John Fleming

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Well, I thank the gentleman, and I will be quick here because I do have something very important. I want to draw the camera's attention to this placard and particularly the Web site outlined below, fleming.house.gov regarding House Resolution 615 that really gets to the meat of the matter. And again this is another effort to appeal to the grass-roots. Over the past few weeks, Members of Congress and the American people have come to know the details of the proposed health care plan advanced by the administration and the Democrats. Call it whatever you like, but at the end of the day, the proposal is still a government-run health care system. Now with its health care plan, the administration and the liberal leadership of this Congress are guaranteeing this democracy is on the solid path towards socialism. As a physician, I am amazed at the number of bureaucrats in this House who are quick to claim a government-run health care plan is the reform this country needs. So I come before this body to announce a resolution that I just mentioned, House Resolution 615, saying very simply that any Members of Congress who votes for legislation creating a government-run health care plan should lead by example and enroll themselves and their family in the same public plan. Again, to repeat that, very simply, any Members of Congress who vote for this legislation, that is one that includes a single-payer or government-run health care plan, should be willing to commit to enroll themselves in that. You see, it is very interesting how Congress tends to carve itself out and create sort of a lead state in many things, and this is one good example. The plans that we see thus far, which we don't know the details of, of course, suggest to us that for the next 5 years the Congressmembers will be still on the Federal health plan exchange and not be part of the single-payer system. In closing, I just want to suggest that to those who are viewing this evening and along the lines of Dr. Broun and Dr. Gingrey, is yes, please call. Call your Representatives. Call your friends. Let everybody know we need to defeat this single-payer system. And the way to do it is to hold our Congressmen accountable for what they do. If it is good for you, it should be good for them as well.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, I join the majority of Americans who found themselves in utter disbelief yesterday when they heard the majority leader say that this Congress might need to consider a second stimulus package. After the first stimulus package has proved to be a failure in stabilizing the economy and mitigating unemployment, the best solution the liberal leadership in the House can propose is to continue on this reckless spending spree. At present, we are spending $100 million a day on interest on the first stimulus, and yet unemployment has now reached 9.5 percent. This first stimulus has proved to be nothing more than a tool to fund a broad-sweeping social agenda that has been on the shelf for years. The Vice President said we misread the economy. Well, Mr. Biden, not one Republican in this House misread it because none of us voted for it. If we really want to stimulate the economy, we should immediately cut marginal tax rates for all and provide emergency tax relief to the very entities that employ 70 percent of those employed--small businesses. The American people have had enough of the tax-and-spend mentality of Congress.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, as we continue to learn more about the single-payer, government takeover of the health care system proposed by my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, I would like to point out why this isn't a good idea. First, we can't afford it. Cost estimates are now up to $3.5 trillion of money we don't have. Medicare, even with heavy subsidies from private insurance, is on the course of bankruptcy. How will we afford a Medicare-for-all program? Let me be clear, the government cannot be both competitor and make up the rules of the game. It would be like Microsoft being put in control of the Internet. How would other companies compete with Microsoft? A single-payer system option will erode the private insurance market that is propping up the public health plan we have today. It is becoming very clear that the public option group has the ultimate goal of destroying competition and choice and substituting it with a government takeover of our health care system. So what is the end game here? The end game is that once the Federal Government gains full control of our health care system and steps between you and your doctor, we will have exploding budgets which will lead to rationing.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Madam Speaker, from today, the ABC network will be known as the ``All Barack Channel'' due to unprecedented propaganda for the President's health plan. Democrats and Republicans agree that our health care system needs reforming, and we essentially agree on how, with one very important exception: a government-run plan is not the solution. Our current Medicare system is a microcosm of what the proposed public plan would look like. Medicare is propped up by the privately insured as it is, and is still on a course for bankruptcy within 10 years. Our President says he can make a government-run system lower cost. Then why hasn't anybody been able to do that with Medicare in 50 years? Creating a public option like Medicare will progressively increase private insurance costs due to cost shifting and eventually drive private insurers out of business. Besides the damage it would do to the private sector, the government does not have the money to pay the $1.6 trillion price tag. As a physician, I say we need to reform, bring down costs, and increase access to private insurance. We do not need the government in the exam room.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Madam Speaker, pursuant to the Republican Leadership standards on earmarks, I am submitting information regarding the following earmarks I received as part of H.R. 2647, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010. I hereby certify that neither I nor my spouse has any financial interest in these projects. Congressman John Fleming H.R. 2647, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Title I, Acct: APA, Line: 26 Intended Recipient: Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation, Stratford, CT UH-60A to UH-60L Upgrade for the Army National Guard, $20.4 M, FY10 funds would provide for critical avionics upgrades to modernize Army National Guard Black Hawk medium-lift utility helicopters. Congressman John Fleming H.R. 2647, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, Title XXIII, Acct: MCA, Line: N/A Intended Recipient: Fort Polk, Leesville, LA Multipurpose Machine Gun Range, $6.4 M, FY10 funds would provide for the construction of a standard design Multi-Purpose Machine Gun Range, required to train and test soldiers on the skills necessary to detect, identify, engage and defeat targets in a tactical environment. Fort Polk does not currently have a suitable training area that meets the requirements needed for machine gunnery. Without this facility, the soldiers of Fort Polk, Reserve, and National Guard units will not be able to maintain efficiency for live fire training for machine gun engagements.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Madam Speaker, like most of America, I support an all- of-the-above solution to this Nation's energy needs. I believe we can have it all when it comes to energy. We can aggressively pursue renewable energy, nuclear energy and other innovative alternatives while continuing efforts to expand our domestic supply of fossil fuels. We live in a country rich in energy sources, and Congress should encourage production from all available resources and technologies. Tonight I'd like to focus on a reliable, clean-burning alternative fuel which is in extraordinary abundance right under our feet in this country, and that is natural gas. Located in my district in northwest Louisiana, recent estimates have projected the Haynesville Shale contains 234 trillion cubic feet of potential natural gas production. This would make it the largest natural gas play in the United States and one of the largest in the world, the equivalent of 18 years' worth of U.S. oil production. I want to point out to you, the crosshatch area is the so-called Haynesville Shale. As you can see, it overlies several parishes in Louisiana as well as several counties in Texas, a very wide area. Now of course for those listening, shale is nothing more and nothing less than a rock formation deep down in the Earth, somewhere around 2 miles in depth, that acts like a sponge that's full of either gas or oil, and sometimes both. Today we have great methods of extracting fossil fuels from the shale. But let me turn to some more statistics regarding the Haynesville Shale. It's provided massive injections of capital into the Fourth Congressional District of Louisiana, my district. It's pumped $4.5 billion into the economy in FY 2008. It's created nearly $3.9 billion in household earnings in the same year. The greatest impact on indirect and household earnings was experienced by workers in the mining sector, with new household earnings of $191.3 million in 2008. It's created over $30 million in new earnings in seven separate sectors. Number one, mining, $191.3 million; health care, $56.7 million; management, $46.6 million; professional, scientific and technical services, $38.5 million; retail trade, $35.7 million; manufacturing, $33.5 million; and construction, $31.8 million. It directly and indirectly created over 32,000 jobs. The new jobs created by the extraction activities in the Haynesville Shale are widely dispersed across industries. Large impacts have been felt in utilities, 5,229 jobs; mining 3,808; health care, 3,496 jobs; and retail trade, 3,433. Those are a lot of numbers, but I think you understand that the magnitude is what counts here. Conservative estimates report that State and local tax revenues increased by at least $153.3 million in 2008 due to the extraction activities of the Haynesville Shale. Needless to say, Louisiana is not suffering from the effects of the recession, unemployment, or real estate that many other States are today, largely due to the Haynesville Shale. Some parishes are reporting a 300 percent increase in sales tax collections. I wanted to talk a moment about how we get the natural gas out of that shale that we're talking about that's 2 miles deep in the Earth. The method is called hydraulic fracturing, or ``hydrofracking'' is a more common term. This method has been used for over 60 years and is responsible for 30 percent of America's recoverable oil and gas. Of wells currently operating today, over 90 percent have been fractured at least once. Environmentalists and their allies in Congress are escalating their assault on affordable and reliable energy with the legislation that would place regulation of hydraulic fracturing under the Safe Drinking Water Act, SDWA, a law that was never intended for this purpose. This legislation would have far-reaching negative impacts on energy, energy producers and consumers alike. For years this process has been safely and effectively regulated by individual States; and of the more than 1 million wells fractured, not a single case of drinking water contamination has ever been recorded. In my State of Louisiana, three different agencies have oversight related to this process. So you see, it's not an unregulated process to begin with. First is the Office of Conservation of the Louisiana Department of Natural Resources, then the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and, finally, the Department of Health and Hospitals, which tests potable water. Additionally, these agencies already work closely in association with existing Federal regulations under the EPA. As illustrated in these graphics, current industry practices ensure multiple levels of protection between any sources of drinking water and the production zone of an oil and gas well. Fresh water aquifers are located relatively close to the surface. In the Haynesville shale, for instance, the Wilcox aquifer is found at depths between 200 and 600 feet. The practice of hydrofracking takes place at a depth of over 10,000 feet or roughly 2 miles. To put this into perspective, the distance between the aquifer and the hydrofracking equals about 33 footballs fields or 8 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other. To ensure that neither the fluid pumped through the well, nor the oil or gas collected, enters the water supply, steel casings are inserted into the well to depths of between 1,000 and 4,000 feet. Oil and gas companies are required to set protective surface casing well beyond the water table. For example, in the Haynesville Shale, surface casing must be set at a minimum of 1,800 feet. The space between this first casing string and drilled hole is filled with cement. The casing, cement specifications and cementing process are governed by state and federal regulations as well as industry standards. In every case this process is supervised by state agency officials. Federal regulation of ``hydrofracking'' under the EPA would result in a sharp increase in costs to small and independent producers, as well as a dramatic decrease in output and job creation. Production in large shale plays such as the Haynesville Shale in Louisiana, the Barnett in Texas and the Marcellus Shale in the Northeast U.S. would essentially grind to a halt and billions of dollars in federal and state tax revenue would be lost. It is crucial that Congress recognize what resources, such as the Haynesville Shale, will play in this country's long-term economic and national security.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Madam Speaker, word has it that the infamous cap-and- trade, or cap-and-tax, bill will be up for a vote this week. Cap-and-trade, or what has been more appropriately named cap-and-tax, would create $640 billion in new taxes on American businesses and raise electric bills by $3,100 per household per year on average. The revenue from the new tax will be used to pay for various social programs this administration plans to enact such as the government takeover of our health care. Simply put, cap-and-tax will cap our growth and trade our jobs. Companies looking to invest in our economy will simply move overseas to escape this enormous tax increase. If you need a tangible example of why this doesn't work, look at Spain, which has been on this plan for 10 years. The result: utility prices have skyrocketed, and the unemployment rate today is 17\1/2\ percent. This is our view of the future. Experts tell us that cap-and-tax will do nothing to cap greenhouse gases, but it will put the United States at a global economic disadvantage because China and India have no reason to enact or follow this policy. We will put Americans out of work but create jobs for developing countries. We need a smart energy policy that will put Americans to work, not further squeeze the pocketbooks of this country's families.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, recently elections were held in Iran with the Iranian Government declaring Ahmadinejad the landslide winner over pro-reform challenger Mr. Mousavi. Mousavi is claiming the results of these elections should be voided because of fraud and other irregularities as people went to vote. He is calling upon his supporters to remain vocal and protest the results of this election, and they are turning out in the tens of thousands, but many have been killed. In response, President Ahmadinejad has tried to minimize anyone with an opposing viewpoint, physically threatening any form of dissent and shutting out the media and communications. The accusations of voter irregularities must be investigated, a fact supported by Vice President Biden. But until this election is certified, the people of Iran should be supported in their pursuit of peaceful protests, if they so choose. Also, dissidents should be allowed to protest without violence against them. More importantly, I call upon our President to not be timid, but to speak out firmly on this subject. Either it is a democracy with a legitimate government, or it is a tyrannical dictatorship.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, I rise today out of concern with the recent news that one out of every four ballots requested by military personnel and other Americans living overseas may have gone uncounted in the 2008 election. These findings were released in a recent Senate hearing. The report claims that of 441,000 absentee ballots requested, 98,000 were claimed to be lost. Over 13,000 were rejected because of missing signatures or failure to notarize. Another 11,000 were returned as undeliverable. I agree with Senator Schumer that this system needs an overhaul. While serving our country overseas, our soldiers deserve to have their votes counted and their voices heard. We need to ensure there is sufficient time for ballots to reach them and have them fill them out and return them for inclusion for their vote to count. The cornerstone of democracy, Mr. Speaker, is the right to vote. Those sacrificing to protect this right should be given every chance to participate in the electoral process.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. I thank my friend and fellow physician and colleague, Dr. Gingrey. You made reference to the 30-Something Democrats, and I watched that debate, that discussion with great interest because, to be honest with you, with 32 years of medical practice and also owning businesses for nearly as long, when I hear this discussion about how a public plan can work, I really try to view that and try to understand that; but I always come out totally mystified with how this sort of thing could ever work. And to clarify the debate, basically Congress right now is looking at three different options. One is a total single payer nationalized health care system, Medicare for all. One would be a private system for all, which is what we, on the Republican side, back. And then the other is a public and private system that are competing with one another. So I really watch with great interest our colleagues on the other side-- none of whom are physicians, I might add--talk about how this could be a great deal, a great success, where you have a public system that's competing with a private system, somehow that's going to drive cost and prices down, and we're going to get a dividend from that. Well, what I would do is point out to my colleagues, let's look at Medicare today and Medicaid as well, both government-run systems. Both of them are running out of money rapidly, the budgets are exploding and expanding, and they are living off the fat of the private system. Today we know--in fact, a recent survey, a study came out showing that the average subscriber to private insurance spends an extra $1,000 a year to support the Medicare and Medicaid system. We also know that a lot of that support comes by way of the uninsured who are routed through the emergency room, who don't have any coverage; and if you think that the Medicare recipients pay for that, forget it. That's not happening. Who is paying for that is the taxpayer and those who subscribe to private plans. So right now the systems that exist, Medicare and Medicaid, are, for the most part, supported not by premiums and not even fully by the taxpayers, but are supported by those who pay premiums into private plans. So if you expand Medicare to where everyone is eligible for a Medicare-type plan, who in their right mind is going to stay on private insurance when they know that they're going to have to pay increasing size premiums in order to get the same level of care that those on Medicare, who are largely supported by taxes, are going to get? What ends up happening is you lose that critical mass of those under private insurance, and so private insurance then becomes only an afterthought, a sliver of the economy. So what you're left with is a giant public system, a Medicare that's much bigger than what we have today. Incidentally, I will remind those that today, as it stands, Medicare will run out of money within 10 years, as it is. It's unsustainable as it is. Now if we grow it into a much bigger system, where are those cost savings going to come from? I will yield back in a moment, but I just want to bring out the fact that no one has ever been able to show that a government-run system, particularly a health care system, but any government-run system in which the economy is being controlled in some way has ever controlled cost. And even today we know that health care costs are going up twice the rate of inflation.

Mr. FLEMING. I wanted to tone down on the debate a little bit more. Again, we heard the 30-something Group Democrats talking about the debate earlier, and one said something very interesting. It really caught my ear. He said that the debate is basically Democrats want health care reform, Republicans do not want health care reform. Now, I have spoken on this floor, as you know, Dr. Gingrey and Dr. Roe as well, and I've heard you speak many times; many Members of our conference have spoken; I've spoken a number of times throughout the district. I've listened to everyone from Speaker Gingrich to many others. I have yet to hear one Republican say that he is against health care reform. So I want to remind my colleagues on the other side of the aisle that the only way we're ever going to solve our health care problems--which make up about 20 percent of our economy--we must have an honest debate. And framing the other side into a position that really doesn't exist is not going to get us there. In fact, I would say that we really agree, from what I can understand, on 90 percent of the discussion. We all agree that we should do away with pre-existing illness; we all agree that we should have portability; we all agree there should be a hundred percent access to care; we all agree that we should lower the cost of care. I can draw you a great list. There is really, when you get down to it, only one thing we disagree with, and that is we feel that a private system, private industry--even if it's paid for by the Federal Government--in many cases does a much better job in terms of quality of care and customer service and a much better job of controlling costs. This is proven time after time. Compare our economy with a socialistic economy and you see every time that we provide much better products and services and at a much better price than those countries do. So, really, the only disagreement is who is actually controlling the care. And, of course, I submit to you that a government-run system is a real problem. And I will tell you where I learned this. When I was in the Navy as a physician, I noticed in the first year that the commanding officer of the hospital sent out a call and said if there is--this is budget time of the year--and if there is anything that you think we could ever want in this hospital, wink wink--meaning, think of something; dream of things--put it on a list, because if we don't preserve that budget the way it is, then our budget will be cut next year. And that, my friend, is the way government works. If you don't force it into the budget, if you don't make sure and protect your territory, it won't be there next year. Somebody will cut into it. And that's really the way government works. And I will give you an example, a real-life example of how we will never be able to get rid of waste, fraud, and abuse from our health care system if it's run by the government. Think about this: we have to throw out a wide net, which is very expensive. We may capture a few offenders out there. Because it would have to be a criminal act, we would have to prove that they really did it on purpose; and then at the end of the day we would have to prosecute them with a lot of dollars; and then we may get one person, and we may get a few dollars. That's the way you get rid of fraud and abuse in a government system. In a private system, much different. You have a physician or some other provider in a health care organization that's privately run, and if his practices are not the best practice and he's not practicing in a cost-effective way, that shows up on a graph; and often, of course, you go to that provider and you reeducate, and you have him work with colleagues, and you get him back to the protocols. And if that doesn't work, then you fire him. Easy problem to solve. It doesn't require all of that--there is no crime involved. So you can work in the most effective way possible.

Mr. FLEMING. I appreciate your yielding. I just wanted to take a moment to follow up on what you said and Mr. Rohrabacher. We have 47 million uninsured, 10 million of course are illegal aliens. And of course that is a solvable problem by only allowing legal aliens and requiring them to pay taxes and insurance like anyone else, and those who are here illegally should not be here. So that's not really a health care problem, at least primarily, that is an immigration problem. We also have, as you point out, at least half that 47 million who are insurable people, and very cost effectively, but they choose not to. That really hurts the risk pool, and we should do things to incentivize them. The real problem is the 10 or 15 million people who are either business owners or they work for small businesses and they can't get cost-effective insurance. And they're the ones that delay care, they're the ones that don't go to their primary doctor, they're the ones that end up going to the emergency room, getting care at a time when the outcomes are the worst and the cost is the highest. So when you think about it--and polls show that 75 percent of people are happy with what they have, whether it's Medicare or Medicaid, private insurance--it's that 25 percent that can't get affordable care. That's where the problem is, and that's where the focus needs to be. And if we do that, we get cost-effective coverage for them--and there are many ways of doing this, and we would have to get into ways to determine that--we would really have this problem under much better control. But if we, on the other hand, blow this thing out with a single-payer system, we are going to have exploding budgets as far as the eye can see, and I don't see any end to that. I thank you, and I yield back.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, in a recent interview with C-SPAN, the President made the very telling statement, ``We are out of money.'' Yes, Mr. President, as of April 27, this country ran out of money. And yet that has not stopped the liberals in this Congress from passing record-setting spending bills. These bills were sold to the American public as necessary to stimulate the economy. Unemployment insurance claims reached a record high for the 17th consecutive week and unemployment has reached 9.4 percent, which he promised would not happen upon signing this infamous stimulus bill. The $1 trillion spending that was supposed to stem the economic recession was nothing more than the fulfillment of a very liberal political agenda. Reckless spending, a total disregard for fiscal accountability, and rocketing us into another inflation-debt spiral is not the solution. Now, even Socialist and Communist countries across the world are rebuking us for excessive spending and government takeover of the economy. Bigger government is never the answer to America's biggest challenges. American individualism, innovation, and ingenuity will, even after 200 years, remain the only way to economic prosperity.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. With that, I thank you for your time in the discussion.

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my friend from Pennsylvania for yielding me this time. I think this is an important bill. I do rise in support of it. I'm a family physician who has treated diabetes even in and among teenagers, which is a sad situation when you consider the future of someone who develops diabetes so young. And certainly the physical future is very important. But I am also very concerned about the fiscal future of our youth. I'm very troubled today. A constituent came to me today from the oil and gas industry and was discussing with me the problems that already are emerging with the loss of tax incentives to invest in exploration that is going on in my district and districts around. So, Mr. Speaker, I think that looking down the line here at the fact that we have not yet developed an energy policy, I know my side of the aisle, we Republicans, attempted to get to the floor a no-cost stimulus bill which would have, I think, been very innovative and certainly revolutionary in getting our energy costs down. But having said that, as gas prices now are approaching $3 a gallon and we are still in a severe recession, just think that even $4 a gallon pretty soon is probably going to be bypassed very quickly. With that, I just want to reiterate what my friend also from Louisiana, Mr. Scalise, has discussed as we move into the cap-and-trade debate, the cap-and-tax debate, if you will, where every analyst that we have been able to read sees this as a pure form of taxation, that the real underlying purpose of it is to raise more money for, I guess, social spending or perhaps single-payer, nationalized, health care spending. I'm not sure. But the net effect of that is just what we have seen with the incubator that we call Spain, and that is cap-and-tax has been in play there for 10 years, and what has been the net result? Well, today the unemployment rate in Spain is 17.5 percent. As Mr. Scalise mentioned, for every job that's been gained, a so-called ``green'' job--and again, I will get to that in a moment as to what a green job, I think, is supposed to be--there has been a loss of 2.2 real jobs. And I can assure you, Mr. Speaker, that in the State of Louisiana and surrounding States that the jobs that we have today that come from the oil and gas industry are very significant jobs. They carry benefits. They carry pay easily in the $50,000 to $100,000 range in many cases. And the so-called ``green'' jobs that are discussed, if you look at Spain and their experience, what they found was that 90 percent of the green jobs were implementation jobs, that is, construction. And, of course, once the construction or implementation period is over, that job goes away; so there is only left a remaining 10 percent of the total green jobs that even become permanent jobs. But then if you look further underlying that, Mr. Speaker, what you find is that the green jobs are really a pass-through of taxpayer money into the system and then as payroll for these so-called ``green'' jobs. They are not a direct result of an exponential growth of a healthy economy or a healthy oil and gas industry. So, as we move into this debate--and I understand it's being pushed pretty hard right now--we've got to decide are we going to continue to put more taxes on our citizens in the way of higher utility bills, which will impact the poor and those on fixed income to the tune of over $3,000 a year of added electrical bills, or are we going to see our manufacturing have to leave this country and go overseas because it can no longer compete with the higher energy costs? What is really the question here? How are we going to have more revenue into our Treasury by killing off jobs? So I don't think this is any longer a theoretical discussion. I think we are talking about real people and real jobs. And all we have to do is to look at Spain and other countries who have attempted this. But just in summary, Mr. Speaker, I think that we need to be very careful about what government is taking over and what it's controlling. If you look to Western Europe, where socialism has been rampant for years, you actually see a retraction, a move away from that. Even Pravda made a statement recently that we are going headlong into Marxism when, in fact, the rest of the world is pulling back.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, on June 1 two U.S. servicemen were gunned down at an Army recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas. Private William Long lost his life in the attack, and another soldier remains in critical condition. Based on the attacker's own statements, these soldiers were targeted because of their affiliation with the U.S. Army. There is evidence that others were being targeted, and this is not the first time. Under recently passed hate crimes legislation, H.R. 1913, these heroes would receive no additional Federal protections. I think we can all agree that if there is any class of citizens who deserve special protection from political or religiously motivated crimes, it is our men and women in uniform who put their lives on the line each day to protect this country. So I have introduced House bill 2677, the Military Personnel Protection Act of 2009. This legislation will right this egregious wrong and ensure those who answered our Nation's call to service are extended the same protections afforded to other protected classes of citizens. I urge my colleagues to join me in passing this legislation and extend Federal hate crimes protections to active, Guard, Reserve and retired members of the armed services. That is the least we can do for them.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Mr. Speaker, on April 5 of this year, North Korea launched a missile capable of hitting nations friendly to us and even parts of the United States. The rocket broke apart during its second phase, but it was able to track halfway across the Pacific Ocean. What was our response to the growing threat? We announced the missile defense budget would be cut by $1.4 billion. On May 25, 2009, North Korea successfully detonated a nuclear bomb at an underground test facility and launched at least six separate short- range ballistic missiles. And I understand that the bomb was about a 3- to 5-kiloton magnitude bomb. Now there is news that North Korea may be preparing another long- range missile test. North Korea's nuclear weapons testing and production have been a major concern for years as they continue to make technological advances that could one day allow them to deliver a nuclear warhead anywhere in the U.S. This is not the time to cut our missile defense budget. Mr. Speaker, we must continue to invest in the ground-based sensors to track, intercept and destroy missiles during the mid-course of flight and ensure America is protected against attacks from those who pose the biggest threat to our safety and freedom. History remains clear on this. Being unprepared or passive always invites aggression.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. I thank the gentleman from Utah, and I, too, feel very privileged, Mr. Speaker, to have been a cosponsor on the no-cost stimulus energy plan that my friend from Utah was also a sponsor of, and it would have provided tremendous utilization of the potential energy we have, but of course, it never made it to the floor. As a good segue into really what I want to talk about is my local district, I just want to reiterate what we discussed this evening, and we also talked about it last night, that this cap-and-tax program has been tried before. We've been 10 years down this pathway with Spain. Representatives from Spain came and spoke with us about this, and they said that the net of all that has been is they've lost companies, they've lost jobs, their unemployment rate is now 17.5 percent, and their energy costs are skyrocketing, which of course prophetically even our own President, President Obama, made the comment in January 2008 that utility costs, electrical costs, home costs of energy will skyrocket if this bill is passed. What I want to talk about for a moment, Mr. Speaker, is the Haynesville shale. I'm from the fourth district of Louisiana. This is the northwestern corner of Louisiana, and 3 years ago no one had ever heard of the Haynesville shale. In fact, the whole idea of shale formation, that is, a rock formation that holds like a porous sponge deposits of natural gas, something that was barely heard of even 4 years ago, and today, we're finding that in the case of the Haynesville shale, it is perhaps the largest natural gas find in this hemisphere. And hopefully, the camera will pick this map up, but you see the area, and it borders, of course, several parishes in Louisiana and then also counties in Texas. As you can see, it covers a wide swath of area, and so this represents a tremendous opportunity for the State of Louisiana and also parts of the State of Texas. So I just want to tell you something about the impact. We're talking about 234 trillion cubic feet of natural gas production potential. This could be a source of energy for many years to come for this country, and remember that natural gas is a very clean form of fossil fuel. It produces significantly less carbon dioxide than say coal, and yet there's forces out there that would like to stop the drilling for natural gas in the Haynesville shale. We're even going to have hearings tomorrow talking about the manufacturing process and potentially issues having to do with the environment with that. But let me tell you about what we also can lose if we lose the ability to extract natural gas just in my district. A 2008 study was done, and it showed that $4.5 billion was pumped into the Louisiana economy in that year. It created $3.9 billion in household earnings. The greatest impact on indirect household earnings was experienced by workers in the mining sector, with new household earnings of $193 million in 2008. It created over $30 million in new earnings in separate sectors; $56.7 million in health care; management, $46 million. On and on and on, many millions of dollars. It's creating cash into the local economy in my district. And as a result of this, our unemployment rate is much lower than that of the east of the country, and our economy's doing very well. Real estate is doing very well. On that, we've created many jobs. Large impacts were felt with 5,229 jobs in the utility sector; health care, 3,496 jobs. Conservative estimates report that State and local tax revenues increased by $153.3 million in 2008. Some parishes reported a 300 percent increase in sales tax. So as you can see, Mr. Speaker, the Haynesville shale is just starting, and yet it is creating a tremendous impact on the economy of my district. So, if we continue down this cap-and-tax road, not only are we going to lose what we have but potentially lose what we're going to have. In the 2010 budget of President Obama on this same subject, we're looking at a potential loss of $80 billion in tax incentives for oil and natural gas businesses, and this impacts small companies. The majority of oil and gas companies in my district are small companies. They're mom-and-pop businesses, and that is the backbone of our economy. We're not talking about Shell Oil. We're not talking about Exxon. We're talking about local, Joe Smith kinds of businesses. Independent oilmen and women in northeast Louisiana rely on these incentives to reinvest their capital in these companies. This is caused by the loss of depletion allowance and the writeoff of intangible drilling costs. It will also broaden our dependence foreign oil; of course, the thing that we used to talk about when gas was $4 a gallon and soon we're going to be talking about that again. Well, in closing, I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, that we cannot tax and spend our way out of growing our economy. In a time of recession, the best way to encourage an economic turnaround is to preserve jobs. The State, instead of flowing money into the economy, as we've tried with this stimulus plan, which, estimates are, only 6 percent of the money is even in the economy, we may actually be pulling out of this recession as we speak. Without the development of natural gas plays like the Haynesville shale, without increased exploration in ANWR, the Outer Continental Shelf, without the tax incentives that I just mentioned, without these things we're going to see our economy, even if it put pulls out of this, level off. We can have our cake and eat it, too, Mr. Speaker. We don't have to destroy our economy and clean up our environment at the same time. We can be good, responsible tenders of our environment. We can be good stewards of our environment without destroying our economy in the process. Someday perhaps we will be able to use some of these technologies. Perhaps we can use solar, maybe wind, but at this point, my friend from Utah says it's 1.6 percent of production, and we're going to have a lot of breakthroughs to make it go much higher than that. But until that time, there's a lot we can do with the technologies we have, technologies that are coming online, and that's not even mentioning nuclear power which many countries, particularly in Europe, are way ahead of us on. But we can do a lot to solve our problems without throwing our economy into the dumpster, as Spain has. So with that I want to thank my friend from Utah for his time, his many great efforts with this. I appreciate his leadership on this subject.

Mr. FLEMING

Mr. FLEMING. Well, I thank the gentleman. I think that really the extension of what you just said is what is the real agenda behind this, and I think that we've recognized in the last few years that the American taxpayer has had enough. They don't want to pay any more taxes. Americans feel like they pay enough on the city level, county level, State and Federal level, and I think that our more liberal friends, our tax friendly friends, have realized this, and now they're coming up with schemes to disguise taxes. And I think Congressman Dingell said it better than anybody in this Chamber--and of course, he's a Democrat--that this is a tax, a very big tax, and I think that really strikes to the heart of what the purpose of this is. Someone a moment ago made reference to the fact that we're going to need at least $1.2 trillion if we go forward with a single- payer, comprehensive health care system, Medicare for all, if you will. And I think that those who support that are scrambling around to find a tax that can be defined as something not a tax, and I think they've got this cap-and-tax program squarely in their sights.

Mr. FLEMING. Well, just to extend that a little further, where are these jobs going? It turns out that some of the Spanish jobs have come to America because we understand that the net effect of tax, or cap-and-trade, or cap-and-tax as we call it, is that there is a higher cost to produce goods for manufacturing. So as a result, for someone who owns a factory or a company that perhaps owns a factory, he has to find the most cost- effective location for that factory. Otherwise, he can't compete in the worldwide economy. We know today that this is, indeed, a worldwide economy. We can't get away from that fact. Just today, a Chinese company bought Hummer--a portion of General Motors. So we know that to be true. Well, we actually have received a dividend from Spain going down this road. We've actually had companies coming to the U.S., and we've actually gained jobs as a result of Spain's having gone down this cap-and-trade boondoggle.

Mr. FLEMING. Also, it was very interesting that the discussion hinged somewhat on the fact that this investment creates more jobs and that it creates revenue down the line. If you listen closely to the discussion, what you hear is really good old-fashioned subsidies. That is, whenever the government is subsidizing forms of energy that are not cost- effective at this point and whenever the technologies are not there, what we really get is a pass-through of taxpayer dollars that goes into what I would call artificial, or papier mache jobs, so-called ``green jobs.'' We'll learn from the Spanish experiment that has been going on now for 10 years that, for 2.2 jobs that are lost, there is only one so-called ``green job'' gained. That job 90 percent of the time is in implementation and construction. It is not a continuous job.

Mr. FLEMING. Exactly. Exactly.

Mr. FLEMING. Thank you. To sort of gear down to the real topic tonight, I heard talk from the other side of the aisle this evening about terms such as ``investment,'' which really, to me, is a code for tax, and also ``jobs'' or ``green jobs.''

Mr. FLEMING. Well, thank you. And I want to thank my friend, of course, from Missouri for having this hour discussion, very important discussion, coming right at the heels of our classmates from the other side of the aisle speaking on the same subject, but with a different opinion. I also thank my fellow Republican classmate, Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania as well for his discussion. Well, let me just point out that, you know, you don't have to be detailed in the science to understand one empirical fact, and that is, this globe has warmed and cooled several times in its life before there was the first emission of fossil fuels. So, that being said, we already have proof positive that the Earth can warm under its own circumstances and its own environment and its own test tube, if you will. And you just mentioned sunspots and other activities. There are many things that go into the global warming effect and global cooling effect. And as you say, now that we're not able to accurately actually predict that the globe is warming, now the whole issue is changing to climate change, so that whatever happens different than what it is at this moment can somehow be blamed.