John Shadegg

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. On page 30. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SHADEGG. First of all----

Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield.

Mr. SHADEGG. If the gentleman will yield.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman for yielding. It occurs to me that, once again, Democrats in this House are acting in haste and we can repent in leisure. It seems to me fairly clear that there are questions that deserve to be answered. Secretary Geithner began the week saying that he had only known about these bonuses for roughly 1\1/2\ weeks; and yet, yesterday Ed Liddy, the chairman of AIG, said that the Federal Reserve was told about these bonuses in December. Where was Mr. Geithner? How come he didn't act? If he didn't know back then when the bailout occurred, it seems to me he should have known. Now, flash forward to yesterday again. Not just Mr. Liddy places doubt on what Mr. Geithner claims, but no less than Senator Dodd says that, in February, he put the money into the bill at the request of the Treasury Department. Who was the head of the Treasury Department at that point in time? It was Secretary Geithner. I would suggest that Secretary Geithner wants us to believe that when he was at Fed, he neither knew nor should have known and then, when he was the head of Treasury and the language was put in by the Secretary of the Treasury he neither knew nor should have known. I think there are questions that Mr. Geithner needs to answer before we are asked to vote on this bill.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Madam Speaker, on rollcall No. 71, had I been present, I would have voted ``yea.''

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Madam Speaker, this is a sad day. It's a sad day because we are about to adopt a radically different bill than the bills that were before with no hearings and no amendments. I would suggest democracy deserves better. About an hour ago, the Democratic majority leader told the tragic story of Deamonte Driver, a 12-year-old Maryland boy who died in 2007 from complications resulting from what started as a simple toothache. The majority leader used Deamonte's story to argue that we need to expand SCHIP. Stunningly, however, Deamonte Driver's story is a story of a government health care program that failed. This was a child that went into a government health care program. It failed him so miserably, he died. Several colleagues on the opposite side of the aisle argue that Republicans don't care about health care. That's dead wrong. We care about health care for America's poor and America's children. What we are against and adamantly against is promising Americans health care but failing to live up to that promise. That is what this bill will do.

Mr. SHADEGG. The Republican alternative is to give every single American family, every single one, the ability to buy a health care plan of their choice, not just the rich, not just the poor, but even those who don't respond to a government request that they enroll. We want to put them in a position to buy the health care they need by their choice from the doctor they choose. That's not good enough for the other side. They want to expand government programs that in the tragic story of Deamonte Driver resulted in the death of a 12-year-old boy from a problem that started as a toothache.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Madam Speaker, I rise to say that this bill is tragically flawed. It contains no increase in FDIC insurance, which would make people comfortable and safe when they're rushing to their banks right now. It contains no capital gains tax, no tax changes, no attempt to deal systematically with the problem. Most importantly, it contains no change in the mark-to-market rules. This morning, a banker of mine called me from Arizona. He said, ``Mark to market is destroying the capital in the market, and is dragging down the value of these markets.'' He explained that bank examiners are not even enforcing their own rule. Their own rule says an asset shouldn't be marked down until, one, its value drops and, two, until the people stop making payments, but bank examiners are now saying that they must call it mark to market and destroy its value even if the owner of the property is still making those payments. We have asked over and over again for FDIC insurance to be increased and for a change in the mark-to-market rules. Again and again and again and again, those requests have been rejected.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, this is a sad day for America. Contrary to what my friend from Massachusetts says, there is no drill, drill, drill, no change in this bill. There is not one drop of oil in this bill. And let me explain why. I went to the Rules Committee and said that any oil produced under this bill will be challenged in lawsuits and there won't be a drop produced. Let's put a limit on the lawsuits. The Rules Committee said absolutely no. Why did I do that? Last year, the Bush administration issued 487 leases in the Chukchi Sea. Environmental groups sued not 484 or 485 or 486. They sued every single lease. There are 748 leases also in Alaska in the Beaufort Sea. The environmentalists have sued all 748. There were 12 drilling plans filed last year with the Minerals and Management Service to produce oil off of Alaska. How many were sued? All 12. The Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, every single lease has been challenged in court. We could solve that problem with limits, reasonable limits on litigation.

Mr. SHADEGG. But instead, the Rules Committee said absolutely no, we want no limits on litigation. Not only are there lawsuits filed by environmental groups against every existing lease in Alaska and the lower 48, they filed a lawsuit against all future oil leases. Any American who believes this bill will produce one drop of oil is being deceived by the lawyers that will sue and sue and sue.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. The truth is this problem could be easily solved. If my Democrat colleagues were genuine about wanting to create American jobs, about putting Americans to work and about getting off our dependence on foreign oil, then put reasonable language in the bill that limits lawsuits. We can allow lawsuits. But they don't have to be dilatory. They don't have to be such that no oil will ever be produced. Sadly, the Speaker called our efforts to produce a hoax. If you don't fill the litigation loophole in this bill, this bill is a hoax. And it's not nice to fool the American people, to tell them you're doing something when you know you're not doing anything.

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank the gentleman. My colleague on the other side just said nobody got everything they wanted out of this bill. The reality is nobody gets anything out of this bill. Nobody gets anything of out of this bill except the environmental groups who will sue to block all oil production. The reality is we are legislating to solve a crisis that we created. It was the Congress at the urging of environmental groups that blocked Outer Continental Shelf drilling. It was the Congress that blocked drilling in the Inter-Mountain West. It was the Congress that blocked drilling in Alaska. Do you know what that has done? That has cost Americans jobs. That has cost the people in my district their chance to earn a livelihood because we locked that all up. Are we opening it up today? Is my colleague right that this is a compromise? Absolutely not. We are not opening up one single square inch of drilling. Let me make it clear. The Sierra Club said ``we are working very hard on this bill to ensure that its focus is not expanded offshore drilling.'' Mr. Murtha, a close friend of Speaker Pelosi, said, he admitted that, this is a political month. Last Wednesday, he said that there are all kinds of things we are going to try to do that will go away after we leave. They don't plan to produce oil under this bill. It's just talk. The legislative director of the radical Natural Resources Defense Council acknowledged the same thing about the Democrats' ploy: ``This is about politics, not necessarily about policy.'' Democrats know that not a drop of oil will be produced because lawyers will file lawsuits stopping every single one. Let me make the point: The administration last year issued 487 leases in the Chukchi Sea. Environmental groups sued to stop and have stopped all 487. The administration has a total of 748 leases in the Chukchi Sea and Beaufort Sea. How many lawsuits have been filed and how many leases have been challenged in lawsuits? All 748. Various oil companies in February of 2007 filed exploration plans for 12 separate leases in the Beaufort Sea. How many of the 12 have been challenged? Every single one. The BLM in New Mexico offered for sale 78 leases in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. How many have been sued? Every single one.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Let me just ask you a question; I thought that when the Democrats took control, they promised the most open process in the history of the United States Congress. You've told us here in these remarks tonight that we're going to debate this for a whole day--a whole day. I thought those rules said that, in this open Congress, Members would get 24 hours to see a bill before it was voted on. I think our colleague, Mr. Westmoreland, brought that to our attention. And yet you mentioned that this bill has not gone to Rules yet and wasn't written in subcommittee or full committee or ever marked up in subcommittee or full committee. And it's in Rules in the dark of the night as we approach 10 o'clock here on the east coast. You can't really mean they're not going to give us 24 hours. You can't really mean they're going to write this bill in a back room and yet bring it to the floor still tomorrow, with less than 24 hours in this, the most open Congress in history? I would be happy to yield back the gentleman's time.

Mr. SHADEGG. Oh, okay.

Mr. SHADEGG. I want to thank the gentleman for conducting this Special Order. I think it's vitally important. I want to thank all of my colleagues, the chairman of the Policy Committee, my colleague, Mr. Westmoreland from Georgia, and each of my colleagues who have spoken before me. It is I think a particularly sad moment. Kids grow up in schools in America today believing that legislation is written in a committee process allowing people across the Nation, quite frankly, to have input either directly themselves to that legislation or through their Member of Congress. And so they get out a textbook when they grow up that says ``How a Bill Becomes a Law.'' And it shows that a citizen has an idea, and they take it to a legislator. And that legislator says that is a good idea, and they write it into a bill. And then they bring that bill to this floor and they introduce it. And the bill gets assigned to a committee, and from the committee to a subcommittee. And it goes through a subcommittee hearing and a subcommittee markup and a full committee hearing and a full committee markup. And then here in our body it might go to a second committee. And ultimately it goes through Rules Committee. I suggest that in America we need to amend our textbooks because under the current regime under Speaker Pelosi, that does not happen. Bills get written. This bill of huge moment and of huge importance to the American people was not ever written or introduced or seen in a subcommittee, never seen in a full committee, never had a chance for input. And that is shocking. But let me point out why that matters. It matters because the Nation believes this week in Washington we're going to do something important. The Nation believes this week in Washington we're going to take up the drilling issue. I want to suggest to you, and I know my colleague understands this, that nothing that happens this week will have any legal meaning, any practical impact at all. I don't mean to be harsh. But it is a charade. It is, quite frankly, a hoax on the American people. And let me tell you why. Not one of these bills, not the bill you just held up, not any of the three bills that will be debated in the House and Senate this week, will produce a drop of oil. And if Americans sitting across the country are saying, well finally we're going to draft a bill that will produce some oil, they need to sit down. They need to listen carefully. They're about to be shocked. Not one drop of oil will be produced. I will tell you why. Because the bill didn't go through a committee markup process. All of these bills are silent on legal challenges. I asked the gentleman in the chair to listen. He is a thoughtful Democrat. He knows that these things matter. I ask him to listen. Not one of these bills contains language dealing with legal challenges. And without that language, there won't be a drop of oil. Let me tell you why. This Nation has got people in it who will file lawsuits challenging whatever we do, and not a drop of oil will be produced. Back that claim up, Congressman Shadegg. Well let me tell you the story. Here are the facts. Radical environmentalists, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and numerous others, Earth First, have filed lawsuits blocking every single oil lease issued in this country and all future oil leases already. Let me give you some shocking statistics. In February of this year, the Bush administration issued 487 oil leases in the Chukchi Sea, which is the coast off the west side of Alaska. Radical environmental groups, the Center for Biological Diversity, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and others challenged not 80 percent of those leases, not 90 percent of these leases, they challenged with a lawsuit, pending right now, stopping those leases from going forward, all 487 leases. They didn't let one go forward. The government decided to issue a 5-year plan for oil leases in Alaska and in the lower 48. And so in July of 2007, the Federal Government issued a plan to allow oil leasing over the next 5 years. Radical environmentalists, the Center for Biological Diversity and others, already filed lawsuits challenging every existing oil lease and every future oil lease. In Alaska there are a grand total of 748 oil leases. How many do you think have been challenged? I will yield to the gentleman. How many do you think have been challenged if there are 748?

Mr. SHADEGG. The gentleman is precisely correct. That is to say whatever bill we pass today, whatever oil leases come from that bill, if Joe back in Texas or Sarah in Washington State or Jill in my State of Arizona or Jack in Utah believe that that bill will in fact lead to drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf, they are wrong. It will lead to nothing because radical environmentalists will sue every single oil lease. This year in the Chukchi Sea, we issued 487. They sued to block 487. In all Alaska including the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas, we issued 748, and they filed to block 748. The Minerals Management Service this year approved an exploration plan for 12 leases in the Beaufort Sea. That is to say an oil company came in and said we've got a lease. We now want to go forward. Here is our exploration plan that they have to file with the government under current law. There were 12 of those that were approved this year by the Minerals Management Service of the Federal Government. How many of the 12 were challenged? All 12. You got it right. There is another lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act going after every single lease in the country. But it is not just in the Outer Continental Shelf. Let's talk about here in the United States. On July 16, 2008, the Bureau of Land Management, New Mexico State office, auctioned off 78 oil leases, some in New Mexico, some in Kansas, some in Oklahoma, some in Texas, the gentleman who just spoke. Out of 78 leases they issued in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, along comes a group called the Western Environmental Law Center and Wild Earth Guardians, and they filed suit against not 80 percent of them, not 85 percent of them, not 92 percent of them, they filed a lawsuit against 100 percent of the leases in New Mexico, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas. The government issued 78 leases. Radical environmentalists sue 78 leases. This is I think a really sad day because the Democrats are holding themselves out, and tomorrow on this floor, they will say they are addressing drilling in this country. They will say they are going to allow drilling to go forward. And it is a charade. It won't happen because they know that the Center For Biological Diversity, Natural Resources Defense Council, and friends like Wild Earth Guardians will file suit and stop not some of these leases, not most of those leases, but every single one of them. That makes me sad because it has the Congress deceiving the people of Arizona, the people of America. They are deceiving the people of my home State of Arizona too, and it shocks me. This is amazing. And somebody might say well, Congressman, that is the norm. People can always file suit. That is not true. When we did the Alaska pipeline, we wrote a provision into the law that said, if you want to file suit, you have to file it in this court and it has to be done in this amount of time. All of us on the floor here were here when we passed the legislation to build fencing along the southern border of the United States to keep out illegals. In that legislation, we said that if you want to file a legal challenge, the government can get you past that legal challenge. I want to suggest, as I conclude here, that if Speaker Pelosi really wants to produce oil, if the Democrats on the other side in the Senate, the other body, really want to produce oil, if our friends, our good Republican friends who are a part of the original gang of 10, now maybe it's the gang of 16 or the gang of 20, if they really believe they want to produce oil and they want to contribute to this, it's easy. You can write language into the bill that says we are going to allow lawsuits. Everybody believes in the process of law. I call myself a recovering lawyer. I don't want to preclude all lawsuits. But we can write reasonable language to block dilatory lawsuits, language that says you must file any legal challenge to this bill within 180 days, and it takes priority over any other litigation, and it must be resolved within that 180 days, and then you get a period of time of maybe another 180 days for appeal. If we pass a bill here in the Congress, in the House or the Senate, which says to the American people we are going to allow drilling to occur, and it is silent, as that bill you are holding is, it is silent on expediting legal challenges, the bill is meaningless and we will have played a nasty, mean-spirited trick on the people at home who want us to do something about oil. I call on my colleagues on the other side of the aisle. If they care about solving the problem of drilling, if they really mean yes, I am willing to allow some compromise on drilling, then it has got to have language expediting lawsuits. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 469, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``nay.''

Mr. SHADEGG

Mr. SHADEGG. I thank my friend and colleague from Texas. I want to compliment him for conducting this special order on earmarks tonight. It's an issue where the American people need to understand what is going on in the government that they elect. I think most of them, if they harken back to their civics class in high school or grade school, would be stunned at what happens here and would find it, quite frankly, disgusting, because it is. It is a perversion of a system. We use the term earmark, and we try to describe it. I am not certain that many people at home fully understand how the process works. To some degree, if you don't understand how the process works, you can't understand why some of us think it is so outrageous. I want to get kind of down to some basics. Let me talk about the equity of the earmark process. Some of us think that we were each elected to come here to represent our congressional districts, and we were also elected in representing them to look at the good of the Nation. Some of us don't believe that we were elected primarily to come to Washington and take as much money as humanly possible from the other taxpayers around the country and rip it out of their taxpayers' pockets and put it in our congressional districts. I don't remember being taught that in my civics book. Yet, the way the earmark system works in this Congress today, it is outrageously inequitable. You might say, well, you know my congressman knows the needs of my district, so why shouldn't he get a couple of projects in your district. Every one of your congressmen who gets earmarks come back and say, look, I got you this bridge, or I got this business in our community, this money, and they say, aren't I great. But, you know what they don't tell you? They don't tell you how much somebody else got. They don't tell you that the congressman three States over got 100 times as much money. They come and say, look, I got us $2 million for this project right in our town. But they don't tell you that the congressman from the State two States over was more powerful than your congressman, and he didn't get $2 million, he got $800 million. So the taxpayers, you, the taxpayer and the congressman whose district brought home $2 million, you got fleeced to the tune of the $800 million that went to the powerful congressman, and that's how it works. Earmarks in this Congress today go to powerful Members. So if you are the chairman of a powerful committee, or you are in the right position to get it done, you get, literally hundreds of millions of dollars, maybe even billions of dollars for projects that you get to direct. But, if you were a poor American taxpayer who lives in a district where you don't have a mega powerful congressman, well, your junior congressman, your fairly new congressman, your less-than-powerful congressman, he brings home next to nothing, but he brags about what he brought home. He just doesn't tell you that it was a fraction of what was taken out of their pockets to pay for somebody else.

Mr. SHADEGG. I would be happy to yield.

Mr. SHADEGG. I am glad the gentleman brought that up. I am going to go through a description that I think will help people understand what we mean by earmarks and by the kind of a simple earmark that you might think about, and then the more complex, the more subterfuge, the more hidden ones. First of all, you have powerful Members of Congress get billions, not-so-powerful Members of Congress get next to nothing, but taxpayers pay for it all. The other fascinating process that goes on here with earmarks is the at-risk Members, that is a Member who is in a competitive district and might lose, and their political party wants to help them, oh, they bulldoze money to that Member's district. But if you have some other congressman who is secure in her District or secure in his district, well, too bad. So you better hope that your congressman is an at-risk Member of Congress because then billions of dollars will be steered to your congressman's congressional district and to your community and to the business and the jobs in that community. But if you have a secure congressman who gets re-elected each year easily, and he is not powerful, you get a fraction amount of that money or you get zero, once again. Once again, money is coming out of your pocket and being distributed on a completely inequitable basis. It goes to the powerful Members of Congress, it goes to the at-risk Members of Congress to get them reelected. Let's see if we understand this, my tax dollars go to fund my Federal Government, but they aren't distributed on the basis of merit to the good projects. They aren't distributed on the basis of need, to people who are in need. They aren't distributed to the Nation's needs. They are distributed to some congressional district because that Member is powerful or to some other congressional district because that Member is at risk of losing his or her seat. Now if you like your money being distributed on that kind of an unfair basis, then you are for earmarks. Let's talk about kind of an explanation of what earmarks are, as my colleague from Texas just mentioned. You know, there is the kind of mundane earmark, the routine earmark. A Member of Congress gets asked to do a community project. I happen to like one, they have got a harbor in their district, that harbor needs to be dredged every few years and so they say, look, I just want to go get an earmark to get that dredged. It's asked for by the community, it's needed by the community, and it looks like a pretty innocent fair- minded earmark. If they were all like that, we might not have any problem as long as they were allocated equally to all 435 districts in the country. Then no one would be taken advantage of. But, guess what, that's not what most earmarks are, at least that's not what many of them are. Many of them are an earmark that goes to a local college or a university or an earmark that goes to a private business. That's my favorite, earmarks that go to private businesses. I am a congressman, I have a business in my district, and it is not quite making it, or it's a startup, so they come and see me and they say, hey, Congressman, we would like an earmark. Give us some taxpayer dollars because we can't survive in the marketplace. So I steer some money to that small business or that big business in my district. You know what happens? This is just surprising. Do you know what happens? I would ask the gentleman to join me for a moment. Do you know what often happens? Do you know that often the executives of the company that get that earmark money, your Federal tax dollars, do they make donations to that congressman?

Mr. SHADEGG. Taking back my time, I think it's stunning, but I don't like the words ``special interest,'' because that makes you think it might be some kind of a public interest, maybe it's for hungry children or maybe it's for needy families or maybe it's for dental care? No. This is for a private for-profit corporation, a huge business advantage for them and, interestingly, the executives of that corporation just suddenly decide that they like that congressman and send him contributions. Well, that's pretty interesting, but what about the next level of corruption in earmarks, what about could it have ever happened that a Member of Congress creates a for-profit corporation or creates a nonprofit corporation himself and puts his friends and cronies on the board of directors of that nonprofit corporation or that for-profit corporation and then earmarks money to them? Shocked. Tell me it wouldn't be so. We are taking earmark money, we are taking taxpayer money, hard- earned money by American citizens, taking it away from them and giving that money to an entity that we created that we incorporated, and we put all the Members on its board of directors and, shock of shock, they donate money back to our campaign or, in some instances, they might hire the congressman's wife or his daughter or his son or some other needy family member. That's very appropriate. That ought to happen with our taxpayer dollars. That's what we expected when we sent our taxes to Washington that a congressman would take that money and donate it through an earmark, direct it, force it through an earmark, not debate it on the floor of this House, to go to a for-profit or a nonprofit corporation that a congressman created that employs his son or daughter that makes donations back to him. We haven't even talked about the lobbyist who used to work for the congressman who then went to work for a lobbying firm that seeks earmarks who, by the way, shock of shocks, asked for the earmark, got the earmark, got paid by the for-profit business or the nonprofit business for getting the earmark, and then both executives of that for- profit or nonprofit corporation and the lobbyist, former staffer, donate to the Member of Congress. This is all above board, all wonderful, all that the American taxpayers ought to think happening with their dollars.

Mr. SHADEGG

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

Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, I have a motion at the desk.

Mr. SHADEGG. I am in its present form.