[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 15 (Wednesday, February 16, 2000)]
[House]
[Pages H493-H494]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           UNEMPLOYMENT IS LOW WHILE UNDEREMPLOYMENT IS HIGH

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Duncan) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DUNCAN. Mr. Speaker, I have said before that while our 
unemployment rate is very low, our underemployment is terrible. We have 
young people with degrees or even graduate degrees all over this 
country whose highest paying employment is as a waiter or waitress in a 
nice restaurant. While working in a restaurant is certainly honorable 
employment, it is sad that so many millions now have degrees or even 
graduate degrees and cannot find jobs in their degree fields.
  In yesterday's Washington Times, an article said that far less than 
half of those who have received doctorates, Ph.D.s in English or 
foreign languages, were able to find college teaching jobs.
  The story told of one man who received a doctorate in English from 
the University of Colorado and who did not bother to apply for a job at 
a small college in northeast Texas after he found out that he would 
have been the 350th applicant for that job.
  We now have a trade deficit of $350 billion. Most economists tell us 
that we lose conservatively 20,000 jobs per billion. This means we lost 
roughly 7 million jobs to other countries last year alone. Because of 
weak trade dealings and because environmental extremists do not want us 
to drill for any oil, dig for any coal, cut any trees, or use our 
natural resources in any way at all, we are losing many of our best 
highest paying jobs to other nations.

                              {time}  1500

  First this was a trickle. Now it is happening very, very fast. We 
cannot base our whole economy on the tourism that the environmental 
extremists always want and always bring up unless we want millions more 
working at minimum wage or barely above minimum-wage jobs. Also, our 
colleges and universities are doing a real disservice to the young 
people of this country if they do not start warning students that 
certain fields have almost no jobs or good job prospects; and I think 
they should at least warn the young people and parents and entering 
freshmen should check out these things very closely, because it is a 
very sad thing to sit with parents or grandparents of very fine, nice-
looking young people who have made very good grades and who have 
received degrees, sometimes even graduate degrees and cannot find good 
jobs after getting these degrees.
  Secondly, I heard while driving in this morning that because of 
rapidly rising oil prices, some fishermen and others in the Northeast 
have asked the President to declare a state of emergency because fuel 
and home heating prices are going up so fast, particularly in the 
Northeast. Everyone knows that we have become far too dependent on 
foreign oil. We have done this at a time that we are sitting on 
billions and billions and billions of barrels of oil. We could easily 
bring down the price of oil or at least hold it steady by drilling for

[[Page H494]]

more oil offshore and in Alaska. But once again environmental 
extremists who almost always are very wealthy people do not want us 
drilling for any more oil.
  Some of these extremists even have said that they think our oil 
prices should be two or three times higher than they are so that more 
people will be forced to use mass transit. But this would really be 
harmful and would put the final nail in the coffin of some of our small 
towns and some of our rural areas where mass transit is not available 
and where people have to drive sometimes long distances to get to good 
jobs. Do we really want to force more people into our big cities that 
are already overcrowded and where more pollution occurs? If we want 
lower prices for everything and more good jobs, we need more domestic 
oil production.
  The very misnamed Arctic Wildlife Refuge, which has 19.8 million 
acres of land in Alaska, could produce many billions more barrels of 
oil if we would just allow drilling on far less than 1 percent of its 
territory. Most of this refuge is nothing but a frozen, huge brown 
tundra that does not have a bush or a tree on it or at least not one 
within many, many miles. If we opened up only 12,000 acres, far less 
than 1 percent of this refuge, we could get to billions of barrels of 
oil; and it could be done in an environmentally safe way and without 
hurting even a single animal or cutting even one tree. Yet once again 
wealthy environmental extremists do not want us to do this, even though 
their actions are hurting the poor and working people of this country 
most of all and are also helping keep young college graduates from 
getting good, high-paying jobs.
  These are just some things that I hope many people in this country 
and in particular my colleagues here in the Congress will consider in 
the months ahead.

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