Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania. In the United States, if you destroy an eagle egg you are subject to 5 years in jail and a $250,000 fine. If you destroy a human egg, it's not only legal, but it's taxpayer funded. That's what we're here to talk about. You would hear our friends say that we've taken too much time today, that we can't give 2 hours out of the endless lunches, out of the fundraisers, out of the rubbing elbows with the powerful to talk for the unborn and the innocents. I would tell you that even in economic times we cannot suspend our voices against injustice. We cannot suspend our voices for the weak, the powerless. It is our sacred duty to be a voice in the Republic for those who have no standing. The unborn have no standing and no voice. Let us allow our voices to be heard for these 2 hours.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of the three free trade agreements that we are considering today. Free trade is good for America. These agreements will increase our products flowing to other countries that currently get to send their products for free here. We live in a world where products flow freely around the world. It's time for us to get American jobs to produce some of those goods moving abroad. I would note that the President has asked us to pass pieces of his legislation, his jobs-creating legislation. I would compliment the chairman that we've waited 2\1/2\ years to get this particular proposal from the administration, and in less than 9 days, now we have it on the floor of the House. We're serious about doing the things to fix the economy. While the President lectures us, he fails to follow through on regulatory relief and tax relief. He fails to follow through on those things which would actually create jobs. So we in the House appreciate the opportunity to vote on these particular bills today, because it is our way of saying that we will agree with the President when he's right, and we'll steadfastly disagree with him when he's wrong. We've got many areas that we can move forward together on, and I would recommend that the President come and sit down with us, come back to this floor of the House and sit and discuss with us the way to move forward instead of pushing a plan that says ``my way or the highway.'' We have generally a great threat from American Government on American jobs. The overregulation is killing jobs in the electrical utility field, it's killing jobs in oil and gas, and it's killing jobs in manufacturing. We can protect workers, we can protect the environment, and we can protect species and create jobs simultaneously. It is up to us, the policymakers, to find those balance points and to move forward with commonsense legislation that will effect these.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, at a constituent event in Inglewood, California, on August 21, 2011, the Congresswoman who represents that area made several shocking and egregious statements that slander the good work a dedicated group of Americans are trying to achieve for our country. Perhaps most disturbing was her statement that, ``As far as I'm concerned the Tea Party can go straight to hell. And . . . and, I intend to help them get there.'' These words do nothing to unite Americans and only fan the flames that incite division. Earlier in August, following the highly charged debt limit discussions, with words worsening the political divide, the Vice President declared that the Tea Party had ``acted like terrorists.'' These attacks are an assault on democracy. Any action which ignores deep-seated concerns, or attempts to extinguish the voices of millions of Americans damages the democratic process. The Tea Party is united in common concern for the future and the well-being of generations to come. They are not, as one Congressman from Pennsylvania described, a ``small group of terrorists.'' These are people who care deeply about the path our country is on and are working through the issues. They are present at parades, marches and rallies. They are gathering in meeting halls, restaurants, and family rooms to discuss their goals for our nation's future. Words that dismiss the Tea Party's shared belief that government can do better by the people of this country only further divide us. We have only our voices to change the hearts and minds of elected officials. Those of us entrusted by the people to support and defend the Constitution of the United States must never work to extinguish the light of democracy or the avenue of free speech. To limit the excitement and drive of a united group grows dejection; a certain foe of democracy. It casts a web of doubt over the activities of the Congress and threatens to harm the creation of good public policy. I will defend the right of any man, woman, or child to speak their truth and share their concerns. Just as all Americans regardless of race or gender, creed or religion, ideals or personal conviction, Tea Party members deserve to have their voices heard.

Mr. PEARCE

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

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I reluctantly rise to oppose the gentleman from Washington's amendment and support the underlying bill. A lot of compelling arguments have been made tonight to support the Endangered Species Act without interruption. They talk about the bald eagle and the compelling story about seeing those magnificent birds, and those are visual images that we all like. But there's a side to the Endangered Species Act that is not being told. That's the side where one group just this year filed 1,000 petitions at one time to list new species. They know that their lawyers get reimbursed from the Federal Government every time they bring suit, and so they're happy to bring these actions which are destroying jobs in the West. For instance, in the Second District of New Mexico, a suggested listing was given this year on the sand dune lizard, a small brown lizard that I've seen in the sand hills since I was going up there. They were plentiful then; they're about the same number now, but they have been listed as endangered. And people didn't think much of it. And then they began to read the reports that anything that disturbs the surface of the ground would represent a potential threat to the habitat of the lizard and would thereby be prohibited. Disturb the ground, they ask. What does that mean? Well, that means oil and gas activity. That means that $2.8 billion investment for nuclear enrichment that is taking place in southern Lea County, just taking place now, creating jobs for the first time in the nuclear industry that has been dormant for 30 years, would be shut down because they disturb the ground. It would stop the high line wires from being put up and the electric utility crews from driving to the homesteads miles and miles away from the nearest town because they would disturb the ground. They could not even check the power lines to make sure electricity is going to these remote areas. This is the Endangered Species Act that we're seeing. People would come to me in disbelief and say, Mr. Pearce, it is not true? They couldn't kill our jobs with a lizard, could they? What about us as humans? What do they say? I said, Take a look at the San Joaquin Valley. Twenty-seven thousand farmers put out of work with a 2-inch Delta smelt that we could have kept alive in holding ponds and bred by the millions and put into the rivers and go ahead and use the rivers for irrigation. But instead, a judge found that we had to shut down the entire agricultural product. We began to import vegetables from areas that spray contaminants that we are not allowed to use in this Nation, a less safe food supply. We kill 27,000 jobs. We caused jobs to be created somewhere else, less safe food supply, all for a 2-inch minnow that could have been kept alive in some other fashion. We also have a Lesser prairie-chicken that threatens the oil and gas jobs in our area. They're saying that the bird might not fly under or over those lines, so we can't put up electric lines across. Then, bury the lines, people say. Well, then the lizard wouldn't go across the area that's been disturbed by burying the lines. It's easy to see why people are saying that the Endangered Species Act is not functioning properly and we've got to stop it. We are spending $3.5 trillion a year in our government and we're bringing in $2.2 trillion. Part of the problem is we've killed enough of our jobs, we've killed enough of our economy that we're in severe debt and deficit crisis. Now, one of the problems is we've systematically eliminated the timber industry because of a spotted owl. We eliminated those 27,000 farmer jobs in the San Joaquin Valley. We've got the salmon swimming upstream, and now it's threatening that we've got to tear down all the hydroelectric dams. And the list goes on and on. It is time for us to say that we can preserve the species and create jobs at the same time. That's not an unreasonable request. But to those lawyers making $350 a hour, they don't care if it's reasonable or not. To the Fish and Wildlife Service, they arrogantly told the people in New Mexico, No, we didn't do an economic study to see the cost on the jobs. We're not required to. These are things that are making people say enough is enough. It's in my district that 900 people showed up to protest at one of the hearings on the listing of the lizard; 900 people coming out, and the Fish and Wildlife Service came to me in nervousness before the meeting and said, Would you speak to those who couldn't get into the meeting? They're agitated. I said, People do get agitated when you start killing their careers, when you start taking the jobs away from them. There's a side to the Endangered Species Act that is being dealt with here tonight. I support the underlying bill and oppose the amendment. I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Madam Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2021 and appreciate Mr. Gardner bringing this to our attention. You know, this is not a bill about Shell Oil Company. This is about a system that is broken. Shell Oil Company has been trying for almost 5 years to get a permit and still doesn't get the answer. In the meantime, they've drilled over 400 exploratory wells around the world, but they can't drill in the United States. I've recently spent time at gas stations talking to people, their frustration over our gas prices is why are they so high here, why are the prices going up. This bill answers why they're going up. We have a government that has a war on American jobs and a war on American energy. We have a war on Western jobs because oil production is concentrated in the West. Every time a drill bit is stopped by its own actions, the price of gas will go incrementally up by just multiple percentages of very small amounts. But when it's stopped by bureaucratic action, then the market's going to assess that a government is going to be unfriendly to future production and the price begins to escalate because people get out of dollars and out of other investments into this because they know the price of gas and oil are going to go up because they can see the bureaucratic delays being played out. So understand that when we have high gas prices in this country it is because the government is making them high. It's making them high by moratoriums. It's making them high by delaying tactics in our administration's responses to these things like this permit. The gentleman from Colorado's bill simply says we're going to simply unravel one piece of the delays that have been happening. It's a well- thought-out bill, it's a well-thought-out process, and it's one which will result in lower prices for American consumers. There's absolutely no health hazard. Lisa Jackson herself has said that. They're going to give the permits. What we're doing today is passing a bill that won't help Shell at all, that will help future producers to understand that they can get regulatory certainty, that they can get answers when they're asking questions of the government. It's a reasonable request and one which we should do.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, this past weekend I had the opportunity in Hobbs, New Mexico, to attend two services, recognition ceremonies for people from Hobbs. First of all, we were able to attend the retirement for Dr. Dean Mathis, who pastored Taylor Memorial Baptist Church for 36 years, same preacher, same church. That is just not heard of these days in America. All teachers are required to do two very difficult things. They are required to push our knowledge base to the extreme limits of what we are able to know; but simultaneously to that, they have to stay grounded in truth. In other words, you can't just teach out to the edge of the learning envelope. You also have to stay grounded in the timeless principles that cause things to be relevant and true. Dr. Mathis did this with extreme care and with a delicacy that I found always attractive. He was able to bring biblical lessons to life in our personal lives and bring relevance to these teachings. I think that also he perfected community participation at all levels. From his one small congregation there in Hobbs, New Mexico, we have city counselors, county commissioners, judges, two State representatives, a State senator, and a U.S. Congressman. Now, that says a lot, coming from one small corner of the State of New Mexico. But his life didn't end there. He also had two missionaries check in from very difficult parts of the world. They were on Skype and checked in at the ceremony, saying that if it hadn't been for his teachings, that they would not have been there. Dr. Mathis and his wife, Betty Sue, dedicated their lives to the spiritual calling. And without those spiritual teachings in our society today, we find our society is drifting towards moral chaos. We are dealing with those problems here in this Congress as we deal with teen pregnancies, with hunger, with people who are wasting their lives on drugs and taking extraordinary amounts of Medicaid. So we deal with the problems of a society that is becoming all too secular and forgetting that no matter what we pass as laws here that there is a moral component to every nation and that if we ignore that, we ignore it at our peril. I would like to give my congratulations to Dr. Dean Mathis and his wife, Betty Sue, for their years of service. But then on the same day, we were able to recognize Carl Mackey. Carl Mackey was a few years younger than me and passed away at too early an age last year. Carl Mackey was a community leader. He was one of the friends, one of the many people that my mom had in class. She used to talk about Carl and said, Carl is really mobile. That meant Carl was walking up and down all the time during classes. Carl was actually one of her favorite students. Now, I know Mom and Carl both personally, and they probably did not agree on one philosophical issue: Carl was a hard-core Democrat, community activist, black leader. Mom just was conservative, raised a conservative family. But they identified each other across that chasm of philosophy to recognize that there aren't many differences in us accept the human nature that says that everyone should have access to justice, to mercy, and to kindness. So it was in that that this young junior high student and Mom formed a relationship that continued until he passed away. I was able to visit with Mom about their relationship this last weekend, and she still remembers it with a smile. When I was elected and Carl Mackey was serving, Carl and I, again, overcame all the supposed difficulties, the things that we did not see eye to eye on in our philosophies. But we did see eye to eye in having him represent a piece of the community that is often forgotten. That was the community that I grew up in, the southern part of Hobbs, the part of Hobbs that did not get its fair share of funding, fair share of justice. So Carl was a constant voice, reminding all of us that we need to stop, slow down just a bit, and pay attention to the small guys in society. He will be greatly missed, and Dr. Mathis and his wife will be greatly missed. But I thank the community of Hobbs, taking the time to honor two different people, completely different backgrounds, completely different lives who weren't so different after all. In the end, we are all Americans, and we're here for a better America. I salute them both.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I appreciate the gentlelady from Wyoming bringing this amendment. You know, many times people think that horse slaughter is just simply inhumane. Somehow they think that horse starvation is somehow more humane. The truth is that people are going to get rid of their horses in some way, so what they do in New Mexico and in the Western States is they simply take them out and turn them loose. Right now we are struggling with an economy, an economy that is having difficulties from every area, and too often we say it is just a problem of the economy. We don't break it down to its individual components. One of the components in New Mexico is that we have completely eliminated sheep from New Mexico. New Mexico used to be a large area of sheep production. That piece of the economy is simply gone because of regulations we in Washington and the States have put into place. New Mexico also used to have a vibrant apple economy. That is now gone because we have given favorable treatment to overseas products. But then this is another element of the economy that has simply disappeared. New Mexico used to have a vibrant horse trade. Prices were high. Now prices on horses are low because people know they have no option at the end of a horse's life, so it is simply doing away with the horse market. So we find that we in Congress are causing the economic decay of our entire Nation, and the gentlelady's amendment simply says let's study the facts. Let's understand what is going on that we ourselves are causing. Let's understand the economic duress that Washington and the States are putting on their own economies. It makes ultimate sense, and for us in the West it should be absolutely reinstated. We should reinstate the market there, because horses are being very inhumanely treated in the guise of some more humane treatment. So I thank the lady for her presentation. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for yielding. In my district people ask, what is this vote about, this debt ceiling vote, and so I have created a simple chart that just says it as plainly as we can. We are spending $3.5 trillion in the country each year, and we are bringing in 2.2 trillion. It doesn't work for your family, it doesn't work for your business, and it's not working for the country. In order to make up the difference, we have to borrow that money except that our bankers are saying no more, just as your bankers would say no more. So we are printing the money to make this system work. It's a scheme that's not working. This chart in the upper right-hand corner says that the whole economy collapses about 2038 so OMB and CBO both are saying that we must take care of the spending problem that we have in this country; that's what the debt ceiling is about. We have a law that says we can't borrow more than a certain amount of money. If we just extend with no provisions for reform, then we are going to continue to spend this much money every year that we don't have. So let's take care of the problems; let's do structural reforms in the way that we are spending our money. Let's do structural reforms on our budget; let's get it under control so that we don't give our kids a failed economy.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from California. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of my revised amendment, No. 144, which will address concerns I have regarding the DOD contract bundling process. The current DOD process encourages wrapping together projects for bid proposals. This process unfairly distributes DOD resources and often allows outside companies to get contracts on bases where local businesses have better regional and technical knowledge to perform the service. The winning bidder then subcontracts with the local businesses, often underfunding the subcontractor and pocketing the rest. The local companies in the State where the base is housed lose out on significant revenue and job opportunities. An example of this was recently in my district. A man that makes radios and radio antennas was called by DOD, asked if he could make a radio antenna that would fit in the pocket like a cigarette package. While they were speaking on the phone, he actually built one of these. The DOD contractor asked him how much it would be. He said somewhere between $1.50 and $3. DOD said the lowest bid they had had for the same antenna was over $150,000. We run into this all of the time. At a time when we have deficits soaring, I think it's time for us to spend our money wisely and efficiently and use local contractors.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, the Western Caucus has several members here tonight. We would like to talk about what is going on right now in the country. The administration seems to be waging a war on the western jobs, and that is carried out through a whole range of activities. A couple of weeks ago, the administration and the President said that the administration is not doing enough to address the high gas prices. The President said in a speech at Georgetown that he would like to cut foreign oil by one-third by drilling at home. Well, we have been in the process of offering him the solution to what he said he would like to do. Now, keep in mind that while the President is saying one thing, he's doing another. While he says that we would like to drill for more oil here, understand that he has increased the moratorium on the offshore drilling. They have made it more difficult to drill in on-land areas through the Rocky Mountains. Know that they rejected Shell Oil Company's $4 billion NEPA study because a paragraph was omitted. So while we are hearing bold language from this administration about increasing the amount of oil that we are drilling here at home--and that would create American jobs but it would also create lower energy prices--understand that it appears that the President is not following through on what he said. So in the past couple of days, this Congress, this House, has passed out H.R. 1229, which says that we are going to put the people back to work in the Gulf of Mexico. I think everyone understands that BP is accountable and should be accountable for the problems that they caused, but we should not have killed 100,000 jobs offshore. Our Nation is stuck at 9 percent unemployment. We are stuck with a deficit that is having to be financed by our own Federal Reserve. We are putting the Nation's economy at risk because of the way that we are treating jobs and because of our deficit. So we are saying: Put the American workers back to work in the Gulf, produce American oil, produce American jobs, and bring lower prices of gasoline to the consumer. The same bill improves the safety by reforming current law. It sets timelines for the Secretary to act on permits to drill. Right now, one of the things that the Secretary is doing is holding off approvals for those applications for permits to drill, the APDs. Know that the administration has within its power to improve the situation with jobs immediately, but instead they are doing the things that harm our work. H.R. 1229 also establishes expedited judicial review processes. We also have passed in this House H.R. 1230, which says we are going to restart the American Offshore Leasing Now Act. It passed last week. It requires that the four lease sales in the gulf and Virginia take place. Those lease sales were previously scheduled, but instead of going ahead with them, the administration has put them on hold. Let's simply produce the energy which has been verified to be there, which would create American jobs and which would aid American consumers by lower prices of gasoline. H.R. 1231 has also been passed, which reverses President Obama's offshore moratorium. The President made a big deal just after he was sworn in 2 years ago about reversing the moratorium. But after one analyzed the moratorium that he reversed, we actually saw that he increased the moratorium, that more areas were put off limits to drilling rather than the message that he gave the American people. So H.R. 1231 says to the President: We would like for you to join us in creating American jobs, jobs that the West would be proud of, jobs that would produce energy, jobs that would produce high-paying careers and not just jobs. We believe that these are the things that the American people are looking for. This is the leadership that they are asking for out of Washington. H.R. 1231 requires each 5-year offshore leasing plan to include lease sales in areas containing the greatest known oil and natural gas reserves. Our offshore areas are tremendous reserves of energy. All we have to do is tap into them and use them. It requires that the Secretary establish a production goal when writing a 5-year plan. I am joined tonight by several members of the Western Caucus. Each one has got their own particular interest area where the administration appears to be conducting a war on western jobs. So tonight, to lead off, I would like to yield time to my good friend Cynthia Lummis from Wyoming such time as she would consume.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentlelady for her comments. We are joined tonight by my good friend Mr. Thompson from Pennsylvania. Before I yield time to him, I would like to walk through just a brief list of some of the other ways that the government conducts war on Western jobs. Consider the listing of endangered species. No one of us wants to see a species be extinct or go extinct, but what we have seen is an extreme interpretation of the rules which kill jobs at the same time. I think there are ways that we could keep jobs and preserve species, yet we are not doing that right now. The Coho salmon was listed as endangered. As a result, the farmers in the Klamath Basin in Oregon have been forced into bankruptcy due to prohibitions on water use by the listing of the salmon. The Methow salmon, water rights holders in the Methow Valley of Washington lost the use of their water, and property owners and timber owners face restrictions on their properties because of the imposition of egregious stream buffers to protect the listed salmon. The listing of the salmon in general, the court case over whether hydroelectric dam operators have done enough to prevent the death of salmon in Washington and Oregon, billions of dollars have been spent to accommodate, according to Bloomberg Business Week, but the environmental groups continue to sue. The northern spotted owl, the listing has killed the entire timber industry in much of the West, especially in northern California and Oregon. The Mexican spotted owl, that listing also killed the timber industry in New Mexico and Arizona. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost. The Delta smelt, the listing of that species, a small 2-inch fish that lives in the San Joaquin Valley, killed 27,000 jobs there. The San Joaquin Valley was the source of 80 percent of our Nation's vegetables. Now those vegetable farms are gone. Bankruptcy. We are now importing food from countries that can spray pesticides that are outlawed in this country, so our food supply is less safe. Fewer jobs, bigger government deficit, greater cost of vegetables and unsafe food supply. The gray wolf was listed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as endangered and has killed agriculture and mining jobs throughout the West. Still the list goes on and on. So it is not that these are just hypothetical ideas that the war on Western jobs is occurring by a government. These are ongoing processes. One group, the Center for Biological Diversity, has declared they are going to list over 1,000 species this year, that they are going to petition for the listing of over 1,000 species this year. Understand that their lawyers get reimbursed at the rate of $350 to $500 per hour. For every lawsuit that they bring against the government, every lawsuit that kills jobs provides employment for lawyers in those groups, so know that the taxpayer is footing the bill but yet losing jobs in the meantime. I would like to recognize Mr. Thompson now, and thank him very much for being here tonight.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman from Pennsylvania for his comments. So far, the quote of the night is ``prosperity is a good thing.'' Yet our government seems to have a war on prosperity. Why is our government trying to undermine the economy when we're struggling with high deficits and unemployment? It defies imagination that that's going on. I would like to recognize now my good friend from Georgia (Mr. Broun) for such time as he may consume. I appreciate your being here. Georgia and Pennsylvania in the Western Caucus, that's the way it should be. We're west of somewhere. Thank you for being here tonight.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for his comments and his perceptions. As he mentioned, it seems that Washington has a war on profits. I think that maybe our friends on the other side of the aisle don't understand that profits pay high salaries. If you work in an industry with no profits, you work at low salaries. Profits pay to reinvest in new buildings, creating construction dollars in neighborhoods. Profits are put into youth training, baseball leagues, soccer leagues. Profits are reinvested into new equipment, causing manufacturing firms to thrive. Profits are invested in dividends, and they cause increased values of stocks, helping retirees. And, finally, profits are the only thing that corporations pay tax on. They do not pay taxes on losses. So when we begin to talk about taking away the profits of companies, understand that we're talking about undermining the American way of life. This attack on profits is an attack on the American way of life. I am pleased to be joined tonight by a good friend from Utah (Mr. Bishop), and I yield to the gentleman.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for his comments. He pointed out that this Nation is rich in shale oil. We do, in fact, have 2 trillion barrels in reserve in shale. That all was outlawed from use by the American consumers back in 2007 in a bill passed by Nancy Pelosi off the floor of the House. To put that in perspective, what does 2 trillion barrels of shale oil mean? We have only used 1 trillion barrels of oil completely in our history in just shale oil. That's not natural gas. That's not normal petroleum. We have double in shale oil what we've consumed up to this point. Another comment that was made earlier is that we subsidize and that consumers end up paying for things that they don't know they're paying. I just talked to a constituent last week. He said that he was given a tax credit for 40 percent of a solar facility that he put on his own home. That was from the Federal Government; from the State government, another 10 percent. So about 50 percent of the cost of the program was completely reimbursed by the government. But the big deal is they're paying him 22 cents per kilowatt hour of energy that he is able to sell back into the system. Now, that 22 cents needs to be compared to the 7 cents that electricity normally costs. So the consumer is tagged with three times the cost of electricity that is provided by solar power that is bought from individual producers. The consumer will pay more for the power. It is not an easy process to understand, but consumers will ultimately pay all of the higher energy costs. We hear much today in Washington about the subsidies for Big Oil. Be aware that there are no subsidies for Big Oil. There are simply write- offs that every company is allowed to take legally; write-offs to encourage them to invest in machinery; write-offs that sound like depreciation, amortization; write-offs that are allowed by accounting techniques across the board in this country. Understand that when we begin to penalize these oil companies, we're going to cost America jobs. So let's talk just a bit about the different supposed subsidies that are, in fact, legitimate write-offs that companies are given. The suggestion was made that we repeal the expensing of the intangible drilling costs. The intangible drilling costs usually represent 60 to 80 percent of the cost of a well. Historic U.S. policy allows a deduction for development. That's since 1913 in this government's Tax Code; and yet, today, we're talking about reversing it at a time when we're starving for jobs, 9 percent unemployment, and we're going to talk about making it harder to employ people in this country. Other businesses are able to expense their research and development projects. Pharmaceutical companies, IEC specifically targets U.S. oil and gas companies. It will discourage innovation in the energy sector at a time when we need more innovation, not less. Disallowing the expensing of intangible drilling costs will put the American consumer in a worse position and endanger American jobs. The second idea that's talked about in raising taxes for oil companies is to do away with the write-off, the dual capacity rule. The dual capacity rule was to ensure that income that is taxed by another nation is not also taxed by the U.S. It's something that the U.S. has been alone on in taxing double. We tax not only the amount that is made here but the amount that is made in other countries, the profits made in other countries. That's a tax inversion that has cost us many jobs. Now then, we have the allowance of dual capacity rule in place to stop that, and yet our friends on the other side of the aisle are saying that we must stop this practice. All it's going to do is make the U.S. more inhospitable for investment in energy resources. At a time when we're seeing $4 gasoline, at a time when our economy is struggling, when we need jobs, we're talking about making American businesses less competitive and making American jobs more scarce. The final section is maybe the most egregious of all, that is, the repeal of section 199 manufacturing exemptions for oil and gas companies. In 2004, the Congress enacted section 199 for manufacturing companies to encourage them to bring jobs back to this country. From 2004 to 2007, the oil and gas industry was responsible for 2 million new jobs that were created. The oil and gas companies currently support 9.2 million jobs. Almost all manufacturers receive a 9 percent credit. That's, again, in order to encourage them to come back to this country. The oil and gas companies have only been receiving a 6 percent credit because they've already been picked on by the people in this town. But now they're suggesting that we would want to completely do away with the manufacturing credit. Keep in mind, that's the refining of gasoline. That's the definition of manufacturing in oil and gas. So at a time when we're starving for jobs, we're going to make U.S. manufacturers, the U.S. refineries, less competitive. We're going to encourage Venezuela and Hugo Chavez to send more jobs there, to take more jobs and to send more gasoline here. It just doesn't make sense. Tonight, I'd like to wrap up with this one picture about the status that our country is in. Our country right now has a tremendous problem with its economy. The problem is this: in Washington, we spend $3.5 trillion. Our revenues to the government are $2.2 trillion. That's a $1.3 trillion deficit. The accumulated deficits over the lifetime of this country are almost $15 trillion. I show those deficits running out the end of the pipeline into our debt barrel to show the accumulated debt to the Nation. I also show a green sludge pouring over the edge of the barrel because we've got $202 trillion of accumulated costs of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. These are the things that are wrecking our economy. This chart given by OMB and CBO, the Congress, and the White House both show that our economy is going to fail in 2038 because of these practices. At a time when we're starving for jobs, this administration has a war on western jobs. It has a war on our energy. It has a war on the jobs in the timber industry. It has a war on our way of life. This is not the time to be conducting partisan politics in this town. It's a time for us to create jobs. With each job created, the 2.2 is greater because each person pays in increment more taxes, but they also are no longer receiving welfare, unemployment, and food stamps. So the 3.5 decreases. The path forward is simple. We simply ask that the President get on board.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to remove my name as a cosponsor from the bill, H.R. 1380.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I rise today in strong support of H.R. 1230, a bill that will restart American jobs. The current 5-year lease plan would have allowed for the sale of four leases, one off the coast of Virginia and three in the Gulf of Mexico. The President and his agencies are continuing to block these sales. It's time to stop that blocking. We're talking about jobs. The Nation is faced with 8 to 9 percent continuing unemployment. The jobs offshore are good, high-paying jobs-- $400 a day, $50,000 per year. Recently, the President had strong rhetoric to Georgetown University, saying that he's going to increase oil and gas production in America. Yet the administration's actions are moving us the opposite direction. Tax increases kill jobs. That's an economic truth. Our friends across the aisle want to kill American jobs by raising taxes at a time when unemployment is too high, when we're dependent on too much foreign oil. In his speech last month at Georgetown, President Obama said, ``The fact of the matter is, is that for quite some time, America is going to be still dependent on oil in making its economy work. We're exploring and assessing new frontiers for oil and gas developments from Alaska to the Mid- and South Atlantic States.'' Mr. Chairman, we are with this bill giving the President the bill that he is saying that he's going to implement. Now let him sign it.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. I appreciate Chairman Ryan for bringing this issue to the floor. Mr. Chairman, basically the entire discussion that we're having in Washington right now centers around two figures: We spend 3.5 T, trillion, and we bring in 2.2 T, trillion, in revenues to the government from taxes. Now, it's the bringing together of those numbers that's a difference of opinion here in Washington. I read the text of the President's speech yesterday--I did not get a chance to listen--and he says that we can close that gap by taxing the millionaires and billionaires. And it sounds so fluid. It comes off so easy. But I will tell you, it's a process that many nations have followed before: tax the millionaires. I don't know what Bill Sweat in Artesia is worth, but he tells me to create a job it costs $340,000 to buy a new bulldozer and he needs a new pickup truck. So he needs $400,000 in the bank to create a job. Now our friends on the other side of the aisle--and the President's speech--said we need to be taxing that money away from him. Nancy Pelosi said a couple of years ago we need to tax the profits of the corporations and spend them. But what you do is you take away Mr. Sweat's $400,000 and he doesn't get a new bulldozer, and we don't get a job. So what we have here is this differential, $1.3 trillion in deficit on these top line figures. That's what we're accruing. Then that goes into our debt barrel, $15 trillion. That's what we have over the life of our country, from George Washington until today, approximately $15 trillion, and we're bringing in 2.2. Now if we begin to give the tax increases that the President says, we're actually going to squeeze down to 2.2 because companies will not be hiring people. For instance, off the shore of Louisiana, we are now choking off those jobs. And so every job off Louisiana that the government kills takes one person from paying taxes and puts them up here receiving welfare, unemployment and food stamps. Economic growth is the only thing that can cure this Nation's economic problems. The Ryan budget does that. The President's budget does not do it. Let's support the Ryan budget.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate the opportunity to address the body tonight. I was not able to hear the President's speech today, but I was able to then get a transcript and read it. I note in the opening of that speech that he says, on page 1, that the debate that we're having here in Washington is about the kind of future that we want. It's about the kind of country we believe in, and then he describes that's what his speech will be about today. As I read the context of the speech, I realize that the President and many Americans believe in very dramatically different models of country, and the kind of future that we believe in is dramatically different. I find in the President's speech that he centers many of his comments around taxing. Maybe it's taxing the millionaires and the billionaires. So I think that if we're going to talk about the kind of country that we live in, the kind of future that we want for the country, for our children and grandchildren, it is imperative that we begin to discuss this policy of taxation, this idea that we should and can tax the rich greater proportionate shares. It is that which I would like to address tonight. Now as we talk about the future we believe in, understand that economic growth and vitality are critical concepts. And so one must then ask, How does the country achieve economic growth? How does it fail to achieve economic growth? That would be a key question. One of the core economic truths of economic growth is that when we tax the citizens more than approximately 23 percent, that we find an economy that will be stuck in stagnation. When we lower the taxation rate, then we find an economic vitality, creation of jobs. And so somewhere in that threshold of about 23 percent, we understand that every time we raise taxes, we kill jobs; and every time that we lower taxes, we create jobs. That was the essence of the argument that President Kennedy levied when he said we need to lower the tax rate in order to create more government revenues. I often talk about the economic chaos that we're facing in our world right now, in our country; and it begins at this point. We begin with looking at the chart; we have basically an imbalance. We are spending $3.5 trillion every year, and we're bringing in $2.2 trillion every year. Our economy is stuck in stagnation. We don't have the ability to create jobs. And the President is talking about raising taxes in order to create revenue. President Kennedy would understand that when we raise taxes, we actually diminish the 2.2 figure, we actually lower the 2.2, because jobs are lost, productivity is lost; and, therefore, those jobs don't pay taxes to the government and the government's revenues begin to decrease. I hear my friends on the other side of the aisle often describe the necessity to tax away Exxon's profits, that we should take every single dollar they make. In fact, we had one Presidential contender in the last race on the Democrat side saying we should tax Exxon's profits and spend them. We heard the Speaker of the House at that point using that same language, that we should tax the profits of Exxon and spend them. Now let's take a closer look at that. Exxon makes good profits. They have a good business. They have good investments. But almost every year, Exxon spends the majority of its profits reinvesting them in new drilling. As they drill wells, people are hired to work on the drilling rigs. They're hired to work on the logging rigs, on the cementing rigs. They're hired to do the tasks of finishing the well, putting it into productivity before Exxon can ever make a profit. So as we take away that profit from them, we take away the future drilling. We take away, then, the jobs from the economy, and that is the reason that higher taxes penalize and kill jobs. Another example that I have about job creation was from Bill Sweat in Artesia. I asked at one of my town halls, What does it take to create jobs? He held up his hand and said, It takes me $340,000 to create one job. That's because we drive bulldozers in our work. And actually they won't let me drive the bulldozer down through the main streets of Artesia, so I have to buy a pickup truck, too. So he said basically for $400,000 that he can create one job. When the government, when Washington taxes away those obscene profits--those obscene profits in the eyes of some--then what happens is Mr. Sweat takes longer and maybe even never gets to the point of having the $340,000 in the bank in order to pay for that new bulldozer and hire one more person. So as the President begins to tell us that his view of this country is one where we're going to tax the people who are producing, then we have to wonder what we're going to get. Often a truism is that what you tax, you get less of; so if he's going to tax the producers, the millionaires and the billionaires, you're going to get less of them. I think that's a question we should ask: Is that a course that we want to chart for our future? My friend from Michigan (Mr. McCotter) is here tonight, and maybe he has some insights; but I would like to suspend my conversation on the idea that we can tax the rich and find prosperity for our Nation. I think the rich should pay taxes the same as everyone else, but when we raise the tax level beyond that 22, 23, 24 percent threshold, then we need to understand the result is going to be economic stagnation. That's what we're finding right now. So when Mr. Obama concentrates his speech today on taxing, taxing the wealthy, that they would pay their fair share in the society, understand he is talking about a future that looks somewhat like Cuba's. Cuba taxes wealthy people, and they haven't had job creation for decades. The Soviet Union taxed wealthy people. They didn't have jobs. Europeans even tax at a greater rate than we do, and they've had economic stagnation up until recent times when they began to cut the cost of government, cut the size of government and lower taxes and found themselves creating jobs. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Michigan at this point for comments that he might have.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for his comments. And he pointed out that we cannot sustain this course, that actually this course is doomed to fail. I draw attention to my chart again, the far right-hand corner of the chart in which we show here exactly what the Office of Management and Budget says. This is the President's own economic arm of the White House that says that our prosperity through time has been increasing--that's the upward sloping line--but now it's flattening out to the red zone in the chart. But then we see the chart absolutely stops at some point in time, that's about 2038. That is the point that Mr. McCotter refers to that we are on the path to stopping our economy. Our economy will actually fail because of the policies that we have now. And this is the future that is being demonstrated by our President today in his speech. Now, as he talks about taxing, understand that we have lost jobs because of our tax policy and we've lost jobs because of our regulatory policy. Now, in the speech today, he talks about tax policy, but it's going in the wrong direction. In previous speeches, he has talked about the need to reform corporate taxes. In his State of the Union speech, he acknowledged that we are taxed too high, that we can't create the economic growth that we need because we are taxing corporations in a fashion that exceeds other nations in the world. So he acknowledges it there. I was hoping today in his speech that he would clarify, that he would begin to set a target, that he would set a timetable where we can start pulling back those manufacturing jobs because of a reform in tax policy. But curiously, in defining our future and in defining the way that we are looking at the values of the country--that's his declaration for what he wants to do in his speech today--he omits the job creation piece of taxation policy toward our corporations. He acknowledges that in his State of the Union speech. In his State of the Union speech he said that we are taxed at too high a rate, that he wants to cure that. He said that we must have reform. He said we need to use our savings to lower the corporate tax rate for the first time in 25 years, and that was what I think Americans were looking for. Americans maybe can't express the companies that have left this Nation to find lower tax rates and better economic regulations in other countries, they might not be able to name them, but they implicitly know that they exist. I will look at, again, my chart. The revenues in this Nation are $2.2 trillion. That's the accumulated taxes that we've paid to our government. The expenses are 3.5. Yes, we can cut our expenses, but we should be concentrating and growing the jobs and having people go back to work. As they go back to work, they begin to pay taxes, and our $2.2 trillion begins to increase. But as every single individual is hired, they come off welfare, unemployment and food stamps, and then they go down into the productive part of society, so we find our economic imbalance collapsing toward itself. The costs collapse as we are hiring people and putting them back to work. And that should have been the concentration of President Obama's speech today. In the past, because of our policies, we have lost the producers in this country, a list of them: Fender Guitars, Converse, Etch A Sketch, Radio Flyer, Levi's, Craftsman tools, Stanley tools, USA flags, Rawlings baseballs, Brach's candy, IBM computer, NBA uniforms. These are just a partial list of companies that have decided that it is cheaper to manufacture somewhere else because our policies make it too difficult. If we're going to rebuild our economy, we need to rebuild that manufacturing base, and we do that through tax policy. That should be the concentration of both parties at this time in our Nation's history. The President also mentions, on page 2, that we're amassing alarming debt levels back in the 1980s. If I look at my chart--again, I show our deficits. This year our deficit is $1.3 trillion; that is, our spending exceeds the revenues by $1.3 trillion. That deficit runs over and I show it going into our debt barrel, that accumulated debt for generations past. And Mr. Obama mentions adequately that that debt in the eighties started reaching alarming levels. But from the time of George Washington until the first President Bush--that's after 1980--we had an accumulation of about $5 trillion worth of debt. If you look at the chart, you can see that we have an accumulation today of almost $15 trillion. So we had $5 trillion back in the mid-eighties, and now we're at $15 trillion. I would point out to the President, when he says we were amassing debt at alarming levels in the 1980s, that the debt he has accumulated in his Presidency is almost equivalent to what we accumulated from the time of George Washington to the first President Bush. That is alarming. It's an alarming statistic that we have a deficit today in this budget of $1.3 trillion, but in 2007--the last budget written under a Republican Congress and with President Bush as President--the last deficit was under $200 billion. That would be the equivalent to 0.2. Today we are over $1.1 trillion, and even up into when the President came into office, our annual deficit was less than half a trillion. We now have over $1.5 trillion that the President is suggesting our debt levels should be next year. So in his time alone we have increased deficits from the billion dollar category, increased them to the trillion dollar category, and that is alarming debt. That is what has got other nations pointing to us and saying that is not sustainable. They're afraid when they loan us money, that it is not going to be paid back. So nations are increasingly reticent to lend us money. That then results in the Federal Reserve buying most of our debt. This year, our Federal Reserve is on track--now keep in mind they get much of their money from the government and then they're loaning us money from the other hand--our Federal Reserve this year is on track to lend us about 60 to 70 percent of the money that we borrow. Now, Mr. Bernanke expresses deep belief that there are buyers for those Treasury bills out there. There are people who are going to lend our Nation money. But as they look at the economic instability that we're facing, they understand the need that we have to, number one, correct spending but, number two, to grow the economy and create jobs. Now, there are those skeptics who do not believe that tax cuts will create jobs. Again, I follow the example of Exxon. When you take their profits away, you tax them more, then you actually decrease the amount that they're spending with drilling companies, offshore platforms that they're spending in different communities to get services done to their wells as they drill them. Also, I would remind the listeners today of Mr. Sweat and that $340,000 for the bulldozer. Those are the evidences that we get that tax cuts will create jobs. But if we want to look at the other model, tax increases killing jobs, we can look no further than our own country at a time of the tax cuts of 2003. Over the next 4 to 5 years, our economy created over 5 million jobs. As the threat of taxes loomed, as the economic slowdown came in, as the uncertainty of the current administration began to take hold, then we have lost almost 3 million jobs. So just the talk of taxes, the talk of the cap-and-trade tax permeated the discussions in 2009, it began to cause people to shy away and say we better not invest because we're afraid we're going to be taxed. The discussions of the health care bill also related the belief that the people had that Washington was going to raise taxes in the health care field. And so again, consumers began not to purchase as much, investors began not to buy new equipment, people everywhere were becoming more cautious, and we slipped into stagnation. Our economy began to stagnate and lose jobs and has not yet been creating those jobs at any significant rate. We're still above 8 percent unemployment, and that was to be the floor we would find if we spent the money on the stimulus in a previous vision that the Obama administration gave to us. As we think about other examples, I always like to use the example of Ireland. Fifteen or 20 years ago, Ireland began to lower its corporate tax rates. They believed, as I'm saying tonight, that if they would lower tax rates to corporations, that the companies would actually come flooding into the country. They would come there to produce. And it created the Irish miracle, the economic miracle of growth that was caused by Ireland cutting its corporate tax rate from about 36 percent down to around 12 percent. A significant decrease. Companies began to flood into Ireland. The contrast is also given by Ireland. As they began to find prosperity, they began to spend more than they bring in, this same model that we're looking at here. They began to raise taxes. And now corporations are flooding away. Just today I was visiting with the managers of a cheese plant that is on the east side of New Mexico. They're an Irish company. They've come here to produce because it is just too difficult, too high, the taxes are too great in Ireland. My brother-in-law works for Hughes Tool. He was at Hughes Tool back when they moved factories, production facilities back into Ireland. This year, my brother-in-law went to disassemble the last plant in Ireland because they've gone up on their tax rates and no longer was it a good place to operate. If we're interested in solving the economic chaos that we're facing, we can't get there simply by spending cuts; we can't get there by taxing the rich. In other words, taxing the rich is going to drive us further away from the goal, further into stagnation, further into job losses. If we're going to rebuild our economy, we must concentrate on economic growth. And the nice thing is that the actuarial tables tell us that if we will grow jobs at about 3\1/2\ percent, that this imbalance begins to disappear, that the worry of the future begins to dissipate simply because we grow the economy, we create jobs, we take people off of unemployment, we take people off of welfare, off of food stamps. Our 3.5 cost to the government begins to diminish, the 2.2 begins to grow, we find ourselves reaching balance, and over the long term, we find ourselves beginning to reduce this $15 trillion debt. We find ourselves able to sustain the $202 trillion worth of unplanned expenses--excuse me, they're not unplanned, they're simply unpaid for--the expenses of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. That's where the real threat lies. And nowhere in Mr. Obama's plan did I see a dealing with those significant drains on our economy. His only plan is to tax the rich, the millionaires and the billionaires, by making them pay their fair share. And that, he says, is going to fix the economy. That, my friends, is going to wreck the economy. When we choose that course of making the rich pay more than their fair share, they owe it to us. It's only fair, he says in his speech, that they would pay a little more. When we do that, we're going to choke jobs off even more. Other nations, our 2.2 is going to be less. We're going to put those people out of work, just like we did offshore in Louisiana. We put about 100,000 people out of work there. We're on the way to putting them out of work. Those people, instead of paying taxes, are going to pay no taxes, but they're now going to cost us unemployment benefits; they're going to cost us in Medicare, Medicaid. They're going to cost us in food stamps, welfare. And they're not going to be producing. So with this vision of taxing the rich, we're going to move more to an unproductive society because you cannot create more productivity by taxing it. If that were the case, every nation would be productive. Every nation can always go up on taxes. But not every nation can create the environment to where innovators are allowed to produce. The innovations in the oil and gas industry have been dramatic, and yet that's the single area it appears that President Obama is going to kill first, that whole specter he refers to as ``yesterday's fuel,'' ``yesterday's energy.'' If it is yesterday's energy, let the President take the lead and cease using it. Use the energies of tomorrow. Stop using that energy of the past. Let him fly an airplane on something besides jet fuel. Please. Give us that bold vision and courage and leadership. Let him show us the way if fossil fuels are a thing of the past. But I suspect, like you and me, that the President is going to continue to drive his limousine on petroleum-based products. He's going to continue to fly Air Force 1 not on solar power, but on jet fuel. I suspect that all of Americans are going to do it. The only thing that we're going to have as an outcome is less plentiful energy, fewer jobs, a greater imbalance in our government and our government spending, greater uncertainty for the future. That's a shame that that's the leadership that we're getting. Because at this point in our world's history, it would be possible, if we are literally looking to recreate our economy, to draw back the manufacturing jobs of the past, to put them back to work here, to rekindle the industries that are gone so that we do have a bright future, so that people have not just jobs, but careers to face; that they are able to plan for their future; that they are able to save for a house, save for the kids' education; that they are able, truly, to live the American Dream. That's what has made this country great in the past, and I think that Americans at this point in time will find that leadership for the future.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, this past week, I had the opportunity to read a book called ``Lone Survivor,'' a tale about four Navy SEALs that were inserted into Afghanistan territory, Lieutenant Mike Murphy, Petty Officer Matthew Axelson, Petty Officer Danny Dietz, and Marcus Luttrell. Marcus Luttrell, the lone survivor, writes the book and says, ``If they built a mountain as high as the Empire State Building for Lieutenant Murphy, it would not be high enough.'' These four young men--physical specimens, men of valor, men of courage--were inserted into the dark on top of an Afghanistan mountain. Shortly after arrival, daylight hit. Three goat herders came upon them. They easily subdued them. Then the choice was to kill--if they represented a clear and present danger--or to let them go. One voted to abstain. There was a tie vote between the other two. Finally, Marcus Luttrell voted to let them go. He knew what the consequences would be. Twenty minutes later, the Taliban that they were after, over 100 came rushing over the top of the mountain firing their AK-47s and RPGs. The four young SEALs moved to the back of the precipice. They were forced back by the fire and finally jumped off the edge of the mountain, 200 to 300 yards, the equivalent of three football fields straight down. Lieutenant Mike Murphy had already been shot through the stomach. They were facing odds of 35 to 1, at least. They were worried about being tried for murder in this country because of their actions. They fell back off the mountain doing back flips headlong. Enemies swarmed after them. They were pushing through trees, grabbing limbs, trying to stop. Danny Dietz is shot. No SEAL is ever left behind. Mikey, bleeding out of his stomach, and Marcus move into the open and drag Danny back to cover. The enemy keeps closing in. They are forced back a second time to another precipice and jump off a sheer cliff, the equivalent of four stories, straight down. Danny was shot again in the lower back. It blew out his stomach. He was still firing. Grenades are now pouring in on them. The Taliban reinforcements are coming closer, yards away, 20, 30 away. Danny is shot again. This time he slumps over, drops his rifle. He props himself up miraculously and continues to fire. They have fallen over 900 feet down the mountain now. They fall back to the edge again and go over the edge. The SEALs had taken a heavy toll. Eighty Taliban are rushing after them, firing. Danny is shot again, this time in the neck. He slumps over. No SEAL is left behind. Marcus Luttrell steps out into the hail of gunfire to rescue him, props him up, and starts pulling him back by the pack. Danny is still firing his weapon. Again they have to go over the edge. This time, Lieutenant Murphy understands they've got one choice. He casually walks out with his severe wounds into the opening to where he can get his cell phone open and get a call for help. He sits there with thousands of rounds of AK- 47 rounds hitting near him. He makes a call and says, sir, taking heavy fire. Need help. A round hits him in the back, blood spurts out his chest. Marcus Luttrell listens to him saying, ``Yes, sir.'' He drops his rifle, he picks up his cell phone from the ground and says, ``Yes, sir, I'll tell the men, sir.'' Mortally wounded, he sits there, rounds continuing to come in. Lieutenant Mike Murphy falls on the ground and says, ``Marcus, help me. Marcus, help me.'' Axelson, the third soldier to die that day, is dying on the other side. Miraculously, Marcus Luttrell survives. We made this, yesterday, a discussion that was academic about supporting our troops. We have friends on the other side of the aisle saying it's a trick. We have the President saying he would veto it immediately. And for us to not give the pay to men and women like this who are putting their life in harm's way causes great shame on this Nation.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. It is a pleasure to address the House tonight and to talk about the issues that are burning across the country. Before I get into the economic discussions, my colleagues from across the aisle, my good friends, have brought up many things that are worthy of discussion. Before I get into that, I'd like to talk a bit about our Constitution. I think that, if we as a Republic are not aware of the importance of the Constitution, then we tend to diminish it; we tend to walk away from it; we tend to not give it the credibility that it deserves, and that is highly risky for every one of us but especially for those people with very little or no status. The Constitution is basically the agreement, the contract, between our government and the people. The Constitution is the only thing that limits the power of government. It is the instrument by which we, the people, have our rights guaranteed to us, and any time we begin to diminish or to say that the Constitution is not valid, then we put at risk our own freedoms. One of the ideas of the Constitution is that it was replacing something previous to it. The Articles of Confederation were what our Founding Fathers originally came up with. Very soon, they realized it had great, deep flaws. One of the flaws that they found is that interstate commerce, going from one State to the next, did not act like it was inside the same country at all. Instead, the commerce was stopped at one State line, taxed as it went through that State, stopped at the next State line, and products became so expensive that they could not move to market because of the taxation, because of the accumulated taxation from one State to the next. The Founding Fathers recognized that to be a problem. Almost immediately, they convened the Constitutional Convention, and one of the prime articles that they were talking about in that Constitution was the Commerce Clause. They felt it was necessary to address that in order for the country to be prosperous, for it to move forward. James Madison later wrote in his Federalist Paper No. 56 what were to be the objects of Federal legislation. He was addressing that question of ``where are we to go with legislation?'' He said that those which are of most importance and which seem to require local knowledge are commerce, taxation and the militia. So he was visualizing a very limited role for government, a very strict role for the Constitution. One of the elements of that Constitution was to be the commerce between States. In article I, section 8, clause 3 of the Constitution, it is delineating the powers of the government, and one of those was to regulate. Clause 3 states that the Congress shall have the power ``to regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes.'' So that's the limit of the Commerce Clause. Early on, our Founding Fathers had actually had a very limited definition of that, but that Commerce Clause definition has been expanded over time so that, if you will Google ``commerce/U.S. law abuse,'' you will begin to see the ways that our government has begun to extend its reach over our lives by redefining what the Commerce Clause was actually about. Now, one of the cases that has been mentioned is that some criminal with a gun somewhere was within a couple hundred feet of a school, and that's something that should not be tolerated and shouldn't be allowed; but the government's attacking of that used the Commerce Clause to go through a circuitous route to say that the presence of that guy with a gun in his pocket, while at or near a school, affected the education of the young people and that ending the lives of the young students would affect the commerce of the United States. So we're trying to get a guy who can't carry a gun on school property, and we're going through this tortuous explanation that somewhere down the line it's going to affect commerce. Now, there are many reasons for not allowing someone to have a gun on school grounds, but to use that sort of convoluted reasoning is one of the threats that we all face, because if the government can go through convoluted reasoning on one thing, it can go through convoluted reasoning on anything. As we research the Constitution and as we talk to people back in our States, we begin to realize that we in Congress have been extending the powers of the different clauses. We're using them in ways that were not designated initially. We're basically doing a rewrite of the Constitution. I submitted from my office a bill, H.R. 346, the Health Care Choice Act of 2011. In that, we visualized that it would be good for people to be able to shop for insurance across State lines. New Mexico has significantly higher-priced insurance than does Texas. I live in Hobbs, New Mexico. That's 3 miles from the Texas border. It seemed practical that we would allow people to drive to the State line and buy insurance across that State line, but it is currently prohibited, so I put a bill in that said, simply, we can go across State lines. On the surface, that seems to be good and noble. It seems to fit the parameters of competition--and competition is always good for consumers--but in closer looking, we realized that what we are doing is the same extension with our bill that we are complaining about in others, saying that the Federal Government can declare that a State's right to regulate its own insurance is improper. So it is my full intent not to pursue our bill because, after looking, I, myself, believe that it does not fit the constitutional requirement that we have. So that is one issue that I wanted to speak about today. Next, I'd like to talk about the bill that we just passed off the floor today, which funds our troops in the face of a government shutdown. I served in Vietnam in 1971, -2 and -3. I was there at the choice of my government. I was not a volunteer. I drew a very low draft number; ended up going through flight training, and was flying combat missions in Vietnam at a time when our Nation began to choke off the funds to the troops in combat. I can remember that the missions here in the U.S. were being choked and starved for fuel so that training could not be accomplished in the full curriculum that was established before us. Instead, we were having to divert money to fund the troops overseas because there wasn't enough money going there. I have a real problem with our using our soldiers as pawns in this particular case, so I voted against the last continuing resolution. I was one of 54 Republicans who voted ``no.'' Yet, in this case, this continuing resolution said: Let's take the troops off the table. Let's have this discussion about where we're going to fund and what we're going to fund, but let's not leave soldiers in combat while we're discussing how much we're going to fund or not fund the government. That, to me, is the only thing that we should be doing. Of all the people we should not hold as political pawns, the troops who are facing very difficult circumstances in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Libya should not be asked to put their lives at risk and face declining amounts of fuel, declining amounts of ammunition, body armor or whatever. And so the suggestion today, even though I voted against the last continuing resolution, I gladly voted for this one because I do think our negotiations here should not include them, our troops, our soldiers in combat, young men and women who are there doing the same thing that I did in 1971, 1972 and 1973. It's my belief that the comments from the other side from the Senate, from Senator Reid, who's the leader of the Senate, that they're going to summarily dismiss this bill, that they're not going to consider it, and from the White House that he wouldn't sign it if it got to his desk, is in my mind reflective of people who have not been in harm's way themselves facing declining funding. If we don't want the troops there, then get them out. But don't hold them hostage to this funding battle that we're having here on Capitol Hill. So I voted for the continuing resolution today that would remove the troops, remove our soldiers from this discussion. I'm saddened to hear that the White House says they're not going to sign it, that they don't care. I'm sad to hear that our Senate says it does not care. If the government shuts down, then those young men and women--they're not going to be able to get out of the combat zone. It's not like we're going to withdraw them. But we're going to leave them there without being able to even pay their paycheck. And I think that's the wrong thing for us to do. One of the things that I heard from our friends across the aisle just now was that there are many corrections for the problems that face us. And I keep this chart handy and I use it frequently to show the depth of the problems that we face. This is basically the economic situation facing our country. We spend $3.5 trillion in the revenues to the government, that is, the accumulated taxes that each one of us pays, or $2.2 trillion. Now, your household could not function like that. But there are greater and worse stories. We're spending in excess of $1.3 trillion this year, $1.3 trillion more than we bring in, each year that we do that--I just draw this as a schematic where you show the deficit running over and it runs into the debt barrel. The accumulated debt of the Nation is $15 trillion, and if you think about if we could devote all of our revenues to paying off the debt in the debt barrel, it would take 7 years to do that. But beyond the debt barrel, we now have debt that is running over. And you see that green sludge that we've depicted on our chart, running over the edge. It's reached the top of it. And that's debt that we really owe, but we are afraid to admit to the American people. That's Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Those three programs have an accumulated cost facing us of $202 trillion, but we don't include that in our debt calculations. If you look on any government Web site and ask about the debt, it will acknowledge the $15 trillion, but will not acknowledge the $202 trillion. Now, if this were your family, and let's say that you made $50,000 a year, and you were believing that if I could devote the full $50,000 a year for a hundred years and not pay off my debt, you would think that it's time to reorganize what you're doing. That's the discussion that's going on in the country: should we or should we not take on significant reform of the government? Should we look and have a forensic audit of our government to consider what things we should do and what things we should not do? Just the idea that we owe a hundred years' worth of total tax revenues to pay off one piece of what we had promised tells us that we're in a nonsustainable capacity. Now, the chart in the upper right hand of the poster here is the alarming piece. We all remember when Ronald Reagan was President, he came up with an idea and he was the only one worldwide who described it. I remember at his funeral in the taped presentation by Margaret Thatcher, she said, Ronnie said he could collapse the Soviet Union's economy by escalating their expenditures for defense weapons. And he could get their cost of government so high that they could never pay it, and they would collapse. So they began to spend more than they brought in, the accumulated debt began to weigh down on their economy, and they actually collapsed. Now, the opponents of what we're doing, the opponents of reform, say that it's us, as Republicans, making up the charges. This chart says our economy is simply going to quit in 2038--exactly like the Soviet Union did. It's going to collapse for the same purpose, that we're spending far more than we're bringing in. We have an accumulated debt. We have an accumulated unrecognized or undiscussed debt that is $202 trillion, and our economy will cease to function. This is coming from the Office of Management and Budget Web site. This is the White House. They're the ones saying that what we're doing is not sustainable. Now, our friends on the other side of the aisle said that we could do something to cure Social Security, that is, we should pass along a tax increase to those people making above $106,000. It's interesting to hear that when our friends on the other side of the aisle had the House in their control, they had the Senate in their control with a majority that would not allow filibuster, and they had the White House, and they did not once bring up or pass a tax increase for Social Security. I find it amazing that it's so simple now that they're not in charge for them to talk about it; and yet when they were in charge, they couldn't talk about it. The reason that we're facing the problems that we are today with this continuing resolution is that our friends across the aisle did not last year pass a budget and did not pass the appropriating bills. And so they simply passed a continuing resolution and they could not get that passed through the end of this year. It was within their power to not have this discussion at all on a continuing resolution. All they had to do was fund the government through September 30 and everything would have been fine. We would have had no cause to change anything. It's because they passed a bill that would only fund the government through March, through the early part of March, that we're in this situation. So I'm curious while they say that the solutions are so easy, that they're so necessary, that they didn't find it necessary before December 31. And, in fact, as they're talking about the need to increase taxes, out the other side of the mouth they actually decreased taxes. They stopped the tax increase that was going to be automatic for American citizens. So my feeling is that I'm hearing discussions which are not sincere, which they had within their ability to change but did not. The idea that we are making draconian cuts in our requests, the Republican request for this continuing resolution, you hear that word often, that they're draconian cuts. I always let people decide for themselves. The cuts that we're talking about, we spend $3.5 trillion. The Republicans have suggested cuts at a maximum of $61 billion. And so what would that decrease $3.5 trillion to? I think it's important to assess that in order to decide if the cuts are draconian. Our cuts, $61 billion, take $3.5 trillion down to $3.44 trillion, and I always ask people is that draconian. And I've never heard one person in any town hall say that's draconian. They're in fact alarmed that that's all that either party is able or willing to do about the accumulated debt, about a deficit that is $1.3 trillion, about the inflation that is now rushing our way. And they're saying it is enough, stop it, do something about it. Do a forensic audit of the entire government and begin to defund those things that don't make sense, the things that are no longer effective, the things that are duplicative. We've got duplicative agencies across the spectrum of government. Sometimes more than 100 agencies do the same thing. That's a hundred different overheads doing the same thing. Now, if our government was a business, it would be broke; and the truth is that our government is broke and is going to be broke worse. And, in fact, we're all seeing the effects on our personal lives. You hear many times that those oil companies are driving up the price of gasoline to $4 now. It's the evil oil companies. I believe that it's exactly opposite. In order to fund the $1.3 trillion deficit that we don't have the revenues to produce, we find that our Federal Reserve is printing money. It is in the printing of money that you devalue the money that is in your pockets at the current moment. If we could create Monopoly money out of thin air, then it depreciates the value of what you have in your pocket. If only oil were going up in price, you could maybe make the argument that it's the evil oil companies. Maybe you could say it's the instability in the Middle East. Maybe you could say whatever. But when we see the price of vegetables skyrocketing, when we see the price of gold skyrocketing, the price of silver has gone up almost 30 percent in the last month, 30 percent, and you would have to say, well, is there a greater demand for silver? Is there some new manufacturing program that is now using silver that didn't before? That is, did demand drive the price up? And you say, no, silver is not used for one thing today that it wasn't used for a month ago. When you look at all the prices across the spectrum increasing, you have to acknowledge that the problem is not that companies are driving prices up but, instead, the value of the dollar is decreasing. That's because we printed almost $2.6 trillion in money last year. We created it out of thin air. That then depreciates the value of the currency that you have in your pocket, in your bank account. And it's that reason that we're seeing inflation begin to skyrocket. The price of gas, food, oil, everything is going up because the money in your pocket is worth less. That's going to continue as long as we do this. Another problem with the country's economy when it spends more than it can bring in and when the accumulated debt is so high, our bankers begin to worry. The same as your bankers would worry if you were living this way personally, they would worry that you could pay your house off. They would begin to call you in and speak with you. Our bankers for the United States Government have been primarily China, Japan, and U.S. companies buying our Treasury bills. That's the process by which we loan money to the U.S. Government. But because of this accumulated position, the Chinese have begun to say, Wait, we're not going to buy so much of your Treasuries any more. We're going to decrease our holdings. So they have begun to sell Treasury bills rather than buy them. The Japanese have got their own problems, and so now they're not willing to buy much debt from us. This year, the largest single private buyer of U.S. Treasury bills said, No more. We think the risk is too great that we'll never get paid back. We think the risk is too great that this system is not going to work. So this year, right now, our Federal Reserve, which is an arm of the government, which receives its money from the government, is, in fact, lending money back to the government. So we are giving money to the Federal Reserve. They are turning around and loaning it back to us with the other hand. Now, if you were doing that, your banker would say you are having to counterfeit, you are creating value where there is no value, and I think I might call your note. We are in the process of finding that the note is due. We see that the country has a course in front of it that simply discontinues our economy, that simply we fail exactly the way that the Soviet Union economy failed. And we're having discussions on the floor of the House about cutting this from 3.5 to 3.44. This 1.3 would go to 1.24. And we are saying that those cuts are draconian. I will tell you that we are not even approaching the cuts that need to be made. In these programs alone, Medicare and Medicaid, we are told annually that the fraud--not the waste, but the fraud--is about 20 percent. Yet we can't find it within ourselves here to address that problem. We're afraid of what the ads might look like on TV if we actually began to take this on. I watched ``60 Minutes'' a couple years ago, and the fraud was discussed by a guy from Florida. He is from Miami. He had been arrested for fraud. He was selling $400,000 worth of medical things to Medicare patients every month. He didn't actually have any inventory. He was just billing the government, and they were paying him $400,000 a month. No inventory. He had a storefront because he said, Oh, yeah, those guys from Medicare drive by, they see if you had a store. So I had a store. And he said, I put my name on the door. I didn't actually have any inventory. I was never open. I never actually did anything. He said, I actually made it into a little game. He said, I charged the same woman every month for four prosthetics just to see. He said, I don't know if she needed any, or one, or none. He said, They never caught it. He said, I did it month after month. He said, So, yeah, you got me and you are going to put me in jail for 12 years. He said, At 400,000 a month, I can stay there awhile. He said, The main thing is I still have my mailing list, and I am going to rent my list to someone else while I am in jail, so I am going to make a lot of money in jail, too. So even if he is going to jail, the fraud continues. That's 20 percent. That approaches $90 billion for one program and $60 billion for the other. We are talking about cutting a total of 61 up here. Americans are fed up. They're afraid of the future. They're afraid of what they see being unleashed here. They're frightened that we are printing so much money to try to make the scheme work. And they're saying enough is enough. Now, I believe that we can make cuts without cutting programs that are essential to people, and I do not think that we should do things which harm those neediest in society. But there are many, many programs where we can make the cuts and we should. The outcome if we don't is extreme. The outcome if we don't is the loss of the economic status of this Nation. The Soviet Union broke into small pieces, small countries. You are seeing States right now nervous and anxious about the future of the Federal Government, so they are beginning to say, We are going to take that function on ourself. We are not going to trust that the Federal Government can fix this. They, themselves, are in terrible shape. The biggest shame of all in this is that, in a time when we're struggling to balance our budget to just make ends meet for our Nation, the government is conducting the greatest war on our jobs. The government is raising taxes high enough to push companies out of this country. President Obama said in his State of the Union message that we must address the fact that we are overtaxing corporations. He said we are one of two of the highest in the world. And since then, Japan has decreased, so we are left alone in that. We are overregulated. We are regulating companies out of existence. Every time we kill a job through regulation--I would point to the timber industry, which has been killed by regulation. I would point to the jobs offshore where that rig had its problems this year off the coast of Louisiana. I think that BP should be accountable, and they are paying the bill for what happened, but we should not have killed those jobs. Because every job that we kill lowers the 2.2 and it puts people on welfare and unemployment, and the 3.5 increases. We cannot cut enough spending to get 3.5 to 2.2. We, instead, must go and re-create the jobs that our government has systematically killed and rebuild our economy, rebuild the manufacturing base so that when we put people to work they begin to pay taxes and we begin to not have their cost in government. In that case, we're growing the economic base. We're growing the revenues of the government and, simultaneously, we're cutting the cost of the government. The only thing that makes sense for us in rescuing our economy is for us to grow the job base. And at a time when we are alarmed at what we're seeing economically, then we find the government most hostile to new jobs. Just recently, within the last week, we have been in discussions with the Fish and Wildlife Service, who, out of the blue, decided to list a lizard as endangered in our State. They cannot declare that it has different DNA from the lizards that are not being put on the list. In other words, it's just a variety of a lizard, not all lizards. They can't show a DNA difference. So over some small minute difference they are going to possibly shut down all of the oil and gas wells in southern New Mexico. That means more people on welfare, more people on unemployment. It means fewer people paying taxes. Up in the northwest part of the State, the EPA recently put out a ruling that would cause three of the five generators in one generating station to shut down. So at a time when we are facing rising utility costs, we are facing rolling blackouts. We are going to put three generators off-line. Since they are doing that they are going to require less coal, and now then 200 coal miners who live on the Navajo Indian reservation, making $60,000 a year, are going to no longer be working and paying taxes. They are going to be drawing unemployment and be on Medicaid, be on welfare, TANF, and food stamps. One would say that our government will not and cannot kill industries, and yet they killed the entire timber industry. New Mexico used to have 20,000 jobs in timber, and today it has none because of the spotted owl, a regulation that could have been done differently but instead was used to stop all the logging in every forest in New Mexico. We believe that's wrong. We believe that we can keep the species from going extinct and create the logging jobs again. So we have submitted a bill that would do that. I would draw our attention also to the fact that 27,000 farmers in the San Joaquin Valley in California were put out of work because of a 2-inch minnow that could have been kept alive in holding ponds and put over in the river. But an extreme decision said that it's either the jobs or the minnow, and they chose the minnow. We are putting our economic system at risk by systematically killing industries and jobs in this country, and that's the reason you have the frustration that is expressing itself in tea parties across the Nation taking to the streets and saying our government is too strong, it's too powerful, it's time for us to live within the restraints of the Constitution. So as I wrap up here tonight, we again talk about the need for the Constitution to limit the government, to limit the government's ability to come in and affect your freedoms and your life. This country has been, in the past, the destination for anyone who wanted freedom to build their dreams here. They could come and do it. We are beginning to choke off the ability for even our own citizens to find their dreams and make them come true here. We are doing it one business, one industry at a time through taxation, through regulation, but more we are doing it through the unstable currency that we are creating through the printing of money. It is time for us to get our fiscal house in order. It is time to recognize that the future is at risk, according to the OMB and the CBO both. If we don't act now, then we will not have an economic future any stronger than the Soviet Union. It's my hope that we will begin to act as Americans today, not as Republicans or Democrats, to look at the challenges that we face, to take them on and to address them in ways that the American people say ``yes.'' That is an appropriate action; that is a correct action. It's my sincere belief that our best days are ahead of us because I believe the American people are going to insist that we take care of the economic mess that we, that we in Congress, have created over the last 70 and 80 years. We can't make promises that we can't keep with money that we don't have. We must correct it.