Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I wish to make the following disclosure in accordance with the new Republican Earmark Transparency Standards requiring Members to place a statement in the Congressional Record prior to a floor vote on a bill that includes earmarks they have requested, describing how the funds will be spent and justifying the use of Federal taxpayer funds. Requesting Member: Congressman Steve King. Bill Number: H.R. 6599, the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2009. Account: MilCon, Air National Guard. Legal Name of Requesting Entity: Iowa Air National Guard. Address of Requesting Entity: 7700 NW Beaver Drive, Johnston, Iowa, 50131. Description of Request: Appropriation of $5.6 million for the construction of a new Vehicle Maintenance Facility and remodeling of the existing Communications Facility located at the 133rd Test Squadron in Fort Dodge, Iowa. Updating facilities at the 133rd Test Squadron is of the utmost importance and highest priority for the Iowa National Guard. This project is approved on the U.S. Air Force Future Year Defense Plan (FYDP), and has been assigned the number HEMT039066. The facility is significantly short of space due to the expansion of the unit's mission, manning and resources. Since it is the only unit designated to test future Command and Control (C2) projects for the U.S. Air Force, the performance of the 133rd Test Squadron is vital to Air Force missions. A detailed financial plan based on form DD 1391 required by the Department of Defense for military construction projects follows.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Smith, for your long work on immigration issues. I often come across legislation that was put in place during the nineties in particular and find out what kind of wisdom was there. I want to also thank the Chair of the Immigration Subcommittee and the support on both sides of the aisle for bringing this 5-year reauthorization of E-Verify to the floor. But I especially want to thank Ken Calvert. It is a rare legislator that has the vision to put something in place that has the legacy that has already been created by E-Verify. His face and his name will be forever identified with this policy, which I think is the smartest, most technologically adaptive, and the most useful tool that we have for employers that want to hire legal workers in America. I look at this and I think, this is a reauthorization. It is a status quo. I would have liked to have had an opportunity to upgrade E-Verify, because we know a lot of things now that we didn't know when it was put in place. One of the things that we know are 98.6 percent of the names that are submitted in through E-Verify on the computer database; and, by the way, I have it in my office and I have run it and operated it and I am familiar with its inner workings in a way--98.6 percent of the first requests are approved. Remaining in that 1.4 percent are people who are not authorized to work in the United States and that very small piece of the database that does need to be upgraded. 99.9 percent of those that are born in the United States and are American citizens and are legal to work here are approved the first time through. So that remains in those statistics those who aren't authorized to work, who may be here illegally, or those who are here legally that aren't authorized to work. And the balance of that is mostly people who have gotten married and women who have not changed their name and the database doesn't match. USCIS has brought that up to speed here within the last several months and set it up so that their database search goes out to two different categories. It looks for those name changes that have to be cleaned up. And the other are naturalized citizens. Sometimes the paperwork of naturalized citizens doesn't catch up in time, and there has been a little delay gap that has caused a little bit of error. That gap has been narrowed substantially by I think a good technological move by USCIS. What I would have liked to have seen is that we reauthorize E-Verify and provide that employers can simply check those prospective employees and make it a condition that E-Verify could be used with a job offer. Not hire the person and wait for the answer in the 8 days to come back but make a job offer conditional to an E-Verify approval. And I believe an employer should be able to use E-Verify for current employees. Those two changes would have gone a long way towards allowing an employer to verify that their entire employee base is legal. Otherwise, under the circumstances that we have, an employer is compelled to hire someone and then find out if they are legal. I think that is the wrong message to send.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, our State and local prosecutors are the heart of our criminal justice system. These dedicated men and women prosecute the majority of criminal cases in the country. Every State has its criminal problems, and in my home State, we have 350 deputy county attorneys and assistant attorneys general who prosecute thousands of crimes each year. In 2007, for example, State and county prosecutors handled over 68,000 criminal cases in my State alone. The National District Attorneys Association, working in conjunction with the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Education, provides training to State and local prosecutors at the Ernest F. Hollings National Advocacy Center in Columbia, South Carolina. This comprehensive training improves trial practice and advocacy skills needed to successfully prosecute crimes against children, gang crimes, and other violent criminal activity. The National Advocacy Center contains over 200,000 square feet of classrooms, conference rooms, and full-size courtrooms equipped with state-of-the-art audio technology for training. The National District Attorneys Association offers a variety of courses at the center, often including visiting lecturers and experts in specific areas of criminal prosecution. Since 1998, the NDAA's, National District Attorneys Association, program at the National Advocacy Center has provided specialized training and education to approximately 3,000 local prosecutors each year. And over that time, the center has trained a total of over 20,000 State and local prosecutors. Unfortunately, Federal funding for this training has significantly decreased in recent years. In fiscal year 2007, the program received no Federal funding. This lack of funding has required the NDAA to lay off employees and require students to pay for their expenses in order to keep the training program up and running. H.R. 6083 authorizes $6.5 million a year for fiscal years 2009 through 2012 to the Attorney General to carry out this important training program. It's critical that our prosecutors are properly trained to hone their courtroom skills and adapt to changing trial practices. These prosecutors come from all across the country and converge on South Carolina, where this center of education is there for them, and that means there's also a standard that goes back across the country, and I think that's an important piece of this as well, Mr. Speaker. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting H.R. 6083. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. I rise in support of S. 3295, and I urge the House to adopt the bill. Mr. Speaker, 9 years ago Congress enacted the American Inventors Protection Act as part of a larger intellectual property and telecommunications reform measure. Among its many provisions, this law confers a measure of autonomy on the Patent and Trademark Office. At the time, inventors, trademark owners, and Members of Congress believed the agency would function more efficiently if it were allowed greater operational freedom. In fact, some of the earliest drafts of the legislation, dating back to the early and mid-1990s, sought to transform the Patent and Trademark Office into a public corporation. Consistent with this goal, the 1999 law enhances the authority of the Patent and Trademark Office Director to oversee agency affairs. This includes empowering the Director, not the Secretary of Commerce, to appoint administrative law judges serving on the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences, as well as the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Unfortunately, this small and seemingly innocuous change may very well violate an obscure provision of the United States Constitution, the so-called ``appointments clause.'' That's article II, section 2, which enumerates the powers of the President, including the right to appoint various judges, ministers, and other government officials. The last portion of the clause states that ``Congress may . . . vest the appointment of such inferior officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the courts of law, or in the heads of departments.'' In other words, a straightforward reading of article II, section 2, which I strongly endorse, suggests the 1999 authority that Congress bestowed on the Patent and Trademark Office Director to appoint administrative law judges is unconstitutional, inconsistent with article II, section 2. Instead, this right is more properly reserved for the head of the relevant department, the Secretary of Commerce, because the Patent and Trademark Office remains an agency within Commerce. But what does this mean as a practical matter? Why it is a problem? The answer lies in the number of judges appointed since the 1999 law took effect. Of the 81 judges serving on the two boards, 50 were appointed by the Patent and Trademark Office Director under his new authority. Those judges have rendered hundreds of decisions, all of which may be constitutionally suspect if challenged. And that is already happening in one case, the Translogic Technologies versus Dudas case, which is pending before the Supreme Court. This body knows how important intellectual property is to our national economy. With all the other problems plaguing the patent system, the last thing we need is a crisis that reopens settled legal disputes. This isn't fair to the litigants, especially those who won, and it places rights and fair access to inventions in limbo. The solution we must adopt is S. 3295. The bill transfers the authority to appoint administrative law judges from the Patent and Trademark Office Director to the Secretary of Commerce and makes it consistent with article II, section 2 of the Constitution. The legislation also adopts two features developed by the Patent and Trademark Office and the Department of Justice. One empowers the Secretary to ``deem'' or ratify all the appointments made by the PTO Director under the 1999 law. The other creates a ``de facto officer'' defense to any challenge made to the appointment of a patent or trademark administrative law judge. Pursuant to the defense, the acts of a public officer performed under color of authority are considered valid and immune from collateral attack. Born of policy and necessity, the defense protects the interests and reasonable expectations of the public who must rely on the presumptively valid acts of public officials. In closing, we must enact S. 3295 much sooner rather than later to avert a potential litigation crisis that would prove wasteful, unnecessary, and unfair. S. 3295 does provide a measure of immunity. Congress clearly has the authority to do so. And today, we have the responsibility to quickly move S. 3295. Mr. Speaker, I urge adoption and yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, on August 5, 2008, thousands of communities and millions of individuals will once again participate in National Night Out. It's an annual event created to raise community awareness of and participation in local crime-fighting programs and organizations. H. Res. 1324 calls on the administration to coordinate Federal efforts to participate in this nation-wide campaign as well as other community crime-prevention initiatives. In 1984, the National Association of Town Watch, NATW, decided the 5 to 7 percent of neighborhood residents actively involved in their local crime watch and prevention programs was just not enough. It was out of that concern that a National Night Out was born. Since then, it has been the mission of the National Association of Town Watch and National Night Out to promote and increase the membership of these local crime- fighting initiatives and organizations, to strengthen police community relationships, and to send a message to criminals that neighborhoods and communities are united in their fight against crime. This year's event will celebrate a National Night Out's 25th anniversary. Since its creation, the event, which began with 2.5 million Americans in 23 States illuminating their homes, has expanded its participation to 35.4 million in all 50 States. And the traditional ``lights on'' has grown to include block parties, neighborhood walks, police meetings, cookouts, and parades. Unfortunately, crime has found its way into even the safest of neighborhoods. And while our law enforcement officials play a tremendous role in fighting this criminal activity, united communities committed to crime-prevention awareness is essential to this ongoing fight. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Poe).

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the remarks made by the gentleman that came to the floor. As I listened to Mr. Poe and his remarks, I come from an entirely different environment. I do a little inventory, and within a mile radius of my house there are four houses, and that's all, perhaps, in limit of a mile. Not only do we know who drives down our road and where they're going, if the ambulance comes by, we know who's in it. It's a very thinly populated rural area, but we have a neighborhood. And when I come to Washington, D.C., where my wife and I maintain a residence, we live in a neighborhood. And neighborhoods are similar whether they're in the city or whether they're in the country because you need to get to know each other. And a National Night Out is a way to do that. And when we get to know each other, that opens up our communications. And when we open up our communications, we provide the intelligence that supports our law enforcement so that we can fight crime in a direct effective fashion. That's the essence of the reason that I support this resolution, and I urge its adoption.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of S. 3294, the United States Parole Commission Extension Act of 2008. This bipartisan legislation will extend the authorization of the United States Parole Commission for an additional 3 years. Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Ranking Member Lamar Smith introduced the House version of this bill earlier this month. Crime Subcommittee Chairman Bobby Scott and Ranking Member Louie Gohmert also joined as cosponsors. The Parole Commission is an independent agency within the Department of Justice that has the responsibility of supervising Federal offenders that are eligible for parole. The Parole Commission also has jurisdiction over offenders from the District of Columbia who are parole-eligible and those convicted under current DC law, under which they cannot be paroled. Today, the great majority of the Commission's workload concerns the District of Columbia offenders. That's because the group of offenders that the Commission was originally intended to supervise--Federal offenders that are eligible for parole--are a small category of prisoners getting smaller every day. This decrease in the number of parole-eligible Federal offenders is the result of a decision by Congress to end indeterminate sentencing, and therefore Federal parole, with the passage of the Sentencing Reform Act, or SRA, of 1984. As a result of the SRA, the arbitrary and disparate sentences imposed by judges under the old system were replaced with determinate sentences mandated by strong guidelines created by the U.S. Sentencing Commission. This new Federal sentencing arrangement has been an unquestioned success. Determinate sentencing makes incarceration terms more meaningful and ensures that offenders actually serve most of their sentences. Determinate sentencing also helped to restore the credibility of courts by making sentencing more uniform. Over the last 25 years the national crime rate has dropped. This decrease in crime can be attributed to determinate sentencing, which keeps the violent criminals in prison and off the streets, and it also provides a deterrent. In an effort to lower local crime rates, the District of Columbia followed the Federal example and abolished parole. Under the new DC system, the DC Superior Court imposes a term of incarceration and supervised release, and the Parole Commission enforces the conditions of the supervised release. Like the population of Federal offenders eligible for parole, the parole-eligible DC offender population is declining over time, although at a slower rate than Federal offenders. However, because all incoming offenders are now sentenced under the new law, the DC supervised release offender population is increasing over time. The Department of Justice has indicated that it will evaluate the future of the commission during the 3-year reauthorization period. The department will review whether any changes to the commission are necessary to reflect its decreasing Federal parole responsibilities and its evolving supervised release responsibilities for the District of Columbia. These changes may include transferring all or some of the commission's functions to an entity or entities inside or outside the Department of Justice. We hope the department will share the results of this review with Congress as it will help the legislature make an informed decision about the future status of the U.S. Parole Commission. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the privilege and the honor to address you on the floor of the United States House of Representatives. This is one of these evenings that is a hot and sultry night here in Washington, D.C. It strikes me as the kind of day that actually was in August when the first hearings happened out here in Washington that were addressing the global warming issue. They had a Dr. Hansen--he happens to be from my hometown--who testified before that first hearing. The temperature was, oh, approaching 100 degrees; the humidity was, oh, approaching 100 degrees, and it wasn't an air-conditioned office about 20 or more years ago, maybe 25 years ago. It wasn't an air-conditioned hearing room, I should say, committee room. As the first testimony unfolded, Mr. Speaker, about global warming, it was a lot easier to convince Members of Congress that that could be a problem when they were sitting in that 100-degrees-feels-like temperature with the high humidity in the committee room here in Washington. You know, this kind of weather is the reason there is an August break. Why, as far back as our founders, they went home, and they tried to find some high ground where there was a breeze because they didn't have air conditioning, but August was used about 20, 25 years ago to kick off global warming. We know that there has been a long debate since then and that the foundation for that science is in question. There are some 31,000 trained scientists who have signed off on a petition that says, ``We don't buy the science of global warming.'' Now, I don't know that you can find very many people on the street, Mr. Speaker, who really understand the science of the idea of global warming--I can surely find plenty who disagree--but I think, when you're going to do something that alters the state of our economy and the state of our culture and the global economy and the global culture in this fashion, then the proof has got to be on the people who want to make the changes and who want to shut down energy and energy access and energy production. What's going on in this Congress, Mr. Speaker, is what has followed from that hearing those more than two decades ago. It's a belief that, when you use energy, it puts greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Greenhouse gases warm the Earth. It's a belief and not proof that a warmer Earth, in all categories, is bad for humanity. The people who are so concerned about global warming are not the kind of people who draw a line down through the middle of the paper on their legal pads and who write on one side ``these are the things that are bad about global warming'' and, on the other side of that line, in the center, ``these are the things that are good.'' No, Mr. Speaker. This is all a one-sided argument. In their minds, everything that has to do with the Earth--and it is very marginally, statistically, warming up. We don't know whether there's an increase in sun spots or whether there's a little bit of increase in greenhouse gases. Whatever the case, in their analysis, if the Earth warms by a degree, it's always bad in every case. Even when the Earth gets colder in certain places, it's still the fault of global warming because, after all, it's the average of the temperature; it's not the extremes that we should be looking at. Last winter was one of the coldest winters we've had. We see the dynamics in the weather extremes. As to those dynamics, by some of the weather forecasters, they say that it's not because the Earth is warmer but because the Earth is cooling in certain locations that we're seeing more extreme weather. In any case, this is not conclusive. Yet there are many people over on this side of the aisle, Mr. Speaker, who have concluded that we should shut down energy consumption, that we should slow it down, back it down. Park your car. Park your SUV. Maybe even park your Prius because, right now, if you plug it into an outlet with a plug and you charge it up with electricity that was generated from coal, you're driving a coal-fired automobile down the highway. So they're saying park all of that. Get on your bicycle and ride your bicycle. If you do that, then it will slow down the greenhouse gas emissions. If that happens, it will save the planet for our children and grandchildren. Whatever the price is to our economy, to our way of life, to our culture, and whatever it does to shut down the economy, in their minds, it is all worth it. That's what we're working with here. On our side of the aisle, we're saying we need more energy. We're arguing that, in all forms of energy, we need to provide more of it, that high prices slow down our economy. Everything we do takes energy, whether you're delivering Pampers or Pablum, or whether you're delivering French wine to the restaurants here in downtown Washington, D.C., it takes energy to do that. When that energy costs more money, everything costs more money. We say, let's put more Btus on the market of all kinds. When there's a huge supply, you'll see the demand doesn't meet the supply and prices go down until the demand meets the supply. That's something we understand over here. It's something that seems to be beyond the comprehension over here. That's what's up, Mr. Speaker. And I think we need to articulate this over and over again until the American people understand. There is one side of this argument that has pushed for more energy. And we passed a number of bills in the last several Congresses, passed them out of the floor of this House and over to the Senate. If they had not been blocked over there by extreme environmentalists that had an ability to put a hold on a bill, that had an ability to filibuster, many of the pieces of legislation that expand our energy would already be law, and 6 or 8 or more years ago we would have started to open up places like the Outer Continental Shelf, non-national park public lands. We passed pad drilling in ANWR some years ago. We would have oil coming out of that pipeline up there today from ANWR if we had just signed it into law the day it was passed out of the House of Representatives. That's some of the backdrop, Mr. Speaker, on the energy issue. And I know that when you go to a place and you're looking for people that know something about energy, the first place you would go in the United States of America would be Texas. And I'm not sure it would be east Texas, but that's where I want to go, to the gentleman from east Texas, Mr. Louie Gohmert, and yield so much time as he may consume.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. And as I listened to your presentation, reclaiming my time, just going down through a list of some of the things that jumped out at me, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, to tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, as the gentleman from Texas said, at a time when Iran has threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz. And through that closed strait comes 42.6 percent of the world's export oil supply. That isn't just the valve through which 42.6 percent of the world's export oil supply goes. That valve, if they turn it down, let alone turn it off, that shuts down the world economy. It nearly shuts off the world economy, and the dynamics of everything we do change dramatically. That's why in past decades we have had the United States Navy in there to keep those straits open during times of crisis because that is the pressure point in the world for the world's economy. If they follow through on this, and there is a relatively unstable leader in Iran, they shut down the straits and we drain out our Strategic Petroleum Reserve, what are our alternatives? Hard-core rationing, and even then we get down to the point where we don't have the fuel for our own military and the scenario of how the Battle of the Bulge was won by Americans instead of won by the Germans falls into play. We won't have the gas. We won't have the gas for our military. We won't have the gas for our economy. We won't have the juice. This is not the time to drain down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It's a political ploy on this side of the aisle. That's, I think, clear to all of us. And, Mr. Speaker, the statement with ``use it or lose it,'' the argument that we have oil companies that have leases that are not being drilled upon, that's another one of those red herring arguments. And if we were serious about this, if we really thought the oil companies weren't developing leases that are on lands, they're just not developing dry holes. That's why those leases that are not drilled aren't drilled on yet. And if we would allow them to trade out those acres, 1 good acre for 5 bad ones, you would find out what the good land was and what the bad land was, what the good leases are and what the bad leases are. That would be my proposal, but that's not what happened here because we had to do another red herring. We had to stand up another strawman and make another argument because the American people aren't going to tolerate very long a Congress that refuses to act to open up energy. The belief that tightening down the energy supply, see gas prices go up. If gas prices go up, people burn less. If people burn less, the god of sky is happy. Mother Earth is happy. Human beings suffer. Grandmothers aren't going to get on their bicycles in January in Iowa and ride them down the gravel road 7 miles to town. That's how far it is for me to go to town, and it isn't all gravel, but the first mile is. It doesn't work for us. We can't drive those little Priuses either because the most recent time I had to shift my SUV into four-wheel drive to get home was still in April when the roads were soft and the frost was going out. So it's not an option for us unless we have a summer car and a winter car, a fair weather car and a foul weather vehicle. No, people in my part of the neighborhood drive the vehicles they do because that's what's necessary to get the job done. And a lot of those vehicles are farm pickups that are doing work every day. There's a whole different mindset going on. And the reason that the people who represent the blue zones, the inner cities, the ones who hold the gavels in this Congress today, can get by with higher energy prices, one of those reasons is because the people buying gas in places like Texas and Iowa, and it's a long ways between towns in Texas, further than it is in Iowa, the people buying that gas that are going from town to town and doing the things they need to do to maintain their life-style and their businesses are paying 18.4 a gallon Federal tax and a lot of States have 20 or more cents on that to maintain the roads, and 17 percent of the Federal gas tax goes to mass transit. And so the people that are voting, the inner-city people that are voting for the folks that are environmental extremists that refuse to allow the energy development in America, our own energy, those people are subsidized by the folks that are buying gas. And their ticket to get on the metro down here at South Capitol and ride out to Falls Church is about a buck and a quarter. It would be a lot more than that if they had to buy the whole price of the metro. And a ticket on the subway in New York is cheaper than it would be if they had to pay the full fair cost for travel, and a ticket on the ``L'' in Chicago and the cable car in San Francisco, those transits by my measure are all subsidized by the people who are buying gas. And the constituents who allow their Members of Congress to drive up these prices are going to push us gas buyers to the point where we say, ``I'm not going to subsidize your mass transit anymore on my gas dollar. You pay for your own ticket.'' That's going to happen too in this Congress, and that will be when they squeal. And then they'll say, well, gas is too high; let's have some more energy. Here's what has happened during the Pelosi Congress. This was going to be the Congress that was the most open in history, by the way. I think it's the most closed in history. It was going to be the most effective and hardest-working Congress in history. Well, it's sure not open, and, Mr. Speaker, it's sure not effective. And, additionally, we still haven't passed an appropriations bill as late in history as that has ever happened. And this cheaper gas price that was promised if we would just hand the gavel to Nancy Pelosi and apply her San Francisco values to all of America, we would have this wonderful world where everybody got along and gas would be cheaper. That was the promise. We are going to get you cheaper gas, cheaper than it was than Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker, took the gavel. Here's what gas prices were when President Bush was sworn in, Mr. Speaker: $1.49. And it slowly crept up. And in about this area, we passed energy legislation, and it went over to the Senate, where the Democrats in the Senate filibustered our energy legislation that would have put many more Btus of energy into our marketplace. They said no. That blocked the smart legislation that came out of the House. And when that happened, prices of energy went up. And they went up to all of $2.33 a gallon for gasoline on the day that the new Speaker took the gavel here just behind me, $2.33, and gas prices were going to get cheaper. And here is what the promise results in. Now, it's fallen off a little bit more in the last week or so: $4.08, I saw $4.10, $4.11, more than that on the board in other places. But gas taking a leap like that, and why? Because there's less energy on the market, not more; because the people that are hedging because they need to have diesel fuel and gasoline see the supply that's there and they see that it's going to be harder to develop energy in the United States because of folks in this Congress in their majority won't let it happen. We say drill everything, drill it now, produce more energy of all kinds, drill ANWR, drill the Outer Continental Shelf, drill the nonnational park public lands. As Mr. Gohmert said, open up the Green River shale oil and go into that massive amount, 800 billion barrels, maybe a trillion barrels that are there; go in and get that natural gas in that huge find in Hainesville. Do all of those things. Produce more of every form of energy that we have. The argument that we can't go to the Outer Continental Shelf and drill because it's environmentally unfriendly, Mr. Gohmert spoke about how that's the place where you go if you want to go fishing out there is to the oil platform because in the shade of the structure is a place where the fish congregate. So it has been better. There are places where they sink ships out in the ocean because it's fish habitat. Well, the structure of the ship is structure for fish. The structure of an oil platform is structure for fish. And there was at least one oil platform that was torn loose during Hurricane Katrina that blew 60 miles across the ocean, and it went up near shore near Mobile, Alabama. No leak, but a platform that was pushed 60 miles by a terrible storm. But they are set up now with the kind of connections that if they're torn loose, there are not leaks. And we have met this technology. The North Slope of Alaska is essentially identical topography and identical environment to that of ANWR. They're right next door. It's like Nebraska and Iowa or Iowa and Illinois, and that's how the difference is between North Slope and ANWR. Well, the habitat for wildlife in the North Slope, after we went up and built the pipeline, has done about the same thing, maybe even better, than the platforms out in the gulf coast. In that the count in the caribou herd in the North Slope in 1970 was 7,000 caribou, 7,000 head of caribou walking around out there in that frozen tundra. For a couple months out of the year when the sun shines 24 hours a day, it thaws the permafrost down a foot to 18 inches. Sloppy old tundra in there. And those caribou that were 7,000 caribou in 1970 today are over 28,000 head of caribou. Why is that? Well, one environmentalist said to me when I made that point, well, of course there are more caribou today. That's because the people that went up and worked on the pipeline shot all the wolves. That was their natural enemy. Now, I would not have come up with that. But this is what I can tell you, Mr. Speaker: I was signed up to go up on that pipeline, and they had to pay good money to get a man to go up there and work in that climate, not just 80-below temperatures sometimes, though real men can do that, but the rules were this: First of all, there were no women allowed; so you're going to lose some of these men who don't want to go someplace where there are no women. It's tough for me. And the second thing was no gambling. The third thing was no booze. And the fourth thing was no guns. No women, no gambling, no booze, and no guns. That's why they had to pay such big money to get somebody to go work in 80-below temperatures. That was some of the worst of it. Most of it wasn't that bad. So the reality is that if there were no guns up there and nobody shot any of the wolves and that isn't why the caribou herd increased, they increased because they had a nice dry spot where they could have their calves, not down in the ice water in the frozen tundra. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Texas. Yes, the polar bears are doing well, and they are probably dining on a seal diet. They'll eat caribou. They'll eat anything they can get their paws on. That's what a bear does. And 28,000 head caribou herd up there on the North Slope. But there is no resident caribou herd in ANWR next door. There's a migratory herd that comes in in the spring from Canada. They come in and have their calves there, and when the calves get to where they can walk, they all walk back to Canada. So it's a kind of a maternity ward for caribou there in ANWR. But no one can come up with any reason why they would stop coming over to have their calves or think that it would hurt their population. It would probably help their population because they like to get up out of that cold, frozen water and the tundra and get up on something kind of high and let the breeze blow the flies away and have their calves up there where they have a better chance of survival. Another gentleman that has come to the floor to address this issue is one of the three judges from the State of Texas, and they all come here from Texas knowing something about the law and something about energy. I would be happy to yield to Judge Carter, the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, one of the outstanding judges from Texas, Judge Carter, and my wing man on the Judiciary Committee for 4 years, and my voice of reason as well. This is a chart that was far harder to put together than it should have been. This should have been something that a simple little e-mail down to the office would have produced. You would think that when you ask a question, What is the energy production in the United States, what are all of its sources, and put it altogether and put it into the common denominator of Btus. Well, it didn't quite work that way because we don't measure electricity in Btu's. We measure it in kilowatts or megawatts, and sometimes coal doesn't give you that measurement either. So we got some help from some people and this chart is the energy pie chart, I call it. Each one of these different colors here is a different source of energy. And so I will take us around. This is the energy we produce in the United States. Overall, this is the number: 72.1 quadrillion Btus. Here's the number down here. That is 15 zeroes or so. But we will get to the meaning of that number here in a moment. When I go around the horn and I start with gasoline, gasoline that is produced the United States amounts to 8.28 percent of the overall energy production in the United States. Then you go to diesel fuel and heating oil. That is 4.20 percent. Kerosene and jet fuel together is 1.57. Less than I thought it would be. Other petroleum products, heavy oil, those things, 4.8 percent. Now there's a big piece here, the natural gas. The natural gas that Judge Carter talked about. Roughly 27\1/2\ percent of the overall energy that we produce is natural gas. Coal is 32\1/2\ percent of the overall Btu's. Nuclear, 11.66. Maybe bigger than most folks would think. We got to hydroelectric, which Judge Carter mentioned. Out of all our energy production, hydroelectric is 3.41 percent overall. Then you get to these tiny little pieces here. We want to do all of these things, as Judge Carter said. We want to do them all. Now we are getting down to the list of the things that the folks on this side of the aisle will do. Here they are. They will be okay maybe with geothermal as long as they don't have to watch it happen because they can't stand the thought of seeing a drill rig punch a hole down to turn the heat back. But once it's over, it's kind of okay. Wind. Well, they don't like wind so good. If Teddy Kennedy can see it, they don't want it. But out in Texas it's probably all right. T. Boone Pickens said this is one problem we can't drill our way out of. Well, I believe that may be true, but it's also a problem we can't get out of without drilling. That is what I would add to the gentleman's wisdom. Here's solar, at .11 percent. Here are the three sources of energy that are not objectionable to environmentalists, geothermal, wind, and solar, and they represent just a little bit more than 1 percent of the overall energy production in America, and that is what they would expand that into the entire energy supply for America. These tiny little slivers here that are so small, you don't even get a color in there. It's just the line, the black line. Expand those into the whole circle and let the rest of this wither and die on the vine. Because if we drill an oil well, it's going to reach maximum production pretty quickly. From there on, it's statistically a little bit less oil on a daily basis until it finally dries up. We have got to keep exploring. Same with natural gas. These wells don't last forever. They don't get bigger, better. They get to be a little lesser. With coal, you have got to keep opening coal mines. You can't be closing the uranium, by the way, or our nuclear will slowly get shut down. There's the little sliver they would have, geothermal, wind and solar. But the rest of us, we would expand all of this, and I include with that ethanol, biodiesel, biomass. All of that source of energy needs to be expanded because I have the chart that shows not just the energy production in the United States, but the energy consumption compared to it, and it is actually the more interesting of the two charts, Mr. Speaker. This chart shows the outside circle is the energy consumption in the United States. I showed you the number before, 72.1 quadrillion Btus of production, 101.4 quadrillion Btus of consumption. This circle in the middle is our production circle. The outside is our consumption circle. This inner circle is 72 percent of the outer circle. So, however we want to measure this, we need to grow more natural gas so it comes out to the width of the outer circle. We need to grow more coal production, more nuclear production, more gasoline over here, and on and on with the diesel fuel, jet fuel, et cetera. This inner circle, which is the energy production in the United States, has got to grow up to match up with the outer circle, which is energy consumption. If we do that, we are energy independent, however you measure it. Now, I'd change the proportion of these slices of the pie. I would use a lot less natural gas to general electricity because it's a finite source and I'd rather see it go to manufacturing, where natural gas is the mother's milk of manufacturing. I'd rather see it go to fertilizer. We have nearly lost the fertilizer industry in American because natural gas has been pushed to high. I would change the proportions and the priorities and I'd produce a lot more nuclear because we can and we should and it's environmentally friendly and it's the safest source of energy that there is on the one planet. The French produce 78 percent of their electricity with nuclear. Ours is 8.29--actually, 11.66 percent of our production and 8.29 percent of our overall consumption.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I will yield. I will add to the slice of the pie, just as I yield, one of these needs to be energy conservation. That changes the equation too. The gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas. I would add to that that the free market solutions that we have, they constantly adjust. If government gets out of the way, the demand will create the supply, and when the supply gets to be oversupply, then the price comes down. Instead, we have people that have their hands on the gavel that don't believe in free market economy. They never sat down and read through Adam Smith's ``Wealth of Nations'' word-for-word and understood it. They don't live to appreciate it. They think there are a handful of intellectual elitists in the world that can manage the economy. We have had two Members of this Congress that have called out for nationalization of at least part of our oil industry or all of our oil industry. One of them, the gentleman from New York, called for the nationalization of our oil refineries. In other words, that word doesn't fit too good with Americans, but it happens in places like Venezuela, and it happened in Libya to the Hunt brothers with their oil fields. Nationalization means the United States Government would take over the oil refineries and run them. One other Member, the gentlewoman from California, argued that we should nationalize the entire oil industry in the United States, run that with the government. I wonder, where does this come from? Where I come from, we are steeped in free enterprise. We are steeped in free market capitalization. We understand that ambition and the desire and need for profit has done more for the standard of living of all humanity than all the missionaries that ever went anywhere. And God love the missionaries for all they have done, but it has been the desire for profit that has driven our technology, in math and science and in the oil industry and in information technology. It wasn't done because some intellectual elitist was sitting somewhere and decided let's invent a software package and a microchip and an oil drill rig and a derrick and a platform and a refinery. That was done because there was profit in it, and some good, solid, smart people put capital together and they worked hard and took risks and our lives got better. There is a book that I read years ago called ``Trashing the Planet'' by Dixie Lee Ray, former Governor of the State of Washington. She since has passed away. She served one term out there, as I recall. She starts the book out about how in 1900 the world was a very smelly and dirty and dangerous place, and she writes about how horses were going up and down in the streets, and they didn't wear diapers like they do in Central Park in those days. They left their mess behind them. The garbage got dumped out the window. There was a time there in transition when a gentleman walked on the inside, away from the curb, so when the garbage got dumped out, it landed on him instead of the lady. Then, after a while, it got to be where the vehicles were splashing water up, so the gentleman walked on the curbside instead of the building side. That is how the culture changed. We didn't have clean water and we didn't have clean air and we didn't have modern medicine, and she wrote about how we took a step up and new technology came, every new invention improved the standard of living and the quality of life on average of all Americans, and, in fact, most people in the world. I read that book next to, side-by-side, simultaneous with Al Gore's book ``Earth in the Balance.'' It was quite a thing to see the difference between the good, solid, commonsense of Dixie Lee Ray, that was full of footnotes and references, a very respectable, scholarly work, compared to the work of ``Earth in the Balance,'' that I didn't find a footnote, and I found quotes from a respected politician, a noted public figure, but not even names. So we are always better off with technology. Energy produces more technology, cheaper, and lets our economy flow. If we decide we are going to shut down, say, the coal mines here in the United States, shut down the oil drilling and for natural gas or for our crude oil, and, by the way, in the last 25 years, our oil rigs have gone from 4,500 of them operating and working in the United States down to 2,000 is all. Only six rigs working in Alaska. Only six up there in that huge oil. So we need more energy so that we can have a more effective economy. That is the bottom line. We believe in free market capitalization. We believe in supply and demand. We believe that if there is more demand, there will be more supply created, if government gets out of the way. You folks all believe get in the way and then drag a straw man out and a red herring and say, well, we will take some oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or we will say ``use it or lose it.'' The American people know better. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the judge and the judges from Texas. It has been a big help to me and a boost to hear your insight on this energy issue. I intend to continue to turn this up and do all I can to open it up. I am tired of $4 gas. The American people are tired of $4 gas. They know that this if Congress shuts down energy, the price will go higher, not lower, and it is up to us. We have got discharge petitions down here that many, many Members have signed. When we get to 218, they will come to the floor, whether it is blocked by the Speaker or not. That is one of the key pieces of this. I also wanted to add, first I will go back and recap this energy pie piece. The inside circle is energy production in America. The outside circle is energy consumption in America. The colored components of this, blue is gas production; diesel fuel is red; and you have got the yellow is natural gas; the kind of orange is coal; green is nuclear; and then you get hydroelectric is this little sliver right here in that faded lavender color. But when you go around the corner and you ask the question, can we bring more biomass into this equation, environmentalists say no, you are burning wood and stuff, so you are polluting the atmosphere with the emissions from burning cellulose. So you can't do that. Well, we get to diesel fuel and gasoline. We surely can't do that, because that comes from an oil well. That is a crude oil product. You can't do jet fuel, you can't do heavy oils, because that is all petroleum out of a well product. Here is natural gas. You can't do that. That is Outer Continental Shelf. They don't want to create fish habitat out there with those oil platforms. And the idea for some people in Florida that out there at 199 miles away from shore we might punch a oil or natural gas well down and somebody might not come to Florida and sit on the beach because there was once a drill rig 199 miles away and now there is a platform that might even be underwater, that can't be seen? That has about as much sense as somebody sitting on Iowa's border with Missouri in a lawn chair saying, I don't like the idea there could be somebody with a drill rig up there in Southern Minnesota, right across the line. Same distance, 200 miles north to south. Why is anybody worried about a drill rig 200 miles offshore of Florida? They can't see it from the beach. Chris Columbus, remember, said that is how he figured out the Earth was round. He saw the mast of the ship first as it got closer. He figured the Earth was curved, because you should have seen all the ship at once if it were flat. We have to grow the size of this energy pie, Mr. Speaker. All of these things are off the table from environmentalists: No more natural gas, no coal, no more nuclear. Hydroelectric, we surely couldn't stop the water in a river and save a flood, like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Iowa City, Iowa, in the process. No, we can't have any more of that. All we can have more of is geothermal, wind and biodiesel. They represent approximately 1 percent of the overall energy, the overall energy production in America, and they are only 0.74 percent of the overall consumption in America. So clearly something has to change. The American people will not tolerate expensive gas, as long as there is a logical, commonsense solution. We know what that is. We have talked about what that is, Mr. Speaker, and I call upon the Speaker of the House to let these energy bills come forward for votes and let the American people see where everybody stands in this Congress.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 194 appropriately reminds us of the horrors of slavery. Slavery was a stain on our original Constitution. It took the blood of hundreds of thousands of Americans who died in the Civil War to erase that stain and to pave the way for passage of the Civil War amendments to our Constitution. We must never forget that. This resolution exhorts us not to repeat the mistakes of the past. I would like to address two of those mistakes in some of this time. One of the clauses of this resolution notes that after emancipation from 246 years of slavery, African Americans soon saw the fleeting political, social and economic gains they made during Reconstruction eviscerated by virulent racism and lynching. It is worth noting in that regard that the government's campaign against the Ku Klux Klan during the Reconstruction Era included the use of military commissions approved by Congress to try those vicious terrorists of the day. Klan terrorists disguised in plain clothes embarked on a campaign of terror that included lynchings, assassinations and even the disemboweling of their innocent victims. The experience, Mr. Speaker, of that period, presaged the dangers of extending habeas corpus litigation rights to enemy terrorists today. The campaign to defeat the Klan collapsed during the Reconstruction Era when Klansmen asserted habeas litigation rights in Federal court against their captors. As one historian has written, the result of the required legal release of the Klan was that Klansmen not only escaped punishment, they turned the law on their erstwhile prosecutors with a series of suits and harassments that drove some of them from the State as fugitives. No sooner had Colonel George W. Kirk, the local commander, brought his prisoners to Raleigh, then two of them sued him for false arrest. He was released on bond and returned to his command, while other similar suits accumulated against him. In effect, he became a refugee from process servers and sheriffs, protected by his own soldiers. I fear the Supreme Court has repeated that mistake today by granting terrorists habeas litigation rights to challenge their detentions in Federal Court. Resolutions like the one we consider now help to remind the Nation of the mistakes of the past so they will not be repeated in the future. This resolution also expresses a commitment to rectifying the lingering consequences of the misdeeds committed against African Americans under slavery and Jim Crow. Those misdeeds, of course, were premised in the notion that people should be treated differently on account of their race. One the most significant civil rights developments out of the 2006 elections was passage of the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative, an amendment to the Michigan State Constitution that passed by a wide margin, 58 percent to 42 percent. The Civil Rights Initiative in relevant part reads simply, and I have heard Ward Connerly make this statement in person and it booms from his voice and it reaches my heart, Mr. Speaker. It says, ``The State shall not discriminate against or grant preferential treatment to any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.'' Similar efforts are underway in Arizona, Colorado, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma. This resolution reminds us all that American government should operate on a color-blind basis. As I read through this resolution, I pick out some pieces that don't fit my sense of history. I would add that the Civil War is often taught to being fought over slavery. The people on the south side of the Mason Dixon Line would say it was fought over States' rights. I would say among those States' rights was the argument that the Southern States could declare their policy with regard to slavery. Slavery has put a scar upon the United States that was a component of history as it arrived here, and it has been a component of most of the history within the continents. It has not, as it says here, imposed a rigid system of officially sanctioned racial segregation in virtually all areas of life. Subsequent to the Civil War and the emancipation, there were many areas in the North that were integrated, socially, economically, with a heart to do so, and I think they deserve some credit here as well, Mr. Speaker. The vestiges of Jim Crow law today, I hope we learn what they are. The one I can think of is the Davis-Bacon wage scale. That is a vestige of Jim Crow. I can't think of the others. I do appreciate the language that says, ``However long the journey, our destiny is set: Liberty and justice for all,'' and I mean that sincerely. And as this resolution apologizes to African Americans, I would correct that and say that there are many African Americans in this country who are immigrants from other countries, and they do very well here in America. They haven't felt the same sense as those who are descended from slaves that lived in this country. So I would say this resolution more speaks to the descendants of slaves and those being in this country exclusively African Americans. I would add that there are some missing components altogether. I brought this book because I think it puts some more perspective on this as well, Mr. Speaker. This is a book written by Robert Davis, ``Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters.'' He is a professor, I believe, at Ohio State University. I have read this carefully. It grips my soul like this subject grips my soul. It tells the story of 1.25 million Christian slaves hijacked on the seas of the Mediterranean who were subjected to slavery and forced to build the edifices along the Barbary Coast and the northern coast of Africa. They don't have descendants because they were worked to death and dumped overboard from the corsairs, those who pulled on the oars instead of built the edifices. Some of the women were pushed into being concubines. But, for the most part, this is very instructive. It says many of us are descended of relatives of slaves, but there are no descendants from these slaves because they didn't survive. That is 1.25 million. So I think that in this context, this Nation is rising above this debate, and I would like to think we have put this debate behind us. I know that Chairman Conyers knows my head and my heart on this, and I have spoken about how deeply it has affected me to walk into a church in Port Gibson, Mississippi, and look up to the balcony and see that that balcony was made for African Americans, while white people went to church downstairs on the ground floor. It is hard for me to fathom a faith that would recognize a division like that, Mr. Speaker. I know also that Abraham Lincoln spoke to this subject matter, and perhaps I will come back to that. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.