K. Conaway

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Today is a bad day for America. We just passed and witnessed the passing of a bill that will have dramatic impact on our lives and our way of life for years to come if it should ever see the President's signature. One matter of process. At 3:08, 3:09 this morning the Democrat majority landed on the Internet a 300-plus page amendment to the already bloated bill that was passed. Apparently, the bragging on the thousands and thousands of hours of work and hearings and process that had gone into the development of the bill that was filed on Monday left it a little short of the mark. In spite of all those thousands of hours, they were unable to get it right. So they had to use a little fine-tuning with a 300-pager that was dropped this morning. So, that issue aside, Mr. Speaker, it is a bad bill. Science, Mr. Speaker, is never settled. Take the example of Galileo as an example. The consensus science of his time was that the Earth was the center of the universe. The Roman Catholic Church believed it and all the scientists who you and I have no clue who their names are believed it as well. Galileo, on the other hand, bucked the system. He said, No, in fact the Sun was the center of the universe. He spent the last years of his life under house arrest because he bucked the consensus science. You and I both know that both the consensus side of that day and Galileo were wrong. Most on the other side believe that Washington, D.C., is the center of the universe. But that's a different conversation. Science is never settled. We should continue to ask the question; we should continue to ask whatever it is that's out there. The sense of urgency that the other side used to try to pass this bill the way they have done it evaporates and is quite muted when you look at the details: 25-year exemptions for certain energy companies to allow them to get their power plants in under the wire to get support for this bill. Even the Ag amendment delays for 6 years the implementation of some of the provisions that will devastate Ag. And so this sense of urgency seems to evaporate as well. The cost of this bill will be thousands of jobs, as has already been said over and over. The empirical data is the Spanish experiment of the last 12 years. A report there on their greening of their economy shows that for every single green job created, that two private sector jobs were destroyed. Of the green jobs created, only one in 10 were permanent jobs. Our own President has said that his cap-and-trade bill, which is the one that just passed, will cause electricity rates to skyrocket. Skyrocket, Mr. Speaker. That does not sound good when you're talking about the cost of a product that goes into every manufactured product in this country, that every one of us who likes air conditioning use. That's not a good idea. This bill also, Mr. Speaker, nationalizes the building codes. No longer will you be able to look to your local planning and zoning commission, your local city council as to how the building code should be. You can't go to your State government. You're going to have to look to the Federal Government. Some bureaucrat in the bowels of the institution in Washington, D.C., is going to decide whether or not you can build a house and what those standards should be. Congratulations. Thank you so very much, Mr. Tenth Amendment. Mr. Speaker, MIT has a study that shows this will cost every family in America $3,100 for implementation of this bill. All of the pain that's associated with this bill and, quite frankly, there is a lot of pain. And we will just begin to see it as the details unfold. So what do we get for that pain? I've recently asked a climate scientist who feeds his family, basically, looking at this issue. I said, If we were able to pass the Waxman-Markey bill, can you in fact measure after 40 or 50 years the positive impact on our atmosphere? If we're going to spend $3,100 per family to get this done, if we're going to lose all of these thousands of jobs and decrease the standard of living in America as a result of this deal, what do we get for our money? He looked me right in the eye, Mr. Speaker, and said, Maybe. Maybe you can measure the impact? He said, Yeah, maybe. The Congress of Racial Equality, not someone you would normally think would be doing things that Republicans would agree with, their spokesman, Niger Innis, talks about the study they performed that shows that should this happen or, actually, should America go to a zero carbon footprint over the next 100 years, that the impacts on the temperature will be like .07 degrees Celsius over that entire timeframe. Again, not measurable. So a lot of pain for no gain. Mr. Speaker, I guess the call to action for all of this is for our fellow American citizens to get mad. I'm hoping that, Mr. Speaker, this next week before they go to their 4th of July parades in their cars, which is a limited opportunity because there will soon become a day they won't be able to drive those kinds of cars that they want. We will tell them the kind of cars they want to drive, not themselves. But I hope they get mad, Mr. Speaker. I hope they use this climate change bill--global warming bill, because we changed the phraseology because the climate is not warming--I hope they use this to incent their TEA parties on the 4th of July to go after us on this deal. I hope they begin to call their Senators and tell them ``no'' on this deal. Call your Congressman who voted for this nonsense. There are 219 of them. You can go to the Web and find out who they are. Start calling them now and tell them they made a mistake, Mr. Speaker. This bill is bad for America, it's bad for our economy, and it will lower our standard of living. It was done simply to allow our President to have a photo op in Copenhagen in December while the Chinese and Indian leaders laughed behind his back.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, I too congratulate you on your long distinguished service. There's an old Western movie entitled ``Bad Day at Black Rock.'' Madam Speaker, if this bill passes today, this will be a bad day at Black Rock for America. This bill will raise energy costs. Our President has said they will skyrocket. Claims of higher coal usage at lower costs are nonsensical on their face. The sense of urgency is muted by the fact that we delay implementation of many of these provisions for years and years in order to convince people to vote for this nonsense. It has no meaningful effect. We all want to breathe clean air. We all want to drink clean water. God has put us on this Earth as responsible stewards of these resources, and we ought to use them responsibly. This bill does not do it. In fact, it does nothing good. The only meaningful thing that it might do is provide a relatively meaningless photo op for our President in December in Copenhagen as he stands to brag about what America has done while the leaders of India and China laugh at us behind his back. A vote for this bill is a vote to lower living standards for all Americans for the foreseeable future. I urge my colleagues to vote against this bill. It does nothing good.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the House Republican standards on earmarks, I am submitting the following information regarding earmarks I received as part of H.R. 2996--FY 2010 Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act. In the Environmental Protection Agency STAG Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Project account, an earmark for the City of Andrews arsenic filtration pilot project was included on my behalf. The entity to receive this funding is the City of Andrews, Texas. Andrews City Hall is located at 111 Logsdon, Andrews, TX, 79714. The funding would create a pilot program for demonstrating an alternative method to achieve EPA mandates for arsenic mitigation in rural public drinking water systems through the use of under-the-counter reverse-osmosis filtration systems.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Chairman, I also rise in great deference and respect for my chairman and Mr. Holt in this difference of opinion. I think there's a great significant difference between collection of data in interrogations conducted in a law enforcement arena in which the evidence is gathered to go into a court of law to be presented with a proper chain of evidence and that the sources and methods are not necessarily needed to be protected versus the interrogations that go on every day in the battle against Islamic jihadists. I don't believe that those interrogations routinely should be videotaped. We are in an argument right now with respect to data, photographs and videos, taken between September 11, 2001, and January 2, 2009, as to whether or not that data should be made public. I, for one, believe it should not be made public. There are differences of opinion on that. I personally think we need to legislate a fix to prevent those photographs from being put in the public domain and further inflaming the Islamic jihadists whom we oppose. So I would oppose this videotaping because I think, as my ranking member has said, it works against our efforts to try to get intelligence on the fly and it will work against us. So with that I encourage my colleagues to vote against the amendment.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I am going to oppose this rule and ask my colleagues also to oppose it based on what's not in it. An amendment that I presented yesterday to the Rules Committee was not made in order; and consequently, the Members of this House will not be allowed to take a stance on a very important issue that our colleagues on the other end of the building, the Senators, have taken a stance on unanimously to oppose, the release of the detainee photographs. The President of the United States has said, listening to his field commanders, General Petraeus and General Odierno, that the release of these photographs would work to put Americans in danger, would be used at as a recruiting tool and, in my view, might also be used by President Ahmadinejad to turn the pro-democracy protests going on in his country away from protests against Ahmadinejad and protests against America, given the nature of these photographs. This is a discrete body of photographs taken between September 1, 2001, to January 22, 2009, that have no business being released in the public arena. We need a legislative fix that would prevent the release of these photographs into the public arena; and my amendment, married up with an exact replica in the Senate, would have allowed these photographs to be protected properly. The amendment would have protected on a rolling 3-year basis these photographs, certified by the Secretary of Defense that they would, in fact, be used as recruiting tools, and could be used to incite violence against American troops that might not otherwise be there should these photographs not be released. There is no good reason to release these photographs. I wish the Rules Committee would have allowed this debate. As our colleague from Massachusetts said last night, For some reason we're afraid of debate on this floor, the way the Rules Committee works. Why are we afraid to have this debate? It is unanimous on the other end of this building that they believe these photographs should be protected. The President has come out saying that it is appropriate to protect these photographs. And we're not talking about forever. We're simply talking about 3 years at a time to protect these photographs. I'm disappointed that the Rules Committee failed to allow the Members of this body to express their will, as opposed to the will of the chairman of the committee and maybe a couple of others who, in their judgment, believe that these photographs should, in fact, be released. The courts have said that they recognize the validity of the consequences that are set forth in General Petraeus' comments as well as General Odierno's comments to the courts. The other side can simply say they believe it is better to have these photographs be used as recruitment tools for al Qaeda as well as the other ill uses that they will be put to. It's unfortunate the Rules Committee, led by the chairman, ruled this way. As a consequence, I will be voting against this rule, and I ask my colleagues to vote likewise.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 433, I was in a meeting of constituents and unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the ranking member. The distinguished chairman of the committee said we know what is in this bill. That may or may not be accurate, but we certainly know what is not in this bill. The conferees ignored the specific instructions of a bipartisan vote to include instructions to protect the detainee photos of alleged abuses that went on in our custody. Mr. Speaker, the protection of these photos, to prevent their release, requires a legislative fix, in my view. I don't believe the President has full authority to stand against the judicial branch, so we need to protect these photos from release. Even the court has recognized the validity of the claims of harm that would come from release of these photos, whether it is recruitment of additional jihadists or inflaming the current jihadists into doing things they might not otherwise have done, but also perhaps squelch the growing protests in Iran if we were to release the photos showing this abuse. Think back to the cartoon that was released in the Danish paper that insulted Mohammad and the overreaction to that cartoon. Think what the release of these photos would do to our relationships. The military leadership, Generals Odierno and Petraeus, both oppose the release of these photos. They have persuaded Secretary Gates and President Obama to change their original position, and they too now oppose the release of these photos. The release of these photos will serve no good purpose. They will get young Americans hurt that don't need to get hurt. I am disappointed that the conferees did not include the instructions that we specifically gave them to protect these photos from disclosure. I urge my colleagues to oppose this supplemental.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. The Thunderbirds, of course, are the elite performance team for the Air Force; and Nicole was a member of that team in the early nineties. As a female test pilot, no one understands WASP's legacy better than her. As she explained in her letter to me, ``I am convinced that every opportunity I've been afforded, from flying combat patrols over Iraq to representing the military as a fellow, is because of these pioneering WASP. Countless servicemen during World War II, and every airman since, have reaped the benefits of their courage, determination, and sacrifice.'' It is with great enthusiasm that I ask my colleagues for their support on Senate bill 614 and that we recognize the contribution of these women for their service with our highest congressional award. I thank you for the time.

Mr. CONAWAY. It is my great pleasure today to recognize the invaluable service rendered to our country by the Women's Air Force Service Pilots during World War II. Their history is one of many surprising and impressive stories that helped define a generation. In the early 1940s, as it became apparent that the United States could not avoid the war that was plaguing Europe and the Far East, many accomplished pilots volunteered their services to our country. They were thanked for their offer, but were refused because they were women. Their argument, that female pilots could free up male pilots to serve in combat roles, was initially dismissed by the Army Air Force's leadership. Yet two of our Nation's most famous female pilots, Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harken Love, persevered and continued to lobby for the ability to use their exceptional skills in service of our country. As the Nation mobilized, it became clear there were simply not enough male pilots in the country to fight the war and man the home front. As the iconic Rosie the Riveter began to build her tanks and her planes, the Army set up two squadrons of women pilots to assist in the war effort. In 1942 Ms. Love became the commanding officer of Women's Auxiliary Ferry Squadron in New Castle, Delaware, which ferried planes around the country from factories to air bases. Not long after that, Ms. Cochran became commanding officer of 319th Women's Flying Training Detachment in Houston, Texas, which provided basic flight instruction for the Army Air Forces. On August 5, 1943, these squadrons were combined to form the Women's Air Force Service Pilots. Over 25,000 women applied to become pilots, and only some 1,900 were selected for training. Of these, almost 1,100 eventually earned their wings, many at Avenger Field in the town of Sweetwater, Texas. That is in the district that I get to represent. The women who volunteered to fly planes faced a world that we can scarcely imagine. While complaints of sexism in the workplace still exist today, in the 1940s, sexism was not the exception but the standard operating practice. The women of the WASP were paid less, were trained with inferior equipment, refused the status of officers, and faced an openly hostile work environment. They also had to buy their own uniforms and pay for their room and board each month at their training facilities. Yet through all of that, the WASP pilots were stationed at over 120 air bases across the United States, flying every type of aircraft and performing almost every duty of pilots in the Army Air Forces. They logged 60 million miles, ferrying planes, transporting cargo and personnel, towing targets, instructing new cadets, and acting as test pilots. Of the almost 1,100 women who flew as the WASP, 38 gave their lives. In what remains a blot on our country, these women were returned home not with military honors but at the expense of their families because, although they flew military planes at the direction of military commanders, they were not considered to be members of the Army. In October 1944, the program ended abruptly, and many of the records surrounding the program were filed away and classified in government archives. It was not until the Air Force announced that it would train the military's ``first'' female pilots in the 1970s that a renewed interest in the WASP allowed them to be granted veteran status and the campaign ribbons which they earned through their service. While it might be tempting to see today's Congressional Gold Medal as a way to right the injuries done to the women of WASP, to do so would be to neglect the true significance of their contributions to winning a war and advancing women's equality. The legacy of the WASP is unmistakable. At a time when women were routinely assumed to be less capable than men, these individuals stood up and asked for the right to prove themselves. These women did not just answer the call of their country, they called themselves to service. And in doing so, forever upended the notion of what women could and should do in our Armed Forces. I would like to commend the leadership and the board of the National WASP World War II Museum in Sweetwater, Texas, for preserving the unique history of these women and preparing educational materials to share their story with countless students throughout the country. I would recommend to the leadership, the Speaker and to my colleagues to swing by Sweetwater, Texas--it's on I-20, an easy drive from Fort Worth or El Paso, 300 miles in either direction--to see this museum and get a flavor for what these women endured during training. It was a very austere training base in a pretty rough part of Texas, and you would be impressed with what they did and what they accomplished. Additionally, I would like to thank Air Force Major Nicole Malachowski who worked tirelessly to secure this tribute for the service of these women. Major Malachowski was a Thunderbird pilot.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you. I appreciate that. Madam Speaker, I want to speak briefly about the narrow aspect of the motion to instruct that would require us to recede to the Senate language in the Senate amendment that would restrict access to the photographs of detainees that have been swept up in the field of battle since 2001. These photographs are of a sensational nature. They will be used to spur actions by radical jihadists that will be dangerous to our troops. If you will remember back recently, there was a cartoon that was very disrespectful to Mohammed. The reaction to that cartoon was irrational given the nature of what went on. How much worse would the reaction be to these actual photographs of the detainees and of their being treated however they were treated? Our own commanders on the ground, General Petraeus and General Odierno, have both said, in their professional judgment, that the release of these photographs will help recruit additional terrorists--additional jihadists--to the team and that the release of these photographs will be used to spur actions against our military and against our troops in the field, who might not otherwise be there. So I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that the release of these photographs, in all likelihood, will result in additional deaths and injuries to American troops that don't have to occur. The Senate language would restrict access to these photographs, which is the right issue, and the White House has agreed that these photographs should not be released. I encourage my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to support our motion to instruct because it does make sense not to release these photographs.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Ranking Member McHugh for those very kind words. It kind of caught me off guard. Thank you. I appreciate that. I rise today to urge the swift passage of the conference report on S. 454, the Weapon System Acquisition Reform Act of 2009. This conference report represents thoughtful compromises that will enable the Department of Defense to better plan for the future and to acquire the combat systems that it needs to make our military as effective as it needs to be at a cost that we can afford. As always, I would like to thank the leadership of the Armed Services Committee for their commitment to the men and women of our Armed Forces. Chairman Skelton and Ranking Member McHugh lead our committee with purpose and with poise, and they never forget that our first responsibility is to protect our soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who are serving our Nation around the globe. I also want to thank the chairman on the House Defense Acquisition Reform Panel, Chairman Rob Andrews from New Jersey. It has been my privilege to partner with him as we work to bring these needed reforms to the Defense Department in how it spends our limited resources. While all the thanking of the members is certainly appropriate, I don't think you can overstate the work that our staffs do on behalf of the acquisitions panel. I want to thank Andrew Hunter on the majority's staff and Jenness Simler on our side for the great work that they've done. I also want to thank, on my personal staff, Tony Ciancielo, who is an Air National Guard fellow in my office for a year, and he is doing outstanding work on behalf of this country. As a member of the acquisitions panel, I've spent the last few months immersed in the details of the weapons system and in the weapons acquisition system. It is nothing if it is not spectacularly complicated. It is clear to me that the oversight of this process must be a never-ending commitment on the part of Congress. Yet, as the changes we are implementing here today mature, I urge that we remain vigilant but also patient. The number of the cost overruns that has been touted during the discussion of this panel is real, but I worry, as all of us have, that that number is artificially high because of underestimates on the front end of weapons systems decisions. This legislation, I think, goes a long way toward helping us cure a natural tendency to under-represent costs on the front end in order to get a program or a weapons system started. Then we are saddled with that decision when we come on to the real costs and to the realization that the real expense of a particular system turns out to be greater than what we estimated on the front end because of a tendency to be optimistic as to time frames as well as to expenditures on those front ends. So this legislation goes a long way toward fixing that. I also want to add a word of caution, and that is that we allow these changes to mature somewhat before we begin to tinker with them again. We've got great acquisition people staffing the system from top to bottom. As Mr. Langevin mentioned, there is going to be a 20,000 increase in those competent professionals as we go forward. We need to let them work with the system long enough so that we can, in effect, evaluate whether or not these new changes work and if they do the things we want them to do. So it will be an ever-changing system, but we in Congress here look for the results. So be a little bit patient as we change the systems acquisition process again. That leaves us then with the bulk of the spending that's done, which is on services. My colleague and chairman of our acquisitions panel will continue to push forward on the review for how the DOD acquires services. It is a very mundane, everyday deal, but as to the scope and the reach of DOD, just think about how they all have cell phones and the decisions that are made across the thousands and thousands and thousands of installations across this world that need cell phone coverage. Somebody somewhere has got to decide on that contract. That's our next work, and it's going to be as difficult and daunting, I think, to understand that system and to see where it's working correctly, to see where we can help change it for the better and to see those places where it isn't working correctly. I've got great confidence in my chairman on the subcommittee, on the panel. Collectively, we're working in a bipartisan approach as we've done so far. I agree with the other speakers that this is a great example of how this House, this body, can in fact work on issues that don't require us to wear a jersey that has got a particular color on it when we go about the decisions of trying to defend this country and put weapons in the hands of young men and women who lay their lives on the line to protect this country. So I'm proud to be a part of this process. S. 454 will begin the process of fundamentally altering how the Defense Department procures major weapons systems desperately needed by our warfighters. It's important legislation that I am pleased to support today. I urge my colleagues to vote in favor of this conference report.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding time on this issue. I rise today to lend another bipartisan voice to support for the Weapons Acquisition System Reform Through Enhancing Technical Knowledge and Oversight Act, giving rise to the best acronym yet in this Congress--the WASTE TKO Act. As a member of the HASC Defense Acquisition Reform Panel, I feel a deep sense of obligation to both our men and women in uniform and my constituents back home to get this right and to give the Defense Department the tools and the manpower it needs to get the acquisition process right. As with almost all work on the Armed Services Committee, I am pleased that we are able to work in a bipartisan manner, and I thank Chairman Skelton, Ranking Member McHugh, and Chairman Andrews for their leadership throughout this process. Last month, the GAO reported that the ``major weapons programs continue to cost more, take longer, and deliver fewer quantities and capabilities than originally planned.'' The GAO goes on to find fault in the ``planning, execution, and oversight,'' of major weapon programs. Congress' inability to realistically plan for the future is slowly strangling our ability to govern, and in no place is that more apparent than in how we procure military hardware. The legislation introduced by Chairman Skelton and Ranking Member McHugh represents an important first step towards our final goal of creating an end-to-end acquisition process that is most responsive to the needs of the warfighter and responsible to the financial burdens of the taxpayer. The WASTE TKO Act will ensure that new major weapons programs begin on a solid foundation; with accurate cost estimation and realistic performance goals developed before the program progresses into the system development and demonstration phase marked milestone B. This legislation will institute clear lines of accountability and authority within the Pentagon, and establish the policies and procedures that are necessary to create a truly knowledge-based assessment of weapons programs. By doing our homework upfront, our armed services will be better able to prepare for the future, our warfighters will be better equipped, and we will be better stewards of the limited resources entrusted us by the taxpayers. It is our responsibility to ensure the warfighter receives the best weapon systems to perform their mission, while at the same time ensuring that the taxpayers get the most bang for their buck. The WASTE TKO Act addresses how we procure major weapon systems and provides much promise in resolving the enormous cost overruns that embarrass the government and infuriate the public. Our bill is a step in the right direction, but we all know there is much more to be done to refocus the acquisitions process on supporting the warfighter first. Mr. Chairman, I look forward to continuing to work with you and Chairman McHugh and Rob Andrews and the members of the committee and Acquisition Reform Panel as we complete this important task. I want to thank our staff--both those of the committee and personal offices--who have done such great work on this bill. I encourage my colleagues to support this important legislation.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, recently at a town hall meeting, Dottie from Andrews, Texas, and I won't give her last name, came to me and said that she did not attend a TEA party in the area because she was afraid that the Department of Homeland Security would have agents there taking down names and taking pictures. Well, Madam Speaker, I rise today to reassure my constituent Dottie from Andrews that while Secretary Napolitano may be guilty of bad judgment bordering on negligence, she does not really consider her to be a domestic terrorist, nor do I believe the Secretary has unleashed the multitude of resources, assets, tools, and weapons of the Department of Homeland Security against her or me. Dottie, like many individuals across my district and throughout the Nation, was at first surprised and then angered to learn that the Department of Homeland Security's new definition of a right-wing terrorist sounded a lot like her. To quote the recently released Homeland Security memo: ``Many right-wing extremists are antagonistic toward the new Presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use.'' In a ham-handed fashion, the memo further defines the Department's view of right-wing extremists to include the great many Americans who believe that gun owners have constitutional rights protected by the second amendment, that our national values are not something to be bartered with for international agreements, that the immigration policy in our Nation is a failure, and that we are mortgaging the future to fund today's spending spree that we can never repay. It then goes on to single out returning war veterans as individuals who warrant special government attention because they are especially susceptible to these extreme views. If these are the positions of extremists, Madam Speaker, then I am an extremist. I am extreme in my belief that our Constitution protects law-abiding citizens from being treated like criminals. I am extreme in my belief that our Nation's sovereignty and values are not up for negotiation or debate with international thugs and 21st-century socialists. I am extreme in my belief that the Federal Government is failing the American people every day that we don't control our borders. I am extreme in my belief that we are running unsustainable deficits and selling future generations of Americans into indentured servitude in order to score political points today. And I am extreme in my belief that our veterans deserve our humble gratitude and prayers, not police scrutiny. Secretary Napolitano's crass misunderstanding of the concerns of conservative Americans is not only embarrassing, but it detracts from her Department's ability to protect America. Her report is riddled with anecdotal evidence and pointlessly broad generalizations. It is a ``well, duh'' listing of long-established facts about racist organizations, anti-government militias, and other fringe radicals. Any memo that relates the members of these fringe organizations with individuals who hold conservative political beliefs will serve only to confuse law enforcement personnel and alarm the public. Where there are public safety concerns, these should be communicated in a precise and meaningful manner; otherwise, the administration should stop antagonizing and profiling its innocent citizens. In its rush to placate The New York Times editorial board and MoveOn.org, the Obama administration is continuing to show itself to be tone deaf on the issues that matter most to Americans and illiterate in basic conservative principles. The administration's actions are rightly a cause for concern for me and my constituents. While the Democrats have earned the right to pursue their agenda, no American citizen lost their right to question that agenda. I should not be here on the floor today making reassurances to the people in my district, but the language of this administration has consistently been dismissive of principled opposition to its policies and now it appears as though it is openly hostile to it. In the future I urge the administration to pick its words more carefully and remember that it governs all of America, not simply those who agree with it. I urge Secretary Napolitano to issue an official clarification of the administration's position on right-wing extremism and to publish a memo that addresses her concerns about the rise of hate groups and anti-government militias in a manner that will both be of service to law enforcement and refrains from painting half of America as extremists. While I firmly believe that this memo represents nothing more than a colossal screw-up on the part of our President and the Secretary, my final reassurance to Dottie is that if I am wrong and the government ever decides to come after her for her views, then they're going to have to come after me also.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Chairman, the Democratic budget that we are considering tonight for fiscal year 2010 proposes to spend $3.55 trillion, collect $2.186 trillion in tax revenues thereby creating a deficit of $1.222 trillion. That would be a record deficit except for the estimated fiscal 2009 deficit of $1.694 trillion. In fact, their 5- year budget window shows deficits in each year that are larger than any deficit ever recorded. The Democratic budget's best year is fiscal year 2013 which shows a deficit of $586 billion, which is $127 billion larger than the current record holder of $459 billion for fiscal year 2008 which was also on the Democrats' watch. These estimates, as large as they are, may in fact be understated if the CBO's assumptions on how fast the economy recovers prove to be optimistic. Madam Chairman, we tend to think that expanding economies will last forever, but they don't. Today we believe that this recession will last forever, but it won't. It is temporary. The debt that will be used to finance these record deficits is permanent debt. It will never be paid back. I recently had a fifth grader in Fredericksburg, Texas, at a town hall meeting ask me what is our plan to pay off the national debt? I had to tell the young man the ugly truth is that there is absolutely no plan to pay off the national debt. To pay off debt, we have to run a surplus, which is something this budget does not remotely contemplate. The interest carry on this permanent debt represents a forever claim on the earnings of all future generations.

Mr. CONAWAY. In other words, those future generations will have to tax themselves to pay for the interest on this debt each year before their tax revenues can begin to address their problems. This begs the question of why should we use permanent debt to address temporary problems? We should not. We have used this technique for far too long, and this budget continues this inexcusable use of future generations' resources to fix our problems. We should not pass this budget. I urge my colleagues to vote against it tomorrow.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank my good friend from Texas. The President's budget--just to kind of put some hard numbers on this--shows that the budgets come over from the White House in 10-year increments--5 years, 5 years; a total of 10. And we've got some rules that require us to do that. Anybody who's ever done a projection knows that you can project today pretty well, and you can project tomorrow better, but each day you go further after where you are right now, those projections become less and less reliable. And certainly out at the 10-year, it's much more of a mechanical, mathematical equation. But the President's budget, the first 5 years creates or spends ourselves into a $3.8 trillion deficit. That's with a ``T.'' So one trillion--$3.8 trillion in deficits, cumulative for the first 5 years. The second 5 years, you'd like to be able to brag on it because it's less, it's actually only $3.2 trillion additional borrowed from the Chinese, from the Japanese, whoever at that point in time will still lend to us. And I'm worried about who we borrow money from, but I'm more worried about the total amount of money, which I think is more important. So over that 10-year period, we're going to borrow $7 trillion from anyone who will continue to loan us money. So the second 5 years is not quite as bad as the first 5 years, except that year 10 of that projection shows a higher deficit than year 9. So the trend in the last 5 years of the budget is increasing deficits well beyond what we've ever seen on a single-year basis in this country. To make matters worse, the budget projections are based, in my view, on flawed estimates: estimates of how good the economy is going to be, how much tax collections are going to be, and those kinds of things. It clearly includes a tax on every single person. If you include the cap- and-tax proposals that the President called for in his speech the other night--and is beginning to tout--that tax, that cap-and-tax system taxes anyone who pays for electricity, anyone who buys gasoline, anybody who pays for energy, those energy costs are going to go up unnecessarily under that cap-and-tax system. So tax increases on everyone. And the spending savings that they brag about is based on, again, kind of a very slight-of-hand technique, and that is they say that the baseline of the budget is going to include surge level spending for the next 10 years. Well, we've already unwound much of the surge, so that spending is coming down. So to say we're going to spend at the same levels in Iraq on the surge for the next 10 years is a bit disingenuous on its face. And then to claim the spending savings from actually reducing that back to a more normal number and then brag about that being some sort of a tough decision to be made, in my view is less than forthright, let me put it that way. I would yield back to my colleague who is controlling the hour because I think we've got a big number in front of us.

Mr. CONAWAY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONAWAY. The perverse impact of the cramdown provision is that we will have fewer mortgages. If you're a banker and you are lending money for a 30-year payout, then you have got to be very secure in your collateral because circumstances come and go with respect to the borrower's ability to repay--their health, all of those kinds of things--but if you've got a 30-year loan, which you're on the hook to leave out there as long as the customer makes those payments, then the collateral is a huge piece of why you decide to make that loan. If bankruptcy judges are now allowed to come in and adjust that value of the collateral to the banker, then the banker is going to react in a couple of ways; one, that the banker on the front end is going to say, okay, now if the bankruptcy judge has this authority to reduce the value of my collateral, then I'm going to be willing to loan less money, which means that instead of coming up with the traditional 20 percent down--before we got into the subprime nonsense that went on, but the typical 20 percent down--banks are going to insist on much higher down payments because they've got to be assured that throughout the life of that loan, the collateral never gets upside down, that if the borrower quits paying, that they can get that house back and pay off the rest of the loan by selling that house. They will also respond by raising interest rates, because interest rates reflect risk for the borrower and the lender; the higher the interest rates, the more likelihood that that loan could default at some point in time. So this cramdown provision will put a chilling effect on future home mortgages, which may be the intent. One of our colleagues said on a talk show with a fellow that, you know, maybe this individual homeownership is overrated. Maybe we don't want Americans owning their own homes because they can't handle the responsibility for paying it off. And so let's put in some public policy things that will help discourage homeownership, which doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but then I was just listening and was trying to understand what this person was saying. But these cramdown provisions will have a chilling effect on future home mortgages if they are left in place, as was contemplated in this bill.

Mr. CONAWAY. To try to put $1 trillion into perspective, which is difficult to do--as the judge mentioned, I'm a CPA, I've been in banking a long time. It's a huge number. But if you were to spend a certain amount of money each second a year--in other words, if you spend $1 trillion, if you were to try to get that spent on a second-by-second basis for a year, you would spend $33,000 a second. Every second.

Mr. CONAWAY. Yes.

Mr. CONAWAY. It's $33,000 per second. So we're approaching 3 or 400,000 just in the time we've had the exchange in this conversation about what it is. So $1 trillion. You'd spend $33,000 a second in order to get it all spent. About 31 million seconds in a year. And so that's just to try to give you some sort of visual or mental aspect of how much $1 trillion is.

Mr. CONAWAY. Yeah. Just multiply it by 10 because you've got $10 trillion there, so just multiply the ten. So it's 300,000 a second.

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank my friend from Sweetwater, Texas--I am sorry, Tyler, Texas. I can actually pronounce your last name, Mr. Gohmert. Thank you. I appreciate being with you today and look forward to our conversation with each other and the other Members of the House who are filling almost every seat in the Chamber this afternoon. We want to talk about fiscal responsibility. That has been a buzzword that has rolled off the lips of just about everybody in the administration who has come over the last couple weeks after the President announced his budget. The President stood here during his address to the Nation and called us to do some tough things, to do some hard things that we were going have to have to do in the coming future. I had hoped one of the things he would have said was that we have some hard things to do, some really tough spending decisions to make. We can't afford everything that we have been spending money on. We can't afford all of this Federal spending. We have hard decisions to make. We have to set priorities. I hoped what he would have said to us that night was ``and we are going to start tonight,'' and he would have turned around and looked at the Speaker and said, ``Madam Speaker, send me a continuing resolution or omnibus bill that spends no more money in fiscal 2009 than we spent in fiscal 2008.'' In other words, let's start that down payment on hard decisions. Much of that increased spending, the $32 billion of increased spending in the 2009 omnibus bill that has now subsequently passed this House is for new programs. It duplicates spending that was done in the stimulus bill. So there is really precious little reason to argue that we needed to spend more money in the regular appropriations process for fiscal 2009 than was already being spent in 2008 and the stimulus package itself. But he didn't say that. He convened a ``fiscal responsibility summit'' on a Tuesday, and then released his budget for the fiscal 2010 spending on that following Thursday. We have had some hearings here in the Budget Committee and others about that budget. Many of his appointed hired guns have come over to us and looked us in the eye, looked these cameras in the eye in the committee rooms, and said this is a fiscally responsible budget. I have to argue with that, because that is a little bit different definition of ``fiscally responsible'' than any I have ever heard. The budget itself calls for a--and he's bragged about cutting the deficit in half by the fifth year, cutting it down to $533 billion. And that's a good goal. I mean, we should all be about cutting deficits. We should never make light of how difficult that is to do. But then, if you look at the next 5 years of his budget, his deficits go right back up. I think the last budget on the 10-year window is about a $700 billion deficit. So, how can you, with a straight face, say that that deficit that's got the cumulative deficits over a 10-year period that more than doubles the existing debt that we owe to outsiders, how can you remotely call this a fiscally responsible budget? You then look at the stimulus spending that was anything but responsible. It was put together in the Speaker's Office with precious little input from those of us on our side of the aisle, which, I'm sure there are evidences in past history where Republicans have run roughshod over the Democrats. But clearly, two wrongs don't make a right. And we had no input into the stimulus spending package. This is going to be kind of the gift that keeps on giving to embarrass those who voted for that stimulus package. I believe, over the next two years, we will see spending after spending after spending on things like Frisbee golf courses and other kinds of things that this money will get spent on that will embarrass anybody who voted for that stimulus package. So we'll see these coming out over the next couple of years. The omnibus bill that we just passed, we gave our colleagues on the other side of the aisle an opportunity to say, all right, let's just spend, do what I had hoped the President would tell us to do in his address to the Nation the other night, and that is, hold this spending flat. Let's start the process. It is going to be hard. When you cut Federal spending, somebody somewhere doesn't get paid. There is a job lost somewhere. There's a benefit that doesn't happen. But this, where we find ourselves today is that every dollar of the stimulus package was borrowed. The deficit this year, which was exacerbated by that $31 billion increase, that $31 billion has to be borrowed. Now, this money, under a normal borrowing scheme, you go to a lender, could be a bank, could be someone else, and you set up the loan, how you're going to get the loan, what you are going to use the proceeds for. But the lender is particularly keen on how he or she is going to get paid back. Quite frankly, Madam Speaker, this debt that we're borrowing, the $700-plus billion on the stimulus package, the extra $31 billion on the omnibus bill, that debt will never get paid back, ever, because the only way you can pay back debt is to run a surplus. And this government does anything but run surpluses well. I had an interesting conversation. I was in Fredericksburg, Texas back in October, and I was doing town hall meetings around the district, talking to constituents and hearing folks sharing their opinions, what was going on. I had gone to a particular school and was doing the town hall meeting for just the school itself. And I was taking questions from the folks in the school. And I had this little, young fifth-grader raise his hand, and so I got around to calling him. And he looked at me and said, Mr. Congressman, what's the plan to pay off the national debt? And I just, I kind of rocked back on my heels. I said, I beg your pardon, which is a technique you use when you're taking questions like that to gain time to think. And I said, I beg your pardon? He said yes, sir. What's the plan to pay off the national debt? And I said, young man, that is the single best question I've ever been asked at a town hall meeting. And the bad news is there are no plans to pay off the national debt. We would be tremendously excited around here if we could just run a balanced budget and we could quit making the process worse than it already is. And there are no plans, certainly over the next 10 years in this President's budget, to even break even, to quit making the problem worse. And so the insidious thing about this debt is that we're not going to pay it off. It's not likely that future generations are going to pay it off. But there is an interest carry on that debt. That debt, right now we're benefiting from low interest rates because the rest of the world has fled into the safety of what they believe is the safe securities, the U.S. debt securities, so our interest rates are low. But as we begin to roll out this debt, borrow additional trillions, doubling of the national debt, interest rates will go up. So whatever the interest carry is, whatever the annual interest rate is on that debt is a permanent call, a permanent obligation that we are handing off to future generations. That interest alone will reach $1 billion a year very quickly as we borrow additional money here very, very soon. So those are resources that have yet to be earned. That's taxes that have yet to be collected. And so those future generations will, in effect, inherit a hole in their budget of whatever that interest rate, whatever that interest carry is on what we have borrowed. We have taken the process of fixing our problems with other people's money to a staggering art form, and weaning ourselves from that concept is going to be hard to do. We've never done it. Our generation hasn't done it. The generation ahead of us didn't do it. But future generations will have to because, while it appears that this Federal Government has a limitless ability to borrow money, that's not true. There is a finite amount of money that this Federal Government can borrow. I don't know that we're there yet, but every dollar we borrow and the trillions we're adding on, we're getting closer to that point at which the rest of the world says, you know, I'm not sure America can make good on its debts. And once that happens, we're in for remarkably different circumstances. So I want to thank my good colleague from Tyler, Texas for allowing me to help out this afternoon and be a part of this conversation, and look forward to the comments from he and our other colleagues.

Mr. CONAWAY. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, the President last week held a fiscal responsibility summit. A week before that he had come to these Chambers to call and implore us for fiscal responsibility. Then last Thursday he rolls out a budget that's anything but fiscally responsible. Following his speech the other night I was asked what I thought, what I wished he was going to say, actually before he spoke. What I wished he would have said is we've got some hard choices ahead of us, very difficult financial statements to be made; that we're going to start those with this statement: We're going to hold spending for the rest of fiscal 2009 to the numbers that were there in fiscal 2008. All of these new programs weren't in existence before we started. This Nation will get along without them if we don't have them in place. And so the President could have made a great statement toward beginning this hard, arduous, difficult task of beginning to spend less money out of this Federal Government than we are currently contemplating. I would call on my colleagues across the aisle to back the President up on his fiscal tough concepts and fiscal tough decisions that he wants to make by starting with this one. This is probably the easiest hard choice to make that we're going to have across these next months, and that is, let's just leave the rest of 2009 to spend at the exact levels we're spending right now. No increases from the $31 billion that are contemplated in this bill. The sad truth is the economic stimulus package that was passed includes additional monies to be spent on these exact line items. The numbers I saw was that, combined with this $30 billion, that increased a total of $301 billion of extra discretionary spending in Fiscal 2009 as a result of the stimulus and as a result of this passage of this omnibus bill of the continuing resolution. I urge my colleagues to vote for the motion to recommit. Let's hold this spending at this year's levels. That's the easiest hard choice that we have to make. And there are lots of hard choices on the horizon. Let's start with that today and begin the process of reining in Federal spending with this vote. And I urge passage of the motion to recommit here shortly.