Steve Pearce

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kansas (Mr. Tiahrt) for bringing this issue in front of the body. Mr. Speaker, there are two things that our standard of living in America is based upon. Our standard of living is very high in this country because of two basic, essential facts. First, we have affordable food and, second, we have affordable energy. Both of those things determine how we live our everyday lives, how much we have got to spend on our kids' school clothes, how far we have got to spend on the schools that our kids go to, those things are determined by the basics that we do not have to spend more than a small amount of our income on either food or energy. Mr. Speaker, House bill 6, the energy bill, really begins to address the fact that jobs are being sent overseas because of high energy costs but it also addresses the more relevant fact of the cost of energy in our homes. I had some high school students in my office today. They asked, what is your position on drilling in ANWR? I said absolutely, that I supported it in my campaign, and that I have supported it since I got here. They asked, why would you do that? And they seemed to be asking it in good faith. You could tell that they had had discussions in their school and they were asking for my opinion because they had received the other side. I said, it is very simple. You hear your parents talking about how much it costs to fill up their car with gasoline, about $40 to $50 to $60 now depending on what size tank you have. I said, you have heard your parents talk about it. Yes, yes, it is very much higher. The fact is that we are talking about supply and demand and they were a little curious about that. They did not really understand it fully. I said, it is simply like cell phones. When cell phones first came out, the supply was very limited so you might pay $450 or $500 for a cell phone but today they will give them to you just to get the business. That is because as the supply of cell phones has increased, the price has gone down. Petroleum is exactly the same way. If in 1995 President Clinton would have signed the ANWR drilling bill that was put in front of him, both House and Senate in 1995 passed that bill, if he had signed that, today we would have 1.5 million new barrels of oil coming down the Alaska pipeline and into our shores. What our attempt is today to lower the price of gasoline in our cars is we have gone to the Saudi Arabians and we are asking them on bended knee, we the United States is asking Saudi Arabia on bended knee to increase production by somewhere between 1 and 2 million barrels per day. We know that at that figure, the price would come back down to what Americans are used to paying for a gallon of gasoline. But instead, President Clinton vetoed the bill that was passed by the House and by the Senate, he vetoed the bill, so today instead of having the 1.5 million barrels that we are asking the Saudi Arabians for, that 1.5 million barrels would have been produced on American soil and with American jobs, instead it is being produced somewhere else and then we have the higher energy costs and we are more dependent on foreign oil. My friend from Nebraska talked about the high price of natural gas. There are some very compelling things in the price of natural gas. It is being pushed up because the Federal Government is requiring that many of our electrical generating plants convert from coal into the clean-burning natural gas. The Federal Government demands that we convert electric plants over to natural gas, therefore, pushing the demand up while at the same time the Federal Government at the insistence of some of the extreme environmentalists is beginning to limit access to the natural gas drilling that is available. The drilling that they are stopping, the drilling that the extreme environmentalists are stopping is not in pristine areas. They are exactly in areas on Federal land that have been drilled before. There is no reason to say that we cannot drill there except the extremists believe in their heart that America has too much.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to visit today with Members of the body to discuss just one of the aspects of the changes that we have seen in the world. We hear a lot from our friends that the war on terror is not progressing, that there is no significant advancement. Mr. Speaker, two days ago we were joined by His Excellency Hamid Karzai, President of the Transitional Islamic State of Afghanistan, to talk about the changes in his country. He reports that Afghanistan was one of the poorest countries. They had, of course, the Taliban and al Qaeda working there. They have an economy that is controlled by the drug lords. Private militias have been ever present in their countries. Yet, today he reports that under their new transitional government that they are rebuilding the schools and starting the children back to school. Boy and girls, 5 million of them, are back in schools today in Afghanistan. They are also developing health clinics to provide basic health services for the inhabitants and the citizens of Afghanistan. One of the most important things he said is they are beginning to rebuild their economy, beginning by rebuilding highways and roads so that commerce can be conducted throughout the nation. As they conduct commerce, they are also beginning to rebuild the military, the militias, their national guard, and reestablish police forces in order to guarantee security for the people of Afghanistan and to defend the country's sovereignty. The government of Afghanistan is beginning to fight against the narcotics trade, the one that has been so prevalent in that nation and provides drugs throughout the world to eat the heart and soul out of not only their children, but our children and the children of Europe, Germany, France and all around the world. And when the government of Afghanistan begins to do what they can to stop the flow of illegal drugs throughout the world, we know that the world situation has changed for the better. He reports to us that the Afghanis are beginning to vote with their feet, that over 3 million refugees have come back to Afghanistan and reestablished permanent residence there, voting with their feet, saying that we believe Afghanistan is a better place today than before the United States entered and began to fight the war on terror inside their borders. The country has adopted an enlightened constitution, one which for the first time begins to recognize the rights of women. And in that constitution, 25 percent of the elected seats are reserved, 25 seats in parliament are reserved for women. A stunning turn around for a culture that in Afghanistan had simply eliminated women from any positions of authority in that country. He declares that they have established an open and inclusive society. He reports that there are many things that they still have to do, that they are requesting the help of the United States on. The Islamic State of Afghanistan is requesting the help of the United States, help in disbanding the private militias and demobilizing those tremendous forces of evil inside the country that both protect and encourage the drug trade. He asked that we continue to fight with them to dismantle the entire drug industry, the illegal drug industry in that country, to help them to reduce the very high infant mortality rate. He explains that Afghanistan is open for business but they need businesses to come and help them rebuild the country. And he has an open invitation that asks American businesses to come there to help establish an economy that will sustain their people now and in the future. But he declares to us, President Karzai, declared to us on the floor of this House when he spoke to the joint meeting of the Senate and the House, that the greatest menace still in Afghanistan is terrorism. And he declared that terrorism is the greatest menace worldwide, as well as in Afghanistan. He talked about al Qaeda in Afghanistan that killed Muslims prior to the US dismantling the Taliban and chasing al Qaeda out of the country. Mr. Speaker, we were honored to have the President of Afghanistan visit and bring us up to date on the changes that have occurred in his eyes.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, as we consider world history, we know that each generation will be faced with its own challenges. And though I am certain that the human race will survive; for a Nation to survive these challenges, each generation must continually produce men and women who are sufficient to the moment and equal to the task. It needs to generate men and women who see without limits, who work without tiring, and who sacrifice without restraint. A nation must find within itself in these times of trouble those who will forego comfort and give up the beaten paths of certainty to find new courses of action and overcome all obstacles in pursuing the truth. Mr. Reagan was sufficient for the moment and equal to the task. Mr. Speaker, we are here to mourn the passing of a President, but we are here to celebrate the life of leadership and sufficiency that Mr. Reagan represented.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 213 I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.'' Stated against:

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, Newsweek magazine this week had a cover story calling Mr. Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, the INC, our con man in Iraq. Newsweek claims the INC gave the U.S. poor information about Saddam Hussein's weapons programs despite millions in funds received from the U.S. Government, including the DIA and the Department of State. Stories say Chalabi is linked with Iran, and members of the INC have been engaged in fraud. First of all, we need to understand some basic concepts that people who provide intelligence to the U.S. from tyrannies and dictatorships often risk their lives. They are what we would call tainted, probably unsavory. It is not as if a number of the members of the Governing Council in Iraq are not connected to Iran. The Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq gets $1.2 million a month from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards whose head is Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, and he is on the Governing Council. The members of the Dawa Party and the Kurds also engage in commerce with Iran and are linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. But let us look at the facts that differ from what the press tells us and what our friends on the other side of the aisle are saying. This is some of the help we have received from the INC. When we are being told that aluminum tubing was being procured that violated the sanctions, this turned out to be true. We were told that Saddam Hussein had buried much of his weapons programs or hidden them in dual-use facilities. This information from as early as 1991 and throughout the 1990s turned out to be true. We were told Saddam Hussein had unmanned drones that could deliver bio or chemical weapons, and this turned out to be true. We are told by the INC and others that weapons were being shipped to Syria; and Dave Kay confirms that he agrees with that assessment, although the exact nature and amount of the weapons that were shipped to Syria still have to be determined. The INC said that al Qaeda and its affiliated terrorist groups were being trained and harbored in Iraq, and this has been confirmed. We only have to review the terrorists caught recently in Jordan who admitted they fled Afghanistan to Iraq before the war to liberate Baghdad, and while in Iraq they received training and assistance in the use of poisons and bombs from Iraqi intelligence. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs said that the INC gave U.S. and coalition forces intelligence on a daily basis that saved American lives, stopped attacks, and deactivated roadside improvised explosives. There are examples in the past that have failed to be covered by our friends on the other side of the aisle or by the press; but I think if we take just a moment, we can see the difficult nature of providing help to other countries and to people in other countries. First of all, the U.S. Government provided hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban during the late 1990s in the hopes they would turn over Osama bin Laden. What did we get for our dollars at that point, and what did the Clinton administration explain to us? The U.S. Government and others provided between $3 billion to $5 billion to the Aristide government in Haiti, and what did we get for our money? Haiti's gross domestic product declined by one-third, and crime and murder rates hit levels not seen since the Duvalier family ruled the country. Haiti became one of the major transshipment points for illicit drugs into this country, and now Aristide has left the country after robbing the treasury of every last dime. During this great Haitian robbery by Mr. Aristide, a former Democratic congressman received a retainer of $50,000 from the Haitian Government and Aristide to provide cover for this looting. The Haitian Parliament could not even meet during Aristide's rule for fear that he would have them killed. Mr. Speaker, what is this fight all about? For the past 25 years, there has been serious disagreement in the U.S. Government and amongst our allies about the nature of Islamic fascism and the terrorist means we face. This problem was accentuated when the Oslo Peace Process was begun. Particularly during the Clinton administration, it was assumed that terrorism directed against the U.S., the Trade Center in 1993, the Khobar Towers in 1995, the Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies in 1998, the USS Cole in 2000, it was assumed those attacks were the work of a loose band of terrorists unconnected to any state sponsor or government. The Clinton administration assumed, therefore, that this was a problem of law enforcement, a point reiterated by many leading Democrats today. The Peace Process was assumed to require the agreement of the Islamic regimes in the Middle East: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and Jordan. Mr. Speaker, these assumptions were proved incorrect. President Bush changed those assumptions into fighting the war against terror. Mr. Speaker, we need to have the facts. The assumption was that once Israel made an adequate offer to the PLO, that the PLO in turn would reign in the terrorist groups attacking Israel. General Zini, for example, in his latest book makes this very assumption that the PLO and Arafat were not responsible for the terrorist attacks against Israel in the first and second Intifadas. He says that once a peace deal is put on the table by Israel, Arafat will take care of the security issue. The assumption was that none of these Islamic/Arab governments were supporting terrorism against the United States and the terrorism would stop once a deal was made between Israel and the PLO. The Peace Process featured Secretary of State Christopher making some 70 visits with President Assad of Syria to negotiate Syria's support for the ``Peace Plan''. The United States could not on the one hand be negotiating a peace deal with Syria and other Arab regimes, while at the same time holding them accountable for terrorism aimed at the United States and Israel. President Bush fundamentally changed this paradigm. In June 2002, the President said the PLO had to have new leadership that agreed that Israel had a right to exist as a sovereign country, something Arafat has never agreed to; just today, the Egyptian government is reportedly asking that Arafat resign and new PLO leadership be appointed. The President also drew a strong link between states such as Iran and Iraq that support al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups. The Wall Street Journal reported last week that new intelligence reveals that a Lt. Col. in the Iraqi intelligence service met with the pilots of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon in Kuala Lampur in Malaysia in January 2000 where the 9/11 plot was begun; additional evidence connects Mohammed Atta, one of the key conspirators and pilot of one of the planes on 9/11, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague, the Czech Republic on April 8, 2001. If these states are training, financing and providing sanctuary, documents and weapons to these terrorist groups, then they have declared war on the United States. As National Security Adviser Rice has noted, ``they are war with the United States, but we were not at war with them.'' Even as we fight to protect this country, we have bureaucrats fighting an internal, Inside the Beltway battle that is distracting from the larger and more important effort.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker. From the troops still in the field today in the deserts of Iraq and mountains of Afghanistan, to the scores of veterans who have served in different theaters and eras, Memorial Day is a time to honor these American heroes and celebrate the freedoms that their sacrifices have secured. This Memorial Day we stand victorious in liberating Iraq and Afghanistan, and our soldiers have struck another blow against international terrorism. These patriots and their families are making great sacrifices on behalf of this nation, this world and all of humanity. This is also a time for our nation to remember the high price of freedom, as we mourn with the families whose loved ones do not return from the front lines. Memorial Day is a time to honor their lives and their sacrifice. New Mexico has been reminded that freedom isn't free, as we have laid to rest four of our bravest sons and daughters. Air Force 1st Lt. Tamara Archuleta, 23 years old, of Los Lunas, New Mexico died on March 23, 2003 in an HH-60 Pave Hawk accident in Afghanistan. She was assigned to the 41st Rescue Squadron, Moody Air Force Base, Georgia. Army Sgt. Lee D. Todacheene, 29 years old from Farmington, New Mexico, was killed April 6, 2004 when mortar fire hit his guard post in Balad, Iraq. He was assigned to 1st Battalion, 77th Armored Regiment, 1st Infantry Division, Germany Marine Corp Pfc. Christopher Ramos, 26 years old from Albuquerque, New Mexico, was killed April 5, 2004 by hostile fire in Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, CA. Marine Lance Corporal Aaron Austin, 21 years old from Lovington, NM. He was killed April 26, 2004 by hostile fire in Anbar province, Iraq. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, at Camp Pendleton, CA. I ask for a Moment of Silence from this Body, to honor them, and their memory. Mr. Speaker, Memorial Day is May 31st this year. But each day we live in freedom is a Memorial Day, and an opportunity to thank our brave members of the United States Military, as well as our Veterans. They have the eternal thanks for a grateful nation. The time we spend with our families and friends over Memorial Day weekend is a time for us to turn back toward what is truly important: our faith, our families, and our precious freedom. May God Continue to Bless America.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett). He is one of the distinguished colleagues in the freshman class, and I am always pleased to hear his heartfelt conviction as he speaks. My colleague talked about the fact that we will win this fight. And, Mr. Speaker, there are successes we should be proud of that indicate that we are doing what we set out to do. The American people will not always hear these on the evening news or read them in the newspaper. In fact, Mr. Speaker, when I went to Iraq, when I walked among the young people, our young men and women soldiers, the most frequent question, and not just young soldiers from New Mexico, but as I walked through the assembled dining halls three different days at noon and in the evening, Mr. Speaker, the continuing question, to which I had no answer, was why do my parents not hear the good things we are doing in Iraq on the evening news? Mr. Speaker, it is the same silence that affects the media that we were talking about earlier, the refusal to carry the actions of astonishing bravery, courage, compassion, valor, and sometimes just the plain steel nerve to be in that foreign land, fighting for a foreign people, and shedding American blood so that Iraqis can be free. Mr. Speaker, that is noble and we are doing an honorable task. One of the signs of success that I look at, Mr. Speaker, is that we have not been struck since our original attack on 9/11. The second component of success is that the Taliban has been uprooted and moved out of Afghanistan. The al Qaeda is on the move and has stopped training the thousands of terrorists in the training camp that they had set up in Afghanistan. The funding mechanism for the war on terror that existed in Saudi Arabia has been dismantled, Mr. Speaker. Saddam Hussein sits in a jail cell, as do over 40 of his top regime leaders. But, Mr. Speaker, one of the successes that I count great is that our friends in Pakistan have picked up the sword against terrorists. They were fighting on one side of the Pakistani border and U.S. troops were on the Afghanistan side of the border and were pinching rebels and terrorists in between us. Mr. Speaker, it is that willingness of other nations in that region that represents some of the most amazing turnarounds in this war on terror. There are many countries who would expel the terrorists, but they just could not do it by themselves. They did not have the funds or the military strength or the military might, and our participation has given them the will and the way to fight their own war on terror. Worldwide we are seeing more terror cells interrupted by international law enforcement. Our human information is getting better in this war on terror. Because of an election years ago, we made the decision to take our spying operatives out of the cells and simply rely on eavesdropping and electronic methods of information gathering. But those information-gathering techniques that were stopped under a previous administration led to our blindness, so that we could not know that were going to be hit on 9/11. Mr. Speaker, that reemergence of human intelligence is one of the most significant things in our finding different weapons in Iraq. Mr. Kay said that many of the scientists said, you will not find weapons of mass destruction until we, until we the Iraqis, are ready for you to find them. It was through their efforts that we did find the 35 fermenters that we have found. Mr. Speaker, another great success is the fact that Libya simply walked to the table and said we want to give up our weapons of mass destruction; we have them and we want to give them up. Since then, Libya has been removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism. Members of this House visited Libya, led by my friend, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Weldon), a senior member of the House Committee on Armed Services. They listened to Qadhafi himself detail Lybia's long and ugly support for international terrorism, and now that has ended. Mr. Speaker, some claim that Libya was already prepared to do this, but I say nonsense. Just days prior to the beginning of the war to liberate Iraq, Mr. Qaddafi initiated negotiations; but only after those pictures of the capture of Saddam Hussein were shown worldwide did Mr. Qaddafi agree to the deal, all of his weapons gone, lock, stock and barrel. As supporters of terrorism, Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq are no more. As developers of weapons of mass destruction, they are no more. Mr. Speaker, we have positive effects inside Iraq that affect the social systems, for providing medical care and rebuilding schools; children are kicking soccer balls, and kids are spending time with organs. Our troops are building new and better societies in Iraq and Afghanistan. The immediate and long-term benefits for a more peaceful region and a more peaceful world are immeasurable. More than 250 Iraqi students and teachers welcomed soldiers at the grand opening of the Al-Walid Elementary School in Baghdad recently. The opening is the result of several months of work by soldiers from the 4th Battalion, the 1st Field Artillery Regiment, the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, the 1st Armored Division, and the 409th Civil Affairs Battalion, an Army Reserve unit from Abilene, Texas. Repairing the schools is a big part of our responsibility because these children will become the future of Iraq. Their attitudes control the future. Mr. Speaker, our troops have not stopped here. The soldiers understand that you can see the future of Iraq through the eyes of its children. The most recent project for the 105th Forward Support Battalion, headquartered in Germany, was giving away 150 soccer balls to local kids in Baghdad. Soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division have been working to not only make Iraq secure, but have been putting time and effort into helping towns and villages with their Operation Helping Hands program. With the Operation Helping Hands, soldiers donate their own money, and many of them are financially strapped providing for their needs in Iraq as well as the needs back home for their family, but they have been donating their own money to help provide families with food and health care necessities. Brigades Commander Ben Hodges came up with the idea of helping the poor families in the area. They have collected several thousand dollars which goes a long way toward helping many Iraqi families. These compassionate troops are helping Iraqi families in a way that they have never been helped before. Soldiers are often out in Iraqi communities providing medical care and humanitarian assistance. A small, impoverished village about 10 miles from Baghdad was recently paid a visit from the Medical Civic Action Program. The program sends doctors and medics to provide free medical care on a regular basis. Because of conditions under Saddam Hussein, soldiers are treating diseases we rarely see here at home: tuberculosis, hepatitis, and polio. Mr. Speaker, we should be proud of our troops for fighting for women's rights. For the first time in history, women in Mosul, Iraq, were able to join the rest of the world in celebrating International Women's Day. That day recognizes coordinated efforts of women everywhere for equal rights and political and economic equality. The state of the woman in Iraq was in horrible condition prior to our arrival. Eighty-eight percent of women could not read. Today, 77 percent of all school-age girls are in school. The People's Assembly Building was rededicated as a center for Iraqi women. The center will serve as a meeting place for all women of Iraq where they can share ideas, offer training, coordinate communication, and build a safer homeland. In Mosul, Iraqi police say they are grateful to soldiers from the U.S. Army's 503rd Military Police Battalion for their assistance in rebuilding police stations. Coalition forces helped to renovate several police stations which enable the Iraqi police officers to protect their fellow citizens. In the past year, 4,570 police, correction specialists, and firefighters from the Ninevah Province have completed this training. They are better prepared to maintain security for the people of Iraq because of the training the coalition forces have provided. Iraqi security forces continue to take huge steps along with the political process. Less than a year ago, the Department of Border Enforcement was created consisting of the border police, immigration inspections, and civil customs inspection stations. Today there are more than 82,000 border policemen and nearly 9,000 border enforcement agents operating along a 3,600 kilometer border. Coalition forces are actively involved in border security operations. In addition to conducting joint patrols with the Iraqi border police, coalition forces routinely visit border posts and continue to train and mentor the Iraqi border patrol officers. More than 11,000 experienced policemen who have completed the transition integration program have learned democratic principles and values, basic fundamentals of policing, policies and standards for conduct, law and order, and their responsibilities to their communities. There are more than 1,600 policemen who have trained from scratch in an 8-week training program. In early March, 450 additional policemen graduated from the first class of the 8-week Baghdad Public Safety Academy. Another 1,500 new policemen will graduate in April. Two academies are expected to have more 2,100 new professional policemen by the end of 2004. The new Iraqi Army is growing. In early March, more than 1,000 recruits of the 4th Battalion graduated from the 9-week basic training program. These are amazing stories. These are the stories of the Americans that I know. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands more. I am proud of our soldiers and want to say thank you. These are not the stories that you will hear on the news or in the newspapers, nor will you hear them many times during this election year; but I would like at this moment to say thank you to the young men and women in Iraq who are fighting for the freedom of a foreign land. One story that is told from Iraq, a U.S. soldier recently evaluated an Iraqi woman, Farha Abed Saad, for medical treatment after she had been harmed by Iraqi thugs who wished to rob Iraqis of their right to freedom. Her comments say it well, ``Thank God you have come here to Iraq to make us free,'' said Mrs. Saad, kissing a soldier's hand. ``When I see you, I see my own sons. Thank you, thank you.'' Mr. Speaker, compassion is a common language. Compassion is what we are showing to the people in Iraq when we fight side by side with them. Mr. Speaker, we have other advances in this war on terror and in the social setup in Iraq. Already the transition to Iraqis is beginning. People are talking about the end of June, but this week the transition began with the transition of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Culture, both responsibilities being moved across to Iraqi civilians. Mr. Speaker, the oil in Iraq has begun to flow again. It is moving through pipelines that we have found damaged and we as coalition forces have repaired. Because of that flow of oil and because of U.S. reconstruction of oil facilities, over $8 billion, almost $9 billion is in the bank now in trust for the Iraqis. It is being used to fund the operation of their government. Mr. Speaker, you will not hear that story either as we read the evening news because it seems that the news does not want to report the positive and the progress that we have seen in Iraq. Mr. Speaker, we heard eloquent points from a gentleman on the floor earlier this evening. The gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) spoke about the fact that in any contest some people will win and some will lose. Then he gave the four points that create the winners, that help determine the winners. Mr. Speaker, when the gentleman from Nebraska (Mr. Osborne) speaks about winning, I listen. The gentleman from Nebraska coached the 1994 national champions and came back the next year in 1995 and coached the same Nebraska Cornhuskers to another national championship. And then he took a year off and came back in 1997 to win his third national championship. Mr. Speaker, when this gentleman speaks about winning, I believe he knows what he is talking about; and he says for us to win in Iraq will require the same elements as to win in any other situation. It will require a unity of purpose. Secondly, it will require sacrifice; the willingness to pay a greater price than the competition often determines the winner. Third, we must have confidence in a successful outcome. Fourth, there must be a bond among the team, a caring, a respect, a love among the group. Mr. Speaker, when we begin to talk so violently in this Nation and to politicize the war, we begin to undermine the unity of purpose, the willingness to pay a greater price, we undermine the confidence and the successful outcome, and we begin to damage that bond that needs to exist among the group members if an effort is to be a winning effort. Mr. Speaker, as I listened to the many complaints and to the calls for resignations, my mind goes back to World War II. I just cannot imagine what it would have been like in World War II after Pearl Harbor if we had gone through the same sort of questions from the press and from the political parties. Can Members imagine Mr. Roosevelt taking time off from the war to come in and speak about why Pearl Harbor was allowed to be attacked? There are many in this Nation who felt that the attack was known to be coming, and yet both sides for the good of the moment said we will let those questions go because we have got a greater enemy here. I cannot imagine the consequences if we had chosen at that moment to pull the President in front of a commission and ask him to explain and justify every action. I cannot imagine, Mr. Speaker, asking the President at that point in the conflict in the first year or even 2 years, what is your exit strategy? Our exit strategy then is like our exit strategy now: it is to defeat the enemy. Mr. Speaker, if we are going to win this war on terror, it is going to take valor, valor like that of Pat Tillman who gave up a lucrative career in pro football to serve his country, and he paid the ultimate price. It is going to take sacrifice like a young woman helicopter pilot from my district who died in a night helicopter crash in Afghanistan, or like the young man from Lovington, New Mexico, just 18 miles from my hometown, who paid the ultimate sacrifice and was just recently laid to rest. Mr. Speaker, as I talked to his mother, she explained that he never liked school much, he did not like to read, he did not like to study, but when he got involved as a gunner in the military, he found an understanding of what he thought he was about and he began to read constantly, read his operational manuals, to work to improve his capabilities. Mr. Speaker, it will take those kinds of sacrifices. Freedom is not free. It takes tremendous sacrifice. It will take courage to win this war on terror. It is going to be a long fight and it will take commitment. It will take commitment from the young men and women who are required to go. It will take commitment from their families. It will take commitment from political leaders who are required to vote to fund the efforts. If we are going to cut and run now, Mr. Speaker, we can be sure that we will not win this war on terror. We can also be sure that the security moms will have been concerned justly. It is our obligation to see that we fight the war on terror outside this country's borders, that we take the fight to them and we take the desire away from them, take the desire away from them that makes them want to strike us. We have had losses and they cannot be minimized. The loss of a single life is too many. But far more of the enemy have paid the full price than of our young men and women. We owe it to the people of this country and to the free people of the entire world to stand our ground and to fight and to have the resolute intent to see that this war on terror is won. Mr. Speaker, I cast my lot on the side of the people who will fight this war and who will see that liberty triumphs over tyranny and over terrorism.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to visit tonight and talk about Iraq and perceptions about Iraq; but before I start, I would like to commend the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) for bringing to the floor this subject of the human rights violations, the countless deaths in the Sudan and other African countries. Mr. Speaker, I am going to draw conclusions that may differ from my colleagues, but I would explain to this House that his perceptions and my perceptions about what is going on in Africa are very similar, and I appreciate his heartfelt contending on behalf of them. Mr. Speaker, I looked at the photographs that America has been looking at and saw the expanded group of photos, and they were startling and disappointing. America and the President have apologized, but the silence that comes from the rest of the world over the beheading of Nick Berg parallels the silence that I hear from the rest of the world about the Sudan and about Rwanda. Mr. Speaker, it was not the newspapers that first drew my attention to Rwanda years ago. It was my pastor at a local church speaking up about the killings of hundreds of thousands in that country. I was in Vietnam in the 1970s, 1971, 1972, part of 1973 and part of 1974; and we were aware of some of the things that were going on in Cambodia then and later, but the world was silent; and I share with my colleagues, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Payne) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cummings) and the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee), the concern that no one speaks, that our press holds its force silent. Mr. Speaker, weekly I have my secretary print out a Web site called the Voice of the Martyrs that explains killings daily around the world unjustly and in the dark of the night simply because someone has the power to kill and torture and maim without consequence. Mr. Speaker, we must lend our voices to those injustices because the people who will suffer the most are going to be the least among us. The powerful, the rich, no matter what country, they will always have their way. They will always have the representation, but the last great hope for humanity is in this country where the rule of law stands and where our Constitution gives rights because the guaranteeing of those rights, the guaranteeing of those rights encourages those without political power and those without family connections, and so I thank the gentleman for his comments tonight. The examples of terrorism that exist around the world at this time and in the past will cause us to blanch in horror. The risks to humanity are extreme. The financial devastation is great. In Lebanon, the trading and banking center of the Middle East was destroyed by the PLO and Hezbollah with Iranian and Syrian funding and support. Terrorism has caused difficulties in El Salvador. It has been the victim of Farabundo Marti National Liberation terrorists for over a decade and a half. The FMNL and their allies the PLO, Black September, the Red Brigades and the terrorists worldwide bombed thousands of buses and bridges, assassinated mayors, elected officials and burned villages. They placed landmines in coffee plantations so women and children workers would hopefully not go to work. When they did, their limbs were blown off. In Afghanistan, the country was destroyed by the Taliban and al Qaeda. Killings and tortures were daily, routine tools of governance. This is what terror brings to us. Mr. Speaker, this is the reason that I commit myself to a fight against the war on terror because it is the weak, it is the powerless and the innocent who suffer most from terror. There are those who say that it is simply the United States policies that caused 9/11; and yet to the people who say that it was the United States policies who caused the extremists to attack our World Trade Centers, I ask them what is the policy in Sri Lanka that causes the attack of terrorists? What is the policy in the Philippines and Indonesia that caused terrorist bombings? Mr. Speaker, we need to remember at this point exactly why we are in the war on terror. It is because of the terrorism. It is because of the output and the effects of terrorism. It is because in this country on 9/11 soccer moms became security moms. Soccer moms began to wonder how safe their children were at school. Mr. Speaker, families everywhere, whether it is Iraq, Sudan, Rwanda, Chad, Cambodia, families everywhere have a similar hope. They hope that their children will grow up and receive an education, that they will grow up and receive an education in safety knowing that their security is assured. Mr. Speaker, 9/11 for America changed that fact, but terrorism had taken away the security of much of the world previously. Mr. Speaker, it is my contention that you cannot have freedom, liberty and security at the same time as you have tyranny and terrorism. That, Mr. Speaker, is the reason that we are fighting this war on terror, in my opinion. For those who wonder exactly what the connection is between Iraq and the war on terror, we are just now learning from Jordan that al Qaeda terrorists planned to use chemical weapons to blow up the U.S. embassy. They were trained in Iraq before we liberated the country last year. Mr. Speaker, Jay Epstein of The New Republic wrote this week of new and convincing evidence that Mohammed Atta did, in fact, meet with a senior Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague in 2001. We are fighting the war secondly, Mr. Speaker, because of the consequences of Iraq's continued use of deceit and denial to hide weapons that risk the entire world, but especially the rhetoric and intentions were directed at the United States. It is not the policy of this country to wait until the first attack of weapons of mass destruction before we take the necessary steps to stop their proliferation. Mr. Speaker, when I was in Iraq last year, Mr. Kay explained to us that they had found 35 fermenters, fermenters having two types of activities associated with them: first, the making of biological weapons; and second, the making of chemical weapons. Mr. Kay stated at that point that though they did not have the weapons in their hands at that point, they were within 2 weeks at any point they would want to start making significant weapons. Thirdly, our critics should look at root causes to understand why we are fighting this war on terror. The entire effort to liberate Iraq and Afghanistan has been to show a different and new future to the Middle East, a future that contains the promise of at least the beginnings of democracy rather than the awful choice between living under a dictatorship or joining the Jihad. A fourth reason we are fighting the war on terror, Mr. Speaker, is the recognition that 23 other countries have realized we must fight terrorism. Our allies in this coalition, 23 nations, have sent over 25,000 soldiers to help stabilize Iraq in order to allow self- governance to emerge. They have helped us construct schools and telecommunications. Lives have been given by Polish soldiers defending and protecting southern Iraq, in charge of multinational forces working closely with pro-democratic Iraqi forces. British soldiers have defended and protected Basra and Um Qasr. El Salvador soldiers fought and repulsed Sadr terrorists in southern Iraq just a few weeks ago. The Jordanians run the hospitals in Fallujah. Peshmerga Kurds protect and build in northern Iraq. Our Japanese friends have helped in telecommunications and in reconstruction. It seems as though people in this city tend to forget why we are fighting the war on terror and they tend to believe that this war is like maybe an intramural conflict, a game of tag. Mr. Speaker, the stakes are far higher than that. The stakes literally seem at this moment to be whether the world will remain free or come under the awful persecutions we find in the Sudan, in Rwanda; that we found in Bosnia and Kosovo. The future of the world is hanging in the balance, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by my colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Barrett), and I want to yield the floor to him. I appreciate his participation.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, as we consider the implications of the debate about the photographs that our news media has been putting on the front pages and on the TV screens, it is important that we begin to calm down and to take a look at what we are doing and to remember why we are in Iraq. Frankly, as we hear the discussions about having the President impeached and the Secretary of Defense resign, it is important for us to remember that 9-11 changed everything. So soon we forget, Mr. Speaker. 9-11 is the day that innocent civilians in this country went to work in the morning expecting they would come home to their families that night. 9-11 was the day that this body convened for its normal business. 9-11 was the day soccer moms became security moms, worried about the safety of their children in the streets. And President Bush said that he would fight terror; that if you harbored a terrorist, you were a terrorist; if you funded a terrorist, you were a terrorist; if you allowed them to pass through your country, you were a terrorist. And, Mr. Speaker, he has been solid and resolute about that commitment. No matter how despicable the acts of our soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison, they remain the actions of just a few. They do not reflect the majority opinion. They do not reflect American values, and they do not reflect what is going on in Iraq. Because there are magnificent tales of sacrifice and commitment going on in Iraq. For those people who wonder why the Secretary of Defense should not step down, it has not been that long ago, Mr. Speaker, that we saw Rodney King in those famous videos where members of the Los Angeles Police Department were beating him. That circumstance did not reflect the policemen in L.A. any more than our current actions reflect our soldiers in Iraq. To put it in perspective, we should have, if we want equivalent actions, have called for the Governor of California to step down. Secretary Rumsfeld is a tremendous political and military leader. If we look at the advances and the accomplishments that have occurred, to suggest change at this point in this war begins to seem irresponsible. Al Qaeda is completely uprooted and on the move. Thousands of al Qaeda members are dead or in prison. The Taliban is gone from Afghanistan. Saddam Hussein sits in a prison cell. We have over 40 of his top officials in prison cells awaiting trial. Libya has begun to give up its weapons of mass destruction, its nuclear weapons. Pakistan worked with us on the Afghanistan border fighting terror. Worldwide, we are seeing terrorists captured and imprisoned by the network of people on the side of good and against evil. Mr. Speaker, Secretary Rumsfeld is greatly responsible for the actions that are positive and that show that we are winning the war on terror. And to suggest that he step down is irresponsible. But we must also consider what it is going to take to win this war on terror. It is going to take valor, valor like that of Pat Tilghman, who gave up a lucrative career to go serve his country. It is going to take sacrifice, like a young helicopter pilot from my district who died in a night crash in Afghanistan. It is going to take courage, because this is going to be a long fight, Mr. Speaker. And if we are going to run right now, I will guarantee you that we will not win this war on terror, and that every American life will be affected. And those soccer moms who became security moms will have been justified in their fears, and they will have been let down by the leadership of this country, many of whom are calling for the President to come back home and to leave that fight. Mr. Speaker, we owe it to the people of this country and to the free people in the entire world to stand our ground and to fight and to have the resolute intent to see that this war on terror is won. Mr. Speaker, I cast my lot on the side of those people who will fight this war, who will see that liberty triumphs over tyranny and over terrorism.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, first of all, in response, I found a different case from my constituents. The first woman who signed up for one of the drug cards, Mr. Speaker, was 85. She had a monthly cost of $409, and after the card was given and she was able to navigate her way through it, her cost was $13.61. Mr. Speaker, that hardly sounds like the drug industry is going to get a payoff. Mr. Speaker, I, like many, am profoundly disappointed in the photos and the actions of a handful of our soldiers, but I do not for one moment mistake the actions of a few to be representative of the many. On the floor of this House, Mr. Speaker, I have heard my colleagues from the other side of the aisle say that the war being fought in Iraq cannot be won and is, in fact, ``unwinnable.'' And yet with straight faces these same colleagues say that they support our troops. They have short memories, Mr. Speaker. They say they support our troops, and yet some of them earnestly voted against providing our troops with the very resources they need in the field, fighting not only for our liberty but for the freedoms of others. Mr. Speaker, the words and actions of these individuals do not indicate support for our troops, and I find it profoundly disappointing when some show such blatant disregard, dishonor, and disrespect for our troops. Some of my colleagues have made such comments without concern for the impact that it has on the morale of our troops who are currently fighting in Iraq as well as those who are poised to go to Iraq. Is this Election Year rhetoric and the partisan banter part of the Democrats' winnable strategy in Iraq? The bottom line is that some Members of the other party have become representative for retreat and appeasement. Mr. Speaker, appeasement and retreat has not worked in the past and will not work in the future with the terrorists. Mr. Speaker, we must win this war on terror. The stakes are too great for the future of humanity. I went to Iraq late last year and personally visited with our soldiers. The young men in this picture and the young women that I met, those are the soldiers in Iraq who are an all-volunteer force who are fighting so that our children and grandchildren do not have to live in a world where there is daily fear of terrorism. These men and women deserve the thanks of a grateful Nation and a grateful world. They deserve to have our unwavering support for their unwavering belief in liberty and their understanding of freedom. Since the American people will not hear these stories on the evening news, Mr. Speaker, I am here tonight to share true stories of astonishing bravery, courage, compassion, valor, and steel nerve. Mr. Speaker, I am talking about our soldiers and what they have done for America, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the entire world. The soldiers of the 101st Airborne Division have been working to make Iraq secure but also have been putting time and effort into helping towns and villages with their ``Operation Helping Hands'' program. With ``Operation Helping Hands,'' our soldiers donate their own money to help provide families with food and health care necessities. Brigade Commander Colonel Ben Hodges came up with the idea of helping the poor families in the area. They have collected several thousand dollars, which goes a long way toward helping many Iraqi families. Mr. Speaker, our troops are compassionate. They are helping Iraqi families in a way that they have never been helped before. Soldiers are often out in Iraq communities to provide medical care and humanitarian assistance. A small, impoverished village about 10 miles from Baghdad was recently paid a visit by personnel from the Medical Civic Action Program. This program sends doctors and medics out to provide free medical care on a regular basis. Because of conditions under Saddam Hussein, soldiers are treating diseases we rarely see here at home such as tuberculosis, hepatitis, and polio. Mr. Speaker, we should also be proud of our troops for fighting for women's rights. For the first time in history, women in Mosul, Iraq were able to join the rest of the world in celebrating International Women's Day. The day recognizes coordinated efforts of women everywhere for equal rights and political and economic equality. The People's Assembly Building was rededicated as the Center for Iraqi Women. The center will serve as a meeting place for all women of Iraq where they can share ideas, offer training, coordinate communications, and build a safer homeland. And in Mosul, Iraqi police say they are grateful to the soldiers from the U.S. Army's 503rd Military Police Battalion for their assistance in rebuilding police stations. Coalition forces helped to renovate several police stations and enabled the Iraqi police officers to protect their fellow citizens. There are more than 1,600 policemen who have trained from scratch in an 8-week training program. Mr. Speaker, these are the stories of our young men and women in Iraq. These are the stories of the people who are fighting for freedom and fighting to rebuild a country. Mr. Speaker, the war on terror must be won. The new Iraqi Army is growing. In early March, more than 1,000 recruits of the 4th Battalion graduated from the nine-week basic training program. These are our soldiers stories. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands more. I am proud of our soldiers and want to say ``thank you.'' These are not the stories that you will hear on the news, or in the newspapers--nor will you hear them during election year rhetoric. A U.S. soldier evacuated an Iraqi woman, Farha Abed Saad for medical treatment after she had been harmed by the thugs who wish to rob Iraqis of their right to freedom. ``Thank God, you have come here to Iraq and make us free,'' said Ms. Saad, kissing a soldier's hands. ``When I see you, I see my own sons! Thank you, thank you.'' It is a sad day, Mr. Speaker, when some in this city who routinely ignore the great accomplishments of our soldiers only to politicize the war at their expense. We will win this war on terror, Mr. Speaker, there is no other option. This IS a winnable war--and we must stand behind our policy and our troops with a firm resolve. A world controlled by terrorists is not acceptable. If the United States of America cannot defeat terrorism, who in the world can? We will continue to fight against Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda affiliated groups--like the one who viciously beheaded 26-year-old Nick Berg. Nick Berg was a civilian who voluntarily went to Iraq to help rebuild Iraqi communication antennas. And my prayers are with his family. After 9-11, Mr. Speaker, America was called to a new destiny. Our destiny is to defeat terrorism and tyranny. Amid the towers of American tragedy, Mr. Speaker, emerged our soldiers as towers of American strength. And they shall have my eternal gratitude.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I rise to address this body on the National Day of Prayer. The Constitution--in a word--is the document that defines the values and principles of America. Nearly 220 years ago, a few men, with extraordinary vision, used the lessons that history taught us to create this binding document that has served as the burning touch of our Nation's freedom. But over time, that flame has been has been dimmed, and its power has been mitigated, and before we know it, it will be a dull light that is indecipherable. You see, over time, Mr. Speaker, we have let the Judiciary, slowly chip away the freedoms that are guaranteed to us under the constitution--chipping away so much that some of our liberties are unrecognizable. For example, Mr. Speaker, the First Amendment to the Constitution says, ``Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . .'' It says that those of us who have faith in a Higher Power have the right to pray, express our beliefs. Yet, our Federal Judges have ruled out prayer in schools. They have ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance, particularly, ``. . . one Nation, under God . . .'' is a violation of separation of state doctrine. Those who would ban our inalienable right to express our beliefs in a higher power selectively choose to cite the first part of the clause that says ``Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion . . .'' They leave the second part, which says ``. . . or prohibiting free exercise thereof . . .'' Congress opens up every session with a prayer, the President of the United States uses a Bible when he is sworn into office by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The Declaration of Independence, arguably the single most powerful political document in world history, mentions God in the first paragraph and ``divine Providence'' in the last. Religion in the public sector is not prohibited by the Constitution, the Constitution is what makes our ability to freely exercise our belief possible! The Second Amendment to the Constitution says, ``A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.'' Some would argue, and unfortunately some have successfully done so, that this is not an individual right, but a collective right associated with service in a militia, or in modern terms the National Guard. The Founders had a profound understanding that individuals and their rights were the only true check against an overzealous government. After all, they had just defeated one that sought to control access to arms. Just a moment ago I added emphasis on the ``people,'' I did so because right belongs to them, not the President and most assuredly not the Federal Government. The Fifth Amendment says unequivocally that no person shall ``. . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without due compensation.'' Yet Mr. Speaker, in my district of Southern New Mexico, we can't water our crops because our water is being diverted for a minnow based on science that only a writer of fiction could love. We have people who are prevented from using their God-given resources to feed, clothe, house and provide energy for their neighbors. The Endangered Species Act, Mr. Speaker, was noble in its intent and just in its cause. Not one of us would seek the termination of a species. Yet the law has been twisted, turned and implemented in ways that directly violate our constitutional rights. Simply stated, and directly supported by the plain wording of the 5th Amendment, Uncle Sam can't take our property without due process. He definitely can't take it without compensating for the loss. So we must ask ourselves, when does it matter to us enough to make a difference? And the Tenth Amendment says that we have States Rights, ``The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'' Yet the Federal government, at the behest of highly objectionable rulings by the courts over the last 100 years, has intruded on every aspect of our lives and ignored those rights reserved for the states and the people. We know that we live under a constitution, but we are living in a time when the Constitution only means what the Judiciary says it means--simply stated, we can't let that happen. The constitution has been tyrannized by people who honestly believe that we are incapable, as a free people, of living our lives in the manner that best serves us and our families. The courts have been willing accomplices and many of the core freedoms that are guaranteed to us under the constitution have been slowly but continuously taken from us. I believe that the Constitution has been treated unjustly by the courts, and I believe we need to take a look at how our Constitution-- this symbol of freedom--can be returned to its rightful place as the foundation of our freedom--instead of being just another document that tourists visit at the National Archives in Washington. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Framers of the Constitution feared tyranny from the judiciary more than from the other two branches, so they placed deliberate limitations on the judiciary. As a result, under their plan, ``the Judiciary is beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power . . . [and] the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from the quarter.'' These are not my words, but taken directly from the Federalists Papers. Can there be any doubt that our forefathers saw a danger to our way of life and intentionally erected a wall of separation to protect us from it? There shouldn't be a doubt, but it stares us in the face every day. The bottom line is, Americans should not have to fear ``judge-made laws'' as a reality of life. We elect our legislators to make our laws, we elect the executive branch to implement those laws, and the judiciary is charged with holding people accountable to these laws and determining the constitutionality of laws. There should be no doubt, either, that government is the greatest, if not only, threat to individual liberty. Neither the United States, nor any of the branches of the government, nor the states, is the ultimate authority of the Constitution. The ultimate authority of the Constitution is the people of the Union, just like Thomas Jefferson said. We need to make sure that the Constitution doesn't just stay locked up in a display case at the National Archives on Pennsylvania Avenue. We need to bring it into our homes, our schools, our businesses, and our courtrooms. Only then can we make sure that our schools are symbols of freedom-- that our families are symbols of freedom . . . that our businesses are symbols of freedom . . . that our state legislatures, and local governments are symbols of freedom. When its all said and done, my greatest desire is for my grandchildren to look back on their grandfather and their neighbors and say, ``They left us a better country than they inherited. They cared enough to protect freedom for the generations to come.'' Mr. Speaker, I was in Vietnam in 1971, 1972, the early part of 1973, and the early part of 1974. I was in Vietnam flying when Jane Fonda made her visit to the north giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Mr. Speaker, I was in Vietnam, or on my way there, when the presumptive Democrat candidate threw his ribbons across the fence into the dumpster or his friends or his medals, or some similarity of that representation, of our country. Mr. Speaker, as I listen to the comments from the floor of the House that said that this war is not winnable, I would remind my colleagues that all wars are unwinnable in the heart; and as they seek to undermine the will of the American people, they should consider carefully what they are doing. Mr. Speaker, we must complete the job that we started before the terrorists complete the job that they started. Mr. Speaker, I was in France on 9-11. So I was compelled to fly to come back to this country as soon as flight service was restarted. I came through Dallas-Ft. Worth about 10 days after the attacks. Mr. Speaker, when I came through Dallas-Ft. Worth regional airport, that bustling busy hub of much of the traffic, the air traffic in the western United States, I think that our plane was the only one deplaning. I looked up and down the corridors and walked the full distance to the baggage check without seeing one other plane deplaning. Mr. Speaker, when I went to get a cab to go to the hotel, there was not one cab available because there were no passengers to ask for cabs. As I finally got a transport van from the hotel, arrived at the hotel to find that there were very, very few customers in the hotel. Mr. Speaker, our economy was this close to collapsing. If we first lose the airlines and the cab industries and the hotel industries and the hospitality industries, we are looking at losing banks and financial institutions and insurance companies. Mr. Speaker, the terrorists set out to do a job a decade ago first attacking the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Mr. Speaker, they did that attack in 1993 and then again in 2001. If we are going to sit on our heels trying a policy of appeasement to deal with the terrorists, I will tell you that the terrorists will win because we cannot sustain repeated attacks on our economy and of the civilian population of America like occurred on September 11, 2001. There are estimates that that cost alone, that one day, exceeded $2 trillion, Mr. Speaker. Our economy is $11 trillion. So we took over 15 percent, close to 20 percent of our economy out in one day, not to mention the 2,000 lives. Mr. Speaker, what I hear from the House floor and what I hear from my friends on the other side of the aisle sounds more partisan when I put it in context of the many complaints that I should have heard from them under the deployments that President Clinton had. We went into Bosnia in the early part of the 1990s, and President Clinton said we would be out by the end of that year. Instead, troops are still there today. Yet, I do not hear one comment about his deployment into Bosnia. If the names Kosovo, Somalia, Haiti, and Macedonia do not mean anything to my colleagues, those are additional areas in which the previous President dispatched our troops to try to stabilize a very unstable region. Mr. Speaker, Mr. Clinton launched cruise missiles into Sudan and Iraq, into Haiti with no U.N. resolution. Yet I hear no comments from the floor of this House. So when I hear my colleagues saying that this war is unwinnable, I think that they are engaged in partisan politics which strikes at the very desire of this country to fight its war. And when I watched the aid and comfort of 1971 and 1972 by the presumptive Democrat candidate for President and Jane Fonda, I am beginning to hear a similar tone. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, as one of the Vietnam vets who returned to this country without one public or private official saying thank for your time, Mr. Speaker, I caution our friends to be careful of the rhetoric they use.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for his comments and the gentlewoman for her comments. They both pointed out many things that we really should be discussing. I have seen the Mediscare tactics that are used in my State. In fact, State officials are going around and trying to convince senior groups that in fact this is not a good plan, but they are sledding against heavy opposition because the seniors themselves have been reading the bill. The seniors have looked at the endorsements of this bill. I think the endorsements were a very key part of not only passing the bill but feeling comfortable with passing it. We are endorsed, of course, by the AARP. Almost all of the hospital associations endorsed this. The physician associations endorsed this. The prescription manufacturers endorsed it. One group after another and maybe either the gentlewoman from Florida or the gentleman from Georgia can tell me exactly, but I think there were over 130 endorsements of groups that cater to seniors and watch out for seniors, saying at the end of the day, this bill is a good bill. So it was with some comfort that I voted for it. There are questions that come up about this bill when we are talking, people get concerned about the reimportation and why we cannot reimport drugs from other countries and why we did not put the reimportation of drugs into this bill. Mr. Speaker, I would remind this body that about 2 weeks ago we saw on the evening news, in China, a firm that was distributing counterfeit formula for infants, and we began to see hundreds of infants dying and hundreds of infants sick because there was a counterfeit drug used. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, the last question that you have to ask is if we allow the wholesale reimportation of drugs, are we going to have those same counterfeit problems on our shelves here as China saw? At the crux of the problem is the security that we face when we purchase anything from our drug stores on the shelves of our stores. Mr. Speaker, that is one of the most important concepts that seniors ask about and there was a very good answer and a very sad answer given on that evening news report. The one piece of legislation that as we look at our medical facilities, as we look at our medical costs, as we look at the ability of physicians and hospitals to provide care, the one thing that we need to have passed, Mr. Speaker, and I am sure the gentleman from Georgia will concur, is we need medical liability reform. The personal injury lawyers are driving up the costs of medicine, but they are driving providers out of business. We have been told, Mr. Speaker, in my district in one town we may not have an OB-GYN left in the town and it is a town of about 75,000, that there will not be an OB-GYN left in that town by the end of the year because of the threat of lawsuit. Mr. Speaker, one of the desperate problems that we must cure is the lawsuit abuse that is occurring in this country. No one person would watch while there was no remedy in our courts. What is going on right now is not a remedy. It is considered a lottery. The trial lawyers feel like they have a lottery, and they have access to everyone who provides medical coverage in this country, and it is literally driving the costs up too high to continue to practice. I yield to the gentleman if he would like to discuss this.

Mr. PEARCE. I thank the gentleman for his comments and the gentlewoman for her comments. Women are the great beneficiaries, and a tremendous number of the people who will participate in this prescription drug program under Medicare will be women because many of them fall in the lower income strata and many will qualify for the 100 percent coverage throughout the spectrum, but they have been made afraid that they are going to be the ones falling into the gap. The only people who fall under the gap are those who can afford it. Those with the most desperate needs get coverage all the way up and down the spectrum, Mr. Speaker. So that is an important distinction to make. One of the things that we have not yet talked about that the prescription drug bill did, it did three things to kind of give the prescription drug makers a wake-up call. None of us would choke the prescription drug manufacturers down to nothing because they are making magnificent miracle-like drugs that are extending life and extending the quality of life. But we did three things in this bill to really get the attention of the prescription drug manufacturers just a little wake-up call, if the Members would. First of all, we cause generics to come to the market sooner in this bill. Secondly, we give incentives for people who will use the generics to convert useage over from the more expensive prescriptions into the generic field. But the third thing that we did was to stop an abusive pattern of constantly extending patents which kept competitive prescription drugs from coming to market. A prescription drug maker gets a patent when they reinvest in a new drug. When they do the research and development and create a new pharmaceutical, they have a patent period, and what they are doing is just indefinitely extending the patent. They would go to a second patent period, a third, a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth by minor changes in their patent application. It was legal, but it was not right. So what we begin in this bill is saying that they get one patent period, they get one extension, and no more. The effect of that is it is going to bring those competing products to the market sooner. So we did three things in this bill, Mr. Speaker, to really address the seniors' frustration with their prescription drug makers to let them know that we appreciate what they do, they do good work, they are good companies, they are good corporate citizens, but to please look at their practices just a little bit. Access and affordability are the two parameters of care. It does not matter if one has affordability if they do not have access. This bill attempted to cure access as well as affordability. And, Mr. Speaker, I think that we have done well in our job. I thank the gentleman from Georgia and the gentlewoman from Florida for coming out tonight. This is a very important topic, and since yesterday was the initiation point of the ability to sign up for the drug cards, those discount cards, we felt like it was important to remind the people of this House exactly what that means and what the bill means. We wanted to have a review of the process which was directed at again the two basic overarching problems. One is the need for a prescription drug benefit in this country because our seniors were having to choose between food and medicine. The second need we were addressing is the financial difficulty that Medicare faces in a very near-term future, extending on into the very distant future. This Medicare bill and this prescription drug bill began the process of reforming the Medicare program to where its financial viability is greater to where the next generation and the generation beyond that has access to the Medicare bill. But we also put in a prescription drug benefit that has the potential to dramatically lower the prescription drug cost that our seniors will face. Mr. Speaker, I for one am proud of the work that we have done. And as I have visited with seniors around my district, and we have had 10 or 12 town hall meetings in my district about the prescription drug bill, I find that seniors are energized and excited about what we have done here in our legislation. They are excited about what it does currently for seniors, but they are also excited about the reforms that we have made to where their children and grandchildren will hopefully have access to the Medicare plan which they have grown to love and to trust. Mr. Speaker, I share with the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) the pride in what this body has done.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the body for allowing me to come and address them tonight. America is absolutely a magnificent place. I was one of six children growing up on a small five acre farm just south of Hobbs, New Mexico. My father worked in the oil industry as a roustabout. We were not poor but we definitely did not have as much as many families have. And to have the six children graduate from high school and go on to college, and for each one of us to become successful in our own ways, to be blessed with the opportunity to serve in this House of Representatives, is truly one of the great blessings that this country offers. My wife and I were able, about 14 years ago, to make a down payment on a business. And in this country we were able to pay that business off and able to build that business from four employees to 15 employees because of the tremendous opportunities that this country has. One of the things that became obvious to many people in the last several years is that with all of the opportunities and with all of the hope that is there were still things that needed to be done. Last year, as many as 75 percent of Americans said that we needed to pass a prescription drug bill. Mr. Speaker, when I got here to Congress, I began to look at the Medicare program. And one of the things that struck me was that both Democrat and Republican analysts, the economists, both forecast tremendous difficulties in the financial part of Medicare within the next 4 to 10 years, depending on which economists you talked with. So it became obvious to me that we had two significant problems. We had a need for a prescription drug plan because America's seniors were having to choose between food and medicine, and we had a Medicare program that faced insolvency, some say earlier than the 2017 projected by the trustees of the Medicare program. At any rate, whichever figure that you use, the tremendous financial difficulties faced by the budget created by the Medicare problems needed facing. As a business owner, I was not about to sit by idly and let that train wreck come toward me. We began to address the problem. So these were the two things that we put into a bill. The prescription drug bill and we began to reform Medicare in order to have Medicare available to the next generations and to the generations beyond that. Now, we wanted to craft a bill that was entirely voluntary. That was very important. Many of our seniors wanted a choice. They said we want a choice but do not mandate the choice. Make the choice voluntary. So that was one of the elements that we put into this bill, that it was entirely voluntary. Seniors can choose to participate or they can choose to stay exactly as they have been. Now, in my own marriage we are a couple that would probably split our choices because I do not like change. I am like the seniors that do not want change, but my wife every day reads all she can about medical literature. She reads all she can about the different medicines that are available. Myself, I just want to know what ones I am supposed to take and I will keep taking it. So I think that in our marriage that my wife and I represent the two different choices that seniors told us that they would like to have in, and this bill allows both camps to have it the way they would like to. Now the reform process that we have put into place was significant. For the first time under Medicare, we are able to give physicals, people entering into the Medicare program will have physicals. And if there are problems that are noted, then Medicare can pay for those problems to begin curing because another reform that we have put in is that for the first time we are allowing disease management instead of waiting until the problem becomes catastrophic, which was the old method under Medicare. We are now proactive in dealing with the illnesses out front in allowing the physicals, but then also allowing disease management. Now, under this program, another reform that we put into place is that we now allow screenings for cancer. We allow screenings for diabetes. We all know that if you screen and detect early, that the cost of cure and the cost of remedy is less than if you wait until the catastrophic point. Not only is the cost less, Mr. Speaker, also the survivability is much greater. So there are many reasons that we felt reform was desperately needed in this plan and we have addressed those one by one and put deep reforms into this plan so that Medicare could begin to lower its costs currently while offering better care, greater survivability, and offering financial stability into the next generation and the generations beyond. Now, I mentioned that we wanted competition in this bill and we got competition. Seniors are going to be allowed to choose private parties if they would like that, but they are allowed to stay in Medicare as they know it if that is what they want. Now, there has been much hubbub, Mr. Speaker, many of our friends on the other side of the aisle declare that this bill is full of corporate welfare. Now, what they are trying to cover up is that we have made some very good decisions. Many of the seniors in this country have retiree benefits. My father is an example. He retired from Exxon and has medical benefits through that retirement plan. Almost always when seniors tell me that they want us to not mess with their retirement benefits, they are hoping that their company will continue retirement benefits into the future. What we did in this bill, Mr. Speaker, that is described as corporate welfare, is we gave an incentive to those companies who have retiree benefits. We are willing to pay almost a quarter or maybe a little bit more if the companies will keep those plans in place. Now, we will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that before we put in plan into place in the bill, 40 percent of the Nation's companies that offer retiree benefits were scheduled to drop them or delete them. After we passed the bill, that 40 percent dropped to 16 percent. Now, keep in mind that if the retirement benefit has dropped, is dropped by companies, that the Federal Government will pick up 100 percent of the costs as those people transition from retiree benefits over into Medicare. To the Republicans in the House, it made sense that we would do what we could to encourage companies to hold those retirement benefits because our seniors liked them, but also they are cheaper for the Federal Government. So it can be described as corporate welfare if you would like, but the greater and deeper understanding is that we wanted to create an incentive which would allow companies just the possibility of extending retirement benefits. One of the most dramatic things we did under the bill, Mr. Speaker, is we put a health savings account in. Health savings accounts are a fairly simple process. It is a medical IRA. You can put money in tax fee at any age. You build up interest on it tax free. You can take the money out tax free at any age if you use it for medical purposes. And then you can pass it on to the next generation if you do not use it, and the next generation has a head start on the cost of their medical care. Mr. Speaker, the health savings account can, by itself, revolutionize the way we buy and spend our health dollars in this country today. The health savings account can be used for medical purposes which are described very broadly in this bill. It can be used to pay for premiums. You can buy your insurance through your health savings account. You use it to pay for deductibles. You can use it to pay for office visits, emergency room or prescription drug costs. Mr. Speaker, I would tell you that my company that my wife and I had built, if we still had that company, I will tell you that we would give the bonuses that each year we gave to our employees, instead of writing the check to the employee, we would have put it into their health savings accounts. Typically, we would have put $2,500 or $3,000 into our employees' accounts each year. Then it probably also would have lowered their take-home pay, and we would put that money over into the health savings account so that we reach the maximum of $5,000 per year per account. After we had put 5 to 10 or $15,000 into the account, we would then start shopping for insurance which instead of having a $500 deductible, it would have had a $2,500 deductible or $3,000 deductible. It is at that point that the insurance costs begin to collapse, usually to about one-quarter of what they are. So that $3,000 deductible, maybe the insurance rates might fall from $500 per month down to $100 or $150 a month. As we compress the cost of health insurance, Mr. Speaker, more of our young couples will opt back into buying health insurance; and the young people in the system, those who use it the least, make our health insurance system more stable. Again, another thing that, of course, we did in this plan is we built the prescription drug benefit into it. Basically, we wanted to make sure that the people of low incomes were treated as well as we could, and then people of higher incomes would receive a different treatment. We simply split that up in order to allow the government to pay for it. If we had given the same prescription drug benefit to all people, as our friends on the other side of the aisle have suggested, the cost would have been driven from about $400 billion to $1 trillion. We felt like that for the future generation's sake that we must watch the cost on this bill as much as possible. So for our seniors, at 150 percent the rate of poverty and less, that is about $18,000 for a married couple, we have no gap in coverage. They are covered at 75/25. That is, government pays 75 percent; the participant pays 25 percent. And that is up to about $5,200, at which point we said we think that is catastrophic coverage and we will begin to cover it at 95 percent of everything above that upper threshold, the cap of the program. The cap is available to all income levels because we did not think anyone should risk losing their house and home. If you have more than $18,000, if you are more than 150 percent the rate of poverty, then we have a different program. Up to $2,200, you again have the 75/25 split, the government picking up 75 percent, the participant 25 percent; but then there is the gap in coverage that has been so demonized by our friends on the other side of the aisle. We put the gap in simply to allow the bill to be paid on this, the Medicare bill to be paid by the government. My mom is an example of someone who falls into the gap. So I called her before we voted the first time on this, Mr. Speaker, because I, like other Members, still go home for Thanksgiving dinner and need to talk to my mom when I get there. I felt it best to address the issue up front. So we called her and asked. Her response to me was, Son, we have been blessed more than most people. We are not rich, we are not wealthy, but we have a pension that comes in from Exxon. We think that if we can pay more we should pay more. It helped me to make up my mind on this bill, to vote for that famous gap that people are talking about, which simply is an effort to make this bill affordable to this generation and the next generation, but the prescription drug benefit again is voluntary. You have the ability to opt in or the ability to opt out of it, but it is available for all. Now then, that program starts in 2006, Mr. Speaker; and so we wanted to do something for our seniors that are currently facing the desperate need to pay for their prescription drugs. We have this year and next year a $600 card for those people at 150 percent the rate of poverty or less. Those people get the $600 card, which is just like a credit card and can be used to pay for their prescriptions. We felt that the people on the lowest end of the income spectrum needed attention immediately, and we did give that. Also, one of the reforms that we built into this Medicare bill was income as it relates to Medicare. It is a very high income relating but still not only in the prescription drug bill; but in the Medicare portion of it, we felt like it was needed to begin to control costs so that Medicare is available to the next generation and the generation beyond. There were some leveling mechanisms that we also put into this bill. Mr. Speaker, I campaigned, talking about the need to reimburse all States equally. Before this bill, an urban State received higher reimbursement than a rural State for the same procedure. If a person went into a hospital in New Mexico and had a procedure done, Medicare would reimburse at a lesser rate than if they went into the hospital in New York City. I campaigned saying that we needed to level those two amounts, the reimbursement amounts, and we did that 100 percent for the hospitals. The hospitals in rural areas now receive the same reimbursement for procedures that hospitals in urban areas previously did. I will tell you, Mr. Speaker, that another important thing in this bill for New Mexico was the fact that we addressed the border question. By immigration law, when a person comes to the border, immigration law says that the nearest hospital will take that person and cure any medical deficiencies that they have. If the Federal Government is going to mandate that, and my district is on the border, then the Federal Government needs to help pay the bill, because I have hospitals in my district that have been greatly penalized by this requirement that should face all of us if it is a Federal law but instead was being faced just by the border hospitals. There is $1 billion in this bill, Mr. Speaker, that helps to defray the cost during the next 4 years that border hospitals have faced dealing with this immigration question. Mr. Speaker, we also recognize that disproportionate share hospitals, the DSH hospitals, should receive greater reimbursement in this because they deal with a greater percentage of Medicare patients. If that is the case, then DSH hospitals, the disproportionate share hospitals, are receiving also a little more help under this bill. Mr. Speaker, we have done dramatic work in this bill. I will tell you that the enrollment process for the prescription drug card began just yesterday. First of all, let me share, Mr. Speaker, with the House the enrollment process. You can get enrollment information from your local pharmacy or on the Web site, www.medicare.gov. That is www.medicare.gov, or you can call a toll free number of 1-800-MEDICARE, and you should receive packets in the mail from your local drug card sponsors. You can log on to the www.medicare.gov or call the 1-800- MEDICARE number to find out if you qualify for a prescription drug card and which card will benefit you the most. To enroll in a Medicare-approved discount card program, beneficiaries must first select the discount drug card that best meets their needs. They then will submit basic information about the drug coverage status to select a drug discount card program. You will turn in your ZIP code, the drugs that you are currently taking, and how far you are willing to drive to your pharmacy, and then you are told how much that it is going to cost you. Mr. Speaker, I received information just yesterday about the first person who was able to sign up for one of these cards. This person was 85 years old. She lives in New Mexico. She gets a $400-a-month Social Security check. Her prescription cost is $409 per month. Mr. Speaker, she is the target that we had in mind when we built this bill: people of low incomes, modest means, who are paying almost everything out for medicines that they take in. She called the 1-800-MEDICARE to find out if she would benefit from a prescription drug card. She told them which medications she used, how much she paid for them, which pharmacy she wanted to go to, how much her Social Security check was, and what current benefits she had. They used all of her information to determine which prescription drug card would benefit her. Mr. Speaker, I myself felt like we had passed a good bill; but when I got the information from this lady in our State in New Mexico, I knew that we had done a good job. Mr. Speaker, we have not yet gotten into the heart of the competition; yet this woman in New Mexico, a retiree, 85 years old, $409 a month in medications, with her card, her cost is going to be $13.61. Mr. Speaker, this is the value of competition. It is this competition that the Republicans in this House wanted to unleash and to get active in people's lives, allowing competition, not the government, to drive down the prices that we find our seniors paying. Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that there was great debate. People wanted the Federal Government to negotiate for prices. Much was made of the fact that we did not have the government negotiating prices. Three of the letters that are most hated in the alphabet by our seniors are HMOs. When I go to town hall meetings, I hear the anger at HMOs because the HMOs have someone sitting in a room somewhere that is not a physician, who is telling them what medical procedures they can have and what prescriptions they can have. Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that in the debate of whether or not the Federal Government should be buying medications and redistributing them, I felt like the competitive model was going to be the most powerful, and when I see that the competitive model that we have unleashed in this bill drives the cost from $409 a month to $13.61 per month, I know that we have chosen correctly. I do not think that the government could buy and distribute medicines that well. If we think the government can do it, then we think that the postal service is going to work efficiently tomorrow. I myself do not feel that way. Mr. Speaker, I am joined tonight by good friends and colleagues of mine. We have got the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey) and the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite). I would welcome them to the discussion and would ask that the gentlewoman from Florida (Ms. Ginny Brown-Waite) take the floor, make any comments that she would have, and then allow her to turn the floor to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey), who is a physician; and I would like to continue this discussion of the Medicare bill and the things that they are finding in their districts.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez), and he is exactly right. We have passed the energy bill out of this Congress, and it is stalled out, unable to move further. The estimates are that energy bill would create 800,000 jobs nationwide. Now, the most important thing it would do is begin to limit our dependence on foreign oil. And when people ask, what is suddenly causing the price of oil to escalate, it is very simple. The OPEC countries decided they are going to try to squeeze off the supply, understanding our demand is fairly constant. If they squeeze off the world supply of oil, the price goes up. Now, those are independent countries. They operate on their own. Our President is asking them, it is an arbitrary decision on their part, if they will not consider going ahead and increasing the supply where the price will moderate. But the fact remains that we do get about 60 percent of our energy from overseas, and there are people in this country, the extremists, who would say we should not produce any energy in this country. They would like to move all drilling to other countries. They do not want to drill offshore, they do not want us to drill in the Rocky Mountains, they do not want those jobs in America, and they do not want an America independent of foreign energy production. Mr. Speaker, this economy that America has is built on one thing and one thing only: It is built on affordable energy. And right now the price of natural gas in this country is between $5 and $6, last year spiking up to $10. In Russia and in Africa right now the price is between 50 cents and 70 cents. We cannot sustain our economy at the levels it is and the levels that it has traditionally been, paying five times for our energy. There are those extremists who say that we cannot and should not drill in areas that have been drilled before on our public lands. Mr. Speaker, we are going to decide in this country if we want a vibrant economy or if we are going to send all those jobs overseas, because that is what will happen. Infrastructure will eventually relocate to the area where energy costs are one-tenth of what they are today. In the meantime, we are going to be faced with paying more at the pump because we have internal policies which refuse to allow drilling to occur in places in this country where there are known and proven reserves. Mr. Speaker, I would also make comment that it is time that we have these discussions. I think that in this Nation we can reach the balance between preserving the environment and providing affordable energy, and it is time that we begin to look at those policies which will allow us to do that. We cannot continue shipping jobs overseas because of the cost of litigation, because of the cost of energy, because of our unwillingness to deal with the regulatory climate that simply frightens people out of investing in new jobs in this country. Mr. Speaker, we ourselves, as Americans, are going to determine at what level our economy operates, and it is each one of those small increments that will determine exactly what we do. In concluding the discussion tonight, Mr. Speaker, and I thank the gentleman from Colorado for participating with me, I would remind the House that our economy has been suffering from three deep shocks. It is suffering from the deep shock of the dot- com collapse, of the 9/11 strike, and finally the corporate scandals, which are now being tried in our courts. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans and the President have charted bold initiatives that are pulling us out of the economic recessions that began in the late 1990s and early 2000. Those recoveries must be sustained. That tremendous job growth in March is an indicator of what lies ahead, 308,000 new jobs in 1 month. Mr. Speaker, we have 138 million jobs in this Nation, but every single person who needs a job and a career should be able to find it. And with the policies that this administration and this Congress have passed, we are on the road to recovery and providing careers for every person that looks for them.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, as most of the Members did, I just concluded about 16 days in my home district. We had visits about Medicare for the first week and about the economy and the job growth for the second, first of all, addressing concerns and answering questions. Mr. Speaker, I will tell you that as I talked to my constituents about the prescription drug Medicare bill, there was a deep understanding that we have done significant work here, first of all, in creating the benefit for our seniors that is desperately needed, but, secondly, causing deep reforms in the Medicare program which should begin to increase the financial stability of that program. Mr. Speaker, while we were home, there was a dramatic event. During my entire life, I have seen Tax Freedom Day, that day which every American works up until that time to provide their entire income for the Federal Government. That Tax Freedom Day has been as far out as the middle of May, tending toward the first of June. Mr. Speaker, this year, because of the tax cuts created during the last 3 years, Tax Freedom Day came on April 11. That means every American worked their entire workweek for the Federal Government up to April 11, but those days from April 11 on to December 31, they are working to use the money for their families, for the education of their families, for just the rent, paying for their house, owning a car, or those things that the American dream really entails. Mr. Speaker, it is extremely important that we are beginning to cause Tax Freedom Day to move back toward January 1, rather than further out toward December 31. We should work less for the government and more for our families. I will tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that without doubt the family is the key building block of society. Strong families create strong individuals. And strong individuals create strong countries. That is exactly the paradigm that we should be following and have followed in this country throughout our history. And as we tax less and put more into the pockets of hard-working Americans, I will tell my colleagues, Mr. Speaker, that the strength of the family increases, thereby increasing the strength of our country. Mr. Speaker, one of the questions that comes up, and it is a fair question, why are we in the economic straits that we are in? What things have contributed to the financial situation that this country faces? Mr. Speaker, the first event which really shocked our economy, and there have been three deep events that shocked our economy, and it is instructive that we would remember all three of those, but the first of them was the collapse of the dot-com economy. Most Americans will remember in the late 1990s that the dot-com industry had really sprung up from very little to something significant, companies that really did not have product. They were not even selling anything. They had no cash flow, no revenues. Those stocks were escalating from no value to $200 and $300 value. Just the capital gains tax off of those sales of stocks began to thrust our growth curves upward. It was primarily due to those capital gains taxes, Mr. Speaker, that we were seeing what economists and what politicians felt like were surplus as far as the eye could see. We remember those days at the end of the Clinton administration where there were the surpluses as far as the eye could see, but they were based on stock values that really had no foundation under them. It was an explosion in value that was driven by emotion, but not fact. Now, that collapse in the dot-com industry came, as well it should have. Stocks absolutely at some point have to have something to back them up. That collapse came, brought us back down actually to the same level of economy we had been sustaining, about a 3.5 percent of growth. It was the incline up, then it bubbled back over. And after the collapse we had about a 3.5 percent rate of growth. That shock into our economy was significant, though, shocking us into a mild recession, one that we should have come out from fairly soon. But just as we were coming up out of that recession, 9/11 came without warning. Now, that was a significant shock on the economy, Mr. Speaker. That shock, by the estimates of some, cost $2 trillion and over 2,000 lives. $2 trillion needs to be put into the perspective that our total economy is in the $11 trillion range, so approximately 20 percent of our economic size was taken out of the economy in one day. When people are concerned about the cost of the war on terror, and it is extremely high, no doubt about it, if we assume that we are up to around $200 billion at this point, Mr. Speaker, it still is only about one-tenth of what that one day cost on 9/11 was. That shocked our economy on the heels of the dot-com collapse into a deeper recession and continuing difficulties. But until 9/11, several things had happened. In those eras and those times of surpluses as far as the eye could see, both the Federal Government and the State governments began to reorient their spending, beginning to pay for programs that had long been underfunded. It is a complaint of our friends across the aisle, and that is fine that they would complain about it, that spending increased tremendously under President Bush. But I will tell you that some of the areas that the spending increased in are the very ones they are criticizing as underfunding. It is really difficult for me to understand when education spending was at $27 billion from the Federal programs and has increased under President Bush to over $66 billion, approaching $70 billion, that we are described as underfunding education. But if one listens to the rhetoric very carefully, Mr. Speaker, it is underfunding the authorized amount. They do not want to say they are cutting funding, although they occasionally slip over the line and say that, because the truth is we have more than doubled funding for education from Federal sources under President Bush. And keep in mind it might have been at a better time. It might have been that we might have understood that those surpluses did not exist as far as the eye could see. But I am not sure anyone on either side understood the reality of what was going on. And it is very easy to understand after the fact. A second area that often we hear our friends on the other side of the aisle discussing is the underfunding of the IDEA, the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act. Now, it is curious that we hear those descriptions of underfunding in that program, when the truth is that at the inception of IDEA the funding was about $1 billion and for almost 30 years stayed very constant, much of that time under Democrat control. The funding stayed constant at about $1 billion. And finally under President Clinton, it eased up to almost $2 billion. Now, today you will hear all-out assaults that the President is desperately underfunding IDEA. One would think maybe he had cut it back to $1 billion. But if we actually look at it, the facts would show that the funding is actually at $11 billion, almost five times the dramatic increase that came under President Clinton. Now, one has to begin to ask at some point, are we interested in communicating the situation that the country faces or are we simply throwing out facts? I would say that this President made commitments to fund serious programs, including education, that at the point right now are causing us to stress as far as our deficits are concerned. So we saw that the Federal Government began to escalate its spending at a time when both parties felt like the surpluses were there as far as the eye could see. It is a fact also that almost every State did the same thing. The economists there were viewing the results the same as the Federal economists. Just my State and, I think, one other actually preserved budget surpluses through that time because even in the surplus era as of the late 1990s, the Republican Governor of New Mexico said we are going to hold spending very, very tight. And to his credit he did that. Thus, when the dot-com collapse came, when the later 9/11 attack came, shocking our economy into recession and driving down revenues, New Mexico and one other State maintained a surplus, and we saw many of the States begin to have tremendous economic difficulties. Now, was it their fault that they are in economic difficulties? I do not know. We could place blame. But I think the greater understanding is to know why. So, again, we experienced increased spending because the perception was that we had surpluses, but we also had two deep shocks into the economy at the very time we were experiencing those surpluses, causing us to go into an economic tail spin. The third shock, the third of three deep shocks came just as we were about to come out from underneath the effects of 9/11, Mr. Speaker. That is when Global Crossing, WorldCom, Enron, and several other companies had to reveal that they were actually cooking the books, that they were misleading their investors, that they were doing things with accounting procedures that they declared correct, that they declared legal, but which, in fact, may have been legal but certainly were not right. And they did not lead to right conclusions by investors. At that point of deception, many, many investors began to pull their money out of the stock market and put it into savings accounts and banks. That began to remove needed capital from our companies where economic expansion was no longer available. So three deep shocks into the economy: the dot-com collapse of the late 1990-2000 time period; 9/11/2001, a second deep shock; the third deep shock was the corporate scandals led by Global Crossing, Enron, and WorldCom. All those three things combined to give us a significant change in our economic climate. Now, at that point in our economic climate, when we had increased spending believing that surpluses were there as far as the eye could see, we had increased spending and suddenly three shocks into the economy caused the revenues to drop. Now we are faced with some management questions. It is easy at this point, Mr. Speaker, to sit and say what should be and should not be. But I will tell my colleagues when we get to that discussion there really are only three solutions that I see: one is to cut spending, the second is to increase taxes, and the third is to grow the economy. If we grow the economic size, and it is about $11 trillion now, if we grow the economic size from about $11 trillion or 13 or $14 trillion, it is easy for anyone to understand that at the same rates of taxes that we are going to have more revenues. So we can, again, to solve the problem of deficits from both internal and external causes, caused by increased spending and recession that has been thrown into us from three violent shocks to the economy, given those situations, again, the three solutions are to increase taxes to bring in more revenue, to cut spending, or to grow the size of the economy. It is really simple. There are not many other choices than that. Now, the problem is if you begin to increase taxes at a time of economic stress, you come into an economic principle and economic reality that when government spending begins to increase to a certain percent of the economy, and generally the range is in the 20 to 24 percent range, Mr. Speaker, at that point you begin to take so much of the investment capital out of the economy that recovery is simply not available. The Germans find themselves in that situation right now. When I came back from Iraq, we stopped in Stuttgart and met with several key business leaders at a dinner at night. Around the table uniformly, and the head of DaimlerChrysler is at that location, it was in that meeting they said please get your economy going because if your economy is going, if the United States economy is going, maybe it will raise the level of the entire economic output in the entire world because we are one-third of the world's economy. And if we can get our economy going in the U.S., just maybe they can get their economy going in Germany. Now, the difficulty they face in Germany is about 44 percent of their current gross domestic product is government spending. They cannot get out of a recession. They cannot create jobs. They cannot do it because they refuse to cut spending, and they refuse to cut taxes. Taxes would begin to lower that amount of government spending down as a percentage. But keep in mind they are desperately high at 44 percent. We were approaching the 24 percent level, which really does begin to dampen down an economy and put the economic brakes on. So we had some choices to make in this Congress and the preceding Congress of just how to handle this. How do you go about creating economic growth? How could you create economic growth when you have had three deep shocks that have taken tremendous assets, both physical assets and the lives of our countrymen? My colleagues recall after 9/11 people just began to stay home. They did not consume, and they did not spend. It was a sadness, there was a deep sorrow in our Nation that really affected us economically as well as spiritually and emotionally. So, Mr. Speaker, we have those situations that existed in our economy. I will tell my colleagues that the Democrat Governor of New Mexico said it best last year. He said that my party should get over the fact that tax cuts create jobs. That is what we wanted to do in this body. Keep in mind we have three choices: we can cut spending, we can increase taxes, or we can grow the size of the economy so that our tax rates bring more revenues. We elected, Mr. Speaker, in this House, and I am proud to have been a part of that vote, to begin to try to grow the economy. And we did that by decreasing the amount of government spending, that is, by increasing the take-home pay of our people in our economy. We began to give tax cuts. Now, those tax cuts began to show immediate promise. The biggest tax cut took place last year. We had estimates in the House, estimates that said we hoped we would get 3.5 percent rate of growth from the tax cuts that we gave. But we would have been satisfied for any rate of growth. We were stunned, Mr. Speaker, when we saw the economic growth in the third quarter of last year jump to 8.2 percent. No one had even anticipated that level of growth in our economy. In the fourth quarter it settled down to a more stable sustainable 4 percent and continues in that 4 to 5 percent range today with Alan Greenspan saying that the economic indicators are good. Independent watchdog groups have looked at our economy and said it looks positive for the next 2 years. One of the problems, though, in the recovery was that jobs had not been created. I heard a lot of my colleagues on both sides of the House express concerns, and I understood the concerns, but, Mr. Speaker, as a business owner, I also understood the other side because as a business owner, the last thing I wanted to do is hire permanent employees. If I am in a period of growth, then, first of all, I want to work overtime because I do not want to hire employees and then have to lay them off if we are just in a little bubble upward. So the first thing we will do to see if we are going to get through this pick-up in activity is we begin to work overtime just an hour here or an hour there. The next thing we begin to do, Mr. Speaker, is work weekends. When those two things do not combine to fill the needs for employees, Mr. Speaker, at that point we would always bring in temporary employees, and I say ``we'' because my wife and I were co- owners in the company. She managed one piece, I managed the other piece, and we have always made our decisions together. But always on hiring we wanted to do the same thing, so we would progress through this sequence over time, working Saturdays and Sundays, temporaries, and then we would hire part-timers. Usually we would go to retirees who did not need full-time jobs, but always would like to have 3 or 4 hours a week or 3 or 4 hours a day. So we would do these four steps before we hired full-time employees. And so, Mr. Speaker, it was not so concerning to me at that point that we had not seen the job figure growth after two successive quarters of significant growth in our economy. As we went into the early months of this year, again the job growth had been small, at about 300,000 for about a 2- to 3-month period, but in March alone, Mr. Speaker, we had stunning news that this economy that had shown all the signs of economic recovery in fact produced 308,000 new jobs in 1 month. That 308,000 new jobs, Mr. Speaker, combined to make almost a million since August of last year. At this point, Mr. Speaker, we feel the signs of recovery. We are beginning to show those signs of job growth which is beginning to show growth signs, and we are beginning to hear it frequently on the floor of the House from our friends. I would expect to see the 300,000 jobs in 1 month. They will begin to rejoice with us because no one would like to see a Nation in suffering. We would like to see a Nation that has found the key to recovery, and these keys are not so simple as going out and causing recovery and passing a law. We have to rekindle the confidence of the consumer. We have to rekindle the confidence of the investor, the confidence in companies that were shaken by corporate wrongdoing, the confidence of purchasers that were shaken by the tragic events of 9/11. So this restarting of the economy should be a rejoicing for each one of us, and I hope that it is that, because, in my view, the last thing we want to do is begin to change courses. I, along with my friends on the other side of the aisle, am very concerned about the deficit, but also I know that we have done some very expensive things last year that could not be put off. The Medicare prescription drug bill was an expensive bill that 78 percent of Americans said needed to occur because people were choosing between food and medicine. Yet it was very expensive. We must have the will to pay for it, and we must have the economic discipline to pay for it. The war on terror is extremely expensive and is taking much, much out of our economy, and that needed to be done, and the President is pursuing that with bold determination to win that war on terror and preserve the liberty that is the world's, because terror and liberty cannot live in the world together. 9/11 changed forever the way we look at this world. Mr. Speaker, another important expenditure that we have undertaken that have helped create the deficits, and even though we do not like them, we begin to understand that we are having to do things that could not be put off, homeland security could not be put off. We must begin to seal our borders so that the American people would feel safe. We must begin to do those things which will keep terror outside our borders. So we fight the war on terror to kill and disable terrorists in their own areas, but we begin to build our own borders that would protect the lives of our children and give them access to the hope and opportunity that peaceful neighborhoods give to each one of us and that we have raised our families with. These are the things that we have been spending money on in the last year and 2 years that are going to fund a deficit. And do we like the deficit? No, we do not. But we must be patient. This year the discussion is should we allow the tax cuts to expire because they are temporary, and they expire towards the end of this year. So the discussion is, and we should be on the floor of this House having that discussion, and we have will it, should we allow the tax cuts to expire? I will tell you that once we have charted a course, the worst single thing is to begin to withdraw and to find another course. In history we can determine that several courses usually will solve a problem, but we have elected to a course here; we have chosen the course of trying to grow the economy. We have given the tax cuts that have stimulated the growth and jobs, and the last thing we need to do is to retreat out and not pursue that one single objective of growing the economy, reestablishing our economic stability, creating jobs so that every American in this country is able to find a career that they look for, is able to have employment security with the outcome of raising and maintaining good families. So, Mr. Speaker, we will continue this discussion this year. I myself believe that we must stay with the tax cuts that we have put into place; that to do otherwise would again begin to thrust up the percent of government spending as a percent of our gross domestic product and run the risk of pouring water on the flames, the low flames of our economic recovery. Mr. Speaker, I am joined in the House tonight by my colleague from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez). We came in as freshmen. He, like I, has been a businessman. He, like I, has made a payroll; and like I, he married above his head, and his wife now runs their business, as mine does. So I, Mr. Speaker, would yield to the gentleman from Colorado to discuss this economic recovery from his eye, and is from the eyes of a man with a dairy background and with a banking background. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez) for his thoughts on this subject and for the calm approach that he has to dissecting a very difficult problem. Always when you face difficulties it is easy to discuss the difficulties, but understanding those elements that must be changed in the very measured way that they must be changed is the difficult part of this business. He began to discuss why would American jobs be leaving our country. I think that he is on a very, very timely subject in discussing the cost of frivolous lawsuits, lawsuits that would drive companies out of this country. About a year ago, Mr. Speaker, right at this time of year, I went to Ground Zero in New York. We went across the street to American Express; and the head of American Express told us, as congressional leaders, that if you do not reform lawsuit litigation problems in this Nation that you will not have a major company left in America in 20 years. I see those pressures that litigation costs us. Currently, the cost of lawsuits on the U.S. is equivalent to a 5 percent tax on wages. Litigation cost $233 billion in 2002. This is $807 per U.S. citizen. Increased litigation costs have burdened American families and businesses with higher insurance premiums and contributed to higher medical costs and, in some places, removing medical care completely as doctors go into retirement or refuse to practice under the conditions that face them. Individuals suffered directly by having less disposable income than they would otherwise have due to increased prices for products but also higher insurance premiums. Individuals suffered directly when businesses raised their prices on goods and services to pay for the litigation costs. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce 2 years ago was advertising in my district that the cost for every consumer who bought a new car for the litigation costs throughout the production of that car was over $500 per vehicle that every single American consumer paid. Individual wages bear the brunt in the form of lower wages in jobs and fewer jobs when we are exposed to continued litigation, and that is not litigation to respond to problems. These are frivolous lawsuits that come up simply because the legal community feels like they can get redress outside the courts, that they can get settlements outside the court without jury trial. Frivolous lawsuits discourage businesses and individuals from taking risk, which means that fewer new products are brought to production and new technologies are either delayed or foregone completely. Consequently, good, high-paying jobs are not created because of the fear of lawsuits. Companies are left going bankrupt instead of being able to pay the high cost of litigation. Currently, this House has passed four kinds of tort reform, four kinds of litigation reform that currently have stalled out in this city, unable to move further because of the influence of the personal injury lawyers in this community. Out of this House, Mr. Speaker, we have passed class action tort reform, asbestos tort reform, medical liability reform and then also, just recently, that cheeseburger bill because the personal injury lawyers are trying to tap into the pockets of every single restaurant owner in America saying they are the cause that people are sick or overweight. Mr. Speaker, just the asbestos litigation reform is needed to begin to deal with the tremendous numbers of cases that face us. An estimated 300,000 claims are pending, 730,000 individuals have already brought claims and 60 to 100,000 new claims are filed every year. Asbestos victims face uncertainty, delay, and risk in the current tort system. Today, a person's compensation is more likely to be determined by where and when the claim is filed and who is the lawyer or judge rather than by the severity of his illness. Many victims even die before receiving anything. To name a few examples, after having his claim consolidated with 1,000 other plaintiffs in a Louisiana trial, a former Avondale shipyard employee died of mesothelioma before his trial even began. An Ohio welder died during trial. A flooring contractor died during his trial in California. While some courts prioritize cases where plaintiffs suffer from mesothelioma, other times plaintiffs can die before or during the trial. Exponential growth in claims involving plaintiffs who are not sick is clogging the system. Those people who are simply making claims with no physical symptoms are clogging the system so that those who are legitimately sick are unable to move forward with their claims. Mr. Speaker, this is an economic distress to companies that maybe never even manufactured asbestos. It is an affront to our entire system. In 2001, an asbestos verdict awarded six unimpaired Mississippi plaintiffs $25 million each. None of the plaintiffs claimed prior medical expenses or absences from work due to any related illness; but they were awarded a combined total of $150 million, Mr. Speaker, and they had never claimed any absences from work due to related illnesses. These unimpaired awards have bankrupted 67 companies and wrung $54 billion from companies. Some experts estimate that under the current broken system the past and future trials of asbestos liability will ultimately reach as much as $200 billion or more. Mr. Speaker, to put these numbers in perspective, the savings and loan sector crisis in the 1980s and 1990s cost approximately $153 billion. The collapse of Enron and WorldCom resulted in losses of as much as $42 billion in gross domestic product and as much as $50 billion in insurance industry losses and as much as $50 billion in insurance losses stemming from the September 11 terrorist attacks. Most unfortunately, the asbestos litigation system imposes billions of dollars of costs, while claimants receive very little of what is paid. Transaction costs have accounted for well over half of the spending. Plaintiff attorney fees alone can be 40 percent of any settlement, with expenses often reducing the settlement to less than 50 percent. It is not just the American companies that are left with the cost, it is the American worker. Companies bankrupted by these 75 percent of unwarranted asbestos claims have slashed 60,000 jobs and failed to create 423,000 new jobs. Each displaced worker has lost up to $50,000 in wages and an average of 25 percent of the value of their 401(k) accounts. Even the AFL-CIO testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting that the uncertainty for workers and their families is growing as they lose health insurance and see their companies file for bankruptcy protection. So while our friends on the other side of the aisle continue to talk about the jobs that move overseas and the failure of this economy to create jobs, they are overlooking one of the most important cures, Mr. Speaker, that can be found to be effective: that of litigation reform. Mr. Speaker, I see that the gentleman from Colorado has additional comments, and I yield back to him.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, when we begin to look at the growth of jobs, we have to understand the importance of education in this country. No Child Left Behind is one of the dramatic things, dramatic policies that have been issued. It is a reform into the education system which literally says we are not going to leave any child behind. The President has dramatically increased funding, regardless of what our friends across the aisle say. Under President Clinton, the spending on education through the Federal Education Department was about $27 billion. Under President Bush, the funding has increased to $60 billion, over a 100 percent increase, and yet somehow we get on the floor day after day that we are underfunding education. Our friends especially like to talk about the way that we are not funding IDEA, our individuals with disabilities; and that has such a dramatic difference in previous funding levels under this President, that it is important to talk about funding levels. The bill was passed in the 1970s, and historically throughout its tenure has had about $1 billion funding. It could never get up, and keep in mind, that was under 40 years of Democrats ruling in this House. It stayed at the $1 billion level. Finally, under President Clinton, it went up to $2 billion. Now, what would my colleagues estimate that the actual spending on IDEA, the individuals with disabilities, is actually today under President Bush? If you were to listen to the rhetoric that is thrown out day after day, you would say, well, obviously it is much, much less. Actually, it is much, much greater. The funding this year under IDEA will exceed $10 billion. That is a five-time, a 500 percent increase in the 3 years under President Bush; and yet we hear the shibboleth on the floor of the House that tries to put a truth out, put a falsehood out in the guise of truth. The truth is that President Bush understands that if we are going to have careers for our young people, if our young people are to have expectations and hope into the future, they need more than jobs. They need educations. They need careers. They need a progression of learning throughout their lives. No Child Left Behind is guaranteed to put those young people in a position to where they can continue the lifelong learning process. We have moved from a time in our history when we could just learn one single task and do that our whole lives. For us to access the technology, the innovations, the creativity that is at move in the world today, our young people absolutely must be given every tool during their 12 years of public schools on into the junior college and college years; but then throughout their entire life, we must continue to have on-the-job training. We must continue to have training when people are displaced. Recently, this last week, I went into my district into Belen, New Mexico, and met with a group of employers there. We met at Cisneros Machine Shop. The Cisneros brothers really are one of the small businesses that characterize the desire on the part of our employers right now to be training their employees every day to a higher level, understanding that they cannot produce the same things yesterday that they produce tomorrow. Otherwise they will not continue to fight off the tremendous international competition that faces us. I think the recognition of people like the Cisneros brothers will bring us all, in this Nation, if we will continue these training programs, no matter what stage of development our employees are in, if we will recognize that and continue to train, then we are going to be in good shape. But we have to ask the question, when jobs are moving offshore, when jobs are moving overseas, we have to ask ourselves why; and the education system is, at base, a root cause of the problem. Under No Child Left Behind, one of the most important things we are striving to do is to put a competent teacher in every single classroom and especially those classrooms that teach math and reading. Those two basic skills are the foundations for the education process; and without them, our students simply do not have the tools to compete when they graduate. We have seen dramatic changes even in my district in the education process. About 2 weeks ago, I recognized Roswell High School on this floor as being one of the 12 breakthrough schools in the Nation. That principal believes in No Child Left Behind. He has seen it work in his classrooms, turning around a population in his high school that is both high minority and then also lower-income status students, and he has turned that around into one of the 12 breakthrough schools in the Nation. It is the kind of example that No Child Left Behind is supposed to be creating in our schools. I see the gentleman from Iowa standing.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding. In addition to our energy bill, which would create jobs, we begin to defuse the increasing price of natural gas and fuel at the pump for our cars. In addition to those two important elements of the legislative agenda that we have passed in this House last year, this transportation bill that just was passed out of the House today is poised to create another 700,000 jobs. Mr. Speaker, when I look at the continued bills that we are passing out of the House, I see responsibility. I see a patient attempt to cure the many problems that we are facing in this country; and keep in mind that we are facing the problems through no fault of our own, but 9/11 changed everything. The first thing that happened in our economy that cost us jobs was the collapse of the dot-com industry. You all remember in the late 1990s that dot-com ramp-up where stocks were selling at an inflated price, sometimes $200 per share of a stock that really had no product, had no cash flow, had no sales, no revenue, no net profit; and yet enthusiasm was that these stocks are going to be great value. Well, that enthusiasm eventually will have to come home. A corporation either had to build a product or create a revenue of some sort; and when they did not and could not, the dot-com stock market price of those stocks collapsed down, and we found that it shocked our economy pretty drastically. The second thing that shocked our economy, of course, was 9/11. The estimates are as high as a $2 trillion shock in one day, over 2,000 lives lost. I will tell you that businesses are still paying the cost for 9/11 today, and we cannot forget that the economy and the culture in this Nation changed so dramatically on that day when the unprovoked attack of terrorists, who would kill innocent lives in order to destabilize an economy, in order to destabilize a political system, after they made their attack, we in this country have got to deal with the results. Now, the President has been very patient. He has worked very hard at going and taking away the root causes of terrorism. He has taken the Taliban out of Afghanistan. Al Qaeda is on the run. The training camp that used to crank out terrorists every month, who would spew hatred and anger toward the United States and try to sow destruction throughout our economy and throughout our Nation, that training camp has been closed down and the terrorists are on the run. We continue to capture and to kill the terrorists who are here to kill us. This is not a police action. This is not something we can take into the courts and deal with there. This is an action where it is either their ideology or ours. The insistence of terrorists to destabilize the entire world is one of the most looming threats that any of us face here. It affects our ability to raise our children safely on the streets. It affects our ability to conduct just everyday commerce throughout our land. Terrorism seeks to destabilize. The paradigms of security and stability cannot exist coincidentally with terrorism and instability. The world is going to make a choice, and the United States is making a tremendous decision here to take on the fight. It is like the Prime Minister of Britain said when he spoke on this House floor: You, as Americans, should ask, why us? Why would we be in this role? It is a fair question. His answer to us on the floor of this House, Mr. Speaker, I will remind you, was simply that destiny has placed the United States in a position where it can act and it must. That means that we have the resources, we have the will, we have the leadership, and if we do not respond, the world will suffer for it. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the leadership of our President as he pushes forward the concept of No Child Left Behind, as he pushes forward the idea of the tax cuts that are creating this economy which is growing at a tremendous pace, and the job growth is exactly what we were hoping for. Mr. Speaker, as he has encouraged us to pass the energy bill, I would simply say to our friends, do your part to see that the energy bill is passed, because it is not the Republican side which is holding it hostage. Mr. Speaker, I now yield back to the gentleman from Iowa.

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I heard the lady that preceded us on the floor say that we needed to do something about OPEC. I am sorry, what are we going to do? It is a free nation. We did something about Iraq, and the accusation from their side of the aisle was that we went in to take the oil. When that was not proved correct, when it was absolutely proved false, now then they are here saying we should do something about OPEC. I am so sorry. What about the free nations? They can produce what oil they would like to. I would continue to point out that the reason that the production in this country is decreasing is exactly the policies that our friends on the other side of the aisle insist on, that is, the lack of access to the public lands in this country. It is going to drive the cost of gasoline and electricity up throughout this country because of their restrictionist policies that they have put into place, and those policies live today from the Clinton administration on through this administration from the field level. It is a question that I recently took to the BLM head, and have asked her what is she going to do to increase access to public lands so that we are not so dependent, she said, frankly, some of the extremists in our country will block every single attempt to drill more on American soil. Even the debates on this floor regarding ANWR say that we do not need that energy, that we do not need the oil; and the other side has persistently blocked every effort to try to drill in ANWR. Mr. Speaker, also, the energy policy that currently resides in Washington, but unfulfilled, is not something that the administration is blocking. It is not Republicans who are blocking the energy bill in this town. Mr. Speaker, the energy bill would not only create access to more domestic oil and gas, but it would begin to encourage the alternative sources of solar, wind, hydrogen, biomass, nuclear. If we will begin, Mr. Speaker, to deal with some of the pressures on the demand cycle for our energy with some of our alternative resources, then we can begin to see the prices of gasoline and electricity go down; but I will guarantee my colleagues, the headlines that I cut out from the Denver Post of last year telling the people in August of 2003 that they would be facing 70 percent increases in electrical costs because of the price of natural gas, those are things that we are going to continue to experience in this country until we pass an energy bill. The energy bill by itself will create 100,000 jobs, and we have been treated by our friends across the aisle to continued talk about the lack of American jobs. We have seen the dramatic report from March where 300,000 new jobs were created. That is 600,000 now in the last 6 months since we passed the jobs and tax bill. Mr. Speaker, the policies that the administration is submitting to us and that we are carrying out into actual votes and into bills are dramatically changing the environment for investment in this country. Education in America

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, some of our friends on the other side of the aisle really do, when we are talking off the floor, ask us, can we do this in an environmentally sensitive manner, this drilling for oil on American soil? The case on the North Slope of Alaska is a really good case example. When we first went there, we were building pads out of gravel or rock or stone. But we have stopped that now, and we build paths to put the equipment on out of ice. We build the roads into the pads out of ice, so that the equipment that goes into the location and then when it sits there to drill the hole in the ground, they are on ice roads and on ice paths. When spring comes, the ice thaws and there is actually just the pipe sticking out of the hole that is causing the production to come to the surface. We have showed that we can dramatically change the way that we do our drilling and our exploration. We have the necessity in this country to find the balance, to balance our environmental concerns with our need for jobs and with the need for affordable electricity, with the need for affordable gasoline to put into our cars. I think as we see gasoline approaching $3, we are going to find that the consumers in this Nation demand that we begin to produce in some of the areas where we can do so without destroying the environment. My friend from Colorado adequately pointed out that we have got a trillion cubic feet of natural gas available under his State. That gas, as he said, is not under national parks. It is not under environmentally sensitive areas. In fact, much of the gas is located in fields that have already been drilled. It is not like it is a pristine area there. Yet we have extremists in this society who are willing to bring lawsuits. Every time an application for a permit to drill is issued by the BLM, they bring a lawsuit to stop that production. We must decide if we are going to have affordable energy in this country, keeping in mind that affordable energy is what drives this economy. We see that it is used in the production of fertilizers. Fertilizers are used in agriculture. Natural gas is used in the production of electricity because it is the cleanest fuel. We must begin to drill for more fuel, or we must begin to accept the fact that our utility bills are going to be double and triple, that our gasoline is going to actually cost three or more dollars per gallon. Again on the subject of jobs, I have got friends on the other side of the aisle who maybe have not run a business. The gentleman from Iowa and myself and the gentleman from Colorado all come here as previous business owners. My friends on the other side of the field who maybe have not had a business, they really do have a curiosity. Why do we have this growth in our economy, why do we have an economy pushing upward at 8.2 percent in the third quarter, at 4 percent in the first quarter of this year? Alan Greenspan said it looks like we are on a sustained growth period for 4 percent through this year, probably next year. Why are the jobs not coming around? If you will simply think about it, Mr. Speaker, in terms of when you had your first job, many companies are afraid to add people on for fear that they will have to lay them back off if the economy is still dipping up and down. We find that, as business owners, we do not hire immediately when we have a need. We begin to expand our capacity by increasing overtime hours. Maybe we just stay late and work every evening and have everybody work on the weekends. But you cannot sustain that, you cannot wear your people out, you cannot treat people like a commodity. You cannot do that indefinitely. In my perception, I have never expected to see the jobs react immediately when the growth in the economy came because I, as a businessperson, would not hire people right away. But now we are seeing that our businesses are sustaining this growth, they are sustaining increased demand, they cannot continue to take care of the demand for labor with overtime hours, with temporary workers; and so it is not surprising that this job growth has lagged behind the growth in the economy. I would expect, Mr. Speaker, that we have such a volatility in the world economy that we will probably peak out and we will stabilize and level off here on job creation, and then we will see another ramp-up a couple of months down the road. It is just the way that I think businesses are very careful in these times to not hire too soon. When we talk about the number of jobs being created and the number of jobs lost, a lot of times our friends on the other side of the aisle are talking about the number of jobs lost in the last couple of years and they make the numbers sound very good. It is important to remember, Mr. Speaker, that America has about 138 million jobs. While we hate to see any worker displaced, we have to keep it in perspective. We have to understand the balance that is there between 138 million jobs and even the creation of these 300,000 jobs, no matter how important it is, is still just a very small change, that most Americans are finding great stability and they are seeing in their daily lives the stability that this economy is bringing in. We have to understand that the changes that occurred on 9/11 really were systemic changes. For a narrow period of time, people began to stay home. They did not travel. They did not go to the bowling alley at night. They did not go out to eat quite as much. The spending in this economy after 9/11 changed dramatically and shocked our economy into a recession that we are just now coming out of. It is not possible for an economy just to change itself and to grow out of its recession. I think the stimulating effect of the President's tax cut is one of the most important things that we did. When people on the other side of the aisle are saying that we should give tax increases back to a certain piece of the population, we have to keep an element in mind, that when government spending increases beyond a certain level, and in general economists think that within the 20 to 24 percent level, if government spending increases beyond that, then the economy does not have the capital to reinvest in growth, to reinvest in new jobs and in new factories and in new equipment. What a tax cut does is it lowers the amount that the government is actually spending as a piece of the gross domestic product. If we want a good example of what high government spending will do to an economy, we look at Europe and especially we look at our friends in Germany. Their government spends approximately 40 to 44 percent of every dollar spent in Germany. Because of that, they have a sluggish economy that cannot create jobs, and they have been wrestling with that for some time. I visited in Germany on my way back from Iraq in early November. The Germans were telling us that maybe if you get your economy going in America that we can get our economy going here. They are unwilling, though, to give the tax cuts or to cut spending. Either one would cause a lessening of the percent of gross domestic product. Because of their unwillingness, their economy stays mired and stagnant. Mr. Speaker, I am proud to be a part of the Republican Party, which has cast a pro-growth initiative in this entire 2 years that I have been in Congress. I am proud as a freshman to have participated in creating policies that will educate our young people, creating the opportunities for them for a lifetime, giving them hope and access to the potential that this great Nation has. I am proud that the President has created an initiative to continue that lifetime training for those young people as they prepare for technical careers. I am proud to have passed this transportation bill which will create many, many new jobs. I am proud to have voted for an energy bill that will create more domestic sources of energy, less dependence on international sources of energy. That bill needs to be passed. There are people in this town who are blocking it from being passed and it needs to be passed.

Mr. PEARCE. Southern New Mexico, Mr. Speaker, I border on the Mexico border, and my district is about as large as the State of Iowa. I would like to go back to the cost of lawsuits to American business and what it costs each individual. Basically, the frivolous lawsuits in America cost each one of us 5 percent off of our wages. That is an approximate cost of $807 per U.S. citizen. That is across the board. Litigation costs increase insurance premiums, create higher medical costs. They cause less disposable income in our homes. They raise prices on goods and services. Businesses have to charge a higher price in order to cover the cost of litigation. This slows job growth and expansion of the economy. The U.S. Chamber last year in my district ran ads. They were telling the New Mexico citizens that for every new car they buy, they pay over $500 for the costs of litigation that are acquiring on that car manufacturer somewhere. One of my friends from Ohio said that we must stop making policy based on the contributions to campaigns. I would like to hold him to that statement. The single largest contributor to our friends on the other side of the aisle are the personal injury lawyers. They are the ones who are buying influence, and they are the ones who are blocking the reforms of lawsuit litigation abuses in this country. This House has passed medical liability reform, it has passed asbestos liability reform, it has passed class action lawsuit reform, and they sit stalled out because of the special interests who are buying influence here exactly like my friend from Ohio from the other side of the aisle was talking about. I hope that he will join me with as much enthusiasm as he was displaying on the floor of the House to talk about the special interests purchasing the system here in Washington, and that special interest group being the personal injury lawyers of America. Mr. Speaker, if we are going to consider the environmental cost, the environmental tax on each product in America, we also need to consider the lawsuit cost, the litigation cost, on every product in America. Because it comes from each one of us every time a lawsuit is filed. No one of us would block access to the courts for people who have a serious, legitimate legal claim, but the frivolous lawsuits are designed never to go to court but instead to extract a payment from a company without going to court for a perceived injustice. Very rarely do the members of the class, those people, the class of the class action, the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people who are put on the class action lawsuit by the lawyers, very rarely do they get anything. I have heard payments as low as 25 cents for each claimant in a class action lawsuit, while the lawyers get millions and sometimes billions of dollars. If we are going to improve the business climate in America, if we are going to stop the outflow of jobs from this country, we will deal with the frivolous lawsuits that really affect the ability of any company in this country to continue to produce goods and services and produce jobs for the people who want to live here and to raise their children in just a peaceful, quiet neighborhood, knowing that they have the security of a job for tomorrow. Lawsuit abuse is one of the greatest penalties in our system, both personal and corporate, that we face. I yield back to the gentleman to conclude. This is all of my statement, and I do thank the gentleman for bringing this conversation to the floor of the House on this day when it is announced that, under the President's policies, under President Bush's policies, 308,000 new jobs have been created in March. I thank the gentleman for his leadership on this issue.

Mr. PEARCE

Mr. PEARCE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman, and I appreciate him bringing this very critical issue to the American public tonight. Our friends on the other side of the aisle continue to complain about the jobs being driven out of this country as if it is the President's fault. The gentleman from Colorado, my friend, has adequately described the problems of a failure to pass the energy policy through the entire House as a source of great difficulty in this Nation. There are two things, Mr. Speaker, that we must provide to keep our way of life, to keep our standard of living in this country. Those two things are food and energy. If we ever ship all of those requirements overseas, this Nation will find itself undergoing a change in the lifestyles and the abundance which we have been treated to and which we have become accustomed to. This Nation has been blessed with abundant natural resources, including natural gas and other fossil fuels. Almost all of the natural gas used in the United States comes from inside the United States, comes from domestic sources. Natural gas provides a cheap and plentiful source of fuel for home heating and, more importantly, manufacturing facilities, particularly the chemical industry. The chemical industry uses natural gas as a fuel and also as a raw material in the production of its products. Those products include plastics, fertilizers, and many of the other products that we find and use daily. Today, the United States has the highest natural gas price of any industrialized nation. It costs the equivalent of $10 per gallon of gasoline. Most people do not know what they pay per thousand cubic feet of gas, but it equates to $10 per gallon in gasoline, and one can imagine the stress that industries are undergoing. Sadly, this increase in price has contributed to higher home-heating costs and the loss of thousands of American jobs, including jobs in my home district in New Mexico. Throughout the United States, chemical manufacturers have lost an estimated 78,000 jobs since natural gas prices began to rise in 2000. These 78,000 jobs lost in one industry, the chemical industry, the chemical manufacturers, have been lost to manufacturing facilities in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and South America. Why do those jobs move overseas? Because our domestic supplies have been interrupted to the point that our prices in this country for natural gas are in the $5 to $8 range. Typically in this country, $2 is the range for natural gas. We had a briefing in the Committee on Transportation last year which showed us that the price of natural gas here in this country is between $5 and $8. Overseas in Russia and overseas in Africa, the price is 50 cents and 70 cents respectively. When we are paying 10 to 20 times more for natural gas in this country as other countries, the economics will eventually take hold and companies will move infrastructure out of this country. What happened to cause the gas prices to increase so dramatically? First, there are two conflicting domestic policies. Number one, the U.S. adopted a policy in the 1990s encouraging the use of natural gas as the fuel of choice to burn in power plants to generate electrical power, even though we have abundant domestic coal resources. Natural gas was the clean fuel, the fuel of choice; and it was mandated by the Federal Government. The increased U.S. restrictions on oil and gas, however, the restrictions to production of natural gas on public lands has caused the supply to decrease, while the demand is increasing. Those two conflicting domestic policies have combined to force jobs offshore into other countries. Mr. Speaker, we cannot long sustain the loss of these jobs because of conflicting policies and because of the special interests who would drive our jobs overseas. In 2000, Americans consumed about 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, almost 23 percent of the energy used. The U.S. Energy Information Agency forecasts that by 2020 domestic natural gas demand will increase by more than 60 percent, to between 32 and 35 trillion cubic feet. Much of the U.S. current production is coming from mature fields. Gas supplies from these fields are declining at about 29 percent per year. A mature field is one where the gas has been produced out of oil to the point that the down-hold pressures do not force the gas to the surface in the same quantities as used to occur. It is a naturally occurring phenomenon that you are able to gather in so much gas from one well before you have to drill another well. We find these declining production curves to be a major threat to the price of natural gas in America and, therefore, a continued impediment to creating jobs in this country. We often hear from our friends about the failure to create jobs, and they themselves are standing arm in arm with the groups who would limit the production of our natural gas which would get the cost of the natural gas to a point where our industries would become competitive again. Most of the promising new oil fields and gas fields in the U.S. are on public lands: the Rocky Mountains, Alaska, and the outer continental shelf. These areas are in the Rocky Mountain regions and Colorado and New Mexico. Mr. Speaker, if we as a Nation choose not to access our own natural resources, with our high standards for compliance with our environmental laws and regulations, we deliberately reduce our economic security and reduce the opportunities for continued leadership in resource development, manufacturing, and technological advancement; and, at the same time, we deny our fellow citizens the opportunity for high-paying, family-wage jobs with good benefits. We do not even bring up in this discussion the additional risk to national security. It is time my colleagues and I take the bull by the horns and fix our Federal land use policies so we can access our abundant natural resources for the benefit of all Americans. Why do we need to do this? People in the southern district of New Mexico understand why. Mr. Speaker, the reason we need to do that is that our standard of living is at stake. Also, the number of jobs that are created in this country are at stake. But even more importantly, the ability to pay for our utilities is at stake. People on fixed incomes are facing the price increases that my colleague from Colorado has mentioned to us already. We are facing tremendous increases in the price of gas, in the price of electricity, in the price of heating our homes and cooling our homes. Lest we forget, last year in the heat wave in Europe more than 10,000 people died from that. This is a matter of life and death as well as the future of our economic engine that powers this country. Mr. Speaker, families spend about 5 percent of income on energy, but for many low income and minority families nearly half of everything they earn is spent on energy. Price increases will be a crushing blow for many, Mr. Speaker. Many people in my district are forced to choose between essentials of heat and food. While we have soaring natural gas prices, the cost is carried by the consumer. Consumers pay more for goods that are produced with natural gas. These goods, I have mentioned before, include fertilizer, which is a key component in the food production. We get to the unhappy state where the supply of natural gas can scarcely meet demand in two ways: First, it is an effort to make our air cleaner, which is an admirable condition. Many electricity producers and factories have switched to natural gas. But this switch has caused the demand to increase to such a point that the prices are now making our industries non-competitive with overseas markets. Mr. Speaker, if we are to do anything about the loss of jobs and the failure to create jobs, we must begin to have a balanced approach to our policy of accessing public lands. Our balanced approach would say that, yes, we can be environmentally friendly while we develop our resources. It has been proven in Alaska, that State we saw the concerns about the tundra there in Alaska along Prudhoe Bay. We found that what producing companies did was drilled in the wintertime. They built ice pads and ice roads. When the well was drilled, they did no damage. Then when the spring came, the thaw came, those ice pads and ice roads disappeared to leave just the hole in the ground and the producing wellhead. Since our way of life is at stake, since our entire economic engine is powered by affordable energy, Mr. Speaker, it is past time for us to begin to discuss and begin to solve the ways that we access our public lands. Mr. Speaker, I have more comments, but I will yield back to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez). I thank him for bringing this important discussion to the floor of the House.