K. Conaway

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be removed as a cosponsor of H.R. 891.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I want to thank the gentlewoman from Tennessee for yielding me time. I always enjoy hearing the young whippersnapper from Wisconsin, who has been here for a long time, his thoughts, the ranking member of the Budget Committee and also serves on Ways and Means. A couple of points that I would like to add on or pile on with what my good colleague from Wisconsin talked about. You will hear in these chambers over the next several weeks, months and years that the Democrats do not intend to raise taxes on everybody, as the charts have shown is going to happen if we do nothing. Their intentions are good. They don't intend to raise the lowest tax rate from 10 percent to 15 percent, or a 50 percent increase in tax rates. They don't intend to do that. But by these budget proposals they brought in in the last 2 years, they commit all of the money that those increased taxes raise. So in order for them to make good on their promise of not raising, as example, the 10 percent rate to 15 percent, they have got to raise taxes somewhere else in the system to make up for those revenues. So your chart says we have a right to know how Washington spends its money. We also have a right to know how Washington raises its money as well, and that is one of the categories that this one falls into. I have seven grandkids, about the same age as Paul's young children, and when I look at what we are doing in this Federal Government, I try to translate that into what impact it has on their lives, on their opportunities when they are in our positions. We have built a world around the concept that let's take care of today's problems with tomorrow or the next day's money. As we look at the problems that face us, and they are daunting, no doubt about it, if they are worthy of being fixed, then they are worthy of taking our money to fix those problems and not taking money away from our kids and our grandchildren to do that fix. When folks come to Washington from Texas to ask me what can we do, how can we help you do your job better, every single time I go through this speech about $53 trillion in unfunded promises that we made to each other, a process that we have to begin the renegotiation of those promises, and that they as community leaders have to begin self- assessing whether or not what they are asking Washington to do has a constitutional link to the Federal Government. In other words, if they want money for a particular project in San Angelo, Texas, or Midland, Texas, is it right to take tax dollars away from somebody in El Paso to pay for that project, or is that a project that ought to be handled by the local folks? Because as Paul said, every time you ask the Federal Government for help in something, that means spending goes up, and we have a very terrible time of saying no. So if we can get our community leaders, our mayors and county judges and others to do a better job of analyzing what they are asking us for so that it really does have a constitutional Federal nexus to what they are trying to get done, then that is a step in the right direction to make this happen. I want to talk a little bit about the budget process, because that is really where the spending piece of this wreck occurs. I serve on the Budget Committee with Mr. Ryan, and that top line number is incredibly important, because whatever it is set at, whether it is on a vote between the two Houses or a vote in the House or then some sort of gentleman's agreement with the Senate, that amount of money is going to get spent, come hell or high water. There is no way to stop it, because as the appropriations bills come to this floor, they have already allocated that top line number among each of the subcommittees. And if we on the floor are able to work to win an amendment to the appropriations bill that strips spending out in some fashion--now, we never win those, but we come down here and try every time--should lightning strike and we actually strip a program out of an appropriations bill, that money does not get saved. That money simply goes back to the committee to spend on something else. Our budgetary processes don't allow us to come down here and effectively drop that top line number. So I have a bill in the hopper that says if we are successful in reducing the spending in a particular appropriations bill, that that money goes to offset the deficit, or that money does not get spent, which is how most folks in West Texas thought our system would work up here. If we won a fight on the floor on a vote of more than half the Members that the Appropriations Committee got it wrong and that they sent a priority that that money should not have gotten spent on, that is money we could save in the budget and not get spent. So working to try to correct that is awfully difficult.

Mr. CONAWAY. Thank you. That is exactly right. It is the Savings in Appropriations bill. What it says is the Appropriations Committee, in all of the hard and worthy work they do, they get one bite at the apple of setting priorities. We give them the top line number. They get a bite at it. And if they bring that bite to the floor and more than half of us disagree with what they did, then that money should be saved to the taxpayer, go against the deficit or increase a surplus, should we ever get into it. That is not the way the mechanics of our system work today.

Mr. CONAWAY. If the gentleman would yield. If they think that more than half of us vote to say that's a bad priority set, I mean, that's just a bad piece of deal, that the majority would win in that circumstance. But under our rules, and they have been in place for a long, long time, it goes back to the Appropriations Committee. They get a second bite at the apple in setting priorities, it's just not the way most folks run their project.

Mr. CONAWAY. Will the gentleman yield? Some of those amendments were cosponsored in regular legislation by Democrats. Yet when it came to the Budget Committee they voted against them. In their own bills on the floor over here, they voted against them, just partisan, partisan politics. It helped to add to that cynical attitude that you are referring to.

Mr. CONAWAY. On policies we debate in this Chamber, we always have choices. And it seems as though recently with respect to spending, the choice is to spend more. With respect to taxes, the choice is to tax more. With energy, the choice is to raise energy costs. All of those things are not good for the American taxpayer. All of those things are not good for the health of this country. And in particular, the seven grandkids that I love the most, it is clearly not good for their financial health or well-being, and we clearly need to do something about it. I thank the gentlelady for letting me participate tonight.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I move to strike the last word.

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Chairman, things that we do in this Chamber have consequences, and the things we don't do in Chamber also have consequences. Quite frankly, there are a lot things that we are not doing that are having immense consequences, things like renewing the FISA bill, the war supplemental, long-term issues like Social Security and Medicaid. We had another one today, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, which are things that will have consequences because we have not dealt with this on the floor. The internal combustion engine will be used for a long time to power pleasure craft on our lakes and beaches and waterways. The public policy decisions that we are taking in here and have taken in here make that use of those boats and jet skis much more expensive. Public policy decisions that are specifically aimed at increasing the energy costs to all Americans are things like raising taxes on energy companies so that they are no longer able to use that money to explore for and produce additional crude oil and natural gas, restrictions on where we can drill for these additional sources of crude oil and natural gas, and the gasoline that results from that to power our water crafts and jet ski, added regulations on the production of crude oil and natural gas, added regulations on the refining of crude oil and natural gas and the gasoline that can be used to power jet skis and motor boats and others, and even new regulations that are coming that will increase the cost of electricity to American consumers and American businesses. All of these public policy decisions that we make in this House and have made in this House are specifically designed to raise the operating costs of all these vehicles to consumers in America. It is the elephant in the room that none of us want to talk about as we go forward with the energy policy that is put forth by the leadership of the current House. That is, they specifically want Americans paying higher gasoline prices because when you reduce supplies, as these policies do in the face of increasing demand, then the law of supply and demand works, in spite of our best efforts, and costs go up. As we have seen, gasoline prices are at an all-time high. This weekend, which will be a wonderful weekend to be on our beaches and lakes, using those watercrafts, the gasoline that will be purchased to pay for that recreational use this weekend will be much higher than it otherwise would have been than if we had taken rational steps with respect to energy policy in this country.

Mr. CONAWAY. I, too, want to congratulate the majority party for bringing an open rule bill to the floor. It is a rare event. And hopefully our side won't wear out its welcome so poorly that this is the last open rule bill that is brought. I know it has to happen on appropriations bills, but we are not too excited about those coming later this year. I rise in support of the Flake amendment. It is a pretty straightforward amendment that, to quote an often poorly used phrase, the opponent doth protest too much. I have not heard anything really as to why it is inappropriate for this to be attached to the legislation, how this would cripple the legislation, how this would prevent the monitoring processes, how this would prevent the grant-based programming from functioning. I have just heard arguments that ``let's don't do it because we have never done it that way before.'' And I am persuaded that under the Department of Homeland Security example, this idea of ``let's just, because we have not done it before, we won't do it in the future.'' And I would prefer to have a straightforward statement in this important legislation. We had an event this past year where a young man, although this legislation won't affect this because it happened in one of the lakes in Texas, where a young man had an amoeba-borne illness get into his brain, and it killed him. It was a freak and tragic accident. And obviously this legislation is aimed at trying to prevent similar type of occurrences on our beaches, coastal beaches I guess, but the idea that somehow because we have been pure in the past we will remain pure in the future. And our history here with respect to earmarks is anything but that. So as we look at the Flake amendment and why it is important, I hope that someone can rise to say, here is a mechanical reason why it is inappropriate to have this earmark restriction, this statement, flatout statement that I think both sides can agree on. Because while earmarking doesn't really fix the overall spending pattern and the overall spending problem that we have in this Congress, because everybody knows that the annual budget is set, and every one of those nickels that get allocated to the Appropriations Committee will get spent, and most all of this earmark churn happens within that number. And so to the extent that we do away with all earmarks, it really won't impact the total amount spent. My grandchildren, of whom I have seven, have a $53 trillion debt staring them in the face because we have made $53 trillion in unfunded promises to each other, issues that we think are important to my generation and my parents' generation, but we are taking their money to pay for it. So anything that we can do to begin the process of restricting spending on issues like earmarks in this instance, on a bill that clearly works best on a grant-based formula, where the mileage of the beaches are assessed in each State and the money is parceled out that way as fairly as it can be, we can argue how much that money ought to be from time to time, but to expose it to the earmarking process I think is inappropriate. I hope, like I said, that the Members who oppose the mechanics of this can help those of us who don't understand the mechanics understand why an earmark restriction that the Flake amendment would put in place cripples and hamstrings this otherwise good legislation, because all of us want safe water to swim in and to play in, but we also want my grandchildren to be able to afford to address the issues they have in front of them some 50 years from now with their money. Quite frankly, it is going to take a Herculean effort among all of us here and everybody listening today to rein in that $53 trillion in unfunded promises. This House, as important as this legislation is, continues to ignore major problems facing this country, problems like the FISA reauthorization, problems like the war supplemental, problems like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. We continue to simply let those slide, and those failed actions have consequences. We are going to add another one today, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement. By refusing to take action on the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, we have left more work undone as we go about all this business. All of that has consequences. As many of my colleagues have said, it has consequences on energy policy, it has consequences on the fiscal policy of this country. I think this is a simple step on a simple bill that would allow the fiscal operations of this process to go forward in an appropriate and in a correct manner. So, I urge my colleagues to support the Flake amendment, should we get a vote on that. Madam Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to congratulate Clayton W. Williams, Jr., on his receipt of the Conservation Champion Award from the Texas Parks & Wildlife Foundation. Claytie, as he is affectionately known, is a favorite son of Texas, not only for his business acumen, but also for his unending generosity and tireless volunteerism. The Conservation Champion Award is but the most recent in a long list of honors that have been bestowed upon him for his philanthropic activities. Throughout his life, Claytie has been at the forefront of the conservation movement. Recently, Claytie and his wife, Modesta, granted one of the largest conservation easements in Texas history: 60,000 acres spread across two ranches. By doing so, they have set aside this land for future development and preserved the land's unspoiled character, picturesque vistas, and natural habitat forever. Madam Speaker, I congratulate Claytie today, and my words are recorded in the Congressional Record. It is my wish that this small statement about his service will last as long as the gift he has given to Texas. I hope that in the distant future when we are all long passed away, someone finds these words and realizes that there was not always a movement to preserve open space and there was not always 60,000 acres in southwest Texas kept as pristine as they were 100 years ago. The gift Claytie has given the people of Texas will last as long as our Union. We should remember this man of extraordinary vision and foresight for at least that long. Through his leadership and actions, the State of Texas, and indeed, all of America, is more conscious of its natural heritage, more thoughtful of the land on which we live, and more interested in preserving all of it for the coming generations. On behalf of my constituents of the 11th District of Texas, I want to express my thanks to Clayton and his wife, Modesta, for his lifetime of generosity, and to congratulate him on the receipt of the Conservation Champion Award.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank my colleague for that. More on the spending issue, which is totally within the Members of this body's control, starting with the leadership of this House, dictates the pace at which that legislation should come to us. We should have already dealt with it a long time ago. But since we haven't, there are some pending consequences for not getting that done quickly. By mid June, the military personnel account will be exhausted, and all military services will have to begin shifting money around, which, again, is just a back office accounting thing. But it delays purchasing the long lead items that are necessary to be bought out of this supplemental. This supplemental is intended not only to pay for the fight that is going on immediately, but it is also to pay for replacement of equipment and gear that is being destroyed and worn out as we fight this fight. That gear is special. You don't go down to your local Ford dealer and pick up a pickup truck. It takes long lead times to actually get that money set in place. So while we casually ignore it, we do so at the peril of our young men and women who fight this fight. I want to recount to you a story. I've been to Iraq five times now to visit our troops and hug their necks and tell them ``thank you.'' Probably my most memorable trip was Christmas Day of 2006. I was there with Ike Skelton and a couple of other Members of Congress. And it was particularly meaningful to be away from my family and be with men and women who are away from their families, to share that experience. I was only away from my family for about 5 or 6 days, nothing like the 15- month deployments that our men and women are enduring right now. But nevertheless, it was great to be there with them. At Camp Victory, we went out to a perimeter fence where this particular Kentucky National Guard unit was guarding this fence for the base. And a Lieutenant Colonel Lutrell had come out, having just returned from a trip outside the wire. He had gone to a mosque. You could see the minarets just across our fence. And he had gone over there to talk to the cleric about some sort of a neighborhood watch program because of what was happening. There was an elementary school right near there that some Shia gunmen and thugs were sneaking into and using that platform to shoot at our men and women walking that wire. So this lieutenant colonel had gone to the imam, or cleric, there, because it was a Sunni neighborhood. He said, we could work out a deal. If you just give us the heads up, we will stop that. It helps you because they are just trying to force us to fire back at them into the school. And they were taking the chance of hurting their guys. So he was discussing with us about what was going on. And a young buck sergeant kind of eased up to kind of the back side of the deal. And I was standing looking at the name tags, and it was Lieutenant Colonel Lutrell and it was Sergeant Lutrell. And when I got a chance to say something, I said, you two men have the same last name. And the lieutenant colonel said, let me introduce you to my son, Sergeant Lutrell. And my comment was, sir, your wife and his mother must be a saint to be able to endure having two very, I assume, very important men in her life in harm's way. But that is indicative of the kind of commitment to country, commitment to duty, and commitment to that flag that is played out hundreds and hundreds and thousands of times every single day over the last 6 or 7 years that we have been in the fight, good men and women stepping forward, putting education on hold, putting families on hold, putting family decisions on hold, while they went to do a job that not very many people are qualified to do, not very many people are willing to do. So in the words of Ambassador Crocker today, our current course is hard, but it is working. I look forward to some additional dialogue with my good colleague a little later in this hour.

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the gentleman from Louisiana, my friend, my classmate of the Class of 2005. I am glad to be with you tonight. I did sit today through General Petraeus' testimony, as well as Ambassador Crocker's testimony, and then later in the afternoon, we heard from both General Richard Cody, as well as General Robert Magnus, Army Vice Chief, and the Marine Corps Vice Chief respectively, on the status of our current forces. And I would like to talk about kind of a combination of those conversations that we heard today. Ambassador Crocker was asked, what does success look like in Iraq? We ought to know both sides of the equation, both sides of the coin of success and failure. He described ``success'' in Iraq as an Iraq that is developed into a united, stable country with a democratically elected government that operates under the rule of law. And that is a path that they are on to. Ambassador Crocker also said today that just because something is hard, as this mission is, does not make it impossible, does not mean it is hopeless simply because it is hard. We have seen some progress on the government side, the national government as well as the provincial government side, in making progress. This surge, as it has been described, was intended to reduce violence as your chart shows. It was intended to allow the government to begin to function in an atmosphere where daily death was not an issue, but they could have the conversations and the sharp disagreements from a debate standpoint on how to run that country. And they have made some progress, not nearly as much we would like, but Ambassador Crocker pointed out today that something as simple as an Iraqi flag, the Council of Representatives and the leadership have adopted a national flag that now flies throughout the country. The Kurds would not fly the flag that had flown previous to that because it had such a connection to Saddam Hussein. And so something just as simple as rallying around a single flag, and we all know how important our flag is to us in its representation to our country, they have been able to do that, and now a common Iraqi flag flies over that country. They have executed a 2008 budget recently in September which provides for record amounts of infrastructure spending, oil revenues that they are getting from these record high oil prices that they are now plowing back into the infrastructure that every government would have to do that is in that circumstance. They have passed a pension law that addresses some of the pension issues related to people that were there. They have passed an accountability and justice law after vigorous debate on both sides because this deals with de-Baathification, in other words, that process of bringing those Iraqi citizens who had previously been Baath party members under Saddam Hussein, ferreting out those who had sold out to Saddam's thuggery and really just have to be retired, and those who simply were members of the Baath party in order to have a job, in order to be a schoolteacher, in order to be a local administrator. They passed a Provincial Powers Act which deals with the elections that are coming up in October, elections which now all major parties have endorsed and they are going to support and will come to the table including the Sunnis. And these are not earth shattering. They are not all that they need to do. But this is a clear line of march down a path that this surge, with its sacrifices that had been made, has provided a space to get that done, and they are making progress. We all want them to make much more progress than they have made. We want them to be quicker than they have currently been. Today, General Petraeus told us that his team on the ground seized the successes that they have had and take great comfort in that. They take great pride in what they are doing. One of the issues that comes up is continuing to replace the number of folks in our Army that we need, I'm speaking specifically of the Army. Third, he told us today the third I.D. has met its April goal for total re-enlistments already just from people serving in Iraq. General Cody participated in a re- enlistment service earlier this month in Iraq. Men who were defending their country today signed up for additional tours and additional extensions on their service to this country, which is an incredibly heartening issue. As I said, ``hard'' does not mean hopeless. But imagine how much easier this fight would be if every American recognized enemy propaganda for what that really is and could parse that out of what we try to think about. Imagine if every American would not tolerate inaccurate reporting and biased reporting out of our media, how much easier our tasks might be. Imagine if all those Americans who oppose this war, and have every right to, would refrain from using rhetoric that is cast just to discourage our fighters, just to cause our veterans to question their service to our country. And the easy one is imagine how much easier this fight would have been had Congress provided the funding on a timely basis through the supplemental process that we have been doing it on. We have a large supplemental that is hung up. It was requested last summer, and this Congress has sat on its fist, leaning back on its thumb for 7 months now, waiting for who knows what. I think it is waiting until next week rolls around, quite frankly.

Mr. CONAWAY. As we draw to the close of this hour, I want to talk briefly about something that also came up in today's conversation. General Petraeus, you went through his resume awhile ago, something that you didn't mention was that he has been deployed overseas, away from his family 4\1/2\ years since this fight began in 2001, a significant sacrifice for his family, and in order for him to do the job that we have asked him to do. He said he is keenly aware, personally as well as for the men and women that he leads, that the impact that multiple deployments have had, the impact of the 15-month deployment instead of the 12-month deployment is having on these troops. He said that they have answered the call every single time and have not yet one time blinked in the face of some incredible sacrifices and commitments that we are asking them to take on. One of the problems that we face here stateside is that a remarkably small percentage of Americans have been directly involved in this fight. We have a little more than 4,000 families now whose lives are forever changed as a result of that knock on the door saying that their loved one has been killed in action or killed in one of these two fights in Afghanistan or Iraq. We have 25,000 or so others wounded in some level of severity, some who have returned to the fight, and many who have life-altering circumstances that happened in the blink of the eye. None of them joined our services to get hurt like that; but they have, and they are now facing a different life, a different style of doing things than they ever contemplated before. They also talked about the men and women who continue to sign up to serve their country. Men and women who know if you join our Army or our Marine Corps today, given this persistent war that we are going to be in, they will fight. This isn't your granddad's army. This is an Army and a Marine Corps that will be asked to fight. I marvel personally at the strength and resolve and resoluteness that these families exhibit. Individually they have made incredible sacrifices. I get a tiny, little glimpse of the anxiety when I go to Afghanistan and Iraq because of the concern and worry that Suzanne, my wife, has while I am away. You and I when we go are never in harm's way. So that helps me a little bit empathize with what the families back home go through 24 hours a day, 7 days a week when they have a loved one in harm's way. While the loved one in harm's way knows whether or not something scary is going on, the folks back home think it is happening all the time and they live in dread of something bad happening. In the face of those sacrifices and commitments that we have asked them to make, they are standing tall and reenlisting in numbers that are appropriate, and new people are coming into the system in numbers that are sufficient to grow the Marine Corps as well as grow the Army which will help shift some of the burden, spread some of the burden out across a larger number of troops. But I stand in awe of how magnificent these warrior families are, as well as their warriors, doing a job that their Commander-in-Chief has asked them to do and that their Nation has asked them to do, and a fight that I personally believe protects America's interests and also keeps us safer at home than we otherwise would have been.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to congratulate the Howard Payne University Lady Jackets on their 2008 NCAA Division III Women's Basketball National Championship. In this, their fourth consecutive appearance in the tournament, the Lady Jackets defeated the Messiah University Falcons 68-54. Winning the National Championship was a fitting end to an unbelievable season for this rising basketball powerhouse. From day one the women of the Lady Jackets unwaveringly pursued excellence, and in the end they achieved perfection. The Lady Jackets finished with a record of 33-0, the only perfect record of any of the 3,823 men's and women's collegiate basketball teams in this country. Located in Brownwood, Texas, Howard Payne University is a small school of 1,400 students that I am honored to represent. As Division III athletes, the members of the Lady Jackets team receive no scholarships or lucrative contracts for their collegiate exploits. Rather, these women play for the thrill of competition and the glory of their achievements. Every minute of every team practice, at every meeting, and every game is endured for the love of basketball. I am proud to commend the Lady Jackets today, not only for their victories but also for their dedication to their sport and to each other in the drive to be the best. It is my great pleasure to extend my personal congratulations to team members Tiffany Warner, Katy Sarem, Stephanie Brewer, Mionca Hall, Daphnie Pippins, Kimberly Hoffman, Makiesha Davis, Meia Daniels, Elaine Hobbs, Stacey Blalock, Hope Hohertz, Sarah Pfiester, and Sarah Jockers on their remarkable accomplishments. I'd also like to congratulate coaches Mr. Chris Kielsmeier and Ms. Lindy Hatfield, who coached this year's team. This season belongs to them as well. While a coach's devotion to their team is often displayed simply in the wins column, this perfect season speaks volumes about Mr. Kielsmeier and Ms. Hatfield's ability to bring out the very best of their players and nurture the talents of their team. Mr. Speaker, hallowed as these walls that we work in are, we rarely have an opportunity to witness perfection, that which cannot be improved upon. Lest we forget what such accomplishments look like, the women of the Lady Jackets have reminded us that there are rare moments in time when imperfect individuals can work together to achieve perfect results. I hope that by taking time to celebrate these small moments we can remind ourselves the importance of working together to achieve success. And, again, Lady Jackets, congratulations on a very unforgettable season.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank the ranking member. The Democrats' budget clearly shows, and depends on collecting, the largest increase in taxes in our Nation's history. Most tax experts agree that one of the hallmarks of good tax policy is consistency and stability in that code. A high degree of uncertainty about future tax policy makes long-term planning difficult for both families and businesses, and that uncertainty can have a negative impact on economic growth, yet this majority continues to actively foster that uncertainty, again producing a budget that depends on the collection of the largest increase in taxes in American history. Congress recently passed a bipartisan stimulus package that will give struggling families some of their tax dollars back with the hopes that they will spend this money and bolster our economy. But before they can even get these checks out the door, the Democrats have unveiled a budget that will take back all of that money, plus billions of dollars more. Do we really expect families to go out and spend money when they've got a host of new income taxes that will dramatically decrease their discretionary income hanging over their heads? Last year, the new Congress waited until the 11th hour to pass a 1- year AMT patch, in effect threatening more than 20 million Americans with an average tax hike of $2,000. This AMT slow walk, according to the Treasury, has now forced 3 million taxpayers to delay filing their tax returns to collect child care, education, and energy credits. If, as the Democrats claim, they actually intend to stick to their PAYGO rule from now on, and as an aside, last night's ethics bill completely ignored the PAYGO impact, Americans can expect to see their tax burdens rise to a level never seen before in our Nation. But just whose tax bills are going to explode, and when, we're not sure. My point here is that, beyond the damage they will do when taxes actually go up in 2011, 2012 and 2013, the majority is doing a great disservice to American workers and businesses and our economy as a whole by maintaining this tax uncertainty. As a result, we have a whole Nation of workers and businesses with no idea of what their tax burden will look like in the future, let alone in this coming year. And I can't imagine too many folks going out and buying new refrigerators, or too many businesses investing, expanding and the creating new jobs necessary to get our economy back on track with that kind of uncertainty hanging over their heads.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 87, The ``Iraq and Afghanistan Fallen Military Heroes of Louisville Memorial Post Office'' Designation Act, in honor of the service men and women from Louisville, Kentucky, who died in service during Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, I was unable to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 86, H.R. 3936--The ``Sgt. Jason Harkins Post Office'' Designation Act, I was unable to vote. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I was laboring under a misconception that the debate was to be limited to the point of order rather than the underlying bill itself. So since the other side has raised the issues in the bill, I'll take a couple of seconds to add some gratuitous comments about those as well rather than strictly talking about my point of order. At a time when we are clearly dependent on foreign oil, imported foreign oil, crude oil, and natural gas, and everyone recognizes that it's a strategic vulnerability to our country, a reduction in domestic production of crude oil and natural gas seems to be very wrongheaded in the sense of trying to reduce our dependency on imported foreign oil and natural gas. This bill will take $17 billion out of the search for crude oil and natural gas, domestic supplies in most instances, and put it towards some very worthy initiatives in terms of trying to find alternatives to that. There is no rational projection that any of these alternatives will develop in the next 15 to 20 years to supplant the need for crude oil and natural gas to drive the economy, whether you're talking about generating electricity or driving cars and trucks and airplanes. So at a time when we are fully dependent on crude oil and natural gas, it seems to make eminent sense that we ought to be encouraging domestic oil and gas companies to reinvest their profits, reinvest their moneys back in the ground. Now, mechanically what happens with respect to the oil and gas business is when they do find crude oil and natural gas, they find reserves in the ground and there is value associated with those reserves. Typically, those producers then go to the bank and use those reserves as collateral in the ground to borrow more money to spend additional money going into the ground. So for each dollar that we increase their taxes, there is a multiple of that dollar that does not get spent on searches for crude oil and natural gas that would be used domestically. We do nothing about the restrictions on a responsible, environmentally sound development of other areas that have proven crude oil and natural gas reserves, domestic crude oil and natural gas reserves. We do nothing in this legislation to affect that. In addition, my colleagues brought up the vaunted PAYGO rule, which is used almost every day in this Chamber. Quite frankly, these taxes have been used multiple times already in this Congress to pay for a variety of things. So if our constituents back home fully understood how theatrical the PAYGO situations with this bill really are, they would be probably offended, that that is just the typical Washington business-as-usual kinds of things that are going on. So while this bill, I believe, creates an unfunded mandate that is in violation of the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act and it should be properly subject to this point of order, the underlying bill itself is flawed on a variety of things as well. I will close, then, by just saying that I believe this point of order should be sustained and this rule should be defeated. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, this bill that is the subject of this rule that is about to come before us includes two tax increases, one on section 199, which eliminates the oil and gas industry's ability to take advantage of this provision within the law to increase their taxes over the next 10 years by some $13 billion. There is also some tweaking with, and that's an odd word to use when it raises $4 billion, but a tweaking with the way foreign oil and gas income plays into the computation of the foreign tax credits that these companies could take advantage of. Both of these violate the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act provision on private initiatives and therefore are subject to this point of order on being waived. So I think that favorable consideration of this point of order is where we should be going with respect to the private sector mandates that are waived under this rule. Mr. Speaker, I would also at this point in time like to yield such time as he may consume to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Flake).

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, I make a point of order against the consideration of the resolution because it is in violation of section 426(a) of the Congressional Budget Act. The resolution provides that all points of order against consideration of the bill are waived except those arising under clause 9 and 10 of rule XXI. This waiver of all points of order includes a waiver of section 425 of the Congressional Budget Act which causes the resolution to be in violation of section 426(a).

Mr. CONAWAY. I thank my colleague for pointing that out. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Budget Office on a similar, almost exact, bill, 2776, earlier in the year, clearly stated that these were unfunded mandates. They breached the threshold appropriate under the Unfunded Mandate Reform Act, and a point of order should be sustained against this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Mr. Speaker, it's good to be with you this afternoon. I want to spend most of the next hour talking about the oil and gas business and energy issues in general but specifically about the oil and gas business. In the interest of full and fair disclosure, I grew up in West Texas, home to much of the oil and gas production from the Permian Basin, and I now have the high honor of representing much of that region in Congress. My dad was in the oil business. He had a service company for the last 25 years of his career. I had oil and gas clients in my professional career. And so I hope the fact that I have some background and experience in this area doesn't disqualify me from talking about things that I know and that doesn't discount what I have to say. In looking at our overall energy picture, almost every legitimate projection of energy usage in this country, over the next 20-plus years, shows that crude oil and natural gas will continue to be a vital part, an important part of the energy complement for this country for the next 20-plus years, as I mentioned. There are no breakthrough technologies. There are no scientific advances that anyone can anticipate today that would reduce our dependency, particularly as it relates to driving cars and trucks and airplanes, on crude oil and natural gas. We don't produce enough of it domestically to meet the needs of our existing oil and gas needs, so consequently we import 60-plus percent of the crude oil, natural gas and gasoline products that we use every single day. And that percentage is growing, unfortunately. Most commentators, and I agree, would believe that this importation of crude oil and natural gas from foreign sources coming from countries whose leadership hate us, whose political schemes are directly opposed to what we would want to do, is not in our best interest and represents a strategic vulnerability that our country has to other parts of the world that in many instances can be far less stable than you would want to count on. So given the fact that we will be using crude oil and natural gas for the next 20, 30-plus years, and that we don't produce enough of it ourselves, it would seem that it would be in our best interest to promote policies that encourage and incentivize additional production of domestic crude oil and natural gas, policies and incentives like allowing the responsible and environmentally sound exploration of areas in this country which we currently, either by law or by executive order, prevent our crude oil and natural gas exploration companies from having access to, promoting policies that, to the extent that it is safe and sound, reducing and eliminating unnecessary bureaucratic red tape. You can look at the reasons we've not built a refinery in this country for a number of years is because of the long lead times it takes to get that done. The approval process, or the bureaucratic nightmare that companies have to go through, all of the money they invest on the front end, they don't get the return on that money until the plant is built and done, and the longer you extend that timeframe between when you start to when you actually begin to refine crude oil adds to your cost, it adds to the carrying cost, it adds to the cost of the money you've borrowed, and is a disincentive to actually entering into that particular business. So when we on this floor from time to time, today may have been one of those times, when we on this floor from time to time put in place new laws, new regulations, added taxes and other burdens on the domestic and international oil and gas companies, we are, in effect, I believe, cutting our nose off to spite our face, because increased domestic production offsets the need for additional import of crude oil and natural gas. No one that I'm aware of with any rational thought thinks that we can produce enough domestic crude oil and natural gas to completely wean ourselves from international imports or foreign imports of crude oil and natural gas. So it's not about totally doing away with those, but at least putting ourselves in a position to make ourselves less dependent on those foreign sources of crude oil and natural gas. My colleagues earlier this afternoon were talking about the high cost of gasoline. And gasoline is high here in the United States. It is higher in other parts of the world than it is here in the United States, but that's scant comfort to the consumers and the folks out there who are, as they stand at the pump and they watch that price ratchet up past $40 and $50 for a tank full of gasoline, the fact that there are people around the world paying more for their gasoline than we are is not much comfort as that happens. I understand that the high cost of diesel, whether it's ag producers or farmers or long distance truckers, whatever it is, adds to their operating cost. The cost of gasoline, of course, has taken an increasingly larger share of the family budget as that number goes up, and that's something that should be of concern to all of us. The bad news is that over time those costs will simply continue to get higher. Short of a worldwide recession, in which demand for crude oil and natural gas was dramatically lessened or reduced, we are going to continue to have increases in the price of crude oil, an increase in the price of natural gas, and that, of course, will be reflected at the pump. Our job should be to try to minimize those increases or delay those increases as long as we can, to smooth them out as best we can to allow consumers and businesses to make the accommodations they need to to begin to live with these higher gasoline and diesel prices that we're currently experiencing. A big jump that we have seen from $30 a barrel to today, I guess, $100-plus per barrel has had an impact, a surprisingly limited impact to the extent that the economy that we've enjoyed over the last several years has not gone down as much as most folks had predicted with a rapid increase in crude oil and natural gas prices. But nevertheless, families are paying more out of their family budget each month for gasoline, and that's not going to get any better. We can make it worse with the policies that we pass on this floor to the extent that as we make it more expensive to find and produce crude oil and natural gas, we will add to the costs and the burdens of families that are unnecessary additions to costs by taking a different tack of promoting and incenting crude oil and natural gas producers to produce more, then we would help go a long way of providing additional supply as the demand goes up. So I was in Midland, Texas, in 1998 and 1999 when the price of crude oil was $10, $11 a barrel, a scant 9 years ago. It's hard to believe that today it's 10 times that number. But there's the yo-yo effect with respect to crude oil and natural gas prices. We have seen those prices go up and down dramatically over the last 40 years. I think the difference this time in this run-up is that China and India are much greater consumers of crude oil than they were in the late 1990s, so we were able to see a price drop to $10 a barrel. I don't think anyone realistically expects that to happen because you have got additional consumers in the market, and those consumers are China and Japan, as I mentioned. I was in China last April and was told that a thousand new cars a day are being added to the traffic pattern in Beijing alone. A similar statistic for Shanghai. These aren't cars or people that are switching from one car to another. These are folks who are getting off their bicycles and beginning to drive automobiles. So this is a net-plus increase in the demand for crude oil and natural gas that has not been there before. So while the prices are high, they will fluctuate some, but I don't think we will ever go back to the levels that we have seen 5 and 6 and 7 years ago. The people who produce crude oil and natural gas, those companies are vilified in the press and, sad to say, with our Presidential candidates from time to time, as well as Members of this House come to this floor and will say some pretty outrageous things about the companies that supply us with the level of crude oil and natural gas that we have today at these prices as if they are some sort of a bad person. When we make critical statements, critical statements about corporations, and let's take ExxonMobil, for instance, because they're the easiest target having just released earnings this past week or so, earlier this month, showing that they had set a record for a 2007 profit of some $40.7 billion. That is a huge number in any comparison, except, perhaps, maybe the total Federal budget. But it's out of context as it is taken most the time. It can be criticized, and some very unflattering adjectives are used such as ``outlandish,'' ``unjustifiable,'' or ``appalling'' or ``ruthless.'' These words have been used by some of my colleagues to describe ExxonMobil, and that's unfortunate. Now, I'm not an apologist for ExxonMobil. They're a corporation, and if they've done something wrong, they should be held to high standards of conduct. But to the extent they have played the rules and played the game within the rules that are set for them, the fact that they have been successful, the fact that they have done well should not be held against them simply because the fact that they've done this well. They are not price gouging. Their prices are set by the international market like everybody else's. And the fact that they are big helps them do things that smaller companies simply cannot do. The investments, the billion-dollar investments that are necessary to explore for and to produce crude oil in some of the more remote areas of this world require huge investments, and it takes big companies to be able to do that. And the fact that ExxonMobil is in that arena and is successful at it should not be denigrated the way it is. Here is some of the bad things that ExxonMobil does, if you think that making money in the oil business is, in and of itself, bad. They produce some 4.2 million barrels of crude oil a day, an oil equivalence of some 637,000 barrels a day. So that's a sizable production of things. I don't have the exact percentage of total worldwide percentage that that is off the top of my head, but I think the production is about 80 million barrels a day. ExxonMobil is 4.2. So that is a sizable piece. When you consider the governmentally owned entities in that 80 million, ExxonMobil is a small player, given the fact that Saudi Arabia and others, as a group owned by the governments, are much bigger producers than that. ExxonMobil, out of that $40.7 billion that they earned in 2007, they paid out $7.6 billion in dividends to their shareholders. Now, when we denigrate corporations, it's easy to do because we don't put a face on the corporation. We just think of it as an entity. But the truth of the matter is corporations can't do anything without people, employees, and directors and others at ExxonMobil. So when we make negative and ugly comments about this corporation or any corporation, we are, in effect, talking about the people who work there. ExxonMobil has some 82,000 employees worldwide. That's 82,000 families who feed their families, feed their kids from hard work and the successful work at ExxonMobil; 82,000 families who own homes, 82,000 families that try to find a way to send their kids to college and pay for health care and take care of the things that they need to do to put braces on their children and all of those kind of things that families do. Those people are no different than anyone else working in America or around this world. They've got the exact same cares and responsibilities that every parent has. And so to denigrate the corporation and, by extension, these 82,000 people is really unfair. Hidden in the conversation about the profits that ExxonMobil made of some $40.7 billion was the fact that they paid some $32 billion in taxes; $32 billion in taxes. Now, if you added up the bottom 50 percent of all individual taxpayers in the United States, I think that number is some $27 billion. And so ExxonMobil single handedly paid as much in taxes as half of the individual taxpayers in the United States, actually paid more than that half. And so as you talk about all of the bad things that ExxonMobil has done, saying they're guilty of some pretty rotten stuff: creating 82,000 jobs, paying out $7.6 billion in dividends to their shareholders, creating the wealth that relates to what those shareholders do. Those shareholders have bought stock in this company. They bought it expecting to be able to sell it at some point in time in the future for a profit, which is not bad, because when they sell that, they will pay capital gains taxes on that. The 7.6 billion, to the extent it went to taxable entities and not to retirement plans or IRAs, those taxpayers pay taxes on that 7.6 billion. So there's an additional 7.6. The 82,000 employees that are U.S. citizens pay individual income taxes on their salaries as well. And they're paying the payroll taxes, and ExxonMobil is matching those payroll taxes in a responsible way. So, as you see, the comments made about the amount of money that ExxonMobil has made, please put it into context with the amount of money that they would have to invest in order to do that. The return on shareholders' investments is in line with other U.S. corporations and other industries within the United States. It should be a good investment. It should create wealth for the shareholders that are able to take advantage of owning that stock having bought it when hopefully the price is lower than what they could sell it for. So, as you hear comments, negative comments, if it is about the breaking of a law or something like that, fine. We will deal with that. But if it is just the fact that they're big and the fact that they found a lot of crude oil, natural gas, and produced a lot of it, then those are misplaced. And when you make those comments about what Exxon does within the rules, you are criticizing people. You are criticizing 82,000 folks around this world who are getting up, going to work every single day trying to do the best job they can at providing a resource and a commodity that all of us enjoy each and every single day. I did not mention the fact that ExxonMobil refines 5.6 million barrels a day worldwide and almost 4.7 million barrels a day here in the United States. So, again, jobs are created up and down the stream with respect to the oil and gas business. As you look at energy policy, I think that we spend a lot of time in this Hall talking about what we should be doing, and yet we don't listen to each other very well in terms of what the impact is of what we are trying to do. And consequently, we don't have in place rational policy for what we should be doing in this country. There are two broad areas of energy that we should talk about separately: One is electricity generation and the other is crude oil and natural gas. That is what we use to drive our cars. With respect to electricity, we have had a dramatic event in Florida yesterday where we had a blackout, an infrastructure failure, overload of some sort that quickly got corrected, but it was a microcosm of a wreck that would happen if we didn't have adequate supplies of electricity. Now, the growth in this country in terms of population, with it comes an automatic growth in the use of electricity. That's just the nature of the beast. Now, we should be doing all that we can to conserve. We should be using smart appliances and smart light bulbs and doing all of those kinds of things. But the truth of the matter is, as the population of the United States increases, we need more energy, more electricity to be able to meet the needs of this increased population, whether that is lighting their homes, air-conditioning their homes, providing electricity to power the businesses in which they work. That is going to be a demand that is there and is growing. If we don't continue to invest in generating capacity, then we are going to get caught in a circumstance where our demand has outrun or outstripped our ability to supply that energy, and we will have very sizable increases in the cost of electricity. You can see what happened a number of years ago in California where they got caught in that exact same wrinkle. They discouraged generating capacity to be built in California, but yet the demand for electricity continued to increase and they got caught in circumstances where the demand was higher than the supply and they had a dramatic increase in prices. They had some regulatory issues involved that created that problem, but when you have demand that outstrips supply, you have large price increases in that arena. And those kinds of circumstances have the dramatic effect on individuals as well as businesses, because when you are putting your monthly budget together or your business plan for your company, you try to estimate what your costs are going to be over a near-term and mid-term circumstance; and you ought to be able to predict reasonably close what your energy costs should be over the next 4 or 5 or 6 months. And when you get sharp spike increases, as was seen in California, then that wreaks havoc not only in the family budget but also with businesses that are subject to passing on those electrical costs through their products and services ultimately to consumers. So as we look at the electrical side of this thing, we should be promoting wind, as we see in west Texas, and solar and hydropower. All of these alternative and green sources of electricity should be promoted as well. But the growth in that side of the business cannot even keep up with the growth in the demand. We've got two circumstances: natural gas-generated electricity, we've got coal used to generate electricity, and we've got nuclear that is used to generate electricity. Those are the three main backbones of the current grid. And so as you look at those plants, they are all getting older every single day. Recently, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has been able to go through a second round of licensing for existing plants and has been able, because of the good maintenance and upkeep and the proper operating procedures and plans that have been in place at the nuclear plants, have been able to extend the useful life of the current complement of plants we have for another 10 to 15 to 20 years, which is important, because the time frame of which a lot of that production capacity was built, they're all going to fall off the grid in a relatively short period of time, which means the supply is going to dry up if we don't create additional sources of electrical generation that can be counted upon. So we've got a problem, going forward, with how to generate electricity. The green sources can't keep up with the growth in demand. Natural gas is an expensive commodity. We're not drilling for sources of domestic gas. And because natural gas is hard to import, those prices and costs of generating electricity using natural gas will continue to go up faster than the cost of using coal or nuclear. The backbone of the grid, for certainly my lifetime and perhaps even my children's lifetime and beyond, will have to be nuclear and clean coal burning technologies. I don't think realistically there is any other way to generate electricity on the scope that we're going to have to generate it on and get it done. If you don't acknowledge that, if you put your head in the sand, then you develop policies that will not promote a rational, orderly, thoughtful process of how to provide electricity for this country over the next 50 or 60 years, and that is an unfortunate circumstance that we see ourselves in. None of the alternative sources can fully replace everything that's going on, and yet we seem to be placing great reliance, or hope, that we can develop these alternative sources, green sources of electrical generation in time to offset the loss of the nuclear power plants that ultimately wear out, the coal-powered plants that ultimately wear out, and the natural gas that is a commodity of seemingly infinite supply. But that's wrong, too, because crude oil and natural gas are finite resources. There will be a day, a long time from now, when the last barrel will be produced and the last MCF of natural gas will be produced because it is such a finite resource and takes so long, millions of years, to create it underground. The argument about nuclear is that it's unsafe and unsound. It's dangerous. I had the opportunity to visit the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant that's just on the eastern edge of my district. It's not in my district, it's just outside on the eastern edge. Quite frankly, I had never been to a nuclear power plant, and so it was an eye-opening experience for me. Everybody had the little meters on, DOSA meters on that will show whether or not you've had an exposure to radiation that is inappropriate. We actually, as a part of that tour, went into the storage facility for the spent fuel rods, the spent rods that they've used over the years to create the nuclear reactions. And I'll admit to being a little apprehensive. You simply walk through this door and you're standing in front of what appears to be a giant swimming pool. At the bottom of this pool of water are these spent rods. And I kept kind of glancing at my DOSA meter to make sure that I wasn't getting a dose of radiation. Sure enough, I was not. It's perfectly safe. But I didn't know that. Ahead of time, if you would have said that this spent fuel is stored underwater like that in an open arena pool, I would have been a little bit skeptical about how safe that was. But our nuclear industry is a safe industry and deserves to be exploited as we look at ways to generate electricity. The argument is that spent fuel creates a hazard and a problem for disposal and storage, and that's the case. But you have to weigh that against the way electricity is produced everywhere else. If we continue to use coal, until we learn how to capture the CO2 and sequester that CO2, the equivalent amount of electricity between producing with coal versus nuclear, the coal will have produced X tons of carbon dioxide that would have gone into the atmosphere, versus on the nuclear side, a small, relatively containable and handleable spent fuel that we have to deal with. So you look at the two. And clearly, given the emphasis on global warming and climate change, the folks who are proponents of that argue that CO2 and climate change are the single biggest things threatening our lives. Well, if CO2 is the biggest threat to our way of life, why not deal with that by using nuclear? I mean, nuclear waste has to be way down the list of things that are dangerous for us to deal with. I'm not a Pollyanna. I understand that when you build a nuclear plant, that it is subject to being somebody's target to do something stupid. But we have done a good job the last 7 years, since 9/11, protecting the nuclear plants, we'll get better at it, and assessing the risks to those power plants and understanding the opportunities that some bad guys might want to do at a nuclear power plant. But getting exposed to it, which is probably not a good word, but at least understanding and becoming more informed about how the nuclear power plants work and how the controls are in place, the systems they have in place for fail-safe circumstances, in addition to developing new generation or next-generation power plants which use a different model that in and of itself is a safer model of a way to generate electricity, and approaching that in a rational, thoughtful manner is going to be in all of our best interests. And yet there are still an awful lot of people out there who are apprehensive to the point of not wanting to use nuclear because they believe that the risks are too great. We need to have these conversations between the folks who believe it's too risky and the experts who understand exactly what it is and how it works and where those risks are and where those risks aren't, to get those to come together and help us understand how we mitigate the risks and how we adjust them and go forward with a source for the grid that is clean, zero emissions, and is going to be one of those sources of electricity generation for the U.S. that is important to our grid. It's important already in France, and other countries of the world are using it safely without incident. And certainly we're as good as the French are at doing things, I would expect, and should be able to handle nuclear power in ways that are responsible, both to the areas where the plant would be, as well as to how we handle the spent fuel and the waste that is an issue, and where we store that. All those kinds of things can be solved and should be solved if we can begin to deal with the issue, and first dealing with our irrational paranoia about it, getting past that and dealing with the realities that the experts and the scientists could certainly help us understand that. So, Mr. Speaker, the national energy policy, we've had several attempts at it over the years. We currently don't have one that's rational, I don't think. We continue to penalize the oil and natural gas industry with added taxes, as we did this afternoon, with red tape, with regulation that prevents them from being efficient. We lock away vast areas of the United States to prevent domestic production of crude oil and natural gas. We don't have a thoughtful, rational approach to electrical generation and how we're going to get that. Clearly, clean burning coal and nuclear have to be exploited and explored. Yes, continue to work on the wind and solar and other ways of generating electricity, but the truth of the matter is that those are going to be at the margin of the electrical grid. Every American alive today, when they walk into a room and flick the switch on, expects the lights to come on. They don't know how that happens, but they expect it to happen. And except for yesterday afternoon in Florida, most all the time it does. When it doesn't happen, like what happened yesterday in Florida, it shows how vulnerable we are to not having electricity, what impact that has. You saw the traffic grids, the traffic parking lots across Florida because the traffic lights went out. You couldn't move traffic the way it normally moves. And all the people trapped in elevators and all that kind of anecdotal excitement that happens when that goes on helps give us a little bit of a sense of what a world without all the electricity that we need to produce and to use is not readily available at our fingertips at the flick of a switch. With respect to crude oil and natural gas production, again, as I mentioned earlier, we are going to be using it for a long, long, long time. If it's imported from countries that are not operating in the same thought patterns that we are with respect to human rights and women's issues and other kinds of things, if it creates a strategic vulnerability to this country to import crude oil and natural gas, then it seems logical to me that we would put in place policies and regulations that would promote the domestic production of crude oil and natural gas as opposed to hindering them. To reduce domestic supplies is wrongheaded. And when we increase taxes on the oil and gas business, that is money that is taken away from the exploration for new sources and new supplies of crude oil and natural gas. The mechanics of an oil and gas company typically says that when you find, through the exploration process, through drilling and finding it, you understand that there's a reservoir of crude oil or natural gas underground. Through scientific estimates and from petroleum engineers, you can determine what the value of those reserves are once you've drilled a well and begun to produce those. Typically what happens, the independent producers in particular then go to the bank with the reserve report that shows what they think the estimated value of that crude oil and natural gas is in the ground. They go to the bank and use those reserves as collateral to borrow additional dollars to drill with and to explore that field further or to increase production. And so each dollar that goes somewhere else other than back into production is a multiple of that dollar that is not used to explore for and to produce crude oil and natural gas. Most of the independents that I represent in West Texas are trying to drill in the United States. Statistics show that independents, as that term is defined, typically reinvest 600 percent of their profits back in the ground. In other words, they borrow six times as much money as they earn in a year in order to continue to grow their reserve base to replace the production that they've already produced and to continue to do the things that they do best. Major oil companies, such as ExxonMobil, are generally well above 100 percent, I think it's 170 percent of their profits go back into the ground to explore for and to produce additional crude oil and natural gas, much of that is worldwide, which in a commodity such as crude oil and natural gas, there is really no distinction between the oil produced around the world versus domestic production as far as creating supply against the demand that is out there and is a growing demand as well. So a broad-based national energy policy that encompasses electricity production, how we drive cars and fly planes and drive trucks and those kinds of things, I think it is awfully important that this Congress come to grips with. I have not mentioned conservation, but that is a huge piece of the pie as well. We can use less per person than we currently are, and that's less electricity and certainly less gasoline in our cars. I have introduced a bill that would create a public-private partnership in order to help remind consumers that they have a direct role in energy usage in this country. The partnership would point out things that we can do individually, by choice, to reduce our own demand. Our own use of gasoline is an example. And it doesn't have to be draconian. I'm not talking about giving up your automobile and riding a bicycle to work. That's not rational. We're not going to do those kinds of things. But there are some small things that each one of us can do and choose to do on our own that would have a dramatic impact across the system. As an example, if we would arrange our affairs next week to use one gallon of gasoline less than we used this week, that would have a dramatic effect if everybody decided to do it. If the millions and millions of consumers and drivers out there would just simply use one gallon less, you would see a dramatic increase in inventories. When inventories go up, the folks who are in the business of retailing gasoline are very price sensitive, and their prices move around, up, and they also come down. But if their inventories begin to grow unexpectedly because we just simply used a little bit less individually, but if collectively across all the United States, you would see a big rise in inventory. Now that does two things. One, you would save the cost of that one gallon of gasoline. And at $3.50 a gallon, you may think, well, that's not all that much. But if you look at the impact that that savings would have across the system, you would save $3.50 per person, but you would also see a drop in the price of that gasoline because the supplies and inventories would go up. That means that collectively all of us would be better off. Now, how do you save a gallon of gasoline? You do some simple things like you keep your tires aired up to the proper limit. You take the extra weight out of the trunk of the car so you're not hauling it around. You think each day about what are the trips I'm going to make today. How can I drive a few miles less today than I drove yesterday, and just be smart about it. You can be a safer, more polite driver to the extent that as you accelerate your car, if you're not aggressive in accelerating it, if you don't slam the accelerator down and race away from red lights and stop signs, if you drive a little friendlier than some of us are used to, that uses less gasoline as well. So there are a lot of things that you and I can choose to do. It doesn't require a government mandate. It doesn't require a bureaucracy to administer. It's just simply all of us working in our own best interests to save a little bit of gasoline. And, again, 1 gallon this week less than I used less last week would have a dramatic impact on those prices, and we would all collectively benefit because we would be doing what we ought to be doing, and that is conserving the resources that we've got responsibility for. The same thing applies to electricity. Using less electricity, you could do a lot of things, and we all can do that, to reduce the growth in the demand for electricity. Again, you're not going to read at night by candlelight or campfire or lanterns. We're not going to do those kinds of things, but we can have a dramatic impact on electrical uses. I had a client when I was with Price Waterhouse back in the early 1970s, Recognition Equipment. Recognition Equipment made some pretty, at that time, sophisticated optical readers, and they had a very complicated cost accounting system in which they would allocate their indirect costs, heating and air-conditioning and lighting and all those kinds of stuff, would allocate those to their products that were being produced. As you remember, in 1973 we had the Arab oil embargo and prices shot up from $3 a barrel to 30 bucks a barrel. There was a big push to use less electricity, to use less energy. REI went all through their plant and did everything they thought they could do rationally to reduce their electrical usage; things like they went to every other light in the hallways and all kinds of things. They were able to so dramatically reduce their electrical usage that it screwed up or messed up their indirect cost allocation to their products, and they had to go back through and readjust the amount of money that they were applying to come up with the cost of their products through their process. So we can do those kinds of things when we have to. Typically when we have to is when the prices get so exorbitant that we are forced to do it. We can choose to do those things ahead of time without being forced to. I currently represent a chain of convenient stores in west Texas where I know the folks who run it, and we were talking about gasoline uses. They make a lot of money selling gasoline at these convenience stores. And 2 years ago when the price first started going over 3 bucks a gallon, they could see a dramatic difference and a change in their consumer patterns when the price of gasoline was above $3 versus when it was below. Consumers would immediately react to that. Now we have become desensitized or less sensitive to the $3 number, and that new number is somewhere north of that where we would feel the pain enough where we would be willing to make some changes in our own personal life to do that. We don't have to wait for that price to go up in order to motivate us to do those kinds of things. There should be plenty of motivation for us to be able to take the kinds of conservation steps that each one of us individually could do as a free-will choice that would help this issue tremendously as we move forward. In conclusion, Mr. Speaker, there are no magic bullets. There's no magic wand that we could wave across this problem and instantly fix it. It requires thoughtful compromise across a lot of folks who are in this arena, folks who have legitimate concerns, legitimate worries, legitimate issues. Working through those, working off of sound science, looking at rational approaches to things and not taking the extremes is going to be important as we as a society continue to move forward with an energy policy that makes sense. Calling each other names, talking about the producers of crude oil and natural gas like ExxonMobil in some very unflattering terms is counterproductive to the system. Beating up ExxonMobil makes absolutely no sense if you think that the product that they are producing is something that we need. Now, you may not like the prices that they're producing it at, but those 82,000 people who work for ExxonMobil are human beings. And when they hear their company denigrated by folks in this Chamber and Presidential candidates and others because they have been successful working within the rules and within the laws, that sends a really bad message to folks who are providing a service, providing a commodity to us that we simply can't get along without. So thank you, Mr. Speaker, for allowing me this time tonight. I would encourage my colleagues to thoughtfully think about the words they use, the adjectives they use as they describe this problem. This is not a Republican issue. It's not a Democrat issue. This is an issue that's important to every single American out there. It's one that deserves our best, thoughtful consideration. It deserves our listening to each other and hearing the concerns each of us have and working toward a solution and actually putting it into place.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, I rise today to thank and commend Mrs. Michele ``Missy'' Mandell for her dedication to the people of central Texas. For the past 19 years Missy has worked at the Lower Colorado River Authority, LCRA, most recently as the executive manager of Federal affairs. She departs at the end of this month, but leaves a legacy of tireless work to meet the needs of the communities in the 58 counties where the LCRA operates. Missy served as a liaison to the myriad of stakeholders in public water service and power generation, including local communities, Federal agencies, industry organizations, and elected officials, such as myself. No matter the issue, she was always able to navigate the complex web of laws, rules, and regulations to help LCRA provide services to its clients. I was fortunate to work with her here in Washington and always found her to be a valuable partner in solving the critical issues facing my constituents. It is likely that the customers of LCRA do not know Missy Mandell, but they all owe her a great debt for her work on their behalf. In addition to her constant work for the LCRA, Missy also found time to give back to her community. She has donated her time and considerable experience by serving on the board of directors for the Children's Advocacy Council; the advisory board of the LBJ Liberal Arts and Sciences Academy; and the city of Austin's Environmental Board and the Charter Revision Council. Through her selfless giving, the city of Austin is a better place. I am certain that Missy will prosper in her new career; she has the drive, experience, and intellect to thrive in whatever she chooses. The LCRA is not merely losing a long-serving employee, but a passionate advocate, a tireless consensus-builder, and ever-optimistic citizen, always seeking to improve the lives of those she worked for. It has been my pleasure to know and work with Mrs. Missy Mandell and I offer her my best wishes and prayers, safe in the knowledge that God will smile on her future endeavors.

Mr. CONAWAY

Mr. CONAWAY. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 31 H. Res. 943-- Remembering the space shuttle Challenger disaster and honoring its crew members, who lost their lives on January 28, 1986, I was attending a funeral for a soldier killed in Iraq. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''