Dave Weldon

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would like to address some of the lemonade that the gentleman from Illinois was referring to, the impact on NASA in this omnibus continuing resolution. The Democratic majority rejected my request to be permitted to offer an amendment addressing some of the devastating cuts to NASA that are included in this bill. The Democrat majority has chosen, I believe, partisanship over partnership. The rhetoric about an open process transparency partnership is nothing but a sham. There is no transparency, there is no openness. This House passed a NASA budget. We passed $16.7 billion for NASA. Nearly all of the increased funds in that bill went to fund the replacement for the shuttle. Now, this bill drastically reduces those funds. It will result in delays in producing the vehicle to replace the shuttle, the need to continue the shuttle beyond 2010. In my opinion, these cuts in the NASA budget will lead to billions of dollars of increased funds needed in the outyears to keep the Orion Project on track. There is only one way to interpret this, my colleagues, and that is to say this is a back-handed way to destroy the manned space flight program, to destroy the work that is going on in places like Kennedy Space Center, Marshall Space Flight Center, Johnson Space Flight Center. And to say that there are no earmarks in this bill, in my opinion, is a little bit tongue in cheek. Within this budget is a huge transfer of funds that the administration did not ask for. I don't know what else you can call it other than an earmark.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us today is very different from the campaign promises that were made just a few short months ago by the Democrats. Counter to the arguments made today by Democrats in support of their bill, experts in the field, including the Democrats' own past and present budget directors, say that this bill will not save seniors or the government money. The bottom line is that this bill is more about politics and partisanship than it is about partnership and lowering prices for prescription drugs. Rather than the ``Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act,'' a more appropriate name for this bill might be, ``The Government Price Control and Limited Access to Drugs Act.'' Price controls, which supporters of this bill advocate, lead to shortages and denial of access to many drugs. Robert Reischauer, appointed by Democrats as the Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) from 1989 through 1995, had this to say recently about the Medicare Prescription Drug plan and the Democrats' proposed legislation (H.R. 4): People said it's going to cost a fortune. And the price came in lower than anybody thought. Then people like me said they're low-balling the prices the first year and they'll jack up the rates down the line. And, lo and behold, the prices fell again. And the reaction was, ``We've got to have the government negotiate lower prices.'' At some point you have to ask: What are we looking for here? In other words, Mr. Reischauer, who now works for the liberal-leaning Urban Institute, says that we have already achieved in the current plan what the Democrats say they want to achieve with H.R. 4. Further undermining the Democrats' claim is the January 10, 2007, cost estimate and analysis of their bill by the CBO concluding that H.R. 4 would not save seniors or the government money. The Democrats had hoped to use any savings for additional government spending. The problem is CBO says there will be no savings. Quoting from that analysis: . . . the Secretary would be unable to negotiate prices across the broad range of covered Part D drugs that are more favorable than those obtained by PDPs under current law. [PDPs are the current private plans available to seniors under Part D.] [T]he Secretary . . . would lack the leverage to obtain significant discounts in his negotiations with drug manufacturers. . . . [P]rices for covered Part D drugs would continue to be determined through negotiations between drug manufacturers and PDPs. . . . PDPs have both the incentives and the tools to negotiate drug prices that the government, under the legislation, would not have. CBO, economists and Republicans understand basic economics: When you have no tools at your disposal at the negotiating table, you have no leverage and no ability to achieve your goals. The Democrats removed from their bill the most important tool in lowering prices. This is the very tool that PDPs have used very effectively--their ability to establish a formulary for their plan that includes some drugs while excluding others. Absent the ability to exclude some drugs from their prescription drug plan, the government has no leverage to achieve lower prices. When seniors were told that the Democrats were planning to establish a plan that excluded some drugs, 89 percent of seniors said they would object to such a plan. It was this strong reaction from seniors that led Democrats to drop this plan. It is this ability to exclude hundreds of drugs that enables the Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA), Dept. of Defense (DOD) and Medicaid to negotiate prices with manufacturers. The VA also saves money by requiring that over 80 percent of VA prescriptions be filled by mail order and by limiting access to local pharmacies. The VA approved drug list includes less than 40 percent of drugs approved by the FDA since 1990, and less than 20 percent of drugs approved by the VA since 2000. VA drug prices also do not include the costs of administering the program or paying for pharmacy services. The tradeoff for those in these programs is that they have access to far fewer than the 4,300 drugs currently available to seniors across the Medicare drug plans. Eighty-nine percent of seniors do not want the government to apply such restrictions to Medicare. The good news for seniors is that currently there is negotiation for drug prices by those who have the leverage and tools at their disposal to secure better prices for seniors and the government. The various Medicare Part D [PDP] plans do negotiate with drug manufacturers for drug prices and they do so in a vigorously competitive environment. Each of these plans has a drug formulary (list of drugs available to enrollees in that plan) and manufacturers know that if they do not provide Part D plan with a reasonable price, their drug will not be offered in that plan resulting in the loss of drug sales for their drugs. These Part D private plans have the ability to leave the negotiating table and exclude drugs from their plan and this has lowered drug costs significantly. Medicare recently released a study showing that estimated costs of the Part D program have fallen by over $100 billion, primarily due to the ability of plans to negotiate savings. Under the current program, once these plans have completed their negotiations, seniors are able to review the plans to see which plan best meets their needs in terms of drugs, including copayments, deductibles, and other factors. My constituents in Florida District 15 have dozens of different plans from which to choose. There is a saying that, ``You don't fix what ain't broken.'' Given that over 80 percent of seniors are satisfied with their current plan, it is safe to assume that it isn't broken. Unfortunately, for Part D beneficiaries, the Democrats' bill amounts to choosing partisanship over partnership. Now-Speaker Pelosi said of the Republican Medicare Drug Plan back in 2003: ``The Republican plan is a plan to end Medicare. I urge my colleagues to reject this raw deal for America's seniors.'' Contrary to her dire prediction, it has turned out to be a very good plan for seniors as the average senior is saving hundreds of dollars per year.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, and I commend her for calling this Special Order. We have concluded now the first complete week under the Democrat majority rule, and I think it is worth talking about what their accomplishments have been. And I am very glad you brought up the issue of stem cells. I am a physician, as you pointed out. I practiced medicine for 15 years before coming to the House. Indeed, I still see patients. Internal medicine. Many of my patients had Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease, the diseases that these folks claim they are going to cure with embryonic stem cells. And to me I think it is really very unfortunate what they have been doing. It is really creating what I feel is false hope. Indeed, it is a deception to tell people that embryonic stem cells have that kind of potential. And the reason I say that is embryonic stem cells have never been shown to be safe in animal studies. They have never really been studied in humans, whereas adult stem cells and umbilical cord blood stem cells have not only been shown to be safe in clinical therapeutics, but they have also been tested not only in animals and shown to be safe, but they have been given to human beings and shown to be effective and to work; whereas embryonic stem cells have a chronic problem, you might say. They form tumors, a specific type of tumor called the teratoma, in every animal study in which they have been used. And before embryonic stem cells could ever be used in any clinical application whatsoever, they have to first be shown to be safe. And for them to be shown to be safe, somebody has to turn off this property that they have to form tumors. And yet we saw person after person parading down to the floor saying these embryonic stem cells are going to cure this and cure this and cure that. And lo and behold, it is quite possible they will cure absolutely nothing. Indeed, what is very, very interesting, and this just came out this past week, the week that the Democrats, in my opinion, are putting this deception forward on the American people, is it has been shown that amniotic fluid is filled with stem cells that have all of the properties of embryonic stem cells. They can do all the things and they behave just like embryonic stem cells, but they do not form tumors. And, of course, these cells are plentiful. They are noncontroversial. You don't have to kill a human embryo, which is what you have to do to get embryonic stem cells. You have to kill a human life. You have to kill a human embryo at its earliest stages to get those stem cells out, whereas amniotic fluid-derived stem cells behave just like the embryonic stem cells. They do all the things the embryonic stem cells do, but they don't form tumors. So they have tremendous potential application in clinical therapeutics. So to me it was unfortunate, the deceptive messaging that went out from this body. And, indeed, it seemed to me like the bulk of the American press corps buys it hook, line, and sinker that these cures are around the corner. But in reality science is moving to a place where embryonic stem cells are not going to be used. And the other thing is they have been studied for 25 years. There were many people who came to the floor and said this research is just beginning. The Journal of Science had a cover story about 6 months ago on embryonic stem cells. ``Twenty-Five Years of Study'' was the cover. It was not 8 years. It is not a new field of study. It is actually an old field of study, and it is a field of study that, in my opinion, may yield knowledge and you may be able to write a Ph.D. thesis based on the material that you discover or learn from embryonic stem cells. And, of course, we are funding it. We are funding it through the NIH right now. We are increasing funding each year, embryonic stem cell research, on the cell lines that exist at the NIH. And really all this study did was just to prove the destruction of more embryos, and that is really what the bill is all about. And this is a critical line in the sand, you might say, that our Nation's research establishment is moving across. We are now going to say that it is okay to take these forms of human life and exploit them in the lab, destroy them for therapeutic purposes, and we have never gone down that path before. And that is not where it will end. They are saying now it is the ``excess embryos'' from the fertility clinics. They will come back next and say, well, there really wasn't that many available in those clinics and we really need to create human embryos for research purposes and we need to specifically create them through a process called cloning. They want to do human cloning. That is creating human life through the process of cloning for their ``research,'' and this is what they always do in all the arguments, saying what it will cure. So before I yield back, I just want to say they were deceptive not just in their stem cell arguments. You were talking about taxes when I came to the floor. To me it was so ironic, or deceptive, almost like a culture of deception, in my opinion. They passed PAYGO and said no more are we going to pay for things if we don't have the funds to do it, and then the next day they waived PAYGO on their homeland security bill. I mean they get up and they say they are going to do all these things, and the very next day they waived that rule requirement in their homeland security bill. Furthermore, they had absolutely no explanation of how we were going to fund the provisions in their bill. The Washington Post, a liberal Democrat newspaper, speculated that the cargo-screening requirements that they put in that bill, which the industry says is unnecessary, could end up costing our economy hundreds of billions of dollars. That is the Washington Post. An anti-Republican newspaper said that. They put that in there, and they have no explanation of how they are going to pay for it. And, of course, I guess the ultimate irony was all the talk about doing away with earmarks and then they pass a minimum wage bill through the House that has a special earmark that was placed in there by somebody that benefited a company in Speaker Pelosi's congressional district, which, to me, is absolutely unbelievable. But, anyway, I have covered a lot of territory. I really came to talk about stem cells, and I thank the gentlewoman for yielding.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Well, you are absolutely right. Adult stem cell research in humans has been funded for about 25, maybe even 30 years. Embryonic stem cell research in the mouse began about 25 years ago. In the mid-1990s, the House and Senate passed and President Clinton signed into law a provision that said no Federal funds would go to any research that involved the destruction of a human embryo. Shortly after that a doctor by the name of Jamie Thompson, I think it is, at the University of Wisconsin was successful in extracting embryonic stem cells from a human embryo. People had been doing that in the mouse, but I guess nobody had either the technique or the hutzpah, as my Jewish friends like to say, to actually destroy a human embryo in his lab. But he did that. He successfully isolated the human embryonic stem cell. And then researchers wanted to get Federal funding. This has always been about Federal funding. We don't have a law restricting embryo research. People can do it. I think a lot of it is unethical, but there is no law barring it. This is all about getting the government to fund it. Under the Clinton policy, because we had a law in place saying you can't get funding if you are destroying an embryo, what the Clinton people did is they destroyed the embryos in an outside lab, and then sent the embryonic stem cells over to the NIH and they funded the research. I and several other Members wrote the Clinton administration a letter saying you may not be violating the letter of the law, but you are certainly violating the spirit of the law. That is what President Bush inherited in 2000 when he became President of the United States. What President Bush said, which I think is a reasonable thing, all of these embryos have been destroyed and all of these cell lines are being studied at the NIH. We don't want to throw them away. The embryos have been destroyed, but we don't want to keep destroying embryos, so we will continue to fund research on these embryos, we just won't destroy any more embryos. That is really what this debate has been about. The people on the other side of the debate have been saying this has so much incredible promise so we have to fund it. Even though, by the way, the biotech industry won't fund it; venture capitalists won't fund it. We want Uncle Sam and taxpayers to fund it, 50 percent of whom are pro- life and are opposed to this kind of research, because it ``has so much promise,'' quote/unquote, is what they have been arguing. When you actually look at the data, it really doesn't bear up to scrutiny. That is the fundamental point of my argument. If you look at the science, the science shows a lot of potential with adult stem cells, cord blood stem cells, and now these new amniotic fluid derived stem cells. The embryonic stem cells form tumors. Their potential application to therapeutics, I think, is very small, remote, unlikely. You have to turn off their ability to form tumors before they can be used.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank the gentleman for yielding. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of this motion to recommit, and I would encourage all of my colleagues to vote for it. Why are we offering this motion to recommit? It is really very, very simple. This institution, the House of Representatives, is previously on multiple occasions on record being in opposition to human cloning, both human cloning for the purpose of creating a baby and human cloning for the purpose of creating embryos for research purposes. Why do we bring this up? Why do we offer this motion to recommit in its current form? Well, it is very, very simple. Some of the labs that are going to get the money under this bill are currently pursuing an agenda of human cloning. I would encourage you all to go to the Harvard medical school Web site. You can pull this down. I have it right here. I would be very interested to share it with any of my colleagues how they are pursuing, through the process that they refer to as Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer, which is human cloning, an agenda to create disease-specific cell lines for embryonic stem cells. That is their agenda through the process of cloning. Now, we are on record wanting to make it illegal, make it criminal, to do human cloning. This motion to recommit doesn't do that. This says something much milder than that, and this is why I think most people in this body should be very, very comfortable with this motion to recommit. It simply says, we don't want to be using Federal dollars in a lab that is engaging in human cloning. If we can't get through the Senate a ban, a total ban on human cloning, at least let's make sure that, as we move forward in this brave new world of using human embryos in research and discarding them, that at least we are not incentivizing cloning. I commend my colleague from Texas and the staff for developing this motion to recommit, and I would just again remind all of my colleagues, we are out of step with the civilized world. Canada, France, Germany and Italy have all completely banned embryo cloning. All the other G-8 countries have serious restrictions on it. This is a restriction on human cloning, a simple, mild restriction that we won't allow Federal dollars to be going to a lab that is doing cloning.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding, and I rise in opposition to this bill. If this bill becomes law, it will establish a new precedent for our government. For the first time, we will be funding researchers who are knowingly destroying human embryos in the course of their research, and that is really what this debate is essentially about. This Congress enacted legislation over 10 years ago, and President Bill Clinton signed it, specifying that no Federal funds will be used for research that involves the destruction of a human embryo. This piece of legislation takes us down a path that overturns that. Now, the advocates for this legislation assert that this is necessary because of the great potential of embryonic stem cells, and I rise essentially as a physician and a concerned American to challenge that notion based on my understanding of embryonic stem cells. And by the way, we have heard it said repeatedly that embryonic stem cells have only been studied for 8 years. They have been studied for 25 years in the mouse. Eight years in the human model, but 25 years in the mouse. All embryonic stem cells form tumors. All of them. Indeed, if you are in the research lab, that is how you determine you actually have an embryonic stem cell. You put it in an animal, and it forms a tumor called a teratoma. They have never been shown not only to be really good and therapeutic, but they have never been shown to be safe. Before an embryonic stem cell therapy could ever be approved by the FDA, it would have been to be shown to be both effective, which embryonic stem cells have never been shown to be; and as well, safe, and the very nature of embryonic stem cells renders them unsafe. So why is this such a critical debate? Why is this such an important debate? It is simply because this is not necessary and it is morally wrong. It is morally wrong because it takes us down a path where we will be saying certain forms of human life are expendable and can be discarded. And it is totally unnecessary, because they have never been shown to be therapeutically useful. Furthermore, we were just amazed to discover that in the amniotic fluid are cells that behave just like these embryonic stem cells, but they don't form tumors. It is not ethically controversial to use them, and they have all the potential that embryonic stem cells have been shown to have in the lab. So I would encourage all of my colleagues to vote ``no'' on this legislation. Support the President of the United States, and just remember, just remember, that there are absolutely no restrictions on this research in the private sector. This is all about Federal dollars and how they are going to be used.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Speaker, I rise to extend congratulations to the retiring Director of the John F. Kennedy Space Center, James W. Kennedy, for his vast contributions to our Nation's space program. Jim's long and successful career has ensured that America's leadership in space exploration will continue well into the future. Jim Kennedy was raised in my congressional district, on the Space Coast of Florida. In fact, he was in the first graduating class at Cocoa Beach High School. After graduation, he began his distinguished career with NASA in 1968 in the Aerospace Engineering Cooperative Education Program at Kennedy Space Center. He joined Marshall Space Flight Center in 1980 as an engineer in the Shuttle Projects Office, and in 1987, was named manager of the Shuttle Program Planning and Management Systems Office. Following that, he served as the manager of the Solid Rocket Booster Project Office. Jim served as the Deputy Director of Marshall's Science and Engineering Directorate and was later named Director of the center's Engineering Directorate. In 2001, he was selected to serve as Deputy Director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, and just two years later, he returned to Florida and was named the Deputy Director of the Kennedy Space Center. In 2003, he became the eighth Director of the Kennedy Space Center. Jim has received numerous awards during his illustrious career in our Nation's Space Program, including the National Space Club's Astronautics Engineer of the Year Award, the Marshall Space Flight Center Leadership Award, the Astronaut's own Silver Snoopy Award, NASA's Distinguished Service Medal, the Presidential Rank Meritorious and Distinguished Service Awards, and the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal. Most recently, he received the Dr. Kurt H. Debus Award from the National Space Club's Florida Committee. Jim oversaw the critical job of ensuring a safe ``Return to Flight'' of the Shuttle Program as well as the resumption of International Space Station construction. I watched with pride last July 4th as Jim's team at Kennedy Space Center performed a successful launch of Space Shuttle Discovery. This particular launch was a fitting tribute to Kennedy Space Center and a wonderful cap to Jim Kennedy's career, as it proved that both our nation's Space Shuttle Program and the International Space Station Program were once again on firm footing. Jim Kennedy's leadership, and the fine professionals at KSC, gave our country renewed confidence that the goals of our Space Program would be realized. Because of the leadership and hard work of Jim Kennedy, America's premier space launch center proved that it is up to the task. Jim Kennedy's leadership has helped ensure our Space Program is on track for completion of the remaining Shuttle missions and continue the Manned Space Program which will include the return of Americans to the surface of the Moon, then Mars and beyond. I should also mention that, as with most successful leaders, Jim Kennedy was supported in his NASA career by a devoted family that includes his wife, Bernadette, as well as his two grown children, Jeff and Jamie. I would like to extend our country's appreciation for the sacrifices they made during Jim's years with our Nation's space program. Much of Jim Kennedy's career was devoted to launching mankind's most sophisticated and complex inventions. The Space Shuttles are truly the jewels of American technological prowess. Each successful launch overseen by Jim Kennedy lifted the spirits of all Americans and underlined our identity as the world's leading space faring Nation. As a representative from the Space Coast, I share deeply in this sense of pride in the promise of Kennedy Space Center and NASA and in Jim Kennedy's devoted service to our Nation.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my concerns about the substance of the legislation before us as well as the manner in which it is being considered. The bill before us will have virtually no impact on those living and working in the state of Florida. Florida voters 3 years ago approved a ballot initiative setting a minimum wage rate higher than the federal rate and indexing it for inflation. Assuming enactment of this bill later this spring, it is important to note that the federal rate is not likely to catch up to Florida's minimum wage until mid-2009 only to once again fall behind in January 2010. Just six months ago, I joined 230 of my colleagues, including 34 Democrats, in passing a bill that increased the minimum wage to $7.25 per hour while also providing important tax relief to help small businesses transition to the higher wage. Unfortunately, that bill was filibustered by Senate Democrats. This marrying of a minimum wage increase with small business tax relief was modeled on the successful approach we took in 1996 when a bipartisan coalition of 160 Republicans and 193 Democrats, including now Speaker Pelosi. I am pleased that Senate is pursing a bipartisan approach and building on this past success. Unfortunately, the Democrat leadership in the House has chosen to break with tradition, choosing partisanship over partnership, by bringing to the House floor a minimum wage bill that excludes tax relief to help small businesses transition to the higher wage. Congressional Quarterly lamented on January 8 that ``House Democrats have established rules for floor debate . . . that will block Republicans from offering any amendment. . . .'' The Congressional Budget Office puts cost of this bill at over $16 billion for small business and nearly $1 billion for the federal government. Once again, Democrats break their opening day promise by excluding this $1 billion from their ``pay-go'' promises. What has been absent from today's debate is a discussion about what the real downward pressure is on U.S. workers wages--illegal workers. After the federal government cracked down on illegal immigrants working at meat processing plants across the U.S., the company was forced to pay American workers a higher wage. Cracking down on illegal immigration, rather than granting amnesty to over 11 million illegal immigrants will do more to improve the wages of the working poor than a law increasing the minimum wage. Finally, some have suggested that raising the minimum wage is the best approach to helping those living in poverty. There are much better and more targeted approaches to assisting the working poor, a minimum wage increase is a very blunt tool in doing that. Consider these facts: The average minimum wage earner lives in a household with income above $50,000/year Less than 1 in 25 minimum wage earners are single parents who work full-time--very few families rely on minimum wage job to support a family. Only one in five minimum wage earners lives below the poverty level. The least skilled and most disadvantaged workers are the first ones to lose jobs when the minimum wage is increased. 68 percent of Americans live in states that have a higher minimum wage. 67 percent of minimum wage earners get a raise within the first year of employment.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Georgia for yielding. I rise to speak in support of this legislation and just raise the point, based on my review of the medical literature as a physician and these are very well published reports, there is abundant evidence that the neuropathways that generate pain responses are present at 20 or 22 weeks, possibly well before that. Indeed, one of the most well respected researchers in this field who is trained in anesthesia and pediatrics, Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand, testified that human fetuses possess the ability to experience pain from 20 weeks of gestation. I might also add that the new emerging field of fetal surgery, where we are actually repairing spina bifida, for example, in unborn babies as young as 16 weeks of age, there is actually a textbook about how you deliver anesthesia to these babies, and it is recommended and it is necessary to prevent movement because they experience pain. Now, the other side may quote from a very bad study published in JAMA. It was basically published by the abortion industry. To me it was a disgrace to the Journal of JAMA that they would actually let something like that be published trying to make the contrary claim. But I think the scientific evidence is overwhelming and this legislation is very, very badly needed. And I applaud the gentleman from New Jersey for introducing this bill and the gentleman from Georgia for bringing it forward, and I encourage all my colleagues to vote in favor of this important legislation.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that my name be withdrawn as a cosponsor of H.R. 3938.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise to strongly support H.R. 6061, the Secure Fence Act of 2006. It is critical that we pass this bill to further strengthen our borders. House Republicans have been forced to pursue this measure separately, because of the earlier opposition by the vast majority of Democrats who opposed that border security bill. Unfortunately, liberals in the Senate weakened the House approved bills so much when they brought it up for consideration in the Senate, that it is more of an amnesty bill than a border security bill. I cannot support any bill that weakens our borders and provides more benefits to illegal aliens, but that is what the Senate bill does. H.R. 6061 places security first. Border security is national security. According to Customs and Border Patrol, 644 illegal immigrants from countries that sponsor terrorism were apprehended by the Border Patrol in 2005. The fact that these individuals were caught illegally crossing into the U.S. should concern us all. These illegal aliens were from terrorist-sponsoring nations such as Somalia, Iran, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, as well as from other nations, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, where Islamic militants, such as al-Qaida, operate. We do not know how many succeeded in entering illegally, nor do we know whether they entered with plans to harm Americans. As further proof that terrorists are attempting to enter our country, the Sheriff of Zapata County, Texas indicated recently that Iranian currency, Arabic military badges, jackets and other clothing are among items that have been discovered along the banks of the Rio Grande River. Some of these attempting to cross the border illegally are from militant Islamic groups that have conducted terrorism on the U.S. A living example is Mahmoud Kourani, the brother of a Lebanese military leader of Hezbollah, an organization clearly identified as a terrorist organization. He was able to come into our country by bribing a Mexican consulate official to obtain a Mexican visa and was smuggled into California. Fortunately, he was later caught. H.R. 6061 will help shut down the flow of illegal immigration into the United States through utilizing additional physical barriers, fencing, and state-of-the-art technology such as UAVs. It calls for immediate construction of nearly 100 miles of two-layered reinforced fencing along the southwest border. Additionally, it authorizes the Border Patrol to disable vehicles fleeing from Border Patrol agents. This is a good bill that takes immediate steps to close gaping holes in our border security. Having these fences in place will also enable the Border Patrol to shift agents from those areas to focus on non- fenced areas, better utilizing our agents. The border fence in San Diego has proven to cut down on illegal entry. It is long overdue that we expand this effective means of securing our border. I am also pleased that the bill requests a study on the necessity and feasibility of constructing a state-of-the-art barrier system along the border with Canada. I urge the adoption of this resolution.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I stand in strong support of this resolution. It is critical that we, as a Nation, remember what took place on September 11, 2001--a day when we ``woke up'' to the fact that we were in a war that had been declared against us years before. September 11th of every year should be a day to remember those who were lost on that day. But September 11th should also be a day when we reflect and remember why we are engaged in this War on Terror. We must continue to fight--aggressively--to ensure the defeat of Radical Islamic terrorists whose aim is to kill Americans. As we commemorate the 5-year anniversary of that awful day, our thoughts and prayers are especially with those who lost loved ones; the spouses, children, and parents who are left behind. For their sake, and the sake of all Americans, we must not allow the passage of time to erode our resolve to remain vigilant in the War on Terror so that Americans will not relive similar attacks in the future. We, at home in the comfort and security of the United States, have become complacent in our security. That is a dangerous place to be. That is where we were for several years leading up to 9-11, when several terrorist attacks on the U.S.--including attempts on our homeland--took place. But our government failed to act with resolve. We must remember what we felt the days immediately after 9-11 . . . when we all felt, for the first time for many of us, that we were not safe in our own country. The anthrax attacks, stories and rumors that al-Qaida possessed old Soviet suitcase nuclear weapons--those were the stories of the time. Because of the Homeland Security measures we have implemented and the War on Terror we are conducting--both militarily and non-militarily--we are once again in a period of calm. There are those who believe that this period of calm is the time to pull back, and this undermines our resolve. No one wants to live in a constant state of fear, but we cannot be lulled into adopting a September 10th mindset. It would be irresponsible to assume or ``hope'' that no one wants to strike us, once again, and kill even more Americans than were killed on 9-11. And kill us is what they want to do. They want to kill all the ``infidels''--a category that includes not just Americans, but people of all the world's free nations, and even Muslims who reject their militant vision for Islam. I fear that we have also lost the unity that existed after 9-11. We must remember--whether in political or personal spheres of life-- that we are all in this together. Whether Republican or Democrat, religious or atheist, we are all targets of this radical group. And we must remember that it matters not whether we are fighting in Iraq--or any other country, for that matter--that makes us a target for the terrorists. Countries that have nothing to do with Iraq and Afghanistan are also experiencing terrorists incidents. And while we are remembering the 5th Anniversary of 9-11, we must also remember that Iraq is a central part of the War on Terror. President Bush is correct when he stated earlier this week in his address to the Nation that even if we pull out of Iraq, the terrorists would not leave us alone. They will never leave us alone. For al-Qaida, Iraq is not a distraction, it is the central battlefield where the outcome of this struggle will be decided. Just read the comments from their leaders, don't take my word for it. If they win in Iraq, they will establish a safe haven for terrorists and terrorist-training, much like Afghanistan was prior to 9-11. Iraq would become a factory for terrorists and weapons of mass destruction which they would export. This idea comes not from George Bush, but from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida itself. There is a clear link--withdrawing our troops before Iraq is fully stabilized would be a disaster for our safety here at home. We must remain vigilant at home, finish the job in Iraq and Afghanistan, and remain decisive in all our efforts in the War on Terror. Doing any less will weaken our security. September 11th should remind us that we have real enemies in the world and that a September 10th mindset is unrealistic, irresponsible, and will only jeopardize the lives of the American people. We must remember that it was not the intention of the radical Islamic terrorists to kill 2,973 people that day in 2001. It was their intention to kill many, many more. I will fulfill my oath of office to protect the American people from all enemies, foreign and domestic. Again, we must not allow the passage of time to erode our resolve to win the War on Terror. On September 11, 2001 we finally woke up to the fact that we were at war . . . let's not be lulled back to sleep and back to disunity. I urge the adoption of this resolution.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I would like to extend congratulations to NASA and the Shuttle program for the successful STS- 121 mission on Space Shuttle Discovery. On July 4th, I watched with pride as the NASA performed a successful launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery, a fitting tribute to NASA, our brave astronauts, and our incredible space program. STS-121 successfully confirmed the Space Shuttle safety improvements, including the redesigned External Tank foam insulation, the heat shield, and improved imagery during launch. STS-121 also successfully supplied the International Space Station with more than 28,000 pounds of much-needed equipment and supplies. Our amazing astronauts also gave us earth-bound admirers three awe- inspiring spacewalks. My hearty congratulations go to the entire Discovery crew--Commander Steven Lindsey, Pilot Mark Kelly, and Mission Specialists Michael Fossum, Lisa Nowak, Piers Sellers, and Stephanie Wilson. With the completion of the flawless 13-day mission of STS-121 on Space Shuttle Discovery, NASA proved that both its Space Shuttle program and the International Space Station program are once again on firm footing. Americans can be confident that NASA's goal of completing the construction of the space station will be realized. And this confidence-building mission comes at the right time, since the most complicated space assembly mission that has ever been scheduled in human space flight will happen in only a month and a half. Starting in August, NASA will launch a series of missions to finish the backbone of the International Space Station. These shuttle missions will be the most complex since the Apollo program. These are great challenges for NASA, but America's space agency continues to prove that it is up to the job. I have complete confidence that NASA will be successful with the remaining 15 Shuttle missions to complete the space station before the shuttle's retirement in 2010. Our Space Shuttle program has proven that it is on track to completing its remaining missions and NASA is on track to continue the manned space program, including the return of Americans to the surface of the Moon.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in strong support of H.R. 2389, the Pledge Protection Act of 2005. This legislation is important to ensuring that over-zealous Federal courts do not strike down the U.S. Pledge of Allegiance. In Newdow, Ninth Circuit ruled that the pledge was unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Newdow decision based not on the substance of the issue, but rather because it found that Newdow did not have standing. The Supreme Court did not address the underlying question regarding whether the phrase ``under God'' was constitutional. The Ninth Circuit is expected to rule on this issue in March 2007. The bill before us would prohibit Federal courts from ruling on issues related to the Pledge of Allegiance. Article III, Section 2, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution gives the Congress the authority to set such limits. The Constitution states: In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make [emphasis added]. Mr. Chairman, today, by passing this law, we are making those exceptions. I rise in strong support of this legislation and urge my colleagues to join me in support of it.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank the majority leader for yielding time. I rise in support of the President's veto. I applaud President Bush's courage in doing this, and I encourage all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to sustain this veto. This is not about whether we are going to fund more embryonic stem cell research. We are funding embryonic stem cell research. We funded $38 million of human embryonic stem cell research last year. This is not about whether it is legal or not. It is legal in the United States to do embryonic stem cell research. Indeed, this is really not about whether the United States is going to fall behind in this area of research. The United States leads the world because of the President's program, publishing 85 percent of the published research articles on human embryonic stem cell research. So what is this about, what are we debating today? We lead the world. We are funding it. What are we debating? What we are debating today in this Chamber is whether or not we are going to use taxpayer dollars to kill more human embryos. That is really what this debate is all about. This business about cures being around the corner, jeepers, I have said this, and nobody has refuted it, they don't have an animal model that shows that embryonic stem cells work and they are safe. Nobody has gotten an FDA approval to use human embryonic stem cells in a human trial. But we have each year 10, 15 or more clinical trials published in the literature showing adult stem cells and core blood stem cells work. This is a debate about whether or not we are going to have the imprimatur of the United States Government to say that certain forms of human life can be discarded.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Madam Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding, and I rise in support of this resolution, and I commend the authors, Mr. Boehner, Mr. Hyde and Mr. Lantos, and the staff involved in drafting it. I stand to urge our continued support for our ally Israel and to condemn the actions of terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, as well as the complicit Governments of Syria, Iran and Lebanon. We must clearly understand what is really going on here, the motivations underneath the surface of these attacks. As I stated last week in the House, the actions of Hamas and Hezbollah involve the kidnapping and killing of Israeli soldiers. This is an act of aggression against our ally Israel, and now they have widened their continued attacks on innocent civilians with their rocket attacks. What is particularly troubling in the case of Hezbollah is that it is part of the Government of Lebanon, which not only failed to dismantle the terrorist group, but incorporated the terrorist group into the nation's official government. Hezbollah has dragged all of Lebanon into its unfounded quarrels with Israel. Unfortunately for Lebanon's other factions, Hezbollah's attacks on Israel will cost the entire nation of Lebanon much, but they should have thought of that before allowing Hezbollah a seat at the governing table. Hezbollah has launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since 2000. It also has thousands of Iranian- and Syrian-supplied rockets ready to launch against Israel in the future. Israel is justly taking strong measures in response to Hezbollah's aggression, as they have done with Hamas' attacks, in order to deter further attacks against its soldiers and civilians. A U.S.-designated terrorist organization, Hezbollah is fully backed by the Iranian and Syrian regimes. Not only have all of the G-8 countries condemned Hamas and Hezbollah and blamed them solely for the current crisis in the Middle East, but the Arab League, while characteristically condemning the Israeli attacks, noticeably failed to support Hezbollah in its attacks on Israel. Why is this? Because the members of the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and others, are increasingly concerned about the growing threat of Iran and the amount of influence that Iran has in Syria and Lebanon and in the region generally. We should not look at this current crisis as just another page in the ongoing conflict between the Palestinians and the Israelis. This now involves an Iranian regime and the Syrians that are fomenting this, supporting this financially. I support this resolution and I again commend the authors of the resolution.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. I thank Chairman Deal for yielding. I want to commend Dr. Roscoe Bartlett. Many of you don't know him as a doctor, but he is a doctor of physiology. He led the charge on this issue beginning over a year ago now. Frankly, I am really surprised anybody would get up and oppose this legislation. It has been claimed that the Congress never directs research like this. We have had a line item directing NIH on diabetes for years. As a matter of fact, I think it passed as a separate authorization through the Commerce Committee. Then we have obviously had the directed research on AIDS for years and years and years. So there is plenty of precedent for this. As was stated earlier, this passed the Senate unanimously. You know, the embryonic stem cells that the opponents of this bill prefer to use, the embryonic stem cells from the fertility clinics, if they were ever used in a human clinical trial, first of all, you have to get over the issue that I have been saying for years and years, that they become tumors when you put them in animals, they become teratomas. That is a feature of embryonic stem cells that nobody has published a study showing the ability to turn that feature off. So they have never been shown to be safe. But then you are going to have the genetic mismatch issue. And, you know, Senator Specter recently held a hearing. And he asked Dr. Beatty, he runs the stem cell program at the NIH, and he asked him this question. He said, would you say, then, that embryonic stem cells are the best available, although all others ought to be pursued? I think he was expecting this researcher to say, yes, like so many other scientists are saying. The embryonic stem cells have the most promise. But, no, he did not say that. He said nuclear reprogramming, where you take a mature adult cell type, and you effectively dedifferentiate it back to a pluripotent state, that is one of the most exciting areas of research. And that is what this bill calls for putting more money into. Let me see, I think I had one other quote here. This is really interesting. Like I have said before, I am a doctor, I have treated Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, it has affected my family. I have also said I read the medical journals, indeed I even hired a Ph.D. researcher out of MIT to help me keep track of all of this. And here it is. This is Nature Magazine, published on line: ``Reprogramming Adult Human Cells to Repair Damaged Tissue May Not be Quite as Tough as Thought.'' Researchers have devised a chemical cocktail that makes adult mouse cells behave like embryonic stem cells, and the recipe is surprisingly simple. What is really exciting are a bunch of German researchers have published this. They have taken testicular cells in a mouse model, gotten them to behave just like embryonic stem cells, and indeed, if you do not think this is worth pursuing and you do not want to vote for this, I can tell you there are venture capitalists funding a company in California devoted to doing just this very thing. And that is where this is going. The embryonic stem cells are going to go away, no matter how we vote on this. Now, I personally believe this is a very, very good piece of legislation nonetheless, and that is because you are going to learn a lot about cell biology and embryology by studying these things. I am morally and ethically against it, but what I have opposed are these false claims that you are going to have all of these cures. I mean, there is no evidence to that. Now, I have never disputed the fact that you will gain knowledge by doing embryonic stem cell research. And we now have the potential to do that in a very ethically acceptable way to, I think, everybody. And this is a very, very modest piece of legislation. To oppose it, I don't know how else to interpret it other than to say, you really want to kill embryos. Because we now have abundant scientific evidence coming forward that you can create embryonic stem cells using other methods. And there are several different pathways to do that. And this bill is a very, very good bill.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support of the marriage protection amendment, and I want to thank Congresswoman Musgrave for her bravery and leadership on this critical issue. Marriage is an honored institution in this country, and voters have consistently voiced their support for protecting traditional marriage. Many State legislatures have already taken action and laws have been passed to establish marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Unfortunately, we have seen activist courts taking the legislative power away from elected officials and reversing important laws and, in particular, marriage protections. Recent court decisions are threatening traditional marriage, and I might add that there are groups in this country who have made that their agenda. They want to redefine the institution of marriage in the United States, and they do not want to do it through the political process, but they want to do it through the courts; and that is why we are here today having this debate. Our goal is to preserve the most basic fundamental unit of our society, of every society on the planet, the family. It has been consistently proven that children benefit the most from being raised in a home with a father and a mother present. Some people argue that traditional marriages and families are failing anyway and they are not worth protecting. I say if children are benefiting from traditional families, we always must fight. It is always worth protecting. This is why I stand today, urging my colleagues to support this important amendment. This issue will not go away, and that is about protecting the clergy so that they can marry men and women and not be forced by courts to do something other than what they want to do.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Barton. And I particularly want to thank the cosponsor of this legislation, Subcommittee Chairman Deal. And I am certainly pleased that this legislation that we introduced passed the Senate unanimously. I fully expect something similar here in the House. This bill, and I just want to point out to my colleagues, we are not revoting H.R. 810. We are talking about the bill to ban the procedure called fetal farming. And we are taking up the Senate version of the bill, which is a verbatim equivalent to the bill that Mr. Deal and I introduced. This bill sets a very, very important ethical boundary for biomedical research in this country, and obviously there is an ethical boundary that today we all agree on. It is a modest, but important, update to the Waxman 1993 fetal tissue research prohibitions. These laws, as developed in the 1990s, attempt to protect women from being coerced into having an abortion for the purpose of providing fetal tissue for research. What they were trying to do is say you can only use voluntarily aborted fetal tissue. Then, as now, the concern was that women would be exploited. Because of this, in my bill the researchers are held accountable, not any woman who may be engaged in this procedure. My bill adds a simple provision that would hold researchers criminally liable for intentionally implanting a human embryo, either in a womb or in an animal womb, for the purpose of harvesting the tissue for research. Otherwise, the Waxman language is the same. It stays the same. The criminal penalties are the same. The definition of the fetus is the same. When Congressman Waxman originally developed these laws, the thought of fetus farming hadn't even crossed our minds. Even now, most of us and most scientists would say that fetus farming is unthinkable. Science Magazine, in their reporting on the bill, stated, this bill, the one we are debating now, not H.R. 810, that fetus farming was ``ethically taboo for any legitimate researcher.'' However, what I want to get into now, and that is the reason I have the posters, this is the reason I have introduced this legislation. It may be considered taboo now, but I don't know if it will still be considered taboo in 2 or 3 or 4 years. And the way these things usually progress is they start doing it in animals and it shows a little bit of maybe potential, and then people start saying, we can cure diabetes and Parkinson's disease if we just start doing this in humans. And that is the direction they want to go. Now, this was the first study that caught my attention, and as I have stated many times on the floor of this Chamber, I am a physician. I still see patients once a month. I have treated diabetes and Parkinson's. My uncle died of complications of Parkinson's. My father died of complications of diabetes. I have dealt with this as a professional. I have dealt with this in my family. What they did is this is a cow study, and I would be happy to provide this to anybody. They did cloning, but then they took the cloned embryos, put them in a cow, and cardiac and skeletal tissue from 5- to 6-week-old cloned natural fetuses were used in this study, and they tried to show that it had some therapeutic potential. This was a second one, a cow study where they did the exact same thing, cloning, and they put it in a cow and they grew it into the fetal stage. And that is because embryonic stem cells are really a hassle to work with. It is really easier to use fetal tissue. And that is one of the arguments I have been making ever since I introduced my original bill to ban human cloning. If you don't think scientists want to start doing this, here it is. This is one of the researchers involved with this. He says, ``We hope to use this technology in the future to treat patients with diverse diseases.'' And that is usually the way we go. We say, oh, this is ethically taboo. Oh, we don't want to do this. And then somebody with a Ph.D. on the end of their name comes along and says, we are going to be able to cure this and cure that, even though there is very little evidence, scientifically, to say that the cures will be there or at least, like in the case of human embryonic stem cell research, most credible researchers in moments of honesty will acknowledge it is 10 to 20 years, if ever, going to be applicable. But that is what they will do. They will say we are going to cure this. We are going to cure that. So I am very grateful the Senate voted unanimously. I fully expect this bill to pass overwhelmingly on suspension. And we will draw a line in the sand to say we are not going to take this whole area of tissue therapies into the realm of where we are exploiting fetuses. Today, there is a majority in both bodies that want to exploit embryos. But we are saying collectively, as a Nation, through the votes of the Members of both Chambers, that we are not going to start exploiting fetuses. I think it is the right thing for us to do, and I am very, very pleased at the expedited action on this bill. And, again, I want to thank Chairman Barton and particularly my cosponsor, Chairman Deal.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I rise on the floor to address an issue that will be in the news a great deal next week. The Congress of the United States has debated on and off for quite a few years the issues surrounding new breakthroughs in cellular treatments for a variety of clinical diseases, and specifically what I am talking about here are stem cell therapies. The debate that the Congress has been engaged in for some time now is the issue of whether adult stem cells, stem cells taken from my body, or any adult's body, or even a child's body, because they are considered adult stem cells, can more successfully be used to treat a variety of different clinical conditions; or whether cord blood, which is blood from the umbilical cord, or actually you can get stem cells from the placenta, from the cord itself; or whether this notion that has been put forward for quite some time now, that the stem cells taken from an embryo is actually the best hope for the future for treating a whole variety of different diseases, diseases that we today have no treatments for. I have taken a keen interest in this issue for some time now for a variety of reasons, the first of which being I am a physician. I still see patients about once a month in the veterans clinic in my congressional district. I practiced medicine for 15 years, internal medicine, prior to my election in 1994. I spent many years treating diseases like Parkinson's disease and arthritis and Alzheimer's disease, diseases that we don't have cures for that people often cite as being potentially more successfully treated with embryonic stem cells. Additionally, I have to say some of these diseases have affected my family. My own father died of complications of diabetes, and an uncle that I was very close to as a small child died of complications of Parkinson's disease. So I consider these arguments very, very personally, I consider them professionally, and I look at the science. I look very, very closely at the science. Indeed, I think the science overwhelmingly, if you just pause for a minute and look at the data, clearly, clearly shows that adult stem cells have great promise. Cord blood stem cells have not only great promise, but they are actually being used today. We have cured people with sickle cell anemia, something I would have never thought in my lifetime I would be able to stand up and say that we are curing sickle cell anemia. Cord blood. Embryonic stem cells, on the other hand, not only have never been successfully used to treat any human condition whatsoever, they have not really been shown to be safe and effective, even in an animal model. Therefore, I find it bizarre and unusual that Members of the Congress would say straight-faced, incredibly, that the embryonic stem cells have more promise and the adult stem cells don't. The data actually suggests the absolute opposite. And, as I said, the embryonic stem cells actually are very problematic and they have never been proven to be safe. They tend to form tumors, and we don't even have an animal model yet. Indeed, this issue has become so bizarre it has actually become a campaign issue. I thought it would be good to have a debate and not just have me get up and do a monologue and show slides, but to have some of the Democrat proponents of embryonic stem cell research come to the floor and discuss this issue with me. One of the big advocates for it is the gentlewoman from Colorado. I asked her to debate me, and she declined. I asked the chairman of the DCCC, Mr. Emanuel, if he would be willing to come and debate me. He told me he was too busy. I can understand why these people don't want to debate. If you actually look at the science, look at the data, their arguments just don't hold up. There is no ``there'' there. I would like to just cover perhaps some of the arguments that we would be getting into if they were here. One of them obviously, and I want to do some separating myths from facts, and one of them which we saw a lot of in the past, and you don't see this argument as much but it is still out there, that is the argument that embryonic stem cell research is not allowed or that it is illegal. In point of fact, it is allowed in the United States. It is not illegal. The argument is should it be funded by the Federal Government. About a year ago, we took up H.R. 810, a bill that allows U.S. taxpayer dollars to be used for the destruction of human embryos in pursuing embryonic stem cell therapy. I must digress to explain how we got to where we are today. This began back I think it was 1996 when we passed an amendment in the Labor Health and Human Services Appropriations bill, and this was signed by President Clinton, stating that no U.S. taxpayer dollars would be used for any research involving the destruction of a human embryo. We never made it illegal. The advocates for H.R. 810 in their bill basically say we will now use taxpayer dollars for research that does involve the destruction of a human embryo, essentially overriding the provision that has been in law for some 10 years. And they contend that we need to do this because of the great promise. I just want to point out that we are already funding embryonic stem cell research, because what happened in the 1990s after President Clinton signed the bill that had the prohibition in it against destructive embryonic research, researchers began to destroy the embryos in outside labs and then send the embryonic stem cells to the NIH, and it was a violation of the spirit of the law if not the legal letter of the law. One of the things that President Bush did immediately upon coming to office is he reviewed this policy, and he said we are not going to do this any more because clearly in the statute we are not supposed to be funding research that involves the destruction of human embryos. But they had already destroyed some 72 human embryos, and they had 72 cell lines. President Bush said we will allow funding for this research using these existing cell lines because the embryos are already destroyed, but we will not permit the destruction of any more embryos. Well, H.R. 810, which passed the House of Representatives a year or 9 months ago, would allow Federal funds to be used for the destruction of more embryos to get more of these embryonic stem cell lines. I worked against that bill. I thought that was the wrong thing for us to do based on the simple fact that embryonic stem cells is a bad investment for the taxpayer, and I think it is morally and ethically wrong. But nonetheless on that vote in this body the ``noes'' did not prevail; the ``ayes'' prevailed and we passed it out of the House, and it has been waiting in the Senate. One of the big reasons I am here tonight is the Senate has finally agreed to take that piece of legislation up. But many of the Members of the Senate who feel the way that I do, that the destruction of human embryos is not something that we should be funding with taxpayer dollars, have proposed a plan to move three bills. One of the bills is H.R. 810, the Castle-DeGette bill that allows funding for creation of more cell lines using embryonic stem cells. And then there is a second bill which is very exciting that calls for more funding for more research for methods of getting embryonic stem cells without destroying an embryo. Science is moving along so rapidly there is a way to do that. And a third piece of legislation which is a piece of legislation barring a practice called fetal farming. I have been saying on the floor of this Chamber for years that embryonic stem cell research will not be where they will want to end. These researchers will then want to do something called fetal farming where they start doing research using human fetuses. That is the direction they will go in. They will make the same kinds of arguments that they have made with embryonic stem cell research that they are going to cure this and they are going to cure that, and that is the direction that they are going to go in. The Senate is going to take up a bill, and I have introduced a bill in the House. They may pass all three of these bills, and we may then take up the ban on fetal farming legislation, my piece of legislation, and a piece of legislation introduced by Roscoe Bartlett in the House, the so-called alternatives bill, ways to get embryonic stem cells without destroying human embryos. I want to say a little bit more about the Bush policy. There were 78 cell lines over at NIH when President Bush came into office. The advocates for H.R. 810 are saying that we need more cell lines; but point of fact, they have only had to use 22 of those. I also want to point out that there is no bar on private funding for this embryonic stem cell research. Indeed, there are private dollars being used. But what is interesting, the State of California recently had a ballot referendum approving $3 billion worth of research over 10 years on stem cells. So their entire State annual budget will probably exceed what the NIH spends on adult stem cells and embryonic stem cells combined. And there is research going on in New Jersey and at Harvard, so claims that this Federal ban, so-called Federal ban, and there isn't a ban, we are actually funding it using the cell lines that existed, it is just not true. There is lots of research going on. There is research in California, research in other States, research at private institutions, and there is embryonic stem cell research being funded by the NIH. What is not being allowed is we are not continuing to use taxpayer dollars for this research because there is an ethical and moral dilemma here. You are destroying a human embryo. Indeed, the NIH last year spent an estimated $40 million on embryonic stem cell research. Now I want to get a little more into some of the myths and the bogus statements. One myth is that it is estimated that there are currently about 400,000 frozen IVF embryos which could be used in embryonic stem cell research. Well, it turns out that is not true. And this issue has actually been looked into. The RAND Corporation looked into it. It turns out that of the 400,000 embryos stored in IVF clinics, and that's the source here, the Castle-DeGette bill, H.R. 810, calls for using the so-called excess embryos at the fertility clinics. When a couple goes in and they want to have a baby and they go to one of these fertility clinics to use in vitro fertilization, there are often embryos left over. But it turns out that 88.2 percent of the embryos in those clinics are actually wanted by the couples to do future pregnancies. So you don't have 400,000 embryos available. It also turns out that when you thaw out the embryos, there is a certain mortality. They don't all survive thawing. And at best, it is estimated that 2.8 percent of these, and all of this has been published and I have the publication with me right here, this was published in the Journal of Fertility and Sterility and I can make it available to any Member of the House or Senate who believes there are 400,000 embryos available for research. It is just not true. It turns out there is only a fraction of that number, and at most you would be able to get about 280 more cell lines from using the so-called leftover embryos from the fertility clinics. Like I said, there are still plenty more cell lines at NIH. This is an unnecessary piece of legislation, and I believe it is unethical. Another point I want to address is that it has been claimed that the cell lines at the NIH are contaminated by mouse feeder cells. You cannot grow these embryonic stem cells on their own. You have to have a layer of mouse cells growing on a plate, and then you put the embryonic cells in there, and that there is genetic contamination. And I have the papers with me here. It turns out you can remove all of that so-called contamination and it is really not a problem. Another point I want to get into is a point which has been made, and maybe I can get some assistance on the next poster here. Thank you. I have already covered this. This was mentioned by a Member of the other body, that all of these approved lines are now contaminated with mouse feeder cells. I have the publication here. It was published in Nature and Biotechnology. Most embryonic stem cell researchers around the world are using NIH-approved stem cell lines, and they are able to get the mouse feeder cells out of it. May I have the next poster, please. This is an important point. It is another point which has been claimed, and that is supposedly because of the so-called Bush ban, and that is the term you often hear them use, the Bush ban, and again there is no Bush ban. Under the Bush policy, there is a ban on killing more embryos, but there is not a ban on embryonic stem cell research, and that we are supposedly falling behind, the United States is no longer the world leader in embryonic stem cell research. Here again I think the best thing to do is to look at science publications. I have done that. This is a fascinating piece of information. Actually, it really amazed me. Mr. Speaker, 85 percent of the embryonic stem cell research being done in the world today is using the cells at the NIH, the Bush- approved cell lines, that were derived from embryos that were killed under the Clinton administration. So this claim that, oh, we must have more embryos, we must get these embryos from the fertility clinics, we must extract embryos stem cells from them because the cures are around the corner and we are falling behind, we see that claim, evidence that the United States is no longer the world leader in embryonic stem cell research is mounting. It is just not true. According to Nature and Biotechnology, in 2006 the U.S. is the world's leader in the number of published stem cell articles generally, and human embryonic stem cell articles specifically. The United States is the world leader. From 1998 to 2004, the U.S. alone published 46 percent of all papers worldwide on human embryonic stem cells. In the period from 2002 to 2004, the U.S. increased the number of human embryonic stem cell publications by 700 percent, using the embryonic stem cell lines approved by the Bush policy. So, clearly, that statement that the U.S. is falling behind because of the Bush policy, there is no basis in science, there is no basis in fact to substantiate that. Now, let me go to the next slide. And this is a very, very interesting point that you often hear made, that adult stem cells have been around for years, and they have an advantage in that the research has been going on for some time. And it is true that adult stem cell transplants have been done for over 20 years, I think over 25 years in humans, and the claim is made that the embryonic stem cells were just discovered in 1998 at the University of Wisconsin. Jamie Thompson discovered them, a researcher, and he didn't really discover them. Everybody knew they were there. What he was able to do was successfully extract them and grow them in a dish. But it turns out, and here again, this was published in a scientific journal, embryonic stem cells, animal embryonic stem cells have been used for 25 years, 25 years, embryonic stem cells research in animals. And the most interesting thing about this is that they have never been shown in that 25-year period to be safe and effective in the treatment in animals. What is lacking in this whole debate is an animal model. You cannot take a diabetic rat or a diabetic mouse and do an embryonic stem cell transplant and cure that animal of its diabetes. Twenty-five years. And the other critical thing is, embryonic stem cells form tumors. And actually it is interesting to note, that is one of the ways scientists demonstrate or validate that they actually have embryonic stem cells. They will take the embryonic stem cells, or what they think is an embryonic stem cell line that they have extracted from an embryo, an animal embryo, and they will inject it into the animal. They will inject it in the mouse, and if it forms a tumor, it is a certain kind of tumor called a teratoma, then they know it is an embryonic stem cell. And before you can ever use something like that in a human you have to turn off that ability to form a tumor to show that it is safe, and it has never been done. They have never demonstrated, in 25 years, that they can cure an animal of a disease and show that it can be done safely. Now, might I digress for a minute, just to say that adult stem cells have been shown to be safe? Adult stem cells have been shown to treat a whole host of conditions. Indeed, I have had people come to my office who have gotten cord blood transplants, who have gotten adult stem cell transplants and have been cured of diseases. I mentioned sickle cell anemia earlier. I had a young lady who had paralysis, and with adult stem cell therapy, she can't walk, but she is able to stand up. She came in my office. I have a picture of her doing that. That kind of research has been published. And so it is just fascinating when you actually start looking at the science here. And now, I want to get into the issue of where is the American public on this issue, and maybe we can get the next one up there. One of the things that is often claimed by the advocates for H.R. 810, the Castle- DeGette language, is the American people really want this. Now, one of the advocates on the Republican side of the aisle that has been advocating for an overturning of the Bush policy and more funding, that involves destroying human embryos, because they know that we are already funding embryonic stem cell research. The Winston Group did a poll, and it showed, supposedly, and this is the myth, that Republican voters support expanding embryonic stem cell research by a margin of 55-38. And that was published by the Main Street Partnership, which is a Republican group that has been advocating, they have been involved in the efforts to pass the Castle- DeGette legislation. It turned out that in that same poll, they then asked those Republican voters, if they knew that it involved the destruction of an embryo, what would happen? And 64 percent said they were less favorable. In other words, you went from a 55-38 in favor of it, and when you revealed to them that this research involves, essentially, the killing of a human embryo, 64 percent changed their mind. They changed their position. Another myth. Every poll shows the dominant majority of Americans support embryonic stem cell research. Facts are stubborn things. Congress is considering the question of Federal funding of experiments using stem cells from human embryos. The live embryo would be destroyed in the first week of development to obtain these cells. Do you support or oppose using your Federal tax dollars for such experiments? That is the right question you have got to ask the American people. Well, here are the numbers. When you ask them the right question, 38.6 percent say they support that; 47.8 percent say they oppose it. Now, granted this is not a majority. But this is certainly not a majority. It is a fallacy to say that a majority of Americans support funding research involving the destruction of human embryos. It is just not true. One of the other myths that you often hear is that therapies are around the corner. I alluded to this earlier. Before you can say human embryonic stem cell therapy is around the corner, somebody has to develop an animal model that shows that it works and it is safe before you could try it in a human, and they have yet to do that. They have just been unable to do that. The other thing I want to get at is another myth, stem cell research, whether it is done with embryonic stem cells or adult stem cells, needs cloning research to make it work. And that was said in a debate in previous years by a former Member of the Congress who now heads the Biotechnology Industry Organization, or BIO, as they call it. I think Congressman Greenwood, at the time, was partially right. Embryonic stem cell proponents will need to clone, if they ever have a hope of using embryonic stem cells for human therapies. And the reason for that is to get over the issue of tissue rejection. You can't take an embryo from a fertility clinic and extract stem cells from it and give it to somebody else who is sick. They will reject the tissue, whereas with adult stem cells where you take it from the patient, you take nasal cells or you take bone marrow cells, you convert those in the tissue that you need and you put them back in the patient, there is no issue of tissue rejection. And so the only way that embryonic stem cell research would ever work, and so he was partially correct in what he said, is that you would have to do cloning. And that is where these two issues come together. A lot of people will ask me the question, what is the relationship between cloning and embryonic stem cell research? It is a very simple one. Adult stem cells work because there are no, well, they work, first of all. Embryonic stem cells have never been shown to work. But adult stem cells can work because there are no issues of tissue rejection. But when you talk about using embryonic stem cells from a fertility clinic, it is somebody else's cells. You are going to reject those tissues. You are going to have to take immunosuppressive drugs your entire lifetim unless, of course, you made a clone of that person, and then the belief is that you would not get tissue rejection. Actually, scientific research suggests that you would still, nonetheless, get tissue rejection. Well, here, I think, is a poster that basically says it all. Adult stem cell research, well, this is from a year ago actually on the top here. They had 58 different diseases, human diseases. These are sick people. I am not talking about treating rats or mice, monkeys. I am talking about human beings. A year ago we had 58 published in the scientific literature, different clinical conditions treated successfully. Now, they are not all cures. There is a guy who was treated with an adult stem cell transplant for Parkinson's disease. He still has a little bit of Parkinson's disease. But he is off of most of his medicines, he is able to walk, talk, feed himself much better. He is 80 percent better. And so I want to be honest. They are not all 100 percent cures, but 58, successful therapies; zero with embryonic stem cells. That was May of 2005. May of 2006, 72, so in 1 year's time, it is almost one, a little more than one a month I see, I look at these studies, I comb the research literature. It is a little more than one a month new clinical diseases successfully treated with adult stem cells and cord blood stem cells. And, of course, embryonic stem cells, still no therapies. Amazing. And what is really interesting behind this figure, it is not 72 people. It is thousands of people that have been treated. There are some of these treatments that are being used constantly, and yet we don't have a single one using embryonic stem cells. And this is the part that I don't understand about the debates here in this Congress. As I said, I am a doctor, and when I see these kinds of, you know, a lot of times we debate reality here. We debated a few weeks ago whether we should pull out of Iraq. I mean, that is a real honest debate. The soldiers are there. The war is going on. Are we going to pull out or whether we are going to stay. But to debate that we need to fund more of this research claiming that we don't fund it, when, in reality we fund it, and to claim that it is more promising when there is absolutely no evidence of that, the opposite is the case. The adult stem cells, the cord blood stem cells; and those don't involve destroying human embryos, and Americans are just not comfortable with that. Now, I said earlier in my introduction that there will be three bills taken up over in the Senate. One of them is this Castle-DeGette bill, which will allow the creation of more cell lines, destroying more human embryos, even though we don't need more cell lines, even though we are leading the world in research. Even though the embryonic stem cell research appears to be going nowhere, the adult and cord blood stem cell research is showing more promise, they want to kill more embryos. And that is how H.R. 810 passed this body. It is probably going to pass the Senate. Most of the Senators, I assume, do not read the medical literature. They just accept these arguments at face value, that embryonic stem cells are more promising. So they will, the discussion is that they will approve that bill. But they are going to take up, and I am glad the Senate is going to be doing this, two other bills. One of them is a bill, a piece of legislation involving more research on alternatives to developing embryonic stem cells. And I think this is very exciting. See, most of the people who want to do embryonic stem cell research are not clinicians like me. Not doctors. They are Ph.D researchers, bench researchers, and they want to study the science of this. They want to publish papers, that science can ultimately be used, maybe to better understand diseases. I do not take that away. I think there is some validity to that argument. The reason I do not support H.R. 810, though, is because we have embryonic stem cells available through the NIH where they can fund the research. We have private entities willing to fund dollars to be used to kill, destroy more embryos so that you can get more embryonic stem cells. We just don't need to be using Federal tax dollars for this. But what is really exciting is there is a multitude of evidence emerging that you can take adult stem cells and treat them and get them to behave like embryonic stem cells. One of the most exciting groups that has approached me about this issue is a group in California that is using testicular cells, and they appear to be able to get them to do all the things that embryonic stem cells can do. And some of this is making it to the literature, Nature Magazine, which is a scientific publication, just published last week, and the title was ``A Simple Recipe Gives Adult Stem Cells Embryonic Powers. Reprogramming adult stem cells to repair damaged tissues may not be quite as tough as thought. Researchers have devised a chemical cocktail that makes adult mass cells behave like embryonic stem cells, and the recipe is surprisingly simple.'' So the science is moving us in a direction where we do not need, basically, to kill human embryos to do this kind of research. We can create embryonic stem cells from testicular cells. We can create embryonic stem cells. Really using this evidence from this report in Nature, you can use adult stem cells. So very, very exciting things going on. And I just want to point out that I am not the only person talking about this. If I can get the next slide here, this was at a hearing about 2 or 3 weeks ago in the other body. The committee chairman asked, Would you say, then, that embryonic stem cells are the best available, although all others ought to be pursued? So he was basically asking the question, we should do adult stem cell research, cord blood stem cell research, but wouldn't you say that the embryonic stem cells are the best available? And this was a question to Dr. James Battey. He is the director of the NIH Stem Cell Task Force. So this is the man who oversees the peer review panels that look at all the applications for stem cell research, and these are the folks that approve funding, and they fund cord blood stem cell research. They fund adult stem cell research, and they are funding embryonic stem cell research and providing the cell lines, the NIH-approved cell lines, to the researchers. And this is what he said. It is an amazing quote: ``To me the very most interesting thing is this frontier area of nuclear reprogramming where you take a mature adult cell type and you effectively dedifferentiate it back to a pluripotent state.'' He is saying, and this is, I think, the man who should be the most knowledgeable on this level of research throughout the world, is that you do not need embryos. You do not need to destroy embryos. You don't have to use taxpayer dollars for the destruction of human life. This is the exciting area, nuclear reprogramming, where you can take an adult stem cell and basically get it to behave like an embryonic stem cell. Might I just say as an aside, while Dr. Battey is very excited about this and I think it is going to bear fruit and there are going to be a lot of Ph.D. theses written using these kinds of cells, I do not think they will ever be useful in any medical treatments. I may be wrong. They may prove to be very useful. And that is because the adult stem cells are proven to be very, very useful now. I mean, there are some four, five, six different clinical trials under way now, as we speak, using adult stem cells used to treat congestive heart failure, one of the most common heart conditions that we see in the United States. Thousands of people in the United States die every year from it. And I seriously question if the embryonic stem cells would ever prove to be any better than the adult stem cell therapies that are currently under way and are being used in research. I want to talk just a little bit more before I close about this issue of fetal farming, and why did I introduce a bill to ban fetal farming; why is that going to be introduced in the Senate. And we may not actually take up my bill, though it is identical to the Senate bill. The Senate may approve the ban on fetal farming that, I think, Senator Santorum has introduced, the same bill. Why do I want to go in this direction? Well, if you look at the scientific literature, it appears as though that is the direction some researchers want to go, and that is where they are not doing research involving human embryonic stem cells. They are now implanting human embryos either in an animal or in a human being and then extracting stem cells or tissue from the fetus. And why am I concerned about this? Well, here is a study. I think this one involved cows. It was published back in 2002. They took a cow embryo. Actually, they took a cow egg and they did cloning. They created a cloned cow. They put that cow cloned into another cow, and then they extracted the cloned cow fetus from the mother cow and they got tissue out of it, and they used the tissue to do a tissue transplant. Then there was another study, and I think this will be the last poster that I will put up, and this is another cow study where they did the same thing. They were looking to get fetal liver, and they were successful in doing that; and it was published in July of last year, where they are taking either clones or embryos that are created through sexual fertilization, and they are putting it in a cow. They are letting it develop for 6 months, and then they are taking tissue out to get stem cells. That is the direction I feel that some researchers will want to go in, and I think that should not be allowed in humans. I think it is repugnant. It is revolting. So I have introduced legislation to ban doing that in humans. And the legislation, which is the Fetal Farming Prohibition Act of 2006, I believe, will pass the Senate. I believe it will pass the House. And, hopefully, the President will be signing it. Hopefully, he will be signing the alternatives research bill. I think we should be putting more money into ways to develop embryonic stem cells without having to kill an embryo, and certainly that would satisfy all of these researchers who want to do this research. The President has indicated that if the Senate passes the Castle- DeGette bill, H.R. 810, that his intention is to veto it, and I certainly support him in that. I hope he does do that because it is the wrong thing to do morally and ethically. There are millions of American taxpayers who will be seeing their tax dollars used to destroy a human embryo. I am against that. They are against that. We should let the private sector fund that. The private sector will not fund it because it is probably research that is not going to go anywhere. The President should veto it. I believe we can sustain the veto. This is the right thing to do morally. This is the right thing to do ethically. It is also the right thing to do with the taxpayer dollars. I put the poster up earlier showing all the treatments with adult stem cells and how embryonic stem cells have never been shown to be safe and effective even in an animal model, and why should we be using taxpayer dollars to fund this research when so many people find it repugnant and, as well, it has never been demonstrated to be effective. So this will be an issue. It will be in the news next week. The Senate will take it up first, then the House. We have already passed H.R. 810. We will pass, hopefully, the ban on fetal farming and the alternative bill, and then all three bills will go to the President. Hopefully, he will sign the alternatives research bill and the ban on fetal farming; and, hopefully, he will veto the Castle-DeGette bill. Of course, if he does that, the Senate may override his veto. I certainly hope the House sustains his veto. It is the smart thing to do and it is the right thing to do. So with that I end my discussion on this issue, and I am looking forward to the debate next week and participating in it.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, last month Israel was provoked when Hamas terrorists kidnapped CPL. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier, manning and checkpoint. This was an unprovoked act of terror--act of war--against Israel by Hamas--which also controls the Palestinian Authority government. As long as Hamas embraces terrorism and refuses to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, terrorists will persist in the Palestinian lands. Earlier this week, Hizballah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in Northern Israel. Israel has responded in an effort to rescue these soldiers and diminish the ability to Hizballah to launch missiles into Israeli population centers. I rise to express support for our ally, Israel, as it deals with yet more terrorist acts . . . the kidnapping of its soldiers during late June and the continuing barrage of rockets launched at Israeli citizens from Gaza and Lebanon. The kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers can certainly be considered a provocation of war. Unfortunately, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip has not led to a positive transformation of Palestinian politics or more security for the Israeli people. Likewise, Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon in 2000--which was certified by the United Nations--has failed to provide peace for Israelis living in northern Israel. Since Israel's 2000 withdrawal, Hizballah has fired hundreds of rockets targeting Israeli civilians. Over the past year, Hizballah has carried out four major attacks into Israel in an effort to harm Israeli citizens. Israel exhausted all non-military means to get its soldier released by Hamas before it called for these military actions. The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority is failing the Palestinian people by giving comfort to terrorists. It is imperative that we provide Israel with continued and broad- based support since an even greater destabilizing force is developing in the region--a nuclear-armed Iran with terrorist allies in Hizballah and Hamas.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, last month Israel was provoked when Hamas terrorists kidnapped Corporal Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier manning a check point. This was an unprovoked act of terror, an act of war against Israel by Hamas, which also controls the Palestinian Authority government. As long as Hamas embraces terrorism and refuses to acknowledge the right of Israel to exist, terrorists will persist in the Palestinian land. Earlier this week, Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers in northern Israel. Israel has responded in an effort to rescue these soldiers and diminish the possibility of Hezbollah to launch missiles into Israeli population centers. I rise to express support for our ally Israel as it deals with yet more terrorist acts. The kidnapping of the Israeli soldiers can certainly be considered a provocation of war. Unfortunately, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip has not led to a positive transformation of Palestinian politics or more security for the Israeli people. We need to support Israel in this difficult time.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I move that the House do now adjourn.

Mr. WELDON of Florida

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the bill and thank you for working with Members of Florida's Congressional delegation to try and address our concerns. The residents of Florida and much of the Nation are facing significant increases in energy costs--gas to electricity bills--due to the increases in global demand and our Nation's increasing reliance on foreign sources of energy. Yet for Florida, our beaches are important for tourism and it is important that we offer some protections along our coast. I believe the bill before us reaches a good balance. It offers good protections while enabling responsible exploration for natural gas and oil. Mr. Chairman, if we in this body and as a Nation are really serious about energy independence and its related national security implications, we must allow greater drilling for natural gas and oil in our Outer Continental Shelf. To do otherwise is to deny reality and live in a dream world. This bill takes a significant step to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and natural gas. Some have made baseless claims that allowing natural gas wells or oil wells within the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) will do little to address the energy costs in the United States. This claim simply is not based on sound economics. Over the past decade both in the state of Florida and across the Nation, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of natural gas for electric power generation. This switch was a quick and cost-effective way for power companies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. According to a 2005 report from the Florida Public Service Commission (FPSC), in 2003, 26 percent of Florida's electric power was generated using natural gas. By 2013, just 7 years from now, the FPSC projects that over 50 percent of Florida's electric power will be generated using natural gas. The U.S. already pays the highest price in the world for natural gas, and it will only rise further if we fail to tap our own natural gas resources along the OCS. Yet today we are increasingly importing natural gas from not only Canada and Mexico, but Trinidad, Qatar, Nigeria, Oman, Egypt, and Algeria. This increasing reliance on natural gas from Middle Eastern or unstable countries will further threaten our Nation's economic vitality and energy independence. This is the wrong path, particularly when we have untapped natural gas along our Nation's Outer Continental Shelf. The U.S. Department of Energy reports that the cost of natural gas for electric power generation increased 300 percent between 2000 and 2005. Absent a new, larger and reliable supply of reasonably priced natural gas, Florida residents--many of them senior citizens on fixed incomes--will face dramatic increases in monthly power bills over the next 7 years. Passage of the bill before, us will enable Florida to secure a long-term supply of natural gas and help keep power bills in check. The bill before us allows drilling for oil and natural gas 100 miles or more offshore. Between 50 and 100 miles the state legislature is given 1 year to withdraw this area from natural gas wells and 3 years to withdraw this area from oil wells. The coastal areas between the shoreline out 50 miles are presumed to be under moratorium unless the state legislature specifically authorizes either natural gas wells or oil drilling within that area. The bill also provides for some revenue sharing with the states that permit natural gas and oil recovery, allowing billions of dollars to be shared with the states to meet participating states' needs. I trust the state legislature and the Governor of Florida to make the right decisions about our coastlines and potential natural gas and oil exploration. That is what this bill does. It ensures that the state elected officials . . . Finally, to those, particularly in Florida who would say we should reject this legislation, I think it is important to consider the sizable shift in recent votes the House and Senate have had on the issue of off-shore drilling. When one considers the shift of 76 votes between the vote we held on this issue last year and the vote held last month, this bill before us today is likely the best deal Florida is going to get. A year ago, Senators Nelson and Martinez could muster only 44 votes in their attempt to strip off-shore drilling out of the energy bill. I'm sure that, as in the House, there is a growing consensus in the Senate to allow drilling in our Nation's Outer Continental Shelf, including Florida's coast. It is also important to note that there are currently areas off of Florida's East coast that have less protection than what is offered in this bill. Those areas will receive greater protection under this bill that they have under current law. Finally, I would say that Cuba and China are proposing a joint venture to drill for gas of the northern coast of Cuba--45 miles from the Florida shoreline. To stand idly by and watch the Communist Cuban government and China drill within 45 miles of Florida's coast--perhaps extracting gas that is in U.S. territorial waters--is absurd. Given the realities of our needs, the national security concerns associated with continued reliance on Middle Eastern oil and legislative realities, I believe it is important that we move forward with this bill today. Let's vote for the underlying bill.

Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Chairman, I thank the gentleman for yielding. I rise in opposition to the Bilirakis amendment. He is a good friend of mine. I do not agree with him on this issue. I represent about 75 miles of coastline. We had no spills from Katrina and Rita. You cannot see an oil derrick beyond about 40 miles, and I think the language in the bill the chairman has put in there is very good. You have got 50 miles of protection, and then the State, if it wants to allow drilling 50 to 100 miles, it can. Let us face it, gas is at $3 a gallon. Renewable energy resources are not there yet. I think we need to explore that. Jeepers, I drive a hybrid vehicle. I drove up here just now in a hybrid vehicle. But we need fuel, and I think this is a very, very good bill, and I think the Bilirakis amendment goes too far. I would encourage all my colleagues, as somebody from Florida, vote ``no'' on the Bilirakis amendment.