Steve King

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I was detained while attempting to reach the House floor to cast my vote on rollcall No. 415 on June 17, 2008. Had I been able to reach the floor before the vote was closed, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak and be recognized here on the floor, raising the issue of energy and gas costs. I brought a poster which I will quickly show. This is where gas prices have gone, Mr. Speaker. You know, we listen to an awful lot of criticism building up to the 2006 elections of the Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress because of high gas prices, and here is where it ended. It was at $1.49 when President Bush was sworn into office, and it went to $2.33 the day Nancy Pelosi picked up the gavel. She is the one that said that she was going to get us cheaper gas prices. The result of that is? You can see the graph, it shoots from $2.33 up to $4.08, $4.07, won't quibble over a penny, and going on up, with no plan to do anything except drive up the energy prices. I am one of those that will say--and we have gotten a good look at that--but I am one of those that will say that everybody in this Congress doesn't want cheaper energy prices. Some people in this Congress want higher energy prices. I think that goes all the way up to the leadership, and I can say that because I have watched these energy bills come to the floor. Every single thing that's affected the price of energy, at least that I can recall, drove the price up, not down, shut down and blocked the drilling and the access to energy across this country, across this continent. When I came into this Congress, I was not convinced that anybody thought that gas prices ought to be higher. Then about 6, 7 months into the beginning of this 110th Congress, this Pelosi Congress, you finally convinced me. You convinced me that you want to see a higher gas price--because it doesn't seem logical that people in my district--and they are going to wonder about the rationale of it, but I have listened to the debate too long not to say it out loud, and it's this--that there are those in this Congress in significant numbers that believe that this planet is warming, and it's our fault. If we can raise the cost of energy, people will use less of it, including gasoline. If they use less of it and ride their bicycle more, there will be fewer greenhouse emissions, and there will be less greenhouse gas go off into the atmosphere. If there is less going into the atmosphere, somehow they are going to save the planet. Well, there are a whole lot of things wrong with that equation, the worst of them is that the countries of and China and India, the emerging industrial nations are not going to back off on coal. They are going to burn more coal, and they are building more generating plants. Whatever we do to slow down the coal or cut down on the emissions of our greenhouse gases is going to be more than offset. You talk about carbon offsets, it's being offset in India and China a lot faster than we could possibly shut down our consumption of energy in the United States, which shuts down our economy. The equation for people that are holding the gavels that control this policy in this Congress today is drive up the cost of energy, drive up the cost so that people will use less energy. I said when gas got to be $3, what's the solution for $3 gas? The answer, $3 gas, because the American people are going to demand that their gas be cheaper. Now we are at $4.07 or $4.08 gas, and what's the solution for that? Well, maybe, it's $4.07 or $4.08 gas. Maybe we are going to see a $5 gas or more. Maybe we are going to see crude oil go from $139 a barrel to maybe $200 a barrel or more. The predictions are saying that. The futures don't quite say that yet, but the speculators are heading in that direction. Why are they doing that? Because they understand there is a policy in this Congress today, as we listened to Mrs. Bachmann talk to us about this, to drive up the price of energy. The idea that we would ride our bicycles instead of drive our cars. They can get by with it. They can get by with it because we put the hose in our tank, the nozzle in our tank. When we squeeze that nozzle we are paying 18.4 cents a gallon in gas tax. That's Federal, a lot of the States, 20 or more cents in gas tax as well so we can support our transportation in our roads. That's a user's fee. I fully support that. The people that squeeze the nozzle to pump the gas into their tanks in my district and across this country believe that money is going to build new roads and rebuild existing roads. That's a sad thing to say, but about one-third of that money goes to that, and the balance of that goes to other causes. Some of them are extreme causes, extreme causes, like, for example, 28 percent used for environmental and archaeological compliance, 28 percent of the 18.4 cents that you put in there for gas tax per gallon is going to comply with environmentalist ideas and to look for arrowheads out there. That's 28 percent, and 17 percent goes to subsidized mass transit. The people that are voting for those folks that hold the gavels that have this green idea that we should drive up the cost of energy, aren't paying for the cost of that energy because they are getting on the Metro down here at South Capitol and riding over to Falls Church for $1.25, subsidized by the gas tax that's paid in Mrs. Bachmann's district, my district, Mr. Gingrey's district in Georgia and across this country. My constituents don't know that because we haven't told them enough. But if I went to them and say, hey, I want to take 17 percent of your gas tax and spend it on something else and subsidize somebody else's transportation, they would object. That's why their constituents, though, the intercity urban Members of this Congress are not held accountable for higher energy prices because it's being subsidized by the gas fees that are paid by people in my district and across the country. By the way it doesn't work for us. It is an awful long drive to get to the Metro or the ``L'' or to get to the subway or to get to the trolley car like they have in San Francisco. But that's all subsidized by the gas that we are paying that's tax on part of this $4.07 that's out there. Now, what is the thinking that's going on in the leadership of this Congress? Well, I pulled out one little thing, green, think green. We had a green initiative, called a Green the Capitol initiative that was initiated by Speaker Pelosi when shortly after she was sworn into this Congress. Her idea was that we should show them how to do cap and trade. We should trade-off some carbon credits. So I got some information that came out of the House Administration Committee, it goes back to the Chief Administrative Officer of the House, Mr. Dan Beard, who at the direction of Speaker Pelosi spent $89,000 to purchase carbon credits. Well, why purchase the carbon credits at the direction of the Speaker? Because the Speaker wanted to be sure that we were a carbon-neutral capital complex. To be carbon neutral they shelled out $89,000 of your tax dollars, Americans, $89,000 to purchase carbon credits. I didn't know you could actually go on the market and do that, but you can. It has been done. The market was the Chicago Climate Exchange, not the Chicago Board of Trade, not the Chicago Mercantile, it was the Chicago Climate Exchange, a place where you can go and buy futures, I presume, and buy puts on carbon credits. So $89,000 went out to carbon credits, and here is where they went, brokered through the Chicago Climate Exchange, this report, through the House Administration Committee--just some of the money I have been able to track, not all of it--$14,500 went to the North Dakota Farmers Union. Now, I don't think they actually farm anything, but it went to the North Dakota Farmers Union. I know they do support some folks on the other side of the aisle very aggressively, and that's fine, this is America. The money went, $14,500, to the Farmers Union then it was redistributed through there to some of the farmers in places in North Dakota. Some of the farmers, reportedly, were already doing no-till, but to try to convince them, give them incentive to switch over from till to no-till. Now, I don't know what the acres actually are--25, 35 percent of the acres around my neighborhood, I believe, are no-till. It's a good practice. I support it. I have got good, responsible, neighbors that do use it. I encourage it. But to pay somebody that is already doing no-till extra money from the taxpayers through the capital complex and the Chicago Climate Exchange, so they will go and do no-till, doesn't seem to me to accomplish a single thing except get rid of some money and allow some leadership in this Congress to posture themselves as being carbon neutral. What a glorious thing to accomplish, carbon neutral. You have got to dig back down through the paperwork and get the House Administration staff to find this. I didn't find out about it until we dug into it. So $14,500 to North Dakota Farmers Union, another $14,500 went to my State. It went to a reengineered generating plant in Iowa, Chillicothe, Iowa, $14,500, so that they could be having an incentive to clean up their act a little bit and emit less carbon. Those carbon credits were available to them, and we sent them the $14,500. The problem was they had shut down before the money got there. There wasn't anything accomplished out of that we can determine. I am open to more information, that's what I know today. But those are two pieces at $14,500 each. I haven't chased the rest of the money down, but it occurs to me we didn't accomplish a single thing with carbon emissions and the Chillicothe plant. We didn't get there with any money in time. That plant is shut down, not functioning, I understand. Some of the North Dakota farmers were already doing no-till. Well, what we did was we set up an exchange now so that we can brokering money and taking taxpayer dollars and send them around the country and the industry, and private sector will be doing the same thing. The value of these credits were estimated by the Heritage Foundation that they would start out at about $13 and then you figure out how you calculate what a unit is, but $13 a unit. In about 10 years they will be up to about $130 a unit. As near as I can determine, there is no audit system. Nobody is going to go check those farmers in North Dakota and find out if they actually switch to no-till, stayed off no-till or went off to do something else. I guess it won't pay to check that power plant in Iowa because it's not actually producing any power either. That's just one of the things that happens when you get this myopic idea that you are going to worship at the altar of green instead of produce the energy that this country needs. I would just point out another thing here, here is another little piece to look at. Here is the overall energy pie. This is the energy that we consume in America. Look at the number, it's 101.4 quatrillion BTUs, all together, and that's all the kinds of energy that we use. That's gas, that's diesel fuel, and it goes on, there is coal, there is natural gas. This is the big picture of all of the energy that we are consuming, 101.4 quatrillion BTUs of energy. Now, that's a lot of energy. These are the proportions. I call it the energy pie, and the sizes of the slices of the pie, or the pieces of the production--you can see that nuclear is over here, and it has got a nice piece of that. It needs to be a lot more. But I have got also the ring here that shows us the production pie. This is the exact diameter of the size of our production. You can see that the circle for the size of the volume of our production in America is 72 percent of the size of our consumption in America. So what Republicans propose to do is grow these sources of energy so that this middle circle gets as big as the outer circle and maybe bigger. If it does, that will mean that we are exporting energy. I will submit that every phase, every kind of energy has a future in this country. It needs to compete economically, we need to get into it. As Mrs. Bachmann said, there is no sensible reason not to tap into the energy that sits underneath us, the Outer Continental Shelf, the North Slope of Alaska. I have gone up there. By the way, if there is any environmental damage to take place in the North Slope of Alaska and in ANWR, we had already heard about it from the other side of the aisle. They would stand up and say here is where that bucket of crude oil spilled out on the tundra, but we have not done that. Even with 1970s technology we have did so efficiently, cleanly and safely, and, yes some little things did happen. I won't deny that. We cleaned them up. We did so effectively and safely. Our technology is a lot better. We do directional drilling now. If we drill ANWR, that will be the equivalent, there's 19.6 million acres. Drilling in ANWR on 2,000 acres is the equivalent of a postage stamp in the corner of a football field. It's out on a coastal plain. The pictures that you see of the pristine alpine forest are false. There is not a single tree up there. Anybody that went to eighth grade knows, the Arctic Circle is a line north of which trees can't grow. There is not a single tree up there. Tundra reconstitutes itself. I have seen acres of it where the Eskimos showed me, we kind of tore this up by accident. We smoothed it over and 5, 6 years later it grows back green. Looks good, I have seen it. That environment was not damaged in the North Slope. It will not be damaged in ANWR. It's built out on ice roads. We punched the holes out. Even the most extreme environmentalist on the left side of this aisle in this Congress couldn't fly over the North Slope and point to the oil field, they wouldn't see it. I can find it because I know what it looks like. I would like to take them up there and show them. All I saw for wildlife, there are no native caribou, by the way. I saw four musk oxen, that's it, standing there with their head down, they wouldn't know if there's an oil well next to them or not, but it's environmentally friendly. We did it in a responsible fashion, and we have got 1 million barrels a day to bring down here. We need to open up every kind of energy, do it now, do it all the time, do it everywhere. Get it into the marketplace, get the rules out of the way, and let's not be punishing companies for producing energy. Yes, one of the slices on this pie needs to be conservation as well. I thank the gentlelady from Minnesota for yielding to me, and thanks for leading this special order.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, as always, it is a profound privilege to be recognized to address you here on the floor of the United States Congress. I come here to the floor, and first I can't begin this discussion over the next 60 minutes without first taking up the issue of the natural disaster tragedies in Iowa. From my history and experience, I go back a ways working with the natural environment and the natural disasters we have had. I remember a tragic tornado at Belmond, I lived through the 1993 floods, and when my equipment and my livelihood was under water, I went to eastern Iowa and down to Keokuk to help out down there because it was the only thing I could do to improve the situation because mine was not in a condition where it could be helped, at least for a few days. As I lived through those experiences and as the Katrina hurricane came up and in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, for example, I was one of the first Members of Congress to arrive down in New Orleans. I made multiple trips down there into the heart of it. I have something like 3,600 pictures taken of Hurricane Katrina's aftermath when New Orleans was full of water. I have been on the ground and in the air, and I have slept on the Red Cross cot and I looked the people in the eye who were underwater and still suffer from that tragedy. I am not without experience. Personally, I lost a considerable amount in the floods of 1993; but also I have the experience as a Member of Congress who has gone into these disastrous areas in the world. And Hurricane Katrina being the heart and the worst of it. And yet when I look at Iowa today, and just having come back from the location last Friday morning where I visited where our four Boy Scouts were killed by a tornado and 48 others were injured, they rose up and did everything that they could do. They did everything they could do from a training perspective, and they did everything that they could to prepare. They did everything they could to take shelter with the shelter that they had that was available. And in the aftermath of that disastrous tornado that brought about the four fatalities of the Boy Scouts, they conducted themselves with utter heroism. I stood on the site and listened to the stories from a number of the people on the location. And think of this, Mr. Speaker, 1,800 acres in the loess hills of Iowa, a very remote wilderness Boy Scout camp location that has been used for a number of years as a training location for first aid, first responders, and survival where the Boy Scouts have been trained. And the tragedy of this is that the Boy Scouts are generally some of the first ones to arrive to help sandbag and help prepare for a flood or a disaster. They are some of the first ones to be there and stay there and help clean up in the aftermath. They are some of the first ones to arrive in the aftermath of a tornado or another natural disaster to help clean up, and they are leaders in their own right as youth, and they are also leaders in training for their adulthood. And these were the elite of the elite. These were the stand-out Boy Scouts who were there. There were at least 93 at the location on the night of the tornado. The shelter that they had available to them was small, round little pup tents that were pitched up the finger valleys of what we call the bluffs. It's the loess hills of Iowa. Some of the reporters called it mountains, and I think I am flattered by that. Come see the mountains in western Iowa. They are beautiful. They are about 300 feet high, but they look like mountains on the horizon. When the storm came, the Scouts had a very short window of notice and warning. The visibility lookout across the horizon didn't exist for them because they were in the valley and the tornado that came first set down on the ranger home, and destroyed that home. There was no basement, no shelter for the wind, slab on grade with a large fireplace built into which the tornado knocked down on top of the ranger and his family. They were trapped underneath the rubble. It was three small children, wife and husband, so five of them were trapped under the rubble of cement blocks and stone that was the former fireplace that collapsed on them. And the tornado went from there up the valley and kind of jumped around the finger a little bit and set right in on the shelter house that 40 or 50 Scouts had gone to as quickly as they could when the weather got bad. The tornado picked up a pickup truck and blasted it through the chimney and the fireplace and on through the building, and it landed on the other side. The vehicle was about 100 feet on the one side of the building which I think was south and it landed about 150 feet on the other side of the building. That knocked rubble down on top of the Scouts, and that is where the fatalities took place. And that is where most of the injured of the 48 who were injured out of the roughly 93, and that were taken off for medical care. The Scouts came out of that rubble. Some of them went immediately to the aid of those who were hurt the worst and did the triage that their training had taught. Some ran half a mile to the ranger's house where they could hear the children screaming from underneath the rubble, and pulled that rubble and saved them from suffocation that ultimately would have taken place. The ranger and his wife and children did walk away, although a couple were severely injured. It was a very sad situation with a very heroic reaction. Some of the Scouts then reached to help each other. Some of them went to the first aid kits that they had been issued 2 years and 2 months earlier when they were on the same location and there was a surprise drill that was called by and initiated by the Boy Scout leaders and by the EMT workers from the neighborhood. They joined together at 5 in the morning and they converged on the 1,800 acre Scout camp and simulated a disaster that very much was like the real disaster that came 2 years and 2 months later. The Scouts had their training. They were trained to react quickly. Many of them did. Some of them ran up the hill to a storage shed where they went in and got a couple of all-terrain vehicles and chain saws, and came back down the hill and began sawing the trees out of the way so emergency vehicles could get in. Other Scouts performed first aid with the kits they had been issued 2 years and 2 months earlier. They were saving lives all across that area. The bottom line of it, Mr. Speaker, that the Scouts and their Scoutmasters and the EMTs that converged on the area within 7 minutes, and I would submit that is within 7 minutes even though the nearest town is at least 7 miles away, they saved Lord knows how many lives. But each move they made before the tornado hit and each move that they made after that was as good as it could have been. Sometimes it's just not enough. Sometimes even though everybody does everything right, there still will be loss of life. And four Scouts were called home who will be remembered for all time, especially on that location. I can't say enough about the job that they did, their training and the EMTs in the neighborhood, all of the emergency responders, the law enforcement personnel, the fire departments, the urban teams across the State, everyone that converged on that location began to arrive 7 minutes after the tornado hit. The Scouts were already sawing logs and timber off the pathways so emergency vehicles could go up. Within 2 hours, everyone who was injured and needed medical care was off the site and under medical care at some of the local medical facilities and hospital. Some went to Omaha, and some went to Sioux City. But the largest share went to Burgess Memorial Hospital in Ottumwa. And those that arrived there, I can just sense the tone in the voice of the medical workers there. The thing that they had trained for, one of the things they had feared and trained for all their lives had visited them on that evening last week. They mustered through the cause and provided the best quality medical care possible and took care of the patients, the 20 patients out of the 48 that arrived at Burgess Memorial in Ottumwa, and also Mercy Hospital in Sioux City and down into Council Bluffs and Omaha. Everyone stepped up to the task. I think they can be very proud of the way that they reacted to a tragedy, Mr. Speaker. And it is a tragedy that will be remembered in Boy Scout lore for all time. If there is a silver lining behind this cloud, the silver lining is that the training that they had, the deja vu experience that was visited upon them last week was one that had a maximum amount of training available. And one of the Scouts said, I think, the most heroic thing when he said, if this had to happen anywhere, it was a good thing that it happened here where we were trained to deal with it. That's a courageous statement, Mr. Speaker. And I can't attribute that because I don't actually know the name of the Scout, but all the Scouts out there, I think, expressed the same sentiment. And I'm proud of the work that they have done. I congratulate them. My heart, thoughts and prayers goes out to them, to their families as they grieve for the lost ones. And as they put this back together, all of us will join together in that part of this recovery from the disaster, as bad as it is. I'll certainly be supportive of constructing a memorial on the location where we lost the four Scouts. Fortunately, the ranger and his family all came out of it in at least reasonably good health and are in the recovery mode today. But I look across the State, Mr. Speaker, and it's a tough battle all the way across Iowa. And we've had more loss of life due to weather and natural disasters than ever in my memory. I believe that number now, through the course of this, comes to 20 lives that have been lost in the culmination of the tornados, the one especially that hit Parkersburg, the one that hit in Monona County that took the lives of the four Boy Scouts. If you add to a number of other disasters, weather-related, that have come across the State, and look at the State of Iowa in your mind's eye, Mr. Speaker, we're fortunate in western Iowa that we're not in worse condition than we are. The Missouri River and its tributaries, by the nature of their grade, come up fast when it rains and they go down fast. We've had some severe flooding in western Iowa, but it doesn't sustain itself over the days and weeks in the same fashion that it does in eastern Iowa. Des Moines, central Iowa, downstream from the Saylorville Reservoir and downstream from the Raccoon River, they've had some record flooding in that area; not as bad as it was in 1993, in some locations actually worse. But for the breadth of it, not as bad it was in 1993, which was a 500-year flood event. But over as far as one goes east in Iowa, and especially in Congressman Loebsack's district, Cedar Rapids and in the Waterloo, Cedar Falls and Iowa City area, the Cedar River especially, but for the Iowa River, the all-time high was set, I'm not certain of the year, but in this flood, this new 500-year event that came back to visit us 15 years after the last 500-year event, Mr. Speaker, set an all-time high there near Iowa City or near the Iowa River that was 3\1/2\ feet higher in its crest of the water flow elevation than ever before. 3\1/2\ feet higher, Mr. Speaker. And that eclipsed a 500-year event in order to do that. But in Cedar Rapids it was more difficult. It was 11\1/2\ feet above the previous high water mark. 11\1/2\ feet, Mr. Speaker. That is a huge, huge amount, a wall of water that has inundated the Cedar Rapids area. And I will say that we've been through some floods before. And we're watching as this crest has moved its way down the Mississippi River. And the Mississippi River is pushing at some all-time highs, and marginally has eclipsed those all-time highs. But what we've learned, in 1993 we rebuilt some levees. We built some up. We tried to prepare ourselves, mitigation for future floods, and it wasn't enough, especially in the Cedar Rapids area. It wasn't enough in the Iowa City area. It wasn't enough in some of the smaller town areas and some of the other tributaries, as well as the Cedar River and the Iowa River. But I want to compliment the Iowans in the eastern part of the State as well, because they did everything they could to get ready. And during this crest and the aftermath, I have every confidence that they have done and will do everything necessary to clean up from it and to bring the resources that are available to them to bear, to pump the water out, to let gravity feed it down, to clean up the muck and the silt, and to go into the buildings and take out the drywall, and haul out the appliances that have been flooded out and redo the flooring, redo the walls, rebuild. In some places houses are entirely gone, washed away, Mr. Speaker, washed away and crushed into bridges where they were trapped until they could be pushed further downstream. Some people's homes just simply washed away. We've seen this kind of tragedy across the country time and again, and I alluded earlier to my experience at Katrina. And this experience in Katrina, compared to Iowa City, Cedar Rapids, all of Iowa, tells me that the vast areas of New Orleans, some of those that are not rebuilt yet may not be rebuilt, even after we're finished rebuilding in Iowa. But I call upon Iowans, and I have every expectation and all confidence that they'll step forward and get this work done, and they'll do it with volunteer forces. They'll do it with contract forces, and we will do it together by using the resources that are available to us in the most responsible fashion. And we do need help, Mr. Speaker. I don't know how much this flood has cost. I know that we appropriated tens of billions of dollars to New Orleans and Katrina, and I have been one of the critics of how that money was spent in some cases, in fact, some will say in many cases, and they may well be right. I pledge, Mr. Speaker, that I'll also be looking to Iowa and asking and making sure that the utilization of the resources that are available to Iowans to recover from this disaster are used with every bit of the frugality and responsibility, as if every dime was our own money reinvested into the future. And I will spend my time overseeing this. I will defend the interests of the taxpayer, and I will protect the needs of Iowans to have a chance to recover from this. The cost of these disasters are far greater than we can withstand within the State itself. To give an example, we're looking at an initial component of this of perhaps $2 billion. It will go beyond that, we think. And there's not much to quantify it. This is a guess number, Mr. Speaker. But to put it in perspective, the Iowa budget's around $6 billion. It was 5 when I was in the Iowa Senate. It's probably above $6 billion now. And so it gives you a sense that this disaster is significantly greater than at least a third of the Iowa budget, at least a third of Iowa's budget, and perhaps well more than half of it, maybe even more than a year or two of the Iowa budget. We will have to see. But I'm going to ask that Iowans use these resources that we provide here in Congress in the most responsible fashion, and step up and do what they do. We don't have a problem with looters. We only have a problem with how we organize all the volunteers that show up. That's the right kind of problem to have. That's the proudest kind of problem to have. And I'm looking forward to an opportunity to roll up my sleeves and get into the middle of this, because when you get into a situation like this, Mr. Speaker, the thing that makes me feel the best is if I can just do something, if I can put my hands on some work and just get in there and do something to help everyone else. That's what I think is the sentiment from the Iowa congressional delegation. We stood here on the floor tonight, and Congressman Boswell asked for a moment of silence from this Congress. I appreciate the leadership on that, and I appreciate that we're all here together in it. We will stand together. And so I thank all the support that's here, Mr. Speaker, and we will be doing our share of this work confidently. We appreciate all the thoughts and prayers and the efforts and the support that have come, that will be there. And now, Mr. Speaker, I must transition into this issue that is a big and broad and lasting issue for the United States of America, and that's the issue that's been discussed by the previous speakers in the 30 Something group. I will give them credit. They come to this floor regularly, consistently, and have done so for years, and they've made arguments that I've consistently and regularly disagreed with for years, Mr. Speaker. I first take issue with the gentleman from Ohio's statement that drilling for oil is a dead end. Now, only here on the special orders, in the rather silent nights after the general session of Congress has wrapped up, can you get by with a statement that drilling for oil is a dead end. How can that be a dead end? We drilled for oil all over the Middle East. The Hunt Brothers went to Libya and developed the oil fields there. They were nationalized by Qadaffi when he took power in Libya, however many decades ago that's been. It's been a while. Drilling for oil in the Middle East wasn't a dead end. Drilling for oil in Venezuela hasn't been a dead end. Hugo Chavez is getting rich off the oil they've drilled for in Venezuela. Drilling for oil in Russia hasn't been a dead end. They're exporting oil into Europe and other parts of the world, and their cash flow is looking pretty good right now. Drilling for oil in Canada hasn't been a dead end. They've discovered a massive amount of oil supply in Northern Alberta called the tar sands or the oil sands, depending on how you want to label that, Mr. Speaker. The Canadians are happy that they've drilled for oil, and they will be soon exporting tar sands oil down to the United States. And Union County in South Dakota, the Elk Point region just across the river from Sioux City, Iowa, passed a resolution here within the Primary Day, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June, that endorsed the idea of building a new oil refinery, first one since 1975 in the United States. Who would have thought that it would be, Mr. Speaker, in South Dakota? But in South Dakota it's most likely to be. The highest hurdle has been reached. There may well be other regulations that have to be circumvented or resolved. But in the end, it's most likely now there will be a new refinery at Elk Point, South Dakota; a new refinery with billions of dollars invested in it that will have a pipeline coming down from Northern Alberta with the tar sands oil in it, oil sands oil. They will be refining that crude oil into gas, diesel fuel, engine oil and all the other products that come out of that refinery, setting up pipelines and distributing that oil across the country. Drilling for oil wasn't a dead end and is not a dead end in Canada. And, in fact, if you'd asked the people in States like Texas, Oklahoma, California, Long Beach area, for example, Pennsylvania, drilling for oil was not a dead end in Pennsylvania whatever year that was when it was discovered some time I think previous to the first half of the 19th century. And drilling for oil in the north slope, Mr. Speaker, was not a dead end. We went up there in 1970 to drill for oil and build a pipeline from the north slope of Alaska down to the Port Valdez. The right-of- way was 600 miles from Fairbanks north. And the environmentalists went in with a court injunction and blocked the development of the oil fields and the pipeline on the north slope of Alaska. That happened in 1970. But, in 1972, they had made their way through the quagmire of the environmentalist lawsuits, resolved all of that, opened up the oil fields in the north slope of Alaska and the pipeline, built the pipeline and opened the oil fields. And by 1975, we're pumping oil down to the Port Valdez. Now, today, we're hearing: It's a dead end to drill for oil in ANWR, a dead end to drill for oil in the Outer Continental Shelf, a dead end to drill for oil on the non-national park public lands of the United States of America. Drilling for oil, Mr. Speaker, is a dead end. Where are you going to get your gas from? I didn't hear you advocate that you want to come to Iowa and buy up all the ethanol that we're producing, so I don't know what you're going to put in your gas tanks, gentlemen. Your cars have to run on something unless, of course, it's your proposal that you're going to park them. And I can understand why you'd want to do that if you represent an inner city urban area that has access to publicly funded and subsidized mass transit. In fact, when I look at the 18.4 cents a gallon that is a Federal gas tax that each of us pay when we fill up our tanks, we stick the nozzle in and we squeeze the handle, and when a gallon runs out we know we're paying 18.4 cents in Federal tax money on gas. And a lot of us spend 20 or more cents to the State as well for our gas tax. We're willing to do that because it's a user fee, Mr. Speaker, and we're willing to do that because the consumers believe that 100 percent of that money goes to build and maintain our roads. Users fees, drive on a road, you wear it out. You need a new road, you've got to build a new one. You need to rebuild the roads that you're driving on because the surfaces wear down and the grade undermines, and you need to reshoulder and you need to reshape and you need to upgrade. 18.4 Federal cents per gallon goes to that. 20-some State cents in many States go to do that. But the consumers aren't thinking that 17 percent of that Federal tax dollar goes to subsidize the mass transit of the constituents of the people that come down here on this floor and say: Drilling for oil is a dead end. We don't need any more gas in this marketplace, at least we don't need any more American-produced gas in this marketplace. No, uh- uh. Somehow there is a solution by demagoguing the oil companies. Well, did they think, Mr. Speaker, that if 15 percent of the gas that's consumed in the United States, the gas that's delivered in the world--put it that way--comes from private companies like Exxon, Chevron, Texaco, and the balance of that comes from nations that own the oil industry, nationalized oil industry, and so what point is it in not demonizing the countries that are part of the OPEC, the oil cartel, but demonizing the private companies that are putting more and more product on the marketplace, helping to keep the price of gas down? What sense does it make, Mr. Speaker, for the Speaker of the House and other leadership and committee Chairs to argue that we should bring windfall profits taxes against the oil-producing companies when their return on investment is less than 10 percent, down towards 8 percent? Why is it, if Exxon is returning 8 percent on their capital investment, why would we want to say to them, that of all of the trillions or, excuse me, all of the billions of dollars that you have invested, you ought not be able to make 10 billion a quarter? With your capital investment being what it is, what is an inappropriate return on investment? Would you want to bring all of the companies down here? How about just the Fortune 500 companies that got a greater return on the investment, Mr. Speaker, than Exxon in particular. Chevron is another. Why don't we bring a bill under that same logic, the logic of the Speaker from San Francisco, that we should put a windfall profit tax on any Fortune 500 company that makes more than 8 percent return on their investment of their capital. Now, that would be a consistent logic. It would be illogical, but it would be consistent with the logic of the Speaker. It's not the case. These oil companies are helping us keep our prices down. I don't know if they're gouging or not. But if you think they are, get in the business and produce some energy. But let's point our finger over at the countries that have nationalized the oil. Khadafi in Libya has nationalized the oil on the Hunt brothers. They're setting prices. They're together. They're a cartel. And by the way, you cannot legislate against that. You have got to find competition that competes directly against it. Mr. Speaker, I don't know where to go in the world with the global demand on energy the way it is that we can line up with a country or two or five or ten and say, Why don't you just sell all of your oil to the United States? This is a global market. This is a global marketplace that has driven the oil price up to $139 a barrel and the price of gas up to $4.08 a gallon, average regular retail in America, $4.08. Mr. Speaker, I made the statement some time back a year or more ago, So what is the solution for $3 gas? And my answer was, Well, $3 gas. Surely if gas is $3, the people that are blocking the development of energy here in the United States are going to get out of the way and join with those of us that believe that energy should be cheaper, not higher. But what do they do? Mr. Speaker, they come to the floor and they make statements like, Drilling for oil is a dead-end. Now who in America would buy a line like that? ``Drilling for oil is a dead-end.'' Drilling for oil has produced all of the gas that we're burning in America. It's produced all of the gas that's being burned globally. It's produced all of the diesel fuel that's being burned in the United States and globally, and it's producing all the hydraulic oil and all of the other hydrocarbons that are out there into the marketplace. Drilling for oil is not a dead-end. Drilling for oil is what launched the industrial revolution, lifted us into this modern era, and allows us to travel globally and do business and see the world. It's an entirely different place than it was when we were sitting on the back of a horse or walking behind the tail of one, Mr. Speaker. And by the way, the Earth was a very dirty place back then. Let's just say 108 years ago at the turn of the previous century back when it was horses doing this instead of the internal combustion engine, you know, things fall out from underneath the tail of a horse and they pollute the street. And they walked in the mud, and the garbage got dumped out of the windows, and we didn't know a lot about medicine or water quality or air quality. We burned a lot of coal, and we burned a lot of wood, and the air wasn't very clean, and the water wasn't very clean. And we didn't have very much for sewers, if they existed at all. We didn't have a lot for modern health care. We lived in the squalor of animals and people walking through their own waste and refuse. And somehow, they thought the Earth was in the balance back in those days, Mr. Speaker. And I will submit that the Earth is much closer to being in the balance today. The technology has moved us forward, the internal combustion engine and the development of oil supplies globally and cheap oil and cheap gas and diesel fuel globally has lifted us out of that mucky quagmire of animal and human waste stirred up in the streets of America and around the world, put us up on paving and moves us across the highway at 75 miles an hour in some of the States on the interstate and allows us to get in a jet plane, and the Speaker herself to fly from Washington nonstop all the way over to her digs over there in San Francisco any weekend she chooses, every weekend she chooses because what? Because companies like Exxon, Chevron, American companies went out there and drilled for oil and explored for it in the United States, offshore in the United States, offshore around the world, places in deep water. They developed technology, and they brought this oil to the market. And if we say to them a deal is not a deal, we want to go after your profits because we think the number's big, even though it's a smaller percentage of the return on the investment, if I'm on that board of directors, I have to think maybe we should not be investing the capital of our stockholders and more and more energy and more and more oil because the Congress will take our profits away from us. A deal is not a deal with this leadership, Mr. Speaker. And I would expect oil companies, if this persists, to invest some of their capital some place out of the reach of the deal changers, those that don't keep their word that are leading some of the issues here in this Congress. I also would take us to an issue that has popped up in the news in the last today and in previous days about an effort on the part of some of the Democrat Members of Congress that believe that we should nationalize the oil industry in the United States of America. I mentioned earlier that Khadafi nationalized the oil industry in Libya. He took over the oil fields that were delivered by the Hunt brothers and others. He took over the facilities they had developed and confiscated their capital. And that is also what happened in Venezuela when Hugo Chavez took over. Well, there's some fellow travelers here in the United States. Congress, Mr. Speaker, fellow travelers with the people that have nationalized the privately owned oil industries developed within their countries, fellow travelers that agree and believe in that. And not necessarily submitting who the traveler is, I will just say this: That gentlelady from California, Ms. Waters, advocated that we should nationalize our oil industry. Now, she is not a lightweight in this Congress, Mr. Speaker. I know her well. I have served on the Judiciary Committee with her for 5\1/2\ years. Here is what she said. She said this at a subcommittee hearing with the oil industry present, and to them she said, This liberal will be all about socializing, would be about basically taking over and the government running all of your companies. Mr. Speaker, an allegation and announcement of a position to nationalize the oil companies in the United States. Take them over by the United States government? That is not just socializing them, as Ms. Waters said, that is--that's Communism, that's Marxism, that's confiscation of real property in the United States of America that's protected by the United States Constitution. And, not to be outdone, Mr. Hinchey made the statement in a similar period of time that he would be for nationalizing the refineries in the United States. Now, I would like to think that we're a long, long ways from being so desperate that we can't drill for oil as Mr. Ryan says. He says it's a dead-end. Drilling for oil is a dead-end, Mr. Ryan. But if there's any oil coming out of those wells--and I would yield to anybody that wanted to challenge my statement--if there's any oil coming out of those wells, then this Congress, according to Ms. Waters and Mr. Hinchey and who knows how many others, would want to nationalize those oil wells, those oil fields, that real property that's held by the shareholders, the retirement funds, the pension funds of the workers and the union people in the United States, nationalize that, and the government's going to run it? How good? As good as we run Social Security? As good as we run health care? As good as we run the welfare program here in the United States? Confiscate real property? Kick aside the Constitution? Maybe if you're not enthusiastic enough about that as a Member of the other side of the aisle, you might want to go with Mr. Hinchey and let the oil companies own their oil wells but nationalize the refineries. Mr. Speaker, that is a chilling message that does affect our markets and does not make energy cheaper. It makes it more expensive. Nationalize our oil industry, Ms. Waters, Mr. Hinchey, and who knows how many others. The statements made by my predecessors here in the special orders about drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf towards Cuba. I listened to those statements as they were made, and I actually wrote down, What is your point. What is your point in bringing up the issue as to whether the Chinese are or aren't drilling offshore and does anybody have any information about whether there is an agreement? We know that the Chinese have their industry and their technology in China. I, Mr. Speaker, have seen it. I have seen the capital investment. I have seen the development. I do not know if there is a signed agreement, a handshake with Castro, or if there is activity down there. I haven't gone down there to look. I haven't flown over the area. In fact, I would be a little bit concerned about doing so because it might well bring out some opposition. But my question is, What is your point? Are they, Mr. Ryan, Mr. Altmire, the balance of you that have been standing here on the floor making these statements about drilling for oil is a dead-end, I guess then I can take it that you make your criticism about maybe China's not drilling offshore in Cuba. Maybe they are. I don't think we know. But are you for or are you against drilling the Outer Continental Shelf? Whether or not the Chinese are drilling there may not be material. But I believe that we ought to be there. We ought to go halfway to Cuba, and we ought to punch in a wall of wells all the way along there, if there's any oil there, we ought to punch those wells in. We ought to get the oil. We ought to take the natural gas. And we ought to drill our way back coming back towards Florida. And it makes no sense to set aside the Outer Continental Shelf towards any of these States and even say to the states, Well, it's your resource. Let us know if you want to drill there and maybe Congress will react towards that or the President will and someone will come and punch a hole in there and bring some gas or oil up below the ocean's floor. When Ronald Reagan claimed 200 miles out in the Outer Continental Shelf, he claimed that for the United States of America, Mr. Speaker. He didn't claim it for Florida or California or Louisiana or Virginia or New York or Massachusetts or Maine. He claimed it for the United States of America. Three miles offshore? That's State ground. That's fine. I will concede that point. But from 190 from--3 miles to 200 miles, 197 miles, that's all resources of the American people. We have to defend those shores with our military. We have to guard our ports. We're doing that federally. The States do not have a claim to the resources offshore. And if they object outside of three miles, I'm wondering what their objection will be. But I bet it will not be to seeing $2 gas again. I bet it won't be to maybe seeing $1.70 gas again or maybe even less. So maybe, Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of solutions. There are a lot of solutions that are there. I agree that this should not be--I agree with Mr. Altmire this should not be a game of ``gotcha,'' but I fear it is a game of ``gotcha'' because I sit here and listen to this, and for the 5\1/2\ years that I have been here, it's been a constant mantra of running against George Bush. I just left the President where he's giving a speech uptown, Mr. Speaker, and he will be retired January 20 of this upcoming year. I stand with the President on these energy issues. I stand with the President on the Middle Eastern issues. And at some point, the 30- Something group, the Democrats, the liberals, the progressives, the socialists, the Marxists, and the Communists are all going to have to figure out that George Bush is not running for reelection. He actually said tonight that he will be retiring and going back to Crawford, Texas. Maybe watching the Rangers on TV. And I salute him for his service to America. But you're going to have to find a different person to demonize, 30- Something group, and you are going to run against the new agenda that's coming. And you're standing here on this floor tonight defending an untenable position, an untenable position that says drilling for oil is a dead- end. How can that be? Drilling for oil has opened up our economy, our industry, and has opened up the world to a modern era. So, Mr. Speaker, I bring some things to the floor here that are quite interesting, I think. And this being the first demonstrable chart, take you back to 2001, January. President Bush was sworn in to office. Gas was $1.49, Mr. Speaker. And as you can see the increase in gas prices throughout this period of time from 2001, the 6 years until 2007. Now, this was not adjusted for inflation, I would add. This is just dollars. So if you adjust this for inflation, this curve is going to look flatter than it is. But if you see, this is a very flat curve, adjusted for inflation flatter yet. On the day that the gavel was passed in this 110th Congress to Nancy Pelosi, gas had gone from, by then, from $1.49 in the Bush administration to $2.33. That was about when Speaker Pelosi said she's going to do something about gas prices, and I think she meant it actually because every bill that came to the floor of this Congress made energy more scarce, and you have to believe the law of supply and demand. And so as each bill that came to the floor of Congress made the regulations more stiff, made it more difficult to go out and explore for more oil, discouraged the investors from research and development and oil exploration, piece by piece by piece, plus the threats, of course, and the tax increases that are flowing along the way and Chairman Rangel's position that he never met a tax cut that he didn't want to kill--and to extend any of the Bush tax cuts, which were the salvation of our economy beginning May 28, 2003, was abhorrent to Mr. Rangel. He didn't quite say so in his first interview or his second or his third, but after the reporters put together his answers and non- answers, throughout out a whole series of interviews across the media circle, the investors in America came to the conclusion that there would be no tax cut preserved at the end of the Rangel tenure. And when that happened, you can see that conclusion. If you look at industrial investment, you can see that that investment tailed off sometime about mid-February right over here shortly after Nancy Pelosi took the gavel behind me, Mr. Speaker. That industrial investment tailed off because the cost of capital went up. The cost of capital went up because the investors could see that there were going to be tax increases that were triggered in and kicked in along the way. That has initiated a decline in this economy that's been significant. The decline in the economy, it started with less industrial investment, was followed by the sub-prime loan problem, was followed by the lack of consumer confidence, and by the way, coupled with a weaker dollar, a weaker dollar that has driven up also the cost of this energy. But here we are, gas is $2.33 when Nancy Pelosi took the gavel, right where you're sitting, Mr. Speaker, and today average retail regular gas prices in America, $4.08. This short little period of time from 2007 until 2008, let's just say 17 months, maybe 18 months, gas has gone from $2.33 to $4.08. What do we get? What do we get but promises, and we get rhetoric on the floor that says drilling for oil is a dead-end. Well, I don't think it's a dead-end, and I don't think it's the whole solution, but I think we should drill ANWR. I believe we ought to drill the Outer Continental Shelf. I believe we should drill the non-national park public lands in America, and we ought to open up every logical place we can and put more energy on the marketplace. There's no reason to save it underneath the crust of this earth when you are paying this kind of price, because we're transferring our wealth to the Middle East. We're transferring our wealth to companies that are not our friends. We transfer that wealth. They turn it into military power, they turn it into economic power, they turn it into political power, and they buy people off to become our enemies. They buy countries off to become our enemies. Our geopolitical influence is diminishing as our treasure is exported to foreign countries. That's just the oil I'm speaking of, Mr. Speaker. We also have a deficit of trade that runs about a minus $717 billion a year right now. That deficit has flattened out a little bit, but it still has a transfer of our treasure to other countries where we owe them debt, and this cannot go on in perpetuity. But the Pelosi energy plan is, well, let's take the $2.33 gas--she promised she was going to take the prices down--let's get it up to $4.08 and then send somebody to the floor like Mr. Ryan who says drilling for oil is a dead-end. Nancy Pelosi, ask your constituents to believe that. Mine are not going to be so easily persuaded. Now, drilling in ANWR, what does it look like? Here's a map, Mr. Speaker, of the United States of America. A lot of us have seen this map because it shows how big Alaska actually is. And I say this to needle my Texas friends. If we split Alaska in half, Texas would be the third largest State. Well, you can see by this map that comes close at least, if not true. This little area up here in the northeast corner of Alaska, that's ANWR, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And if you look a little further up here, this is the region that's in yellow that is the coastal plain that's in question. Over here along this area about in there is Dead Horse. That's mile post zero of the Alaska pipeline. It's up there very near the Arctic Ocean. The Arctic Ocean runs right along here, Mr. Speaker, and the Dead Horse access, mile post zero, and then the pipeline runs across Alaska like this. I think it's here, maybe here. There, the oil goes onto tankers and is floated on down and around to refineries on the west coast of California and points beyond. To deal with an issue that I continually am asked about, and it's been alleged on this floor that the allegation that this oil from the north slope of Alaska is shipped to Japan. Not true. It was true back in about 1985 for a short period of time because the economics worked out better that way, Mr. Speaker. Hasn't been true since then. Hasn't been true for at least 23 years. This oil that comes out of the north slope of Alaska, pipeline down here and tankered on down, goes to the United States of America. In any case, that's what would happen with this oil that would be developed here on the north slope of Alaska. Now, if you've seen an advertisement that says that we shouldn't drill in ANWR because it is a pristine, alpine forest, or they're showing you a picture of fine, evergreen trees and tell you let's not disturb the native area up there because it's pristine wilderness, I will submit, Mr. Speaker, that this area in question, the north slope and east of the north slope, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is right on the Arctic Ocean. I take us all back to something we all should have learned in eighth grade; that is, the Arctic Circle, which runs around here somewhere in Alaska, the Arctic Circle is the line, by definition, north of which trees can't grow. So why would we buy a negative commercial that tells us that we shouldn't be drilling in a pristine alpine forest? We can't go back to our eighth grade training and understand that this is an arctic coastal plain. On its warmest days, with 24 hours of sunlight, it melts down towards the permafrost a foot to 18 inches. It has some tundra there. Tundra, by the way, can be reconstituted. We aren't going to tear it up. We would do this all on ice roads over the top. The ice melts and everything goes back to the natural way. But if a machine falls off of an ice road into the muck a foot to 18 inches down to the permafrost, gets pulled back out, can smooth that all over, the seed is there. In 5 to 6 years, the tundra is grown back. I've seen it, Mr. Speaker. It's not a belief that's not founded. It is one that I have observed. I've also heard the testimony of the Native Americans that live up there that want to drill. Drill ANWR. Drill ANWR. Get the oil in the pipeline, bring it down here, and bring it around to the refineries. This is not a pristine wilderness that can't be replaced, but it's not one that's going to be disturbed either. This is a coastal, frozen tundra about 9 months out of the year or more that has a regular topography that's flat. It's got a few little potholes and sink holes in it. A little bit of green grass grows out of that tundra in the summertime. This works get done when it's all frozen. There isn't even a native caribou herd there, Mr. Speaker. There is in the north slope. By the way, that herd was 7,000 in 1970, and it's over 28,000 head today because we did this work up in this area in an environmentally friendly fashion. And if it had not been done in an environmentally friendly fashion, if there had been a desecration of the environment, if there had been a significant spill, if there had been disrespect towards wildlife or loss of wildlife, I have every confidence that the people on this side of the aisle would have been here with their posters and their pictures, and they would have embellished it to no end because I don't believe that you believe that we should lower energy prices. You've finally convinced me after 18 months, a year-and-a-half of this 110th Pelosi Congress, that you want to see energy prices go up, not down, but you believe that if you can drive gas prices up from $2.33 a gallon to $4.08 a gallon to $5 a gallon to $6 a gallon, maybe all the way up to where it is in Europe today at $10 a gallon, the poor people will have to stop burning gas first. But a lot of people will stop burning gas or at least burn less of it, and they will get on their bicycles or walk or they will get on the mass transit that's subsidized by the people that are buying the gas, and there will be less combustion in the internal combustion engine, and there will be less emissions out the exhaust pipe. And less emissions out the exhaust pipe in your myopic mind saves the earth, saves the planet from what you believe is an impending global warming holocaust. That's your motive. You would shut down, slow down dramatically, and ultimately shut down the economy of the United States of America, the very well-being of our people. The wealth that's created and regenerated here, that provides all of our creature comforts and our technology and our medicine and our creativity and our art and our sciences, that would all be diminished, all be shut down. You'd hand that all over to the Chinese and to India and to other developing nations and let them develop the industry. We would sit here and curl up among ourselves and spend our $5, $6, $7, $8, $9, $10 for gas, ride our bicycles and sit around and say, isn't it wonderful now. Drilling for oil was a dead-end, but we didn't drill. We didn't go into ANWR. We've got an awful lot of oil up there, enough oil up there to produce at least a million barrels a day for a good, long time. We save that all back and handed our economy over to who? Handed it over to the Chinese, handed it over to India, handed it over to developing nations. Mr. Speaker, a logical thinking nation cannot come to that conclusion, and I am quite concerned that we're not here building together a comprehensive energy plan and driving it with the leadership of the people who have been elected for our judgment and who have access to more information than anybody in the country collectively. We're not putting a plan together. We're reacting. We're scooting ahead of the hottest criticism there is, trying to hang on to some congressional seats but still move us off to the left and hand this country over to the people that believe in green, the people that are extreme environmentalists. I'll point out, also, Mr. Speaker, I've spent my life in soil conservation. I've built more miles of terrace than anybody in the United States Congress. I've done more waterways. I've protected more soil than anybody in Congress, and I've also planted an awful lot of trees and many of which I'll never get to sit in the shade of. I believe in soil conservation, water conservation, and quality. It's my life. I've demonstrated it. I believe in protecting this environment. But I do not believe in disarming our economy. I do not believe that this equation that's being pushed forward here on global warming is one that will sustain it. I'm particularly suspicious when one of the scientists that back in 1970 signed on and was a leading advocate that there was going to be an ice age that was just around the corner, an impending ice age, at least one of those scientists that was a leading thinker, giving us the scare about a glacier coming down to wipe out our corn fields is now on the global warming side. I think history will only tell, and we can't affect this climate enough to make it worthwhile for us to unilaterally disarm our economy when the Chinese and the Indians are building more and more generating plants, burning more coal, polluting more air. We can't put a dent in it, Mr. Speaker. But some of the things that we can do, we can look at this problem, what we have, from a more comprehensive perspective. This, Mr. Speaker, is our energy production chart of the United States of America. Now, we need to be talking about all of the sources of energy that we have. And if you look around the chart, you can see that this is gasoline here in this robin egg blue color; diesel fuel, here; kerosene and jet fuel down here in the white; other petroleum products which might be asphalt and heavy oils and engine oil, those kind of things right here; and then natural gas, a lot of natural gas in yellow. Coal, Mr. Shimkus loves that coal, and I support him and clean burning coal. Let's put that on the market. We've got a lot of it. Here's our nuclear. 11.66 percent of the energy. This is all the energy consumed in the United States. Actually, all the energy produced in the United States. 11.66 of it's nuclear. Even though we haven't built a nuclear plant since 1975, still, of all the energy, 11.66 percent of it is nuclear. Here's our hydroelectric. We haven't done much of that either, 3.41 percent for water going down the rivers. We're using that to spin generators. And I think that's a green energy. It's renewable energy. It doesn't get categorized as such. Here's your geothermal, a little bit; wind, a little bit, half a percent. Here's solar, tenth of a percent. Here's ethanol, three- quarters of a percent, and we're producing a lot of it, 9 billion gallons of it last year, but it's three-quarters of 1 percent of all the energy that is produced in America. Biodiesel; one one-hundredth of a percent. Biomass; some of that's wood burn, 4 percent. So you see, Mr. Speaker, here is a chart of the energy that we're producing in America. And now, the number down here, 72.1 quadrillion Btus. Just remember the 72.1 because that's really what's operative, Mr. Speaker. And now, that's what we produce. Here's what we consume. This chart, Mr. Speaker, is the Energy Consumption chart for the United States for 2007. You see roughly similar proportions of the energy sources that we have. You'll see that motor gasoline is a larger percentage of the overall energy consumption chart; 17.44 percent of the gas consumed; and down on this chart, it's 8.29 percent of our production. So we're importing a lot more gas than we're burning. If you go to the diesel fuel, that number is 8.84 percent of the energy consumed as diesel fuel, we're producing only 4 percent overall. So if you look at this chart, you will see that the diameter of this chart represents the amount of Btus that we are consuming in America. That's 101.4 quadrillion Btus. Just remember, we're producing 72.1 quadrillion Btus, we're consuming 101.4 quadrillion Btus. So just round that off into we're producing 72 percent of the energy that we're consuming. And now here's another little chart that shows you, Mr. Speaker. And this is the Energy Production chart set on top of the Energy Consumption chart. So you can kind of wind this up and see our natural gas, the size of the natural gas production on the smaller circle versus the natural gas consumption on the larger circle. We can turn this over to nuclear and see what percentage of our production is nuclear versus the percent of our consumption that's nuclear. Turn this around and you can kind of see. But the main thing that this illustrates is the smaller circle is proportional, Mr. Speaker, to the amount of energy we're producing. The larger circle is proportional to the energy we're consuming. And so I will submit that each of these pieces of the pie--I will just turn this over so the coal lines up for Mr. Shimkus--each of these pieces of the pie needs to grow out to the limits of the diameter of this circle so that together we're producing as much energy, or more, than we're consuming. And then we can engage in this and change the size of these pieces so that we can prioritize the use of our energy. And I would submit that this natural gas product that's here, the yellow, let's produce a lot more of it. Let's use less to generate electricity; let's use more to produce fertilizer and use it in industry where we produce plastics, et cetera. But this is where the picture is for the solution. We need more coal, more natural gas. We need more other petroleum products. We need more diesel fuel, more motor gasoline, more biomass, solar, ethanol, biodiesel, wind, geothermal, et cetera. Mr. Speaker, might I request how much time I have remaining?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. That's just enough time to demonstrate what corn is. Mr. Speaker, this may be a first on the floor of the United States Congress. In this Ziploc bag is corn. Now, there's a little bit of a misconception out there. There's an argument that we shouldn't turn this into ethanol because people will say, well, that's food. Well, I have chewed on this corn, but we grind it up and feed it to livestock. This isn't human food as we know it. We do convert some of it to syrups and 299 other products, value add. But what happens is we'll bring a bushel of this corn into an ethanol plant, we'll run it through that plant. A third of the volume that you see here will be converted into ethanol. About the same amount of it is wasted when you feed it to livestock anyway, it just isn't usable, so that turns into CO2. And that's a waste product right now with ethanol. The other third of it turns into this; this is a fine product called dried distiller's grain. This is actually high-protein, dried distiller's grain, Mr. Speaker. This gets fed back to livestock. So I'll come down at another time and I'll demonstrate what you do with a bushel of corn. It produces three gallons of ethanol. Half of the feed value in that, at least, goes back to the livestock in the form of dried distiller's grain that I have in this hand. And this food-versus- fuel argument does not hold up right now; it may for the '08 crop, it doesn't for '07. We've produced more corn than ever before in 2007; that was 13.1 billion bushels. We exported more corn than ever before; that was 2.5 billion bushels. We converted more corn into ethanol than ever before; that was 3.2 billion bushels. And 1.6 billion of that went back to livestock in the form of feed, so you add that back in. And the amount of corn that was available for domestic consumption was 9.0 billion bushels of corn from the 2007 crop. That's more than ever before, Mr. Speaker. And the average amount of corn available for domestic consumption for the other years in the decade was 7.4 billion bushels. So there was 1.6 billion more bushels available for domestic consumption, the prices somewhat higher than they ever were before; part of it is a weak dollar, part of it is global demand; part of it is we exported more meat than ever before. And our economy has been rolling and booming. We have to figure out how to come to grips with this. Ethanol isn't the only answer, drilling is not the only answer, but $4.08 gas surely is not the answer, Mr. Speaker. And anybody that thinks that drilling for oil is a dead end I think has a dead idea. And the American people are going to stand up and say, Drill ANWR, drill the Outer Continental Shelf, drill the non-national park public lands. Let's have all the energy and all these categories that we have. Let's drive down these prices. Let's boom our economy. And let's get on with where we need to go as a country. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate your attention this evening.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was detained while attempting to reach the House floor to cast my vote on rollcall 401 earlier this afternoon. Had I been able to reach the floor before the vote was closed, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I thank the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate his perspective. I will point out that there are three branches of government, there is the executive, the legislative and the judicial branch of government. I really only know of one person in the history of this country that has felt a compulsion to legislate, found himself on the bench as a judge, and decided that the constitutionally appropriate thing to do was to walk away from that judgeship and run for the United States Congress and come here to legislate. That's Congressman Louie Gohmert from east Texas. I am proud to call him a friend and serve on the Judiciary Committee with him. I appreciate something that he brings to the table, a unique personality that's never been matched in the United States Congress and also the judgment of a judge that makes him a good listener and an analyst of the law and one who thinks deeply into the long-term ramifications of the decisions that we make. I look often to the prudence of the gentleman from Texas, and I appreciate him coming to the floor and offering his remarks for the energy situation here in the United States. I said some year or 2 or 3 years ago that what is the solution for $2 gas? That's $3 gas. What's the solution for $3 gas? That's $4 gas. Well, we are truly here at $4 gas, and that sounded like an outrageous kind of a number to put out back at that time. The reason I said that was as gas gets higher, we are willing to do more things to provide energy for the people in this country. But when I sit here, and I think of the votes we have put up here on this floor, and I think of the decisions that have been made--and about 3 years ago, there was a bill on floor of the House of Representatives that said let's drill ANWR. I can remember there was a letter that was produced by Republicans that had 10 or 12 signatures on it that said we will join with all the Democrats, and we are going to block all drilling in ANWR. We are not going to let that happen because of some idea about when the North Slope was opened up for drilling, there was some kind of an implicit promise that we wouldn't tap into the rest of the oil up there in that part of the world. That doesn't make any sense to me, I cannot rationalize that. But I remember that letter that had 10 or 12 signatures on it, and the 10 or 12 Republicans that said ``no'' was enough to join with all the Democrats that said ``no.'' Had we done that, we would have more than a million barrels of oil a day coming down here into the United States to be poured into this marketplace, which would make a significant difference in the cost of energy in the United States of America. But the 10 or 12 Republicans that were on the wrong side joined with all of the Democrats on the wrong side, and we didn't drill ANWR. And the rationale was pretty weak. I have had people say you want to tap into 2,000 acres in ANWR, what does that mean. Well, there are 19.6 million acres in ANWR. And 2,000 acres out of that would be the equivalent of a little postage stamp stuck in the corner of a football field. That is 2,000 acres in 19.6 million acres of ANWR. And so if that is the part that is going to be a footprint to develop half of the oil reserves in the United States of America, and they are asking me this question, how much is an acre, Mr. King? So I say well, it is 208 feet by 208 feet, that is 43,580 square feet. That is, let me see, oh, about a football field. So it is about 2,000 football fields on 19.6 million acres. That is the equivalent of a postage stamp in the corner of a football field. That is all it is. On top of that, we get access to these oil fields by ice roads on top of the frozen tundra, and then sinking wells on a work-over pad by which we do directional drilling. We pull a lot of that oil out into one single collection, and collect it in the collection tubes that go into the terminal at milepost zero, Dead Horse Access. That is what it is all about. Can you imagine, Mr. Speaker, if you flew over that at 5,000 feet, a football field, you are looking for a postage stamp that is the same color as the grass, could you see that from 5,000 feet? Could you see that postage stamp from a thousand feet or 500 feet? Could you see it if you walked around on the football field looking for that postage stamp? I will submit not. I will submit further that I can take the most extreme environmentalist on this side of the aisle, and I could put him in a Black Hawk helicopter and fly him around the North Slope today where we have developed oil fields, and I could ask them, tell me when we are over the oil field. Tell me what you see that violates your sense of intrusion upon this pristine environment that nobody goes to see. I challenge that not one of you environmentalists could point down out of the window of that Black Hawk and say, There is an oil well, there is a oil rig, there is a oil field. Oh, it violates my sense of what Mother Nature is all about. Not one, Mr. Speaker, because when you look over the oil fields of the North Slope, there is not a single derrick down there. Not one structure sticking up in the air 230 or 240 feet that is set to drill for oil. There is not, as I could find, not a single pump jack pumping that oil out of the ground looking like an oil field, which doesn't offend my sensibilities, by the way, but maybe offends some of you over there. And let me know why that is the case, and I will yield to you. But no, you don't see any of that. And the reason why is because the wells are underground. The wells are drilled. They don't have pump jacks sitting above the ground, they have submersible pumps way down in the casing at the level of the oil. The collector tubes don't even show where they are, and I don't know if they lay on the ground or if they are slightly subterranean, but they collect the oil that goes into the tanks at the terminal at Dead Horse Access, milepost zero, on the Alaska pipeline. And there it gathers it together and it sends it down that 51-inch pipeline down to the Port Valdez. Now I cannot understand why a people that is dependent upon energy, a people whose economy is run by energy, a people who sit on billions of barrels of oil, would somehow draw some kind of a moral position that even though no one goes up to the North Slope, and if they went up there they wouldn't know what they are looking at, and if they saw it they wouldn't be offended by it, and it would be environmentally friendly, all of those things, but somehow we have some kind of a Mother Nature religious aversion into tapping into American energy. Why is that, Mr. Speaker? When the 110th Congress convened, I did not know, I really thought there was a sense of conscious and goodwill and a way that we could move forward with the American economy and the American people. I could not at that time have believed that the core of the Democrat Caucus in this Congress sincerely believed that energy costs should go up no matter what it takes, shut down the drilling in ANWR, shut down the drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf, don't let any drilling happen in the non-national park public lands in America, don't do any of that because by blocking all of that, we are blocking the delivery of energy to the economy of this dynamic, robust free country that we have. Why? What rationale, can there be. Well, first of all they hate capitalism. They don't want to see prosperity, and they want to see energy cost more. I am convinced that this regal Pelosi Congress wants to see energy cost more. What is it that the regal Pelosi Congress likes better than $2 gas, $3 gas. What do they like better than $3 gas, $4 gas. You've got it. You should be happier now, and I know you will happier yet when it is $5 gas. This is the drill-nothing Congress. This is the develop no energy Congress. This is a drive the energy prices up Congress. This is the Congress that is punishing the American economy. They know that an economy requires energy, and the more expensive it is the less economic activity that we will have and the more it will slow down. When it slows down, we will burn less energy. When we burn less energy, there will be less greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere. And then, and this requires an article of faith, the leap is if we assume less energy, there will be less greenhouse gases and then there will be less global warming. Now there are two reasons why that is a bad idea. First of all, 95 percent of the greenhouse gases are created by nature. The other part is the 5 percent of the greenhouse gases that are created by man cannot be 100 percent controlled by man. Reasons for that are the Chinese and the Indian economies are growing. They are going to burn more coal and release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and they are going to create more greenhouse gases, and they don't care. They don't care because their people are hungry and they need economic development. They are not dying because the planet is 1 degree too hot, they are dying because the planet is short of calories and protein for them that keeps them alive, and it is short of health care. So they know what their priorities are. Here we are running this myopic agenda that we are going to make energy more expensive and we are going to see $5 gasoline and $6 gas, and people will park their cars and grandmothers in Iowa are going to ride their bicycles 10 miles to town through a blizzard. I mean, they are not going to do that. We know they are not. But the people in San Francisco and New York and Boston don't know that. But I'm here to tell you all, that's the case. They are not going to park their cars and ride their bicycles to town in January in Iowa. It is not going to save the planet. It will keep grandmother home. She will not be living this life to the fullest that she could. Millions of Americans will not be living this life to the fullest that they could. And when you bring your myopic, Goddess of Gaia faith-based approach, and I mean this from a nature environmentalist extremist perspective to this economy, you drive up the cost of energy and you slow down the activity of our economy and impoverish the people of America and you think you are going to save the planet and it is all worth it. Here is what it is. It is not worth it in the first place. And the second place is you are not going to save the planet. And you are not going to do that because the science doesn't support you in that. And if it did support you in the idea that if we shut down America's emissions of greenhouse gases, we don't affect the Indian and the Chinese and the other growing economies' emissions of greenhouse gases, and so we are here in the United States shouting out into a thunderstorm trying to solve a problem. It won't work, it can't work, it is not rational. There is no scientific base that upholds it. And on top of that, there is not the sociology that says human nature will support the kind of approach that you bring to this. Drive up the cost of energy and slow the emissions of greenhouse gases, and if you do that, the planet will what, is it going to cool? No, it isn't going to cool. It might not increase in its temperature quite so much, but we can't prove it and we don't have a model that says so. In fact, our models say we can only affect 5 percent of the greenhouse gases if all humanity joins together, and we are a small percentage of the emissions of the entire planet. And even if we controlled them all, the Indians and Chinese are going to increase their emissions of CO2 and greenhouse gases. So why go through this exercise to unilaterally disarm the economy of the United States so we can't compete around the globe economically with free trade, militarily, culturally, and politically. What is it about America that you don't like over on this side of the aisle? Why is it the blame-America-first crowd is carrying the agenda in this United States Congress? Why is it that the constituents of Iowa and Nebraska and Kansas and all of the way out to the left coast and all of the way to the right coast, why are they paying $4 for gas with this driven-up price of energy, and why have you blocked the drilling in our non-national park public lands, and why have you blocked the drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf where we know there are 406 trillion cubic feet of natural gas out there, coupled with the oil that naturally goes with it that we can't tap into to drive down the cost of fertilizer, to drive down the cost of energy, to lower the cost of BTUs, to add to the overall supply of energy in the United States of America? Why can't we do that? It is because you have a religious belief and it is kind of like the laws of your nature and the laws of your God say that we should cut down on greenhouse gases because of this belief that, and say religious belief, and I have strong religious beliefs. But sometimes that religious belief is defined as something that you say you believe in that you have no scientific basis for. If you believe in this global warming God, and you cannot stand up and defend a scientific basis for a belief in a global warming God, then it is a religious belief. It is a religious belief that is unfounded. It is one that is unfounded on science and one that can't be proven. We have watched this planet. Yes, it is a little warmer than it was 20 years ago. But if you look at the data, it might be cooler than it was 2 years ago. We had a long winter, we had a late spring. Most of my constituents thought global warming would be a good thing. And by the way, the beginnings of this global warming debate began here in Washington in August years ago when not many of the office buildings and the ones they had the hearings in were not air conditioned and we had a Ph.D. come out here from Iowa who testified that global warming was an impending disaster, and the Members of Congress were sitting in a hearing room with temperatures approaching 100 degrees and humidity approaching 100 degrees, and as the sweat dripped off them, it was not hard to convince them global warming was a problem. We have one of those scientists who advocated it was an impending ice age in 1970. He cited his scientific ability to predict to us that we should figure out a way to gird our loins and get ready for the next ice age. That was 1970. So some of us girded our loins, and some of us just went to work, and we went on and realized that God runs this planet, not man. In his time he will let us know and we will do what we need to adapt. And in 1970 the impending ice age didn't come. The idea that it was going to be here went. And so here we are in 2008. And guess what, Mr. Speaker, that scientist that was a part of the Time magazine prediction that we had an impending ice age is today a scientist that says you can't avoid it, we have an impending global warming period of time, and it is going to happen and here is what you need to do, shut down your economy and greenhouse gas emissions, don't produce energy, and somehow or another we will help avoid, dodge this bullet which is the idea that the Earth could be a couple of degrees warmer. Some of the ice could melt and the sea level could go up a couple of a tenths of a foot or so. Mr. Speaker, when I asked the USGS people what is sea level, well, they have an elevation that they pegged by satellite, but they couldn't really peg sea level because it goes up and down. It is awful hard to catch. The tides go in and out. Wind stacks water. And if you go to New Orleans, and I asked them what is going up and what is going down here, and what is settling and what is swelling up, they don't know. They don't know what the elevations are in New Orleans, Mr. Speaker, and yet we have scientists telling us that sea level is going to rise by a certain amount and that is going to start to swamp the coast land areas, but we don't know what sea level is. So we do have an energy situation in America, and the energy situation is this: $4 gas; $4 gas. And the people in my district are buying gas. And they are paying the price, and they are paying 18.4 cents a gallon Federal, and they are paying more than that for State gas tax. They look and they expect that all of that money is going to go to road construction and road maintenance to make sure that they have a good transportation route. That's why they pay that gas tax. So you are at 42-point-something cents a gallon in my State, but I can tell you for sure 18.4 cents of that is Federal gas tax dollars, my constituents believe, Mr. Speaker, that we are converting all of those dollars in that gas tax into road construction and road maintenance, making sure that they have a good transportation route. Users fees, drive on the road, pay the tax. All right. We're good with that. We're user people, and we like user fees, and we know it takes money to run the government. There's nothing more appropriate than a user fee, a per gallon gas tax. The problem, Mr. Speaker, is that most of the money that my constituents, and, in fact, all constituents in America, the Americans that buy the gas and pay the gas tax, most of the money that they spend does not go towards road construction or road maintenance. No, Mr. Speaker, it gets diverted off on these other things, like, for example, 3 percent of that 18.4 cents goes to trails, to build bike trails. So apparently we don't have bicycles riding down the highway. Now I kind of like it that the bikes are out there riding doing their thing. But I'm not so sure that's that a good idea to tax the people that drive cars so the folks that ride bikes have a place to ride them. Second thing is, it takes 28 percent of that 18.4 cents of gas tax, 28 percent to meet the environmental and the archaeological requirements in order to build new roads and maintain the ones we have: 28 percent. And, Mr. Speaker, it takes another 17 percent to subsidize the mass transit in the United States. And so, right there, Mr. Speaker, is the answer to the question that I've asked many times, and that is, how is it that the constituents of Speaker Pelosi, of the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Charlie Rangel, of the chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Barney Frank, how is it that their constituents let them off the hook? Aren't they angry that they're driving up the cost of gas? Don't they get mad when they have to pay $4 for gas? How is it that somebody in San Francisco or New York or Boston or Washington, DC, for that matter, can have the patience to spend $4 for gas and not hold their Congressman or their Congresswoman accountable if they're the ones that are pushing up the price? Well, now, here's a piece of the answer, Mr. Speaker, and that's this. Of the 18.4 cents of Federal gas tax dollars, 17 percent of that goes into mass transit funding. Seventeen percent. That means that if you pull into the gas station in Iowa, and you squeeze the nozzle and you pump a gallon of gas into your car, and that's all you can afford, you only have 4 bucks. You're going to pay 18.4 cents in tax for Federal, 20 some percent State. Of the 18.4 cents in gas tax that you pay, 17 percent of that money goes to fund the mass transit. So, if you're riding the cable car in San Francisco, you get a cheap ticket because it's funded by the folks in my district and across America that are buying gas. And if you jump on the El in Chicago you get a cheap ticket because it's funded by the folks in my district and across America that are buying gas. If you jump on the subway in Charlie Rangel's district in New York and you ride it, you get a cheap ticket because that's subsidized by the people all across America that are buying gas. And if you go into Barney Frank's district and you jump on, I don't know what they call it, the subway, the Big Dig, the major multibillion-dollar boondoggle and you buy a ticket to ride along on that thing, you get a cheap ticket because it's subsidized by the folks all across America that are paying 4 bucks for gas. And, Mr. Speaker, if you go out here outside this Capitol building and you walk a little block over and a block down and you get into the Metro on South Capitol, and you ride over to Falls Church, Virginia, that's going to cost you about a buck and a quarter, and that buck and a quarter is a cheap ticket that's subsidized by all the folks across America that are paying 4 bucks for gas. The constituents of those Members of Congress that are driving up the cost of energy, the regal Speaker Pelosi, the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel, the Chairman of the Finance Committee, Mr. Frank, all of them, their constituents are riding to work, going into town, riding around on mass transit that is 17 percent of the Federal gas tax dollar, that's subsidized by the people that are buying gas. Why aren't they angry? They don't care, Mr. Speaker. They don't care because they got a buck and a quarter from South Capitol to Falls Church. They've got a cheap ticket, a cheap ticket that's subsidized by the people that are paying for expensive gas. And that's why they're not feeling the pressure. But I can tell you, even though my constituents are utterly polite and respectful about all this, I can feel the pressure because I'm one of them. It cost me $41.42 to fill up my tank the other day at $3.85 a gallon. So here, Mr. Speaker, is the solution. This, Mr. Speaker, is the energy pie chart. Now, this might seem like it's very simple, and actually it is, although, to approach this concept seems to be a little complicated. Energy production in the United States of America, for 2007, well, I'll take the position, Mr. Speaker, that it's about all the energy. It's all interrelated, whether it's nuclear or hydroelectric, geothermal, biomass, motor gasoline, diesel, other petroleum, natural gas, coal, whatever it might be, if all of the energy in the United States is interrelated, and if you raise the cost of one form of energy, it's going to affect the cost of the other kinds of energy. And consequently, and correspondingly, if you drive the price down of one kind of energy, you'll lower the price of all kinds of energy because it's all interrelated. So I've taken the trouble to build this chart. And I can't tell you how difficult it actually was. It should have been a simple no-brainer. It's not. But here's the energy pie chart. We produced 72.1 quadrillion Btus of energy in the United States last year. That's 72 followed by, I think, 15 zeros. Three, six, 9, 12, 15. 72 quadrillion Btus. It's more important, I think, to think of it in terms of the proportionality of it. This is all the energy that we produced in America. Now, the percentages are on here. 27 percent was natural gas, 32\1/2\ percent was coal, nuclear was almost 12 percent, hydroelectric 3.4, other versions, geothermal, wind, solar, fuel ethanol is a little smaller, a lot smaller than you would think. It's three-quarters of a percent of the overall production in America. Biodiesel, one one-hundredth of a percent. Biomass, 4 percent. That could be the people burning wood and the methane, et cetera, that comes out of there. Gas was only 8.29 percent of our overall production. The list goes on. You can see it here, Mr. Speaker. Now, that's energy production. What I've done is, Mr. Speaker, taken this pie chart of the energy pie, I'll call it, and I cut this out so that I could put it on top of the energy production, or the energy consumption in America, so you can see how this works in just a moment. All right. This, Mr. Speaker, is the energy consumption chart in America. And the outside circle, and I'll kind of line them up here a little bit; the outside circle is the energy that we consumed. Actually, I think I might be able to do it this way. This is all, Mr. Speaker, the energy that we consumed in America last year. Energy consumption, United States, 2007, 101.4 quadrillion Btus. Number down here, 101, comma and the equivalent of 15 zeros out. Now, we're dealing with 72 quadrillion there, 101 there. So let's just think, Mr. Speaker, in terms of we produced 72 percent of the energy that we consumed in 2007. And this is a picture of the consumption, this round spot here is a picture of the production. This circle is smaller than this circle. That's kind of like Energy 101, probably the first time that that idea has arrived on the floor the Congress, Mr. Speaker. And so you look at the percentages of the overall consumption, and you see natural gas is 23 percent, and we produce 27\1/2\ percent of all the natural gas that we consume, but it's 23 percent of the overall Btu picture here. Coal, 22 percent, nuclear, 8.29 percent, hydroelectric, 2.4, smaller pieces of energy here, including ethanol, biodiesel, wind, .31 percent. Not very much. We're working on this. By the way, I do represent the number 1 renewable energy producing congressional district in America, and so we're not without knowledge on this subject matter. Gas, 17.44 percent of the overall Btu consumption in America. And here in the red we have the diesel fuel and heating oil at 8.84 percent, kerosene jet fuel here, 3.3 percent and other kinds of petroleum, asphalt and that kind of thing, almost 10 percent. So, what do we need to do, Mr. Speaker? Well, here's a way to approach this thing from my view. The small circle is energy production. The big circle is energy consumption. And so you don't have to be a Harvard M.B.A. or, let me say, a rocket surgeon, to be able to calculate this, Mr. Speaker. The inside circle, which is energy production, needs to grow to the size of the outside circle, which is energy consumption. Yes, we could maybe add another piece to this energy production pie called energy conservation that will help us grow the size of this inner circle to get it to be the size of the outer circle. But however we do this, we're producing about a little more than 72 percent of the energy that we're consuming. And so we can stand here on the floor of Congress, until all Hades freezes over and talk about this piece of energy and that piece of energy, and somebody's wrong because they want to drill ANWR and somebody else is wrong because they don't want to drill the Outer Continental Shelf; somebody else is wrong because they think ethanol is a good idea, or biodiesel's a good idea, or they could even make the ridiculous argument that somebody's wrong because they think that we ought to dramatically expand our nuclear. And, Mr. Speaker, we should dramatically expand our nuclear production of electricity. That is the single most effective thing we can do, cut down on the emissions of greenhouse gases, and replace the consumption of other energies and allow those other energies to be used for other purposes. We can produce a lot of energy with nuclear. But in the end, it's this. I'll go right around the circle. Natural gas, drill the Outer Continental Shelf, drill the non national park public lands, open up the natural gas production in America, the place where we have enough natural gas to heat every home in America for the next 150 years. Get the slice of the pie in production as big as the slice of the pie in consumption on natural gas. We go over here to coal. Why in the world can't we produce and burn more coal to add to the overall size of the energy pie? Yes, we can. And we should do that, and we should do that until it's no longer cost effective as competing against these other signs, other components of energy. Nuclear. I talked about the nuclear. Here's the overall percentage of our energy production in nuclear, which happens to be 11.66 percent. But it needs to be a bigger piece of our energy consumption, and we can broaden that out. You can see how these pieces of the pie come out to the edge of the circle and they get wider. We do that with ethanol, we do it with biodiesel, we do it with wind, we do it with biomass. We can produce more gasoline, Mr. Speaker, and we can produce more diesel fuel and more jet fuel and we can produce more natural gas. There is no component in this energy pie that we cannot produce more of. And if we grow the size of the energy production pie to meet or exceed the size of the energy consumption pie, we have then solved the problem of energy dependence on Middle Eastern oil, on foreign energy. Mr. Speaker, we can do this. We should do this. We must do this. And any idea that says that we should strike off of our list of options any component, and you will hear almost every source of energy vetoed and opposed by Members of the other side of the aisle. Some will stand up and say, no more nuclear. We will not do any more nuclear plants. Some will say, can't drill in ANWR because 36, 38 years ago, somebody said, well, we're not going to ever drill ANWR. That's our deal. And somebody else will say we can't drill the Outer Continental Shelf because people sit on the beach in Florida will figure out that there must be a drill rig out there 199 miles away. Mr. Speaker, I will tell you, I talked to three children in Lineville today. They're down on the border with Missouri and Iowa. And if they stand with their back to Missouri and they look north, it's 200 miles to the Minnesota border. And for them to say, I can't have a drill rig up there on the Minnesota line because it offends my idea of sightseeing with my back to Missouri 200 miles from there is as ridiculous as the people on the beach in Florida saying you can't have a drill rig 200 miles offshore. No, Mr. Speaker. There is a reason, and more like an excuse. And my father taught me a little bit about that. He said there's a difference between reasons and excuses. There are all kinds of excuses for not developing energy. I can't find a single reason, Mr. Speaker. Unless you like $4 gas, unless you like $5 gas, and unless you like expensive energy, expensive energy shuts down our economy. You shut down our economy, it uses less energy; if it uses less energy, it emits less greenhouse gas; if you emits less greenhouse gas, somehow or another in this fantasyland world where you're out there in Pa-la-la- losi land, you're going to save the planet if you shut down the economy is the only rationale that's there. It's weak and it's unfounded, Mr. Speaker; and we've got to open this energy for the American people. And with that, I thank you for your indulgence. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate greatly the privilege to address you tonight on floor of the United States Congress, and as I listen to my colleagues talk about the energy situation that we have here in America, it's quite interesting to me that my colleagues would say well, we can't drill in ANWR because in 10 years we are going to still have some other energy issue. Are they looking for the silver bullet, I wonder? Do they insist that we can't do anything with regard to energy? We can sit here and deal with $4 gas? Unless we can fix $4 gas and make it $1 gas, we shouldn't do anything? I wonder what is the problem with the realistic approach to this that seems to be a barrier for my colleagues from the other side of the aisle? We know this, that there is a little over 10 billion barrels of oil in U.S. reserves, and we know that the United States Department of Energy produced a number about three days ago that showed there is about 10.4 billion barrels of oil in ANWR. If we open up ANWR, we will essentially and virtually double the oil reserve supplies for the United States of America if we tap into ANWR. Now, what kind of thinking person would say I would rather pay $4 for gas, or $5 for gas, or $6 or more dollars for gas before I would tap into 10.4 billion barrels of oil in a neighborhood up there that I would remind you, and I would remind the body, that in 1970, we were scheduled to go up to Alaska and drill for oil in the North Slope. I remember that very clearly, 1970. The idea was, we will build a pipeline from the North Slope, Mile Post Zero up there at Dead Horse access on the Arctic Ocean, and that pipeline will run from there all the way down there through the Port of Valdez in Alaska where they will then tanker that oil down to refineries along the coast of California and other points. That was 1970. The same philosophical environmentalists that are blocking drilling in ANWR today, the ones that took the floor just a few moments ago that said--where we shared--we dare not drill in ANWR because it's not going to solve all our problems are the ones that brought the lawsuit that brought the drilling that blocked the North Slope of Alaska in 1970. In those days, there was a long and intense court battle that finally got the environmental extremists out of the way. In 1972, they said, all right, there isn't any logical or rational or legal reason why you can't drill the North Slope of Alaska. So we went up and we started to punch holes in the North Slope of Alaska in 1972. In 1972 we started building a pipeline from the Arctic Ocean all the way down to the Port of Valdez. I don't actually know how far that is, but I know that there was a right-of-way for alongside the pipeline that went from Fairbanks 600 miles north. It's more miles than that from Dead Horse access on the Arctic Ocean on down to the Port of Valdez. Even though the environmentalists in court blocked drilling in ANWR for that period of time for 2 years, even though we look back on that-- well first, at the time, I thought how can the environmentalists be so effective as to shut down access to the American energy supply for two full years without a logical, rational or legal argument? Well they did so, and now I look back on that, and I think how in the world did we resolve issue in two short years by going to court between 1970 and will 1972 to clear the environmental extremists out of the way and go in and drill in ANWR where all these extremists ideas were that if we punch our drill in the North Slope, if we punch holes in the North Slope, there will be oil flooding all over the permafrost, the tundra will be destroyed. They will be driving bulldozers through the tundra, and you can never put that environment back again. It's a careful balance that Mother Nature has, and the caribou will all drown in crude oil. There won't be any wolves left, and it will just be a terrible economic or terrible environmental catastrophe. That was what they predicted in 1970. In 1972 we started building the pipeline and building the right-of- way and drilling the wells on the North Slope of Alaska, identical in the environmental component that's there, to ANWR today. In 3 years we built the pipeline, we built the right-of-way road along the pipeline. We punched the wells in. We got the wells up and got them running. We hooked them in and began to transfer that crude oil down through that long pipeline down to Valdez and into other parts of the United States where it was refined. That got accomplished in 3 years. And now, Mr. Speaker, the very people that sit over on this side of the aisle tonight that have blocked the drilling on the North Slope back 30-some years ago, and are blocking the drilling in ANWR today say, well, gee in 10 years, we still will have a problem with enough oil for the United States of America, and you will not solve this problem, the whole problem. You will not solve it in perpetuity so, therefore, you ought not do anything in Alaska to fix it. What kind of a Nation would be foolish enough to set aside half of its crude oil reserves when gas is 4 bucks because of some myopic idea that you should not punch a hole down through the permafrost when you have proven 38 years ago--I should actually say 36 years ago--that we could drill wells through the permafrost, we could drill them on the North Slope of Alaska. We could transfer that oil out of there into the terminal, start it in at Mile Post Zero in the Alaska pipeline, that 51-inch diameter line that runs from there on down to Valdez and pump all that crude oil, and we have done since 1972, 36 years. If there was an environmental problem, I guarantee you that people on this side of the aisle lament anything that will lower the price of energy, would have told us that somebody spilled a gallon of crude oil someplace up there near the Arctic Circle. But have we heard them say anything about a single gallon? No, we have not. I know it does happen. Occasionally, there will be a leak in the pipeline, a little rust hole, leak or something. They will go in and swab up the oil off the ice, weld the hole shut, patch the pipeline in and everything goes on. But if there was a serious environmental problem, these would be the first people that would let us know. I am telling you, they don't have an argument. If you have one, stand up. I will recognize you. But, of course you won't, because you don't have an argument. But you say to the American people, it's people like Louie Gohmert that wants to see $4 gas--no--Louie wants to punch a hole down there and suck this oil up out of the ground and lower the price of energy. I would be real proud to recognize Mr. Louie Gohmert for as much time as he would consume.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I want to pick up on the point made by the gentlelady from California about this is, of course, not by any means a complete solution to the immigration circumstances, but we agree on some of these points, and on this point of attracting investors to the United States who will invest in businesses that create jobs and create wealth, more importantly create wealth. Without the creation of wealth, there's no money to pay the wages. Companies have to make money. It takes capital of course and it takes labor, it takes ideas, it takes energy, it takes a free market environment and a low regulatory environment. The United States looks better than some of these other countries in the world. This sends the right message here today that this Congress is interested in opening up and laying out the welcome mat, at least in this specific case, where we ask investors to come into the United States under this EB-5 program. Then I would add that there are other interests that we at least philosophically agree on, and one of those is highly skilled immigrants coming into the United States and those that are highly educated. When we can do the calculation on what kind of return we get from someone who comes into the United States as a legal immigrant to work here, to invest here, to start and run a business here, and we can see what they will do from a prosperity perspective, what their contribution will be to the economy and to the society, there are many records that help support that. What we do see, though, Mr. Speaker, is that between 89 and 93 percent of the legal immigration in America isn't based upon merit like this program is. Most of it is based on familial connections, who are you related to, as opposed to what can you do for the United States of America? And I have said for years, we need an immigration policy that's designed to enhance the economic, the social, and the cultural well- being of the United States of America. Every Nation has to have an immigration policy that is for them. And we held a hearing a year or two ago about the point system that some of the countries have established. Canada has one established; the United kingdom is implementing a point system; New Zealand has one; and I believe Australia is looking at one. Those countries come to mind, where they give certain points for certain categories that demonstrate how a person can contribute to society. For example, higher education is one category that offers significant merit. The next one is job skills; so that's earning capacity. Another one is language skills, which says how easily they will be able to assimilate in a society. It's not a barrier not having the language, but it's easier to assimilate, of course, if you are fluent in the language of the host country. And another component is youth. If we bring people in here that are 65 years old, that qualify right away for Social Security and Medicare, of course they're not going to be contributing to our economy. And so I plugged myself into the Canadian equation and found out--I don't think the welcome mat is open for me in Canada because I'm a little over the hill, Mr. Speaker. Youth is a big, important thing because, if you come in at age 22 with a college education, you can contribute to the economy for, let's just say, 43 years before you retire. So youth is an important criteria, as is education, as is job skills, as are language skills. These things are all things that a wise country should reach out for and craft an immigration policy that will enhance the economic, the social, and the cultural well-being of the United States of America, where 89-93 percent of our legal immigrants are not measured that way; about seven to 11 percent are measured that way. This is a measure on merit. It is strictly a capital investment, and then meeting the other criteria about establishing the jobs in the business. But I fully support it. It is a bipartisan effort. And it is something that we agree on the theme and the philosophy. I wanted to point out that I believe that we need to set a hard cap on our overall immigration, and then start to shift within those visa allotments so that we get a higher percentage of merit coming in legally into the United States. And of course control the border, stop the bleeding there; none of this matters unless we can do that, Mr. Speaker. With that, Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the investor visa program is designed to attract entrepreneurial talent and capital to the United States and to create American jobs. Under this program, permanent resident visas are available each year to aliens who establish a new business in the United States and invest between $500,000 and $1 million in the business and eventually create at least 10 full-time jobs for American workers. Once the Department of Homeland Security approves an alien business plan, the alien receives conditional permanent residence status. Two years later, the Department of Homeland Security determines whether the above requirements have, in fact, been met. If they have, the alien receives permanent residence. To further encourage economic development, back in 1993, Congress created a temporary pilot program that set aside 3,000 investor visas each year for aliens who invested at least $500,000 in designated regional centers. A regional center is any economic unit, public or private, which is involved with the promotion of economic growth, including increased export sales or improved regional productivity or job creation or increased domestic or capital investment. Further, a regional center shall have jurisdiction over a limited geographical area which shall be described in the proposal and consistent with the purpose of concentrating pooled investment in defined economic zones. The establishment of a regional center may be based on jobs that will be created, directly or indirectly, as a result of such capital investments and the other positive economic effects such capital investments will have. I should acknowledge, Mr. Speaker, that one of the operating pilot projects is the Iowa New Farm Family Project, under which host communities are inviting farm families to establish modern dairy farms in Iowa. And according to Iowa State University, which is our resident authority on the subject matter, ``The project has the potential to enrich Iowa communities with young families who establish value-added agricultural businesses . . . and foster healthy economic development . . . The . . . project,'' which is the Iowa New Farm Family Project, Mr. Speaker, ``creates opportunities to increase the population of rural communities, support agriculture, expand value-added agriculture, and maintain Iowa's existing dairy processing industry.'' That's as described by Iowa State University, the Iowa New Farm Family Project. I want to point out that it has been successful, and it's not just agriculture. It can be urban, too, depending on the region and the zone as it's defined. It has been quite helpful to us in Iowa, and I am grateful for the initiatives that have been taken by Members of this House, Members of the Senate who have not just reached out in support of this legislation but reached out to individuals and helped pave the way through the bureaucratic nightmare to get investors to come into the United States and establish themselves here, where often they will find their economic opportunities have been dried up because of, let's say, capital exchange or regulation. It happens to be the case with our dutch dairy families that come in, that the regulations have gotten so heavy in The Netherlands that they want to continue their skill, their family tradition. I note that the individual that stood at this particular microphone ahead of me was the gentleman from California who has a dairy tradition in his family, and you look back through generations. This establishes a generational linkage, Mr. Speaker, that I'm very grateful for, and it comes at a particularly good time, especially in the Midwest where we are a center for renewable energy. Some 6 or 7 years ago, we had almost no industry to produce ethanol, and yet it began back in about 1978 and it began in my neighborhood in my region. And as the first gallon of ethanol was pumped, it became part of an alternative fuel that had been initiated in the late 1970s, came to fruition about 6 or 7 years ago, and since the time I've come to Congress, it has built such an industry in my region that we now, the Fifth District of Iowa, are the number one renewable energy producing congressional district in America out of all 435. Because we have the ethanol industry in Iowa, it has been very helpful to our dairy farmers because a byproduct of corn ethanol is the dried distiller strain, or the mash if it comes in a wet form. And the dairy farms have been able to utilize this, as well as anyone has, and it's added value to all of our feed. It's added value to our rough feed, and it's provided a high quality feed which makes it more attractive for our dairy producers to move into the region. So, the pressure that we're under today with $4 gas, and, by the way, I just happened to check a receipt here, and I paid $141 for a tank of gas, $141.52 on Saturday, Mr. Speaker. That's enough money to put into a gas tank, and that was at $3.85. The folks on the west coast that are over $4 a gallon feel this. But what we've done is created a renewable energy industry in the Midwest to help take on some of that burden of providing energy for America. And when we do that, and as of the 2007 crop it hasn't really brought forward the food versus fuel argument. We have produced more corn than ever before, exported more corn than ever before, and still left more corn for domestic consumption than ever before, and we have produced over 9 billion gallons of ethanol. And the byproduct of that 9 billion, you get about a third of the weight of corn out into ethanol. You get a third of the weight of corn that goes into feed for these dairy cows, for example, and about a third of it goes off in CO2. That's the simple breakdown, which I'll go into more detail with perhaps a Special Order that I can get into the details, Mr. Speaker. But I want to point out that we need these dairy farmers in Iowa. The energy situation is actually a plus because $4 gas holds up the price of corn and holds up the price for ethanol and helps make these systems work, and they're feeding the byproduct in a fashion that's producing more milk in the Midwest. We are still today a net importer of milk in a rural State like Iowa. So we can use some more. But the regional center program expires in September. The bill will extend the program an additional 5 years. I think this is a very valuable program, and I support the passage of this bill. I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, Specialist Kendall Frederick was a 21-year-old U.S. Army soldier serving in Iraq who dreamed of becoming an American citizen. He was born in Trinidad and came to this country when he was 15 years old. Specialist Frederick joined ROTC while in high school--and I would point out there are increasing numbers of high schools that have denied ROTC presence on their campus. Not the case for Specialist Frederick and we are thankful. He joined the Army after he graduated. On October 19, 2005, he was tragically killed by a roadside bomb while traveling in a convoy to a base. He was granted U.S. citizenship posthumously, but he never knew he was an American citizen. Tragically, the very reason that he was in that convoy that day was to get fingerprinted in order to achieve his dream. We know that Kendell Frederick wanted to be an American citizen but bureaucracy stood in his way. He had been trying to become an American citizen for over a year, Mr. Speaker, having started the process while he was in training. His mother and his sergeant in Iraq tried to help him, but they didn't know the rules. His efforts to become a citizen were thwarted by bureaucratic misinformation and other obstacles. While he was fighting for our country in Iraq, he was told that he had to have his fingerprints retaken in Maryland. When his mother called 1-800-IMMIGRATION, it's a USCIS unit, United States Citizenship and Immigration Services hotline for immigration assistance, and tried to explain that he was fighting in a war and was, I should say, tied up at the time, as John McCain might say, he could not come home to Baltimore to be fingerprinted so she was told that there was nothing they could do. This is wrong and this is intolerable that our soldiers are unable to get correct information, Mr. Speaker. They should be given every possible assistance in applying for citizenship. Last year, the House passed H.R. 2884 which provides that a soldier who submits a naturalization application within 24 months of enlistment can have that application processed using the fingerprints that were taken at the time of his enlistment. I supported that bill then which was designed to and does honor Specialist Frederick and all of our lawful permanent resident servicemembers. Today we're considering S. 2516 which is a bill the Senate passed that makes a few technical changes to H.R. 2884. I urge my colleagues to support this bill. It has taken us some time to get this resolved. I trust it will be resolved today in this House, Mr. Speaker, and done so with great gratitude from this Congress and the United States people to Specialist Kendell Frederick and to all of those who have given their lives and parts of their lives and some their limbs for the freedom of this great country. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa

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

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I join my colleagues in strong support of H.R. 5938, the Former Vice President Protection Act of 2008. The Secret Service must be authorized by law or the President to provide protection. Federal law provides Secret Service protection to sitting Presidents and Vice Presidents, former Presidents, their spouses and children, visiting heads of state, Presidential candidates, and other dignitaries. However, the statute does not include former Vice Presidents. For the past 30 years, it has been common practice for former Vice Presidents to receive protection on a temporary basis via a joint resolution of Congress or Presidential memorandum. This temporary protection typically continues for 6 months after the Vice President leaves office. When necessary, Congress or the President has extended this protection for an additional 6 months. H.R. 5938, the Former Vice President Protection Act, makes this routine practice a permanent authority of the Secret Service. H.R. 5938 amends title 18 to provide statutory protection of former Vice Presidents, their spouses and their children under the age of 16 for the initial 6 months after leaving office. The bill also provides the Secret Service with the authority to reevaluate the need for continued protection in 6-month increments. The permanent authority granted by H.R. 5938 will improve the Secret Service's ability to prepare for the protection of Vice Presidents after they leave office. Preparation for such security takes time and can often overlap administrations. Permanent authority will allow for the development of long-term protection plans. The upcoming change of administrations, not to mention the current threat level, makes permanent statutory authority for the Secret Service to provide such protections even more timely. I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. I urge adoption, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this resolution honoring Bo Diddley, the great guitar player and rock and roll musician. He was born Ellas Otha Bates, but he came to be known by the nickname Bo Diddley. It came to be an ironic nickname indeed, and refers to ``nothing at all,'' as in, ``he ain't bo diddly,'' or in my neighborhood, ``you don't know bo diddly.'' Well, far from becoming nothing at all, Bo Diddley started playing in Chicago's South Side and rose to become one of the greatest rock and roll musicians of all time. His song ``Bo Diddley'' became a number one rhythm and blues hit as far back as 1955. Through songs such as ``Who Do You Love,'' he established the now famous Bo Diddley beat, a rumba like sound that mimics the sounds made by street musicians who would pat beats to songs by slapping their arms, legs, chest and cheeks. Bo Diddley headlined above the Rolling Stones. He appeared with the Clash and the Grateful Dead and wrote many crossover hits that appealed to music lovers everywhere. And he was one of the first major male musicians to include a woman in his band. He was inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. In 1996, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and in 1998 from the Grammy Awards. Rolling Stone magazine listed him at Number 20 on their list of the Greatest Artists of All Time. When Bo Diddley passed away on June 2 at the age of 79, he was surrounded by his friends and family, who sang the gospel song ``Walk Around Heaven.'' Mr. Speaker, I never knew Bo Diddley, but I know he touched my life and that of all of us. Walk around heaven, indeed, Bo Diddley.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, the Congressional Review Act provides Congress with a vital tool to oversee how agencies exercise their legislative authority Congress delegates to them. The act has a great deal of promise, but unfortunately is used too little. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have worked long, hard, and in a bipartisan fashion to help identify ways in which we can prompt its better use. Today, we begin the process of improving the act with one of those measures. H.R. 5593 streamlines the act's processing requirements, lightening the burden on the House Parliamentarian's office. This is a measure first proposed in the 106th Congress by our much loved, revered, and respected former chairman, the late Henry Hyde. It had bipartisan support then as it does today, Mr. Speaker. I applaud the House's consideration of this bill, and I hope that its swift enactment is but the first of key improvements we can make so that the act is both more efficient and more effective. I urge its adoption.

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

Mr. KING

Mr. KING. 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. 5658, the National Defense Authorization 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: Authorizes 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. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to offer an amendment asking the Chief of the National Guard Bureau to develop a report on the effectiveness of certain Guard ``empowerment'' provisions that were contained in the FY08 Defense Authorization Act. Mr. Chairman, since September 11, 2001, the United States has increasingly turned to the men and women of the National Guard to provide much needed support in our efforts to prosecute a global war against radical Islamic jihaddists. Answering their Nation's call to arms, Guard units from across the country have faithfully and courageously served in harm's way on the front lines of this historic struggle. The men and women of the Iowa National Guard are no different. Just last month, constituents from my congressional district in Western Iowa welcomed home members of the Iowa Army National Guard who returned from deployments in Iraq. As has been the case with many Guard units across the country, this is not the first welcome home ceremony that these units have enjoyed in the past few years. And yet, while the Guard is deploying many of its members to distant battlefields, it is still expected to meet the many demands of its domestic mission. Despite the Nation's need for men and women of the Guard to serve on the battlefield, our State Governors must continue to have ready access to the Guard to respond to the emergency and disaster relief needs of their States. There is no doubt that the services and capabilities of the Guard are in high demand. In many respects, this is due to the fact that both active duty commanders and governors know that when they call, the Guard will be there. They also know that Guard members can always be counted upon to complete their mission in the most efficient and professional manner possible. The many demands placed upon the Guard, however, have begun to wear down its capabilities. To address this, Congress included several provisions in the FY08 National Defense Authorization Act intended to boost the standing of the Guard within the Department of Defense. The ``empowerment'' provisions included the elevation of the Chief of the Guard Bureau from the rank of Lieutenant General to the rank of full General. The bill also made the Guard Chief the primary advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs on Guard matters. In addition to these important changes, the bill also made the National Guard a joint agency, charges the Secretary of Defense with writing the Guard's charter, and requires that the Deputy Commander of the Northern Command be a member of the Guard. All of these changes, Mr. Chairman, were aimed at ensuring the National Guard would have a clearer voice in policy and budgetary discussions within the Department of Defense. To determine the extent to which these empowerment provisions have accomplished this goal, my amendment asks the Chief of the Guard Bureau to submit a report to the Secretary of Defense analyzing the effectiveness of the empowerment provisions. My amendment then requires the Secretary of Defense to submit the Chief's report to Congress with the Secretary's own comments on the matter. Mr. Chairman, as we continue to wage a global war against radical Islamic jihaddists, it is imperative that we give the National Guard the resources and pull necessary to ensure it is able to remain an integral part of this fight and to ensure it is able to carry out its duties with respect to its domestic mission here at home. To do this, we must see to it that we are responsive to the needs of the Guard. With the passage of the empowerment provisions in last year's Defense Authorization bill, we have taken some important first steps toward addressing the 21st century needs of the Guard. But only the Guard itself will be able to tell us if these changes have hit their mark and are having their intended effect. This amendment will allow Congress to get important, first-hand feedback from the Guard on this important issue, and I ask my colleagues to join me in supporting its passage.

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Mr. Speaker, I was detained while attempting to reach the floor to cast my vote on rollcall 338 earlier this afternoon. Had I been able to reach the floor before the vote was closed, I would have voted ``no.''

Mr. KING of Iowa

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time then, drilling the Outer Continental Shelf is part of the solution. We would agree on that?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Thank you. And I know you have been here on the floor talking about energy for the last hour. Just as a matter of transition, I would just ask a few clarifying questions. The first one is, as I heard discussion about the Outer Continental Shelf, is there a nuance there? Are you for or against drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf for more energy?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Madam Speaker, I thank you for recognizing me to address you here on the floor of the House of Representatives. As a means of transition, and in fact it is not normal practice, but I would ask the gentleman from Texas if he might still be available to perhaps enter into a colloquy. If the gentleman from Texas would be interested in entering into a colloquy, I would be happy to ask him if he would yield for a question. I have been interested in listening to the presentations by the folks here, and I would ask if the gentleman from Texas would be willing to enter into a short colloquy just as a matter of clarification on our energy position?

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I appreciate the gentleman's remarks from Texas. I believe also that, at the very minimum, we ought to go out there and tack some wells in right up against those Chinese Cuban wells that are going in within 45 miles of Key West. I am all for that. And let's at least build a little barrier and get our share of that well and start pipelining it back in here if we can. I would be significantly aggressive on all of this. I would say on the upside too, Madam Speaker, and to the American people, there are a couple of good things going on in America. One is that we have the structure put together where we can produce the first refinery since 1975. There will be a vote that comes up, it will be primary night, June 3rd, and if the people in Union County, South Dakota, decide they want to have a refinery in their Hyperion refinery, then very likely that will be the biggest roadblock for a large refinery to come in that would deal with the pipeline coming down from I call it the tar sands in Northern Alberta, a tremendously large oil supply up there. A pipeline would come down, and the crude oil would be refined there and then distributed across the area in a network of pipelines. That is something that we will find out here in a few weeks, if that is going to happen. Another thing that America doesn't seem to know is that there is a nuclear plant that is being constructed--thanks again to the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Lampson--there is a nuclear plant that is being constructed in South Carolina. I am not certain when that goes on line, Madam Speaker. But those are two large milestones that are being driven by the market and by the need. It is not being driven by this Congress. It is not being driven by this Congress, because this Congress has not taken any action to open up opportunities for refineries or open up opportunities for nuclear power plants or any other kind of power plant to be built. This is happening because market forces are driving them, and the regulatory resistance is being overcome by very high energy prices. It is not because Congress reduced the regulations. It is not because Congress provided incentives. It is because the costs of energy are so overpowering that it is now starting to roll over the top of the prohibitory regulations that have been put in by this Congress and signed by more than one President. So, the overall picture, Madam Speaker, is this: This is what I call the energy pie. It is a pie chart, and this is energy consumption 2007: 101.6 quadrillion Btus. Now, I could explain what all that is. That is a lot of Btus. It is important to look at it proportionately. Let's just say that is 100 percent of the energy consumption by British Thermal Unit in the United States. This pie chart represents the percentages of their consumption that comes from each of these sources of energy. Natural gas, 23.3 percent of our energy consumption in the United States is natural gas. We use that for heating energy and for production energy and a lot of other ways. Natural gas is clean burning and it is environmentally fairly friendly. Also the coal is 22.4 percent. So coal and natural gas comprise about equal amounts, very equivalent amounts of energy consumption in the United States. Then we go to nuclear. It is larger than most people will think. Even though we haven't built a nuclear plant since 1975, 8.29 percent of our energy consumption in the United States is produced by nuclear. That is a piece that in France, for example, their electrical generation is produced by nuclear. 78 percent of their megawatts of electricity are produced by nuclear. If the French can do that and do that without incident, do that without fear, do that without concern, we can produce a lot more energy by nuclear here in the United States. Now, that is environmentally friendly. It is clean burning. It is the safest form of electrical energy that we have, and we have been remiss in not continuing to develop our engineering capability to produce nuclear. That slice of the energy pie could get a lot larger. It could take up some of this going to coal, it could take up some of this going to natural gas, because there is electrical production generation in each of these, natural gas and coal, and actually a lot of it, and the nuclear could be a bigger piece of this pie. As we go around the chart, the hydroelectric is 2.4 percent. That is probably not going to get any bigger. That requires we build more dams. There are a lot of regulators in the way that don't want to see that happen. As we go around the chart, you can see small pieces, geothermal, wind, solar, all less than 1 percent of the energy consumption. Fueled by ethanol is almost 1 percent is all. We would think that would be a lot more, Madam Speaker. 1 percent, but a growing number. Biodiesel is a tiny .06 percent of the energy there. Biodiesel is a fledgling part right now, and it may well become significant. Today it is a small piece. Wooden waste is bigger than we would think. Then we get to gas, 16.9 percent, and diesel and heating oil, et cetera, is 8.84, and jet fuel, 3.31, and other petroleum projects, asphalt and heavy oils and those, 10 percent. That is the energy consumption. 101 quadrillion Btus of energy consumed in the United States. Now, if we are going to look at how we address this energy situation, Madam Speaker, we need to look at it from the whole pie chart perspective. So often we are here debating on whether we should be drilling in ANWR or whether we should drill the Outer Continental Shelf or whether we ought to grow ethanol from corn or maybe grow ethanol from cellulosic, which is a big part of what is in the farm bill that maybe we will see again tomorrow. What do we do with solar? There is plenty of solar power that cooks the United States, especially in the summertime and especially in the Southwest. Can we collect that and turn that into energy? Perhaps. But as we have this debate, we can debate the relative merits of these sources of energy. But what I am not hearing the Members do or the leadership do or the American people or the business world in America, no one is out there pitching the big picture, pitching this picture that we had the conversation with Mr. Lampson, and that is the entire picture of energy, the holistic picture of energy, this energy pie. What is our solution? No one thing. No one thing is the solution. And there are some parts that need to be bigger on this pie chart and there are others that need to be a little smaller on this pie chart. But maybe, maybe our solution instead is let's make all of these pieces of pie a little bit bigger and let's produce more BTUs of energy out of every source that we can. As that happens and as market forces dictate, we will see, I believe, fuel from ethanol get up above 1 percent. I think actually from a gasoline standpoint we can take it to 13, 14, or maybe even 15 percent of the energy that today is being consumed by vehicles that burn gasoline or that burn generally a 10 percent blend of ethanol. So maybe this 1 percent here of the overall can become as much as 15 percent of the gasoline component, say 15 percent of this, 16 or 17 percent of the BTUs which is in gasoline today. That is one of the ways that it might change in proportion. And so then another way that we can look at this is if we can produce a little more biodiesel, we can take a bigger piece out of the diesel fuel on this side. If we can increase nuclear, as I mentioned, then we can take a bigger bite out of the electrical production. And if we can produce more electricity with nuclear, then the pressure comes on natural gas and comes on coal to give up a little bit of that market share to nuclear. When that happens, it puts the coal and the gas in different areas and different markets, and perhaps keeps the price from going up or maybe even can get us a little bit lower price on our energy. I think this: If we are consuming 101.6 quadrillion BTUs of energy and we are producing--this is the chart behind here, this is the energy that we are actually producing here in the United States--71.7 quadrillion BTUs of energy. And so, Madam Speaker, just roughly speaking, we are producing about 72 percent of the energy in the United States that we are consuming here in this country, 72 percent of the energy. The balance of it presumably is imported. Now, we can import it from Canada, we can import it from Venezuela, we can import it from Saudi Arabia and the Middle East; in fact, we do that from all of those places. But when we do that, it does a number of things to us. It makes us vulnerable and dependent upon Middle Eastern oil, for example, and makes us also dependent on Venezuelan oil and energy, and it makes us dependent upon the Canadians. Which is the least of my concerns. I am very happy to be doing business with the Canadians. If we are going to be importing energy from the western hemisphere or anyplace on the planet, I think from the Canadians is as good a place as there is. And we do import some oil from Mexico as well. But if we are only producing 72 percent of the energy that we are consuming, that means then that we, just by simple math, are importing 28 percent of the energy that we are consuming. And I believe that we are importing 61 percent of the oil and gas or the crude oil, the products that we are using here in the United States, 61 percent of that imported. And as you see, we are producing I think all or very close to all of our own coal, we are producing a percentage of our natural gas. Not all of it, because a fair amount of that is imported into the United States. If you look at the hydroelectric, we are producing all of that, the geothermal, all of that. There are a number that we are doing, wind, solar, ethanol, as it goes around the corner. We are producing most of that. But these other energies, the ones that we are most dependent on, Middle Eastern oil, 61 percent of our crude oil products imported, much of that from the Middle East. We are very dependent upon it, and that needs to change, Madam Speaker. So my policy is this. And I don't know, I haven't identified the distinctions between my approach and the gentleman from Texas who spoke in the previous hour. But my policy is this. Take this pie chart that we have, let's produce a lot more natural gas. Let's go offshore, drill the Outer Continental Shelf. Let's drill everywhere offshore in the United States. Let's first rush down there and set up our drill rigs right up against those Chinese drill rigs 45 miles from Key West and tack those wells in there and start pulling that oil out and work our way back. We will build a fence between us and them of oil wells right there on that line between Key West and Havana. There is a lot of natural gas on the Outer Continental Shelf. And in that region from the gulf coast around Florida and back again, there are known reserves of at least 406 trillion--that is trillion with a T--cubic feet of natural gas that can be tapped offshore down that way. And there is a lot of gas in the gulf coast altogether. We can produce a lot more natural gas. We can punch holes around the Outer Continental Shelf. We can do that offshore almost anywhere in the United States. There is natural gas almost everywhere offshore in the United States. But we need to expand that where we can develop the fields and be able to transport that gas effectively and efficiently. And the most promising region is offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf of Florida. Now, I have a growing list of Florida Members of Congress who are willing to support drilling offshore in the Outer Continental Shelf, because they understand that this Nation is vulnerable to other countries for energy supply. And they are understanding more and more that if they are going to build generating plants in Florida, and they increasingly want to build them as natural gas fire generating plants, that they are going to have to go along with the idea of tapping into the resources that they have offshore in Florida itself. So, they are concerned that people sitting on the beach might see an oil rig out there and not come back to the beach and sit down in the sunshine. Beautiful State, beautiful beaches. I don't think they are matched anywhere. But if you cannot see an oil well 200 miles offshore, you can't see a gas well 200 miles offshore. To give an example, somebody in the Midwest that might think like me, if I am sitting down between Iowa and Missouri on the Missouri line, on the State line at say Lineville, for example, a little town right there on the Missouri line and Iowa, and I am sitting in my lawn chair gazing off to the north up to the Minnesota border, roughly 200 miles, maybe a little less, that is about what we are talking about. If we are worried about drilling offshore in Florida, 200 miles offshore in Florida, roughly the equivalent of sitting on the Iowa-Missouri border and wondering about whether you are going to have something mess up the scenery that is going to be a drill rig that would be up on the Minnesota border that far away and perhaps even a little further away, as I say, a growing number of the members of the Florida delegation willing to tap into this. But truthfully, I say this to the good members of Florida, both Republicans and Democrats, those resources that are offshore are American resources, not Florida resources, not Alabama or Mississippi or Louisiana or Texas resources. These are American resources, the resources that were claimed by President Reagan on the Outer Continental Shelf out to that 200 mile limit, I think the year was 1983. It seems as though Jimmy Carter made a move in that direction, too, and I can't remember exactly what he did, but I believe President Reagan declared our influence and declared the mineral rights out to the 200 mile limit. It wasn't a declaration of the Governor of Florida or the Governor of any other State that is a coastal State. It was a declaration by the President of the United States that claimed those resources for all the people in the United States. And so as much as I like to see coalitions and like to see us get along and cooperate with each other, Madam Speaker, I will submit that the good people in Florida and the rest of the way around the coast, really, let's bring them into the dialogue. But this is an American situation, not a Florida or a Louisiana or a Texas situation, and we need to make a decision for America. I am increasingly hearing the Florida delegation make such decisions and take such stands. If push comes to shove, I am going to say that it is America that will decide; it needs to be this Congress that decides. We need a President that will help us decide to do that, drill the Outer Continental Shelf. If we do that, natural gas gets more plentiful, and the law of supply and demand keeps these gas prices from going up and in fact pushes them down. If we can put a lot more natural gas into the marketplace, that means Florida can have the electricity that it needs to run its air conditioners, and it means that they can have the natural gas that they need to generate their electricity, and that natural gas can be delivered to the rest of the country, heat our homes, run our generating plants that we need, too. But, Madam Speaker, I would submit this. Let's put more natural gas into this marketplace. Let's put a lot more natural gas into the marketplace. But let's not turn a lot of it into electrical generation. Let's use this for the things we need it for. Let's use it for industrial production, plastics, for example. Mr. Peterson from Pennsylvania has given speech after speech on those necessities. But let's also use the natural gas for fertilizer production, because that fertilizer is what is necessary in order to provide food for the American people and the people of the world. You simply can't produce food without nitrogen, the nitrogen that either is drawn from the air naturally through a crop or nitrogen that is put into the ground through the fertilizer. And 90 percent of the cost and of the feedstock that goes into the production of nitrogen fertilizer is natural gas itself. And so more natural gas available on the marketplace means that we will come back and rebuild the fertilizer production industry in the United States, and it frees up a lot more gas for the production of the things that we need as far as industrial production is concerned. Home heating is another way we can use natural gas. And if we increase the production of the natural gas and we start taking away from the generation of electricity by natural gas and replace that with nuclear, you can start to see how the pieces of this pie will shift. American production can increase for natural gas, but actually the share of the overall consumption of energy could actually diminish even though we increased it because we will have more energy on the marketplace and more energy in the form of nuclear, which is here; the 11.73 percent of our production of energy is nuclear. But if we are down to the other chart, then it is 8.29 percent of our consumption is nuclear. That gives a sense of what we can do with this energy, grow the size of the energy pie. Madam Speaker, this chart, this is energy consumption, 101.6 quadrillion BTUs of energy consumed in the United States, which tells us that about 28 quadrillion BTUs of energy is imported into the United States. So this energy pie that I just sat down here on the floor needs to be at least matched by the production energy pie chart here. And another thing that we can do is add another slice to this pie called energy conservation, so that on this consumption side we can replace some of that consumption of energy with the conservation of energy, efficient homes, efficient vehicles, and efficient generating plants, efficient plants of all kinds. That is the view of the energy situation here in the United States, Madam Speaker. And then I have another bar graph right here that helps lay out the proportionality of the different kinds of production that we have. I started on the bottom. For petroleum, it is 39.14 percent of our production. So we are dependent upon petroleum products significantly. It is almost 40 percent. We go to natural gas. That is another well product, another petroleum hydrocarbon product, 23.25 percent of natural gas. These two things of course come out of the ground, deep wells, not quite of deep of wells as a rule. And coal. Coal has traditionally been a big part of our energy consumption here in the United States. And you see how, as we go to nuclear with 8.27 percent energy consumption, now it goes down 2.5 percent, hydroelectric about the same, ethanol less than 1 percent. And it gets down to where these other pieces, biodiesel, solar wind, geothermal and that are all tiny in comparison. Another way to look at this is as we grow fuel by ethanol, that bar gets longer. Hydroelectric probably stays the same. And wind can get bigger, solar can get bigger, biodiesel can get bigger. But we are in the early stages of this, Madam Speaker. We have a lot to do, and we have a lot to do to expand each one of these kinds of energy that we have. We are a Nation, we are a Nation that is sitting on a significant amount of natural gas. We actually have a wealth of natural gas. And I recall a statement made into the Congressional Record by a Member of Congress from Colorado about 3 or 4 years ago, and that is that we have enough natural gas in the United States underneath the non-national park public lands that if we would drill that natural gas in the known reserves, there is enough there to heat every home in America for the next 150 years, Madam Speaker, 150 years of heating every home in America just with the gas that is underneath the non-national park public lands, Bureau of Land Management lands, primarily. And why can't we do that? Why can't we open up all those areas to drilling? We have do so in an environmentally friendly fashion; We have done so without spillage in a significant way without any kind of permanent environmental damage. And we need to open up our non-national park lands for drilling and for distribution. We can't be shutting people out of there by shutting off roads and not allowing them an ability to deliver the product. We have got to open this up and get the energy into the marketplace. We do that, drill our non-national park public lands and we drill the outer continental shelf for gas and oil and we drill ANWR. And ANWR is the piece that I asked the gentleman from Texas about. I have long been an advocate for drilling in ANWR. I took a trip up there a few years ago because I had listened to the rhetoric about ANWR. And the constant statement was that this is a natural, beautiful arctic wilderness. It's a place that wildlife needs to be able to roam without being disturbed by man, pristine wilderness area. And so I remember seeing commercials on television that showed a beautiful alpine forest, a beautiful alpine forest represented as Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And so I'm sitting there, like any American would be, thinking, boy, if we go up there and bulldoze those trees and start putting roads in and pipelines in and drilling into that beautiful alpine forest, it'll never be the same. And I wasn't really totally shocked or surprised when I got up there, but I started to put all the pieces together. I was looking around for trees. And as we flew north, it was a long flight from where I saw the last tree out the window of the plane before we got to the place up there in ANWR where they want to drill. In fact, it's about 700 miles from the most northerly tree approaching the Arctic circle. It's about 700 miles south of the area they want to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and then in a region with that Eskimo town called Kaktovik. That's about 250 to 300 people that live up there right on the Arctic Ocean. So as we flew over that area, we flew over the north slope of Alaska, which had the pipeline. The Alaska pipeline was built beginning in 1972. And the wells were drilled up there beginning about that same period of time. And so for all these years we've watched crude oil be pumped down out of the north slope of Alaska into that pipeline and down to the Port Valdez, where it's been loading tankers, and the tankers have then gone down to the refineries along the West Coast. Madam Speaker, the question continues, and that is that comments continually come to my office about allegations that that crude oil from Alaska is being exported to places like Japan. And once again, I looked into that. Once again I got the answer back that says no, that oil is going to the United States. It goes down for United States production. Early on there were some market forces that sent some of that oil across over to Japan. It has been a long, long time since any of that oil has gone anywhere except into the U.S. marketplace. So I think we can be confident that the oil that would come out of ANWR would also come into the U.S. marketplace. In fact, it would go into the same pipeline. And as the oil wells in the north slope start to wind down and start to slow in their production, we need to ramp up production next door in ANWR to bring that oil on-line and keep that Alaska pipeline full. If we fail to do that, the line will corrode on the inside and, as it starts to, it'll take a fair amount of renovation work to get it back up to speed again if we don't keep it working most of the time. And so, as I looked at the ANWR region, and flew over that 19.6 million acres, I was looking for caribou herds that would be scattered out all over the place, and perhaps a lot of musk oxen and birds and polar bears, et cetera. But, Madam Speaker, as much as we flew over that area and looked, from end to end, out and back, as low as we could safely fly, all of us looking out the window, the pilot finally spotted four musk oxen, four oxen standing out there in 19.6 million acres. And I'm sure we missed some animals. We didn't see them all. They were standing there with their head down, doing nothing, just standing there, four of them all in a little group. And we saw that, and two big white birds. I don't know what kind they were. That's all we saw for wildlife across that whole region. But what we know is this, that there is not a native caribou herd in ANWR, in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It is a kind of a maternity ward where caribou migrate in from Canada in the spring, starting perhaps a week or 10 days into May, and they have their calves in there in that region around the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And once those calves get big enough, then they migrate back to Canada mid June or the latter part of June. That's the extent of the caribou herd. Now, if we're worried about caribou, we ought to look and see what happened to the caribou herd on the north slope of Alaska where we have about, let's say, 36 years of experience up there building pipe lines, drilling oil wells and delivering oil onto the marketplace of the world. And so the caribou herd that was 7,000 head of caribou back in 1970 today is over 28,000, and the herd is growing. That doesn't tell me that the work that's been done on the north slope has been detrimental at least to the caribou herd which is more than four times what it was back in 1970 when they first began the operations. Court injunction shut it down for 2 years, and then the work really began in 1972, as I recall. But from 7,000 caribou to 28,000 caribou on the north slope, I don't think we ought to worry about the caribou, if that's our issue, and any kind of environmental reason that they might come up with on the other side of the aisle not to drill. So all the indications are that the caribou are going to do just fine with the pipeline running through them and some oil rigs that are drilling. We think, somehow, that wildlife just simply is not compatible with man and not compatible with machines, not compatible with oil drilling or pipelines or road construction or populations. So Madam Speaker, I would submit that there are a number of examples that would beg otherwise, and that would be-- Well, one of those easy examples would be, let's see, I get my days right. Night before last, as my wife and I were walking down the street at about let me see, pretty close to Sixth and Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, there a furry raccoon ran down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, almost in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C. And a raccoon figured out how to live inside Washington, D.C. It's the first one I've seen running around on the streets. I was quite surprised, but there he was. Another example, Madam Speaker, would be, I recall my wife and I were doing a little road trip. We had driven up to the end of the road in northern Ontario. And there's a paved highway that goes up to a city by the name of Red Lake, Ontario, actually a fairly small town but along the shore of the lake there, a beautiful region. And it's vast and it's wild, and it's open wilderness. But I'd always been concerned about how the eagle would adapt to humanity. And I recall working on a job in Southwest Iowa where the Department of Natural Resources, in a heavy timber, discovered one of the earliest eagle nests in modern times in the State of Iowa. And this would be back in, I believe, 1986. The game warden told me about the eagles nest, but would not tell me where it was because he said that if I would walk down there I would scare the eagle off the nest and the eagle would fly away and the eggs wouldn't hatch. That was the concern about scaring an eagle out of their reproduction operation. And that was things we heard many times, that these animals do not, and they're not very compatible with humanity. Well, Madam Speaker, I don't know what happened to that eagle out in that heavy timber in Southwest Iowa. I presume she hatched out her eaglets and they flew away, because we've got a lot of eagles living in the country side now, these 22 years later. But what I did see up there in Northern Ontario were the highway, a paved highway that actually has a reasonable amount of traffic going north and south. It's two lanes. But it's split around a high line pole, a big tall high line pole that was perhaps over 100 feet high. And as we drove by, we had the top down, and I looked up on top of that pole and there was an eagle nest with an eagle sitting in it, keeping an eye on all the traffic that was buzzing by right directly underneath its necessary. Now, that tells me that animals are fairly compatible. All of them maybe are not. And the argument about the spotted owl, I don't have quite the personal experience rebuttal to that. But we do know that peregrine falcons live pretty well in the city if they can prey on the pigeons that also live pretty well in the city. And so time after time we find out that animals adapt to their environment, and a lot in the same way that people do. They will find a way to find some feed and find some shelter and reproduce and hatch some little ones out. The caribou found out how to do that in the north slope. There's not a problem in ANWR. No one can create an environmental scenario that tells me that we should go without energy in America. But we do have the situation where the Secretary of the Interior has put the polar bear on the threatened species list. Now, this polar bear that has watched its population over the last 2 decades go from about 7,000, maybe as low as 5,000 polar bear, now up to about 25,000 polar bear. That would be the world population of polar bear. We've watched polar bear numbers that are blossoming, anywhere from 3\1/2\ to five times the population of polar bear that it was 20 years ago. And yet, for the first time in the history of the country, the Secretary of the Interior has put an animal on the threatened species lists because of the predictions from the global warming enthusiasts of what will happen to its environment if they are right. Now, Madam Speaker, I will submit that that polar bear will become the tool and the pawn and the toy of litigation after litigation after litigation that will be designed to shut down the development of energy exploration and production in all of those regions where the polar bear might roam or might have roamed. That's what we can expect coming, because this debate isn't really about the well-being of the polar bear. This debate is about people on that side of the aisle, not all of them, but I do believe the majority of them, Madam Speaker, that really in their heart of hearts don't mind seeing expensive energy. They don't mind seeing $4 gas. In fact, I don't think they'd mind seeing 6, 8 or $10 gas because they believe that the higher the cost of energy, the less of it we will use. If gas goes to six bucks or 10 bucks, more people will park their car, more people will ride their bicycle, more people will walk, more people will take mass transit, and more people will stay home. If all of that happens, their calculus is that we'll use less energy per capita, instead of more energy per capita, and the net result will be that, in their mind, that they saved the planet from global warming. Well, this is a long ways from subtle science, and we should not be handicapping the economy of the United States of America for the purposes of people who believe we should have a more expensive energy policy. So in spite of what I heard the gentleman from Texas say, and I don't discount his word, nor do I challenge his integrity. I will submit that his party has only brought energy issues to this floor of Congress that have raised the cost of energy by making it more scarce. They've tried to bring windfall profits taxes on the energy companies. They're the ones that are keeping our energy at least as low as it is today. They're slowing the increase in prices, companies like Exxon, for example, that are putting billions of gallons of gasoline out there in the marketplace. If they stop producing because we punish them, gas is going to go up, not down. We don't get cheaper gas prices by punishing energy companies, and we don't get cheaper gas prices by taxing companies after the fact in windfall profit taxes, Madam Speaker, because what will happen is they'll sit around the boardroom and they'll decide, wait a minute. We paid our royalties to the Federal Government for the energy that was there. We entered into these agreements in good faith. We're an efficient company, an efficient company that drilled and explored the leases that they paid for, put that energy on the marketplace for a fair market price and paid the royalties to the Federal Government for that. Now, how do we come in and change the deal? How do we say, if you don't renegotiate those lease agreements with the Federal Government, we're not going to let you enter into another lease agreement. We're going to hold a gun to your head and make you capitulate and change. The deal's not a deal, according to some folks on this side of the aisle, and a lot of them are driving the agenda. And so, Madam Speaker, I submit this, that a deal must be a deal. And we can't be penalizing energy companies that are out there exploring, risking billions of dollars in capital, and putting gas and diesel fuel and oil and kerosene and jet fuel and asphalt for our roads all out there on the marketplace, keeping the price as low as possible. They're competing in this marketplace. And yes, they are making some money. But if their Board of Directors are listening, they're hearing what this Congress is saying to demonize the people that are producing the energy, and they're starting to wonder, shouldn't I take some of that billions in profit and invest that in some other industry someplace where Congress isn't going to come in and tax me after the fact? If they play by the rules, every company that plays by the rules should be able to count on the Federal Government keeping their part of the bargain. And whatever the tax structure is when they enter into the agreement should be the tax structure that they comply with, at least for that year that they've entered into and the corporate tax and the royalties that are designed to be part of it. I've spent my life in the business world, 28 years meeting payroll, doing construction work, entering into contracts, some written, many written actually, many more verbal contracts, sometimes a hand shake, sometimes we didn't bother, sometimes it was over the phone, sometimes it was just simply eye contact, nod, and we have the kind of relationship where we know we'll each keep our deal. I respect a contract. I respect a deal and an agreement. That's what makes the economic world go round. People that have integrity that understand that a deal is a deal are what keeps this world going. And we have verbal agreements that go on up into the hundreds of millions of dollars, and in the end, we're evaluating the character of the people that are entering into those. I would also submit that one of my favorite energies here on this chart, the energy production, which is the fuel by ethanol, this .94 of a percent here, is getting a bit of a bad rap. And it's getting a bit of a bad rap by the folks who just simply don't like the competition of ethanol. I think it's become a political argument rather than a rational scientific argument. I know a couple of scientists in this Congress who are working and tracking the three laws of thermodynamics, and I hope they're paying attention when I make this argument, Madam Speaker, and that is this: according to Argon Labs out of Chicago--first the argument that comes from ethanol's critics is it takes more energy to produce ethanol than you get out of it. Madam Speaker, I submit that's factually incorrect. If ethanol from corn can only be calculated if you take a bushel of corn and you say, All right, now I have this bushel of corn here sitting here at the ethanol plant, I want to convert it into ethanol. How much energy does it take to convert this bushel of corn into ethanol compared to how much energy do I get out of this bushel of corn? And if you're going to be fair about it, if we're comparing it to gasoline, we have to also measure how much energy it takes to refine the same amount of energy from crude oil into gasoline, because it takes energy to do that, too. Here are the numbers, Madam Speaker. To produce one Btu of energy in the form of ethanol from corn, you will consume, according to Argon Labs, .67 Btu as the energy that it takes to get an entire Btu out of corn in the form of ethanol from shell corn sitting at the gates of the ethanol plant. That's the equation. But if you go down to the oil refinery, let's just say in Texas, and you have a barrel of crude oil sitting at the gates of the oil refinery of Texas, how much energy does it take to get a Btu, a British thermal unit of energy in the form of gasoline out of that crude oil? That, Madam Speaker, is 1.3 Btu's; .67 to get one out of corn ethanol, 1.3 Btu's to get one out of gasoline refined from crude oil. Almost twice as much energy to craft gas out of crude as it is to convert corn into ethanol, Btu to Btu. Another way to look at that is a gallon of gasoline is, for round purposes, is 100,000 Btu's of energy. Let's just say it takes a little bit more of a gallon in the form of ethanol, but let's say we had two jugs sitting here, one has ethanol in it and one has gasoline in it, each are 100,000 Btu's. Well, to produce 100,000 Btu's of ethanol it took 67,000 Btu's of energy to convert corn into ethanol. 67,000 Btu's to get 100,000. And to convert crude oil into 100,000 Btu's, roughly a gallon of gasoline, it takes 130,000 Btu's to get your 100,000, roughly a gallon's worth. So there's your answer, about twice as much energy to convert gas from crude oil as it is to convert corn into ethanol. Those are laboratory scientific facts, Madam Speaker, and those are facts that ethanol's critics cannot get around. And so let me take us to another level. Since it doesn't take more energy than you get out of it, .67 Btu's to get one full Btu of energy out of corn, since it doesn't take more energy, it does for gasoline, it doesn't for ethanol, then the only other argument that remains is well, food versus fuel, Madam Speaker. And the argument that we're using this corn for fuel instead of feeding the world population, well, we have a lot of folks who think we take field corn and, I suppose, set it on our plates and cook it up and feed it. Now, that may well be how we make grits. I don't know that. We don't make any grits in Iowa, but I do have a little sack on my shelf. And other than that, our corn goes to about some 300 products, maybe a little bit more than that. Corn sweetener and a whole variety of products including, I think, the forks, knives, and spoons at the Longworth cafeteria are today now made from corn. But we produced 13.1 billion bushels of corn last year in the United States. Now, that's the annual crop for the 2007 crop, 13.1 billion bushels of corn. Now, if we're going to argue that food prices went up, I'm going to take that argument away also from ethanol's critics, and here's how it is. We produce 13.1 billion bushels of corn. We exported more corn than ever before. We exported 2.5 billion bushels of corn. And so more corn exported than ever before, and you subtract that 2\1/ 2\ billion from the overall crop of 13.1, you end up with 10.6 billion bushels of corn left over after we exported more than ever before. Then we converted 3.2 billion bushels of corn into ethanol, roughly 9 billion gallons of ethanol, 3.2 billion. So remember, we were at 13.1 billion bushels, overall production, minus 2\1/2\ billion bushels for export, leaves us 10.6 billion. Then from that we subtract 3.2 billion that went to ethanol. That takes us down to 7.4 billion bushels of corn left over for domestic consumption. Now, that happens to be the exact number that is the average of our corn that's available for domestic consumption for all of the other years of this decade is 7.4 billion bushels of corn. So one would say by this argument we didn't really take any corn out of the availability for food for domestic consumption in the United States because we still have 7.4 billion bushels left over after we exported 2\1/2\ billion bushels after we converted 3.1 billion bushels into ethanol, we still end up with 7.4 billion. But additionally, we have to add back in half of the bushels that we converted to ethanol because at least half, Madam Speaker, of that corn has a retained feed value in the protein that we did not use, the protein that goes back in livestock feed in the form of DDG, dried distiller's grain. So you add 1.6 billion bushels back in, and that says last year, 2007 crop, the average annual domestic corn crop for the decade is 7.4 billion, but the 2007 year, there's 9 billion bushels of corn that were available for domestic consumption. That says the supply for domestic consumption went up, not down. If the supply went up, then we can't be arguing that the food-versus-fuel argument, although I will say that if you dump 3.2 billion bushels of corn into the domestic market, and it would push the price, and that would be a lot better for our livestock producers, especially our pork producers. But that's not the case. It's 9 billion bushels available where 7.4 normally are available. I think that takes that argument away that the high costs that are there today that are putting so much pressure on our pork producers are at the burden of ethanol, yes, it's part of it. It's part of it. But, Madam Speaker, I will submit that the low dollar is a bigger part of it. And according to some financial experts that I have met with, people whom I respect, their judgment is sound and they're well respected in the country, the cheap dollar has more to do with high grain prices and high gas prices than most people will calculate. So, for example, if about 35 percent of the value of our commodities, such as crude oil, is wrapped up in the cheap dollar, we could take $129 crude oil and say well, about two-thirds of that is where oil would be today if our dollar were shored back up and it was more traditional values than it is right now. And I know that some think that we should try to encourage the European Union to devalue their Euro. I don't know that that can be done from the United States any more effectively than we can convince the Saudis to put more crude oil out on the marketplace. But we can shore up the value of the dollar, Madam Speaker. We can and we should shore up the value of the dollar. And we ought to take some dollars out of circulation. We ought to make an announcement that we're going to hold a tighter money supply and push the value of the dollar up. If that happens, and we can get the dollar back to its traditional values, the gas that we're looking at today that on the streets tomorrow or by next week will be $3.80 a gallon, would only be, with a more traditional value of our dollar, about $2.47 a gallon. That's still too high in my view, Madam Speaker. So the combination of these things, the combination of the speculators that expect that energy is going to be more scarce in the future, is driving up the price of energy, the intimidation effect of windfall profit taxes and higher regulations and the constant beating that the energy supply companies take here on the floor of this Congress pushes up the energy prices. The bill that passed today that was debated yesterday, the NOPEC bill, the bill that says it's unlawful for the organization, the petroleum export companies, OPEC, the bill that says it's unlawful for OPEC to exist and grants the authority to the Department of Justice to sue those OPEC countries, and if they successfully bring suit, one could presume that they could freeze the accounts of the investments of those oil companies here in the United States, at least the sovereign wealth accounts that they might have invested in U.S. products. It is a move that drives up more energy prices. The Middle Eastern countries that are part of OPEC, because when we passed NOPEC here in this Congress, they are not going to produce more energy to get Congress off their back because they know Congress doesn't know how much energy they produce. They know this, that the oil that sits underneath their land is their oil, and they will market it in a way that serves their interest best. That's the bottom line. That's free market capitalism. And even though a lot of those countries don't have the level of freedom that we have, they do understand the market system. So if we say to them that we're going to turn the attorney general loose, create a task force to study this and then give the attorney general the authority, the Department of Justice the authority to bring suit against the OPEC countries, I'll submit this, Madam Speaker, they're not going to produce more energy; the best we could hope for is they produce the same amount of energy, and we have to hope that they don't reduce that energy supply, and we have to hope that they don't pull their capital out of the United States out of fear that their assets could potentially be frozen in the aftermath of a suit that could be brought by the attorney general. Only bad things can come from the NOPEC bill that passed the floor of this Congress. It's going to make energy either the same or more scarce. Just like every other piece of energy legislation that's been brought in this Pelosi Congress that's made energy more scarce, more expensive, provided more regulations and more intimidation, more taxes on our energy producing companies. That's wrong. And what we have been doing is growing an industry. We've been growing the corn-based ethanol industry. This piece right here. This probably, by now, exceeded 1 percent of our overall energy consumption in the United States. We need to, Madam Speaker, grow the size of the energy pie. This is the energy production chart, 71.7 quadrillion Btu's of energy produced from all of these sources, and they come with crude oil, liquefied petroleum, natural gas, coal, nuclear, hydro-electric, geothermal, ethanol, biodiesel, solar, wind, all of these sources. This is the energy production chart, 71.7 quadrillion Btu's. This is the energy pie that we need to grow. We need to grow this energy pie to the size of this energy pie, Madam Speaker. This one that is 101.6 quadrillion Btu's. Now this circle should be bigger in proportion to the one behind it. We will get our graphics down a little better later on, Madam Speaker, but this is what we need to do: grow the size of the energy pie so the energy- consumption chart, which is behind here, excuse me, the energy- production chart, which is behind here, equals or exceeds the size of the energy consumption chart which is this one here, the 101.6 quadrillion Btu's. If we do that, we will see energy prices go down in America, we will see gas at a price that a working man and woman can afford it again, and we will see ourselves become significantly less dependent, in fact independent from foreign sources of energy and oil and, and if we do that, the prospects for America's balance of trade, the prospects for the stability of our currency, the prospects for the future of the United States of America, of our children and grandchildren and each succeeding generation, gets greater and greater. That is our responsibility, Madam Speaker. It is our responsibility to advance the American dream. Advance it for our children and advance it for our grandchildren. We need to do that with a comprehensive approach to the big picture in every way that we can. We cannot do it by increasing the cost of energy by making it more scarce and intimidating our energy-producing companies. That's the theme that the American people understand. And I will submit, Madam Speaker, that the clearest thing for the American people to understand is drill ANWR. Drill in ANWR, drill now, drill as fast as we can. It doesn't take any 10 years to get that energy on the marketplace. How can we, on the one hand, how can we say, well, there's only enough energy up there to last for 5 years and we can't get it into the marketplace for 10? That doesn't make sense to me, not in a Nation that can have a Manhattan Project that can, in a few very short years, produce an atom bomb and deliver it, or in a few very short years, from the time John F. Kennedy said we're going to the moon, by 1969 we were on the moon. A Nation that can produce a nuclear weapon in the fashion that we did, a Nation that can go to the moon in the fashion that we did has got to get the regulations and the taxes out of the way so that we can produce the energy that we need in the form of ethanol and biodiesel and wind and solar and nuclear and hydroelectric. And the list goes on and on and on, including coal, gas, diesel fuel, et cetera. Madam Speaker, it's commonsense to the American people. Let's first drill ANWR and send that message that this Nation is finally ready to produce energy. Let's do that, and let's take it a step at a time, or all at once if we can, but whatever we do, we owe it to our children and grandchildren to grow the size of the energy production pie in the United States of America. With that, Madam Speaker, I appreciate your indulgence. It's a privilege to address you.

Mr. KING of Iowa. Reclaiming my time, I thank the gentleman from Texas and the gentlewoman from Texas. I know it is a little bit irregular to engage the people that have just completed a special order, but I think it is important for us to engage across the aisle. I will transition to the things I came here to say, but I will be looking at the proposals that you have made here tonight and the language that you have. And I have been relatively aggressive on this energy issue, and I think we need to be very aggressive on this energy. In fact, as we look across the spectrum of all of the components of energy, I wouldn't make anything off limits. I want to drill the entire Outer Continental Shelf, and I know of no natural gas spill that has affected the environment in a negative way. In fact, I don't know an Outer Continental Shelf oil drill that has affected the environment in any lasting negative way. We did see a lot of stability in the Katrina hurricane and the subsequent hurricane that came after that. There was one oil platform that was broken loose in the Gulf, and it was pushed 60 miles and came upshore down by Mobile, Alabama. However, there wasn't a significant spill. We can do this.

Mr. KING of Iowa. So for those reasons I asked for those clarifications, that helps me in my transition as I go into the presentation that I hope to make tonight on energy. I just want to make those clarifications, because it does provide for a transition for us, and it also identifies some common ground that we have. I would state to the gentleman from Texas that my view is that the free market does prevail and that more Btus of energy on the market will help to hold down the increase in prices, and, if all goes well, to actually reduce those prices of energy. That is the approach that we should be able to arrive at in a bipartisan fashion. If the gentleman would agree?