression systems, connection to Installation Energy Management Control System (ECMS), and building information systems. Special foundations are required due to the expansive soils. Supporting facilities include electrical, water, sanitary sewer, and natural gas utilities; storm drainage; chilled water distribution; paving, walks, curbs and gutters; security lighting, information systems; landscaping and site improvements. Heating will be provided by self-contained natural gas units. Access for the handicapped will be provided. Comprehensive Interior Design package is required. Anti- Terrorism/Force Protection (AT/FP) measures include mass notification system, structural reinforcement, special doors and windows, high curbing, and other measures to maintain stand-off distance. Fort Hood, Texas is a strategic installation for the Army. This project was programmed to receive funding in Fiscal Year 2012, but was identified by the garrison commander as the highest unfunded priority in Fiscal Year 2009. The project is necessary to improve psychological and spiritual care for the soldiers and their families. Military Construction projects are always 100 percent funded by the U.S. Federal Government so there is no opportunity for matching funds.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Iowa, my classmate from Iowa. We came in this Congress together and have been close friends since we have gotten here. The one thing that I have learned about people from Iowa, like Steve King, is that they are blessed, like a whole lot of my folks back home, hopefully I am too, with something called common sense. You know, this is really about common sense, and I think the American people get it. Tomorrow morning, in Round Rock, Texas, where I am from, that used to be a little bitty town of 2,500 people, and now we are bumping up against 100,000 people, but I estimate we have got at least 15,000 to 20,000 vehicles that are operated out of Round Rock, Texas. So, tomorrow morning, in just my hometown, 15,000 people are going to get out of bed and go out and start up a vehicle to go to work, and it's summer, they may be wanting to take the kids on vacation, maybe taking them to swimming practice or to baseball practice or down to the park to play, or they are going to grocery shopping, as the price of groceries go up, or they are going out to work, or they are driving down to Austin, 30 miles away, to their job. But they are all mobile and going some place. There's no mass transit that comes to my town of 100,000 people. There's a Greyhound bus that passes through, going places. But I wouldn't call that mass transit. It won't get you back and forth to work. And all those peoples are going to start their vehicles tomorrow morning, either on gasoline or diesel. We may have a couple of hybrids. But the power that is going to recharge the batteries of that hybrid vehicle is going to come from a source of some sort. Hydroelectric used to be a big source, but it's one of the minute sources now. We got scared to death of nuclear energy and so we stopped making nuclear power plants. So we burn coal and we burn natural gas and hydrocarbons to make electrical energy most everywhere in this country. Now, sure, I like what I heard from my friend, T. Boone Pickens, from the panhandle of Texas, where the wind blows all the time. Wind mills are a great idea in the panhandle of Texas, and they are going to help a small amount. I am all for it. I, of course, am a big fan of natural gas because my daddy was in the natural gas business. I grew up in the natural gas business, and every summer job I had from the time I was 16-years-old was in the natural gas business. Which brings me down to something that I discovered. Most of the people here in Congress know that I am married to a little lady who's from the Netherlands. I worked on a pipeline in the Netherlands back in 1965. That is how I met my wife. That pipeline was being laid because the Dutch discovered in the northern province of Holland--and Holland is a little country. It's not very big at all. I think it's 190 miles long by 90 miles wide. They discovered natural gas. In fact, one well in north Holland produced the same amount of natural gas as the entire west Texas gas field in the panhandle. Now they were elated. They were overwhelmed. Europe was fascinated. They had found a resource to power their homes, because they were still burning coal, they were still burning coal that was made into liquid. They were still burning coal oil in their homes in northern Europe in 1965. And they were excited about this great resource that they found. And then they moved offshore; off the shore of Norway, off the shore of Scotland, off the shore of Sweden, and out into the North Sea, out into the Baltic Sea, and they drilled and they found more oil and natural gas. And Europe was excited. Yet, we are ashamed of our natural resource that we know is sitting off the coast of the United States. Oh, woe is me. We can't touch that. That is not good for us. Now what is wrong with us? Because tomorrow morning in Round Rock, Texas, 15,000 people want to run their vehicles to live their lives as Americans. And, you're right, these folks, the intercity folks, they have got mass transit. Some of it's good, some not so good. But they have got it. Maybe that is what is part of the divide that divides the red States from the blue States in the old comparison that we get right now. Maybe us red State folks don't have as much transit as the blue State folks. I don't know about that. But I know this. The Republican Party stands for the right idea. Let's develop every power source known to man to make this an American independent power country. American power for Americans. You have got a chart right there. You have got a great list. I will be glad to yield back for you to go over that list of the power sources that we say are available and how we support each and every one of those power sources. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. The other bogeyman, strawman out there, is Big Oil. Big Oil finds the oil rigs. As a Member of this House, and I don't think you would be ashamed for me to tell this, and it is not a long story, his name is Trent Franks, he is one of our classmates, and he made his living drilling for oil. You know how he started? Trent was 18. His partner was his 15-year-old brother. They bought a makeshift drilling rig that was basically rigged on the back of an old truck, and they went down outside of Midland, Texas, and started looking for a place to drill for oil. Trent is out of the business now because he is a Member of Congress, but his firm today is drilling offshore off the coast of New Zealand and Australia. So he and his 15-year-old brother obviously found some someplace so they could keep drilling. The average person who seeks oil is an independent, more or less for the oil industry, small businessman, and we should stop throwing these bogeymen out there, because these are the people looking for our oil, and they are going to find it and they are going to change things, as are our coal miners and all the other people we have talked about. We will get clean coal, we will get oil that we can live with, we will have American energy. I thank you for allowing me to join you today. I yield back.

Mr. CARTER. There are commercials running on television on both sides of this issue, and one of them says, Why don't the oil companies do something about energy, not just oil? And do something about the environment. Well, we are told that the big challenge we have today is CO2. Carbon dioxide is ruining our planet. We talked about the polar bears earlier. If we captured carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere from some type of burn process, what will we do with it? Who has a use for carbon dioxide; taking it out of the atmosphere? The oil companies have a use. The oil companies can use carbon dioxide to deep inject into fields like east Texas, where Brother Gohmert comes from, which just about spinout oil fields, and geologists tell us there may be 50 percent of the oil in that field may not be recoverable without some change in the field. Under this future gen project, which this government is looking at spending billions of dollars on to study how to take coal, clean the burn of coal, capture the carbon dioxide and put the carbon dioxide deep in the ground, where it will change the composition of--I assume it's like tar sands that are left down there--and bring light crude to the surface. So, you know, these are not the evil empire. They actually have a solution to a problem that we are talking about, and as we learn how to capture carbon dioxide, which we are working on right now. I was in a meeting the day before yesterday with a group that has a process of capturing carbon dioxide from a burn process. As we capture it, it has a market price in a free enterprise world to the oil and gas industry to bring petroleum products to the surface safely, without polluting the atmosphere. We don't talk about these things because these are the things that they do in the regular engineering in their business. But the reality is this is a solution to the very problem that our friend, Mr. Gore, is talking about. And if you believe that carbon dioxide is the end of the world, there are energy companies, oil and gas companies, that are ready, willing, and able to take captured carbon dioxide to work in their business. This is the kind creativity when you challenge Americans to solve a problem. We say, Go to the moon. Yes, we can go to the moon by using these kind of new ideas to make life better for Americans so that when we get up tomorrow morning, we can comfortably start our automobiles and our pickup trucks and our SUVs and together work.

Mr. CARTER. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. I thank my friend from Arkansas, the ranking member, Mr. Boozman. And I want to thank Ms. Herseth Sandlin for the work she did incorporating into 6225, which I rise in support of, H.R. 6070, the Military Spouses Residency Relief Act. I have a very similar story to the previous story. I had a spouse of a captain at Fort Hood come to me and say, you know, we have been transferred to the Pentagon. And my husband, he still votes, pays his taxes and everything else in Killeen, Texas. But I have been transferred with my husband up here to Virginia, and now I am having to register to vote in Virginia. My Congressman is from Virginia. I have to register my car titles and everything in Virginia, independently of my husband. I have to pay State income taxes in Virginia. And quite frankly, my husband serves in the Army, and we serve the military out of patriotism to our country, and we are proud to do it. But I make twice as much money as he does, and this is a burden upon me, taxwise and it is a burden on me with my family. And I made the assumption that that was fixed, had been fixed a long time ago. So this, 6070, which is incorporated in 6225, allows the spouse to have the same benefits we have given to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, that they can designate a residency and that remains their residency no matter where the military sends them. My wife is from Holland, and she has a little saying in Dutch that she has got written on the wall. And it says, ``It's not the mountain you have to climb that gets you, it's the grain of sand in your shoe.'' And this is one of those grains of sand in the shoes of the spouses of our military which is an irritant to them that is easy for us to fix. And I want to thank all those involved in allowing this to go forward. This will be something that seems small to some, but it is a big hurdle to the spouses of our military.

Mr. CARTER

Mr. CARTER. Madam Speaker, today we vote on a bill to draw down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve by 70 million barrels of oil. The U.S. consumes 21 to 23 million barrels of oil a day. So this is just over 3 days' supply. The good news is that our Democrat colleagues have finally started to realize that supply is the problem. Seventy million barrels may help slightly the pain at the pump, but so would the billions of barrels of oil in ANWR, offshore, and in shale oil. Increasing American energy supply is not an ideological issue like traditional marriage or abortion. It's a simple issue of do you support the American people or radical environmental groups. Sixty-seven percent of the American people want safe, environmentally sound drilling for oil. This is what the American people want. This is what they should have. The only obstacle seems to be Speaker Pelosi and the Democrat Congress. Americans are counting on Congress to work together and lift the American oil embargo. Americans stand ready to work with the Democrats, as do the Republicans.